626 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
say that the Marwari youths are for the Hindu Code Bill. If we say that the older people are there and their experience is there, Mahatma Gandhi in his autobiography has written that it is a most pitiable sight to see the Hindu wife ....
Pandit Mukut Bihari Lal Bhargava : You can’t exploit Mahatma Gandhi’s name.
Shri Sita Ram S. Jajoo : Perhaps you might have exploited his name much more than what I have done. I have just started my life and I had no opportunity of swearing by the Mahatma’s name whereas among people who are old and who have got grey hair there might be some who might have exploited his name hundreds of times.
Madam, Mahatma Gandhi writes that so far as the position of Hindu wives is concerned, it is most pitiable. He says that if the master is annoyed with a servant, the servant may leave his master, if one is annoyed with one’s father he can’t demand partition, if a father is annoyed with his son he can ask him to get out, but so far as the Hindu wives are concerned they cannot go anywhere. If that was the case with Kasturba at the hands of the Mahatma, what would be the position of women at the hands of ordinary human beings like us ?
So far as the Constitution is concerned, we have agreed that there is equality of sex, but here we are afraid of granting that equality to our women folk, to our sisters and daughters. You can adopt a boy from a family simply because he also happens to have the same Gotra or the same surname, but you are not prepared to tolerate your own daughter or your blood sister simply because she happens to be a female. That is the position.
Much ado has been made about the Bill by saying that it is an insult on the Hindu religion. I want to ask this of my friends. The Hindu religion is very adjusting and accommodating. It has adopted itself to changing circumstances from times immemorial. The very fact that there are 137 or
138 Smritis is evident to this statement. If there was a fixed law and no change suggested or expected in the Hindu law, then why are there 138 Smritis ? And why we cannot have one more Smriti, codify and have a new Hindu law ? We can have in it all the good things of those Smritis together with all the good things which the modern times and the scientific developments and the social progress demand. What is the harm if we codify all these into one law ? The very word Smriti indicates whatever is written from memory, the word Shruti indicates whatever is heard and written.