1030 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
slightest doubt that legislators will initiate the legislation and the custom will be incorporated and dignified into a rule of law.
That being so I am unable to understand the argument of my hon. friend Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee that we are doing something revolurionary and in such a manner that the normal sources of law which were available will be completely closed. It is not so. Whatever we have inherited we have so to say, instead of putting our inheritance into a number of banks consolidated the inheritance and put it in some bank which has the prestige and strenth of a Reserve Bank, namely legislation. That is what we have done. In fact in the present Code as it is now before this House what is really done is that we are practically coordinating what is in existence—the present law—to the extent of eighty per cent. There is no doubt an element of progress to some extent. I will even concede that there is an element which to some extent goes in advance of public opinion. But I want to ask one question to the Members of this House. Is it or is it not our duty not merely to think in terms of the needs of the persent moment but to think in advance of our society, as we visualise or as we desire that it ought to be ? If planning is good in the economic sphere why should it be bad in the social sphere ? We are anxious that our society should be such. If that is the ideal on which we are agreed and on the assumption that we are . agreed—because we have adopted it as one of the objectives in our Constitution—then we have to consider how we shall manage to take our society to that destination. Can we follow a policy of laissez-faire in this sphere or shall we think ahead, think in advance just have our target and gradually, through the mechanism of law, which in due course, become part and parcel of the community’s life and arrive at the destination according to the schedule ?
Shri R. K. Chaudhari (Assam) : That is questionable.
Shri Gadgil : If we leave it to non-official effort I have no doubt that in course of time, may be two generations hence, things will become as we desire now. But by that time public opinion would have advanced much more. In other words we will never be able to cut the time element between the growing public opinion and the legislation. I therefore say that if there is any element of advance thinking in this Code it is justifiable, and I would say that it is an act of wisdom.
Now the opposition to this Bill has been from several points of view. There are people who do not like any interference by the Legislature in these matters. There are people who think that the Parliament, or the