DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 1009
Very often, the residents of the different provinces, in spite of the restrictions imposed by customs and usage and sentiments of the orthodox, find ways of coming together, in nuptial contract. What shall be the effect on them and their progeny if we allow these various provincial laws to operate. Suppose a man from Bombay marries a girl from Bihar and in Bihar he marries another woman. In Bombay monogamy is the law. What will happen to his marriage in Bihar. While his children by that Bihar wife will be legitimate in Bihar, when they go to Bombay they shall be considered illegitimate and shall have no civil rights. What will happen to the hundreds of couples coming from different castes and different provinces ? What will be the rights of those children ? If you allow individuals to opt, many anomalies are likely to arise. A man may opt for the new Code ; his father may be governed by old Hindu law ; and the optee’s son may not opt for the new Code. What laws would govern such a family ? If, therefore, the suggestion of my hon. Friends were to be adopted, there will be such confusion, that the confusion in the tower of Babel as compared to this was nothing. It will take the Judges centuries to clear the confusion. Therefore, I feel that we have reached a stage when in the interests of Hindu society we cannot but have such a law.
Previously in the provinces there was certain rigidity—people living in a certain province had one social tradition. People of the same caste had almost the same intellectual development, the same cultural code, etc. In those circumstances, when one married out of his caste one went to a different world altogether. But today these cultural, economic and intellectual disparities are disappearing. Society in India is becoming one. While previously there was some justification for marriage within one’s caste or inside the province, there is no such justification today. because the cultural level, the intellectual level and the economic level of the various communities are coming on a par with each other. According to eugenic principles marriage outside one’s caste under the previous state of affairs would have been bad. Today the laws of eugenics point in a different direction altogether. They point to a direction in which the hon. Mover of this bill is attempting to lead us.
Dr. Mookerjee talked about the intensity and the depth and breadth of feeling in the country against this Code. I am a villager. I do not come from one of those advanced cities where the most modern theories are the order of the day. I know the minds of the villagers on this matter. I know that there is a lot of misapprehension in their minds about this