DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 889
Shri J. R. Kapoor : No praise will bring him into your parlour.
Dr. Ambedkar : I have used no temptations. I now find that really he has been digging various trenches one after the other. He knows very well and I see from the last trench that he knows very well that he would not be able to defend the first trench or the second trench or the third trench. He has got a very small last trench which, of course, is concerned with ousting the married daughter and I think that if that point could be conceded his opposition would be extinguished completely.
He has raised other questions also with regard to customary law. I agree and I have examined this position with great care. The Punjab Law does show that certain matters relating to personal law shall be decided by customary law, but I also know and I think my friend Thakur Das Bhargava also knows that the customary law is Hindu Law really. I do not think that that proposition can be denied, namely, that what is called customary law in Punjab is Hindu Law. The reason why it was not called Hindu Law was because the same customary law prevailed among the Muslims, and the East India Company was frightened about using the words “Hindu Law” when the law was also applicable to the Musalmans. But these are merely differences of words. It cannot be said that Punjab is not governed by Hindu Law : Punjab is governed by Hindu Law.
Now his great point was that I was laying an axe on their customary laws in the province. Well, as I listened to some of the instances which both my friends Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava and Sardar Hukam Singh gave, I found that these customary laws were really not appealable in any sense. I would merely call their marriage laws marriage made easy, their divorce laws divorce made easy and their inheritance law inheritance made easy. There is nothing fundamentally different about it. Therefore, I am not going to discuss the question on this occasion,— what extent the customary law should be saved ; to what extent the Punjab should be excluded. But I want to make this statement that I should never agree to exempt any province from the operation of this law. Let there be no doubt about it at all that the Hindu Code shall be a uniform code throughout India. Either I will have that Bill in that form, or not have it at all.
With regard to the second point as to saving customary law, I think that is a point that he could raise on the various clauses of the Bill where he wants to introduce the customary law, and if he proves that the deletion of the customary law is going to introduce any kind