DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 887
the jungle tribes, the backward classes, the animists, and so on and so on—one can go on enumerating ad infinitum. What about them ? Surely some provision must be made for them. Sub-clause (2) therefore applies to this class of people whom I called a residuary class. Now, it might be said that in making this Bill the Government has a political motive, namely, to absorb these non-descript people into the Hindu community so to say, by a side door. That is not our purpose at all, because you will see from the proviso what we are doing.
4 P.M. The Hindu Code will apply to them only if it is proved that Hindu customs and Hindu usages are prevalent in that class; otherwise, they are free to do whatever they like. There, again, the criticism of my friend was quite misplaced.
Prof. Ranga : Can they opt themselves out ?
Dr. Ambedkar : Once they have adopted the customs and so on, they are in; otherwise they are out.
Now, Sir, I will deal with certain points that were raised by my friend Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava and by Sardar Hukam Singh. Sardar Hukam singh’s amendment is that it should not apply to the Sikhs. Later on, I suppose, he moderated his attitude and said that he had only objection to some parts. With regard to the question whether this Bill should apply to persons or communities other than Hindus in the strict sense of the word, I think it is desirable to have some general idea about the matter. The first thing that I would like to emphasize and which I would like Members of Parliament to bear in mind is this, that from a sociological point of view the variety of religions that we have in India or elsewhere seems to me to fall into two categories. There are religions which have as their part a legal system, which you cannot sever from those religions. There are religions which have no legal system at all, which are just pure matters of creed. The peculiarity about the Hindu religion, as I understand it, is this, that it is the one religion which has got a legal framework integrally associated with it. Now, it is very necessary to bear this thing in mind, because if one has a proper understanding of this, it would not be difficult to understand why Sikhs are brought under the Hindu religion, why Buddhists are brought under the Hindu religion and why Jains are brought under the Hindu religion. When the Buddha differed from the Vedic Brahmins, his difference was limited to matters of creed. The Buddha did not propound a separate legal system for his own followers; he left the legal system as it was. It may be that the legal system that then prevailed was a good system; that it had