736 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Permission, therefore to dissolve in a legal, reasonable public manner unions which have become oppressive, which have become a source of misery to the parties and their off-springs, is nothing more in my opinion that a recognition of the actual prevailing circumstances and the developments that may have in any given case taken place, and therefore, it is that even though one may not like the idea, one must recognize realities, one must face the actual position and admit that it is much better that we should discontinue or dissolve such unions than that we should continue a misery for such parties.
The idea that these unions should be monogamous in character while they last is also one which in my opinion is the basis, is the foundational condition of a continued happiness, continued success of such unions. There may be occasions, however, when such unions as I have just said prove unbearable or intolerable by circumstances that neither party could foresee, but in that case, without too much fuss, without going into an operation that might involve washing of the dirty linen and mere playing to the gallery, so to say, by sensationalism, we might in our law devise machinery by which this union could be easily dissolved without unnecessary prejudice to any party. I do not see therefore that we need insist upon reasons or conditions or excuses that any other legal systems have been made necessary for granting divorce and I think it would be much better if divorce is made easy, simple and unexpensive, more than is at any rate, the case in some of the western countries whose model we have been following. The question of inheritance, the question of enjoying a share of the patrimony is again one which does not seem to me to be a just cause for the degree of heat that it seems to have evoked in this House. After all, in this country how many people are in a position to have property and leave such property outside beyond their life? If you go by standards, if you go by measurements such as that of the income-tax statistics, you will find that perhaps less than a million people are in a position to have an income of about Rs. 250 a month and that would include all people, not only those who are regarded as income-tax payers, but those who try or manage to escape that.
In a population of over 300 millions, the income tax paying class number about one million, or with their dependent about three to four millions and that is less than one per cent of the total population who can possibly afford to have some property that can be divided or that can be the cause of disaffection or of inequality of rights as