DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 633
divorce courts, an appeal court with three judges sitting, etc. when the communities affected have got hardly enough to eat ? I should think that is not a move in the right direction. In so far as any divorce is permitted according to the custom of the community in particular castes, it should continue ; but in the interests of uniformity you need not make the divorce more expensive. It would certainly benefit my profession and I am not at all against it. But I know my hon. friend Dr. Ambedkar very well and I have no doubt he will consider all the aspects of the question before coming to a conclusion on this particular question.
In regard to judicial separation, I recall to mind a very interesting debate in the House of Lords some years ago in which Lord Birkenhead took part. Very eminent lawyers and some of the greatest jurists of the day took part in the debate. There was a certain section of the people who took a strong view to the effect that judicial separation is another name for legalising concubinage. I would rather prefer a clean case of divorce to this judicial separation continuing. If it is a question of providing maintenance, if it is a question of seeing that the obligations are discharged that the wife is not starved or that you do not discharge your marital obligation, while continuing to be man and wife, provision is made in the Bill in regard to that.
Why all these complicated provisions of the English law in regard to alimony, in regard to judicial separation, in regard to divorce and restitution of conjugal rights ? Is it necessary to have so many detailed and complicated provisions is a point which is worth consideration.
Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra (West Bengal : General): They are necessary in the interests of the progress of the country.
Shri Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar : I am not giving one view or the other in regard to that. You may have your decided views on that matter. But I have no decided views on the subject.
Therefore, I think we have to take the modern trends of thought into consideration and not merely go upon antiquated ideas prevailing in England. Even in England within the recent years there has been a great change of opinion in regard to marriage law, although every aspect of it has not found a place in the Statute Book of England. Therefore, instead of merely copying the English precedent let us see if it is possible to make any changes.
So far as the general principle of it is concerned, I do not think that the Bill is drastic at all in regard to divorce or other matter.