DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 677
we must make plastic, which we must make elastic, which we must make impressionable and therefore, mutable. Instead of doing that if we suddenly throw one stone of law against another of custom, both the stones break and that is not the way of achieving this change. Changes in this customary law must be set in motion in order to bring about social changes.
Now with regard to this custom for the girl’s share I am quite willing that she should have a share, but I wish to make an alteration and that is that the moment she marries, she becomes a partner in the husband’s property and that will not give any chance for the misbehaviour of the husband as it sometimes happens unfortunately. Then we go to the divorce question. I have spoken to many women. This morning four women came to me. They are good people, highly cultured, and there was also one among them who was introduced to me as one who had been abandoned by her husband, and they said, it is not only those who are happy that withheld their support from this measure, but also those who are unhappy, the unfortunate victims of man’s fury and tyranny. That is not the point, I said to them. The point is this. Ninety per cent, of our marriages are exellent but what about the remaining ten per cent ? They want relief. In India we marry and love, the English people love and marry and then give up their love, because what is called love at an impressionable age is a fanciful affair. One does not know what it is. In Hindu society there is a law or rule that in respect of marriage Shree, Kulamu, Roopamu, Bandhu Shreni and Sampradayam, —all such things should be considered. All these have to be considered before a marriage is settled. Shree means Sampatti or prosperity, then comes Kulamu or caste and position, and then Roopamu, that is appearance, Sowndariya or beauty; and then Bandhu Shreni or collection of relations and then there is sampradayam or the tradition of the family. All these five have to be carefully considered. Can a girl of eighteen—quite marriageable in age—select by judging, all these things ? Can she distinguish between one and another among these things ? No. The other day I asked my wife’s sister’s husband’s sister. No, that is not a distant relationship, you know, my wife’s sister’s husband is my brother-in-law and his sister was married. But I learned that she had said something to her father before her marriage. I went to her husband’s house, with her husband accompanying me into the inner apartments and there I said to him, “ Do you know this girl never married you ?” He was