DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 671
Have you ever come across a party which draws up a comprehensive election manifesto covering all questions from China to Peru and
contemplating the nationalisation of the key industries, abolition of drink and zamindaries and various other things, but never saying a word about
social reform which is the central factor relating to India ?
It is not merely a piece of social reform. In India society is closely
mixed up and intertwined with religion. Religion is the sanction behind everything. Now I am a most irreligious man, but I have the greatest
regard for the sentiments of my neighbour. Otherwise, I am an uncultured brute. If I want to practise my heresy upon the convictions of others then I am not worth the salt that I eat. Now then, not merely religion,
but economic factors, social factors and other things are intertwined. The joint family system is the creation of ages. What is this joint family
system ? It is an insurance trust; it is a co-operation union ; it is a labour society.
It is a labour society where all the poor brothers toil; it is a cooperative society in which all the brothers live together—each for all and all for each, and it is an insurance union in which the widow of the deceased
brother is the care and charge of the surviving brothers. This is what the Mahatma said when he opposed insurance. But I know everybody
is not Mahatmaji. The Joint Hindu Family is a noble combination of these three features based upon a religious background and held together by a social bond. Can you produce an equal to it by all your labours, by
all your statutes and by all the Halisbury’s Laws of England ? You cannot do any more than you can produce an equal to the economy of hand 5 P . M . spinning which the Father of the Nation rediscovered. Permit me, with my usual immodesty, to say that I wrote a Book in 1938 which is called “The Hindu Home Rediscovered”. As I entered
life as a heretic, brought up in Christian traditions and western heresies, I began to discover in every festival, in every ceremony
and in every religious observance of Hindu society there was something deeply religious, uplifting, inspiring and ennobling. When I lived with my sisters and my brothers, I rediscovered the Home
and after twenty-five years I ventured to write this little book in which I have tried to idealise these things. I would not say that these
ideals do exist in life, but when you judge an institution, you must judge it in its pristine purity, and not in its degenerated imitation. If you want to idealise any concept, popularise any institution
and resuscitate it, then put it before the nation as it was conceived