744 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the better but for the worse. If they have an easy mode of dissolution of marriage now and are hereafter being compelled to resort to some more complicated and more expensive method, certainly they would not welcome it. It is argued that there are evils creeping. The bill is a permissive one. That there is no compulsion for anybody, but we have to be on our guard whether the remedy proposed is not worse than the malady itself. There are evils no doubt to a certain extent. But if we loosen the bonds, a small percentage of the population would be happy to break all ties and secure relief from their self-created miseries. But what about the large minority? Would you not be opening a trap for them, and a temptation to make mistakes, and have a trial of their future as they will realise that there is a way out to end it?
Then I come to my second main point and that is about adoption. Adoption in my province, that is the Punjab, is a peculiar institution. It is called the customary appointment of an heir. It has nothing to do with religion. It is a simple declaration for practical purposes, where the owner of a land nominates a person who is to be his assistant for cultivation during his lifetime and an heir to his farm after his death. As I have said, it has nothing to do with religion. There is no restriction as to age or as to relationship. You are now proposing in this Code that a daughter’s son or a sister’s son may be adopted but I must convey to you that already in the customary appointment of an heir daughter’s sons are most ordinarily appointed, sister’s sons also are appointed. There are absolutely no restrictions. A young man can adopt a man of his farmer’s age, a man with many sons might be appointed as an heir. That might look strange to some people here but I tell you that it is a fact. A married man, a man with children might be appointed an heir. That is a most secular institution; it has got nothing to do with religion. How are you going to provide for such an institution? Are you going to throw it out? Surely that has the sanctity and sensation of ages, it is so popular in our part of the country that it cannot be thrown away like that. People would not submit to it so easily and so far as this part of the law is concerned, it would be a dead letter if it is pressed and forced on our people there.
Then there is the question of succession. I agree with my friends that our females, sisters and daughters, should have a share in the property, but I cut it short by saying that I agree with my learned friend Dr. Bakshi Tek Chand when he enunciated some time ago that