DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 745
they should have a share in the father-in law’s property and not in the father’s property after marriage. I have particular reasons for that because as I have stated the circumstances of my province are very peculiar. The Punjab is a province of small peasants; small farms of three or four acres are the ordinary holdings. Such a person cannot be expected to have more than two bullocks which he might have secured after raising some loan, one hal and one panjali and one gadda also to take manure to the field or to bring fodder from the fields to his house. The Code would not apply to agricultural land, but what about the movables? What about his bullocks? Take the simple case of a family with one son and one daughter. The father dies, these movables are to be divided among these two. (An Honourable Member : Why not ? ) I don’t say that, I say it must be divided. Ordinarily they would have a cow as well and I think the Mover would have to give us the mode of dividing that cow, hal and panjali. The son-in law who comes from a distance, of say fifty miles, is interested in that part of the country; here he cannot live with this brother-in-law because the four acres holding cannot provide him with anything. His interest is elsewhere and therefore he must divide the property and go away. The sister would demand her share; surely she will take away one bullock, one half of the cart, one half of the panjali and would go away never to come back, thanking the framers of this Code, and of course not to be welcomed again ! (An Honourable Member : The brother’s own brother-in-law will thank him !). That is a very easy question that is put, but it is not realised that when there are more than one-two, three or four—brothers in the East Punjab, they join the army, they are adventurers, they have gone to the farthest corners of the world to Argentine, Brazil and South America. They bring money from there and buy more lands, they live together with a common kitchen.
Sir my submission is that this provision would create difficulties. I agree with my learned friend Dr. Bakshi Tek Chand that so long as the daughter is unmarried she must have a share in her father’s property, but as soon as she is married she must be transferred to her fatherin-law’s, there to have an equal share with right of partition and everything else. I am not against giving a share to the females— I might not be misunderstood in that respect.
I am afraid that our educated girls have much leisure. An ordinary girl, when she gets educated, does not absorb herself in the household