650 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The question that I was last addressing this House on was, whether or not by giving permission for divorce this country will not be plunging itself into a large number of divorce cases like other countries. My answer
to that question was—and is—that the cases for divorce will depend entirely upon the quality of the moral values that a country has. A society may be so constructed that only in absolutely unavoidable and necessary cases would the parties seek a divorce and that there would be inherently a dislike, a distaste, a contempt for divorce where there is no occasion
for it and where evidence is really fabricated for the purpose of establishing that there are reasons for divorce. In this country the experiment has been tried in Baroda and in some parts of South India, where there is and there has been divorce for a long time past, but I am told there have been only three cases so far in Baroda and these
three cases during twenty years. I submit, again, that it is the social atmosphere and the moral values prevalent in the particular society that determine the number of divorce cases. Therefore, it is not the law that makes the society. The law only gives sanction to certain cases where it is necessary to give sanction for divorce. In this part of the Bill which
deals with marriage law there are four characteristics. The first is : intermarriage has been allowed. The second is that there is prescription for divorce. There is, thirdly, prescription for monogamy. Now all these are present in Act III of 1872 and, therefore, it is not the Hindu code which has raised these points for the first time. It was in the fifties of the
last century, as I have said, that the agitation arose and ever since then the agitation has been going on. The crusade against caste was no doubt first led by the Brahmo Samaj under Keshub Chunder Sen. The Brahmos at that time suffered persecution, ex-communication and ignominy of every description. Today we recognise that caste shall go and therefore,
all these provisions that are laid down here in this Bill relating to intercaste marriage need not raise any opposition at all. There is no doubt whatsoever that there is a very large body—if not an overwhelming body—of public opinion in favour of abolition of caste. Otherwise, what are all these provisions that we have laid down in the Constitution? Caste
shall go. If we take that position then there is nothing objectionable so far as those provisions are concerned which relate to intercaste marriage.
The same consideration applies to monogamy. I do not know
whether there is any public opinion now in favour of bigamy or