DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 995
was this. There were friends who came from outside India and they asked with a tone of complaint. “Well, India was the land of birth of Buddha, but India killed Buddhism”. I do not wish to go into those controversial matters now. But one point comes out very prominently and that is that when Buddha started preaching his great doctrines India needed Buddha, not only to save the world but to save India. And Buddha succeeded in checking the growth of certain tendencies which were about to destroy the very life-blood of Hindu civilization Buddha has been absorbed by the same Hindus as an avtar. Although there were people in India who fought with Buddhism—whether they were right or wrong is a matter into which I need not enter now—but gradually it was realized that Buddhism was a factor of growth on Indian soil and had to be absorbed in Indian culture.
Shri Gadgil : The same thing will happen to the Code.
Dr. S. P. Mookerjee : Far from it. That is a paradise that my friend is creating where he may dwell for ever.
So far as Buddhism is concerned it went and spread in other countries but the tenets of Buddhism were gradually absorbed in Hindu ideology .The reason why I am saying all this is to show that we should never tolerate any criticism from any quarter, especially from a foreign quarter when they say that Hindu civilization or Hindu culture has been of a static nature or of a stagnant nature or of a decadent nature. There is something in our culture and civilization which is of a dynamic character and which has lived from generation to generation. Even when India was a subject nation people were bom in this country, men of our soil, who stood up for great ideals which gave a new lease of life under new and modern conditions to the eternal tenets of Hindu civilization. This code is destroying that fountain-source. I shudder to think of the effect of cause 4. You read clause 4 of the Hindu Code. You are closing the door there. You are saying that except such manners or customs which might have been recognized in the body of this Code, everything else will be taboo from today. And my friend Mr. Gadgil says that this will be another Code of a modern Buddha or Manu or something like that ( An Hon. Member: What a fall !) It is these manners and customs based upon the ancient ideology, which allowed the Hindu society to grow and prosper from time to time.
12 N OON
Today, this great Assembly—and all of us are honourable and learned men—is solemnly deciding that we are the: fountain-head of Indian