676 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
it. That it should be open to us to register our marriages is a great privilege and I also like that the question of the share of the property to the girls must be settled once and for all. For a long time I have felt that the daughter must be an equal inheritor of the father’s property with the sons. Now I see that it is going to bring about endless complications in our social and economic structure. There is a friend of mine who has six daughters and one son and I asked the girls one after another separately and individually as to whether they would like to have a share in the property of their father. No : they said, “this will give rise to quarrels with our brother. We do not want this. We have our husband’s property and that always remains with us.” It is not however available to them as the stridhana would be available to them. Stridhana is a most wonderful thing, and I should like to know where in the world is there a parallel to this stridhana ? The stridhana is an institution by means of which the stridhana given to the girl at the time of the marriage becomes the absolute property of the girl which cannot be touched by the husband or by the father or by any human being at all. It is the reserve fund of the family which she is sure of and when her husband is very ill, she goes to the market to sell the jewels away for paying the doctor’s fees and if the husband lives well and good, but if he dies, it is the last service to her Lord. Such a reserve fund is cast off and a share for the wife in the husband’s property under T. V. Seshagiri Ayyar’s Bill, which became law about
15 years ago, has now come to be recognized, but after the death of the husband, in equal measure with each of the sons and only as a life interest. Our law, in spite of the British people’s unwillingness not to interfere with the religious institutions of this country for fear of their political stability being disturbed, has been slightly changed as has been already described by one of the earlier speakers and yet it is not sufficiently changed. The unfortunate feature is that the British people felt loathe to interfere with the social customs of this country for political reasons and therefore the law has become petrified. In every country custom goes on changing and when the King adopts a change in social customs, immediately that becomes the law and it sets the tone and the pace for all society. But unfortunately in our country for a thousand years we have not had indigenous kings and after the British came, they positively resisted all temptation to make any social changes in the social set-up. Therefore the custom has become petrified and it is that custom, that petrified custom which