714 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
competent to enact a measure of this kind simply because it does not have many learned pandits or that the Members who are here were not elected for a specific purpose. I submit with the due deference that there is no force in this objection and I would most respectfully ask my orthodox friends to consider the history of the legislation which I had placed before them the various measures which we ourselves have passed in recent times and to consider that they might attack the Bill upon other grounds, but to say that this House is not competent either being merely a legislative assembly or that we have got no mandate of the country to look into this measure to enact or consider it and pass it, I submit with very great deference that that argument is not sound. I will ask them to examine the Bill upon its merits to accept it or to throw it out. It is one thing to say that the Bill has not been sufficiently considered; it is one thing to say that there are provisions in the Bill which require further discussion and examination; it is one thing to say that the bill requires to be re-cast in certain matters. Even today as I suggested and as Sir B. N. Rau in his original report of the Committee said perhaps it will be advisable to take this reform of Hindu law in parts. I can quite understand that, but when every morning—I hope I will be pardoned for saying so— every mail has been bringing in letters during these months, letters and reprints from speeches delivered by persons, resolutions passed by the Dharma Sangh and this society and that society, all giving the opinion of this great man and that great man and saying that this Assembly is not competent to deal with them : I with the greatest deference and in all humility submit that that is neither correct nor logical nor reasonable, and therefore, I would submit to my friends, the opponents of the Bill not to press those arguments but to look at the Bill very reasonably, rationally and with a proper point of view.
That was my submission to my orthodox friends and now I may be permitted to say a word to our friends, the supporters of the Bill.
Shri H. V. Kamath : Are they heterodox or orthodox?
Dr. Bakhshi Tek Chand : Well let everbody decide it for himself. Now the position is that this Bill was introduced. It had as we know a very brief discussion at the first stage. When we met in the Select Committee we were given only six days to consider this important Bill and when certain objections were raised by Members of the Committee to some parts of the Bill, we were told that the principle