DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 933
any inconvenience. So far as our marriage laws are concerned, no woman remains unmarried unless she chooses to remain a sanyasin. A Sanskrit sloka says that no woman is entitled to freedom. But it has been mis-understood. A woman is not born twenty five years old. She is born out of a mother’s womb, has to become an adult, marry and become old also. Both of them, whether a man or a woman, when they are in their teens are minors, have to be under the guiding hand of some other person. So long as the girl remains a minor the father has to maintain her. When she becomes old, is there any better person to look after her than her son ? Therefore at the dawn of life as well as at the close of life both man and woman depend upon the father or the son respectively. The only question is during converture. If God has created both man and woman, either the woman should go and live with the man or the man has to go and live with the woman. In a happy marriage the woman must live with the husband or the man must live with the wife. Is there a middle course ? I ask Dr. Ambedkar ( An hon. Member: they live together). Yes, both of them live together. That is what I am saying. Therefore either the man’s voice dominates in the House, or the woman’s. Let us assume there is a difference. If the man’s voice prevails there is no trouble. Or the man must get himself submerged in which case also there is no trouble. But if there is a difference between the man and the wife as to whom the girl should be given, when is the marriage to be celebrated ? I am only thinking aloud of the inconveniences. It is not as if man produces sons and woman produces daughters. In all seriousness I am addresing this House. What I am submitting to the House is this. Some people have misunderstood, merely because some of our sisters are going about with regard to their share and their sufferings—on account of the experiences that they possibly have had—and the corresponding chillness on the part of our friends here, that it is a woman’s Code. It is something like a husband and wife quarreling “to whom does this child belong ? “It is not either to the one or to the other. Therefore, If this Code emerges, it will belong both to the men and women of this country. Let us therefore look at it dispassionately.
We have been brought up for three thousand years in a particular institution. I will presently quote a number of jurists who came from the West and who were attracted by the institutions that prevailed here. Some, of them even become converts and Max Muller created an ashram also. You have their opinions. They have compared their