616 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
husband is keeping a woman or a concubine, the other party has ceased to be a Hindu, either party is incurably of unsound mind, either party is suffering from a virulent and incurable form of leprosy. Now, I put you a simple question. Is there anything in any law, in any text of Hindu Shrutis or Smritis which bar these conditions ? I have been looking into the Manu Smriti and I have found nothing repugnant to this. If my hon. friends find anything, they may bring an amendment. I am not against the Smritis and I am only proud of them. I have gone through the texts; I have not been able to find anything in them repugnant to this. If these conditions are in accord with notions of social justice as it is prevalent, I see no reason why you should not accept them. Are you an enemy of women? Are you an enemy of your mother and daughter ? Our mother is a respected being and our daughter is part of our life and blood. Is that not so ? Why then do you raise the cry that this is something which will bring down Hindustan and that the Hindu society will be crushed to pieces. There is nothing in religion, there is nothing in culture, there is nothing on the basis of Hindu society that is against these conditions and repugnant to them.
Take the case of adoption. My own feeling is that at this stage of evolution of our society, it is unnecessary and it has no meaning. There is a text in Manu on which this adoption is based : that a son-less father has no region in Heaven. The basis of that text was this. At that time, the Aryans were facing the aboriginal tribes or some people who were non-Aryans. Therefore, they naturally wanted their number to grow. They put it this way. A Hindu has three “ Rinas ”: Rina to God, Rina to the Rishis and Rina to the Pitras, that is the race. That is, to carry on the thread of the race. To carry on the thread of the Race was necessary at the time Manu wrote the Smritis. It is not necessary today. Today the cry is not that we have not got children; on the other hand, the cry is that we have not got food and cloth. The fewer we are, the more of these things we will have. Therefore, at this stage, I do not see any reason for adoption. As to going to Heavens, the meaning behind the oblations and all these things was to keep up a spirit of charity in our society. Human society has grown so well and so organised that there is enough scope for charity and social service and generosity in this world rather than giving something to our ancestors who have gone beyond this world. It is better to work in this wide world. That is an institution which has no meaning. The meaning that it had has no application in the present