662 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
to the daughter having a share in her father’s property is very much in consonance with the times and compatible with our faith and culture and I hope it will be considered in a very generous spirit.
In opposing this provision, several people have also averred that the idea that a woman should also have a share in her father’s property took birth in the minds of those persons who are imbued with a foreign culture and who have not read Indian literature. I shall not be taking much of your time and should like to tell you briefly that this sentiment finds ample expression in our folk-songs which have existed for the last hundreds of years. This sentiment did not get into our folk-songs at the time of our mothers and sisters but has been there since the times of our grand and great-grand-mothers when there was not even a trace of foreign culture anywhere and when it had not set any kind of seal on our culture. The songs that are sung at the time of marriage in our Province contain this sentiment and I think that such songs are sung at marriages in all Provinces. I do not here want to recite the actual lines of those songs but would briefly like to state that such songs are sung amongst us at the time of marriage, at any rate in our Province with which I am familiar. I have also studied the folklore of some other Provinces where too a similar line of thought exists. We find a very wholesome sentiment forming the burden of these songs. The girl gives expression to her desire to have one-half share in her father’s ‘dominion’. The brother offers her various kinds of temptations, saying he would give her a plate full of ornaments, that he would give her horses and elephants and also enumerates the various articles he would be giving her by way of dowry. The girl replies that if she is destined to acquire all that wealth, it could also become available to her when she goes over to the house of her father-in-law and her husband but that she would rather have her one-half share here, that she has been brought up in this home and that she would like to have a share in the orchard and the tank here. Thus there is absolutely no foundation for the allegation that this sentiment is the product of foreign literature, or foreign education, or foreign culture or that it is a creation of the minds of those persons who have received their education from foreign sources. Our ancient literature abounds in that sentiment and our folk-songs would offer various such examples as reflect that feeling.
Nature has made a boy and a girl equal in the eyes of their parents. Then why is it that a boy should have a share in his father’s property