760 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
and ill-health, but it cannot be said that our homes are broken ones. In other countries they may be rich, healthy and very enlightened but one is sorry to note that many of the homes in other countries are broken ones and that is entirely due to the license given in their divorce provisions. That is my opinion.
Such an eminent person like Dr. Tek Chand said that the joint Hindu family should be kept and wife be made a coparcener in the family. I should like to say that the real economic independence of women would come not by giving a share to the daughter, to which I have no objection, but by giving her an equal share in the husband’s property. That is how she will attain her economic independence. It is not by taking a share from the father’s property. After all the daughter is a trust to be given away to the son-in-law. The father keeps the girl as a trust and it is therefore better and more proper that she is made a joint owner or equal sharer in the husband’s property rather than made to claim a share in the father’s property. She may claim a share in the father’s property if she remains unmarried.
I do not want to dilate further but I should like to end on this note. The chief man who conceived the Code (though a gentleman found it difficult to conceive yesterday) was Mr. B. N. Rau and we may be sure that he is very anxious about this Bill. He would want to see all his proposals, though in a modified form to be put into effect as early as possible and I should like to read his opinion, which has also been the opinion of the Hindu Law Committee………
Shrimati G. Durgabai : There was a select committee to consider those proposals; not he alone.
Shri O. V. Alagesan : The Hindu Law Committee has stated as follows :
“The aim should be as far as possible to arrive at agreed solutions and to avoid anything likely to arouse acrimonious controversy. This need not mean any real slowing down of the pace of reform, for true reform proceeds by persuasion rather than coercion.”
Sir, I have done.
The Assembly then adjourned till a Quarter to Eleven of the Clock on Thursday, the 15th December, 1949.