DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 703
Our friends from Travancore and Cochin are far advanced but they should also keep in mind that a solitary swallow will not make summer.
They should make the villagers also pace with them and if they also are to be taken along then kindly give this Bill more publicity and explain it to them the various implications and then the purpose will surely be
achieved. There is not the least doubt about this fact. At places it is being said that by passing this Bill a reversed state of affairs is being created, and to some extent this allegation is right also. Let the water
trickle down its natural course and if by spurning the minority view point here you would reverse the state of affairs then today you may be able to do so; but in future a time will come when such drastic changes
would be made therein that would stun you speechless. The inevitable must come to pass. I do not like to go in details.
I wish to say one thing more that our Smritikar (law giver) Yagnyavalkya has gone a step ahead of Manusmriti. Even I do not want to enter into the controversy as to which of the Manus has been the
author of this Manusmriti because there have been a number of Manus. But Shri Vigyaneshwar, the famous annotator of Yagyavalkya Smriti, who has written the Mitakshara annotation and the annotators who have
written Dayabhag and Mayukh annotations have propounded different and distinct opinions. I do not want to quote all the illustrations. But they have laid down that if a woman be not given her stridhan then
she also should get a share in the property equal to that of the son. This has expressly been mentioned. I wish to say with all the emphasis at my command that in our Smritis a mention is made of stridhan. The
people of England have not yet codified their law. I wish to inform you that according to the English Book of Prayers the prohibited degrees of relationship for marriage were determined in 1565 A. D. The same
continued to be in force till 1915 A. D. and in 1915 A. D. only one alteration was made in the prohibited degrees of relationship viz., till now a marriage could not be consumated with the wife’s sister. So I
wish to say that we have stepped far ahead as compared to this. There they took so many years to change one degree of prohibited relationship but here according to the Civil Marriage Act the people have been permitted to enter
into matrimonial alliance with the second cousins also. Those who like many take recourse of Civil Marriage, but why you want to impose the same restriction on all others. The Civil marriage Act provides for marriages