DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 1059
Yeats, because it has always been my endeavour, and I had made up my mind in this connection when I was at College, not to read Rabindra Nath’s Gitanjali until I had learnt Bengali. I have always held that it is useless to read such a work without having the knwoledge of the language in which it was originally written. I have not been able to learn Tamil so far, but I would try to learn it, such has been my tendency from my early days. When I saw Gitanjali in original and its translation by Keats. I found a lot of difference. The translation did not contain anything worthwhile. Compared to it the translations in vernacular languages are much better. I have seen a more beautiful translation in Marathi done in Abhanga metre by some person under a pseudonym. But unfortunately we Indians generally close our eyes to those things which are our own and when somebody from outside throw light on them we exclaim ‘Yes now we have seen’. I would like to ask after all what flood lights are opened before our eyes by the foreigners which dazzle our eyes and we begin to appreciate those things ? After all what are the defects in our own lights ? What do you think is missing in the lights that we have ? We should try to understand our own things in the right prespective and after a full realization should gladly make the necessary changes in them so that everybody may be satisfied and it may be in the interests of all.
Now, I come to the point as to what a Hindu really means and wherefrom has this word Hindu come ? Sir, you would excuse me if I would take a few minutes more to throw light on this. My submission is that I do not like to go into the historical facts nor do I want to go into Greek and Iranian histories. Neither do I want to go into the details as to what relations we had with Iran and Greece in the past; but I would only make an attempt as to wherefrom has this word ‘Hindu’ come. My amendment wholly relates to this very thing. One opinion about the origin of the word ‘Hindu’ is that there were two cities in Gandharva Desh, one of them was known by ‘Hindas’ from which the word ‘Hindu’ has been derived. The second opinion is that the word ‘Hindu’ is derived from the word ‘Sindhu’ the great river that we had according to Philology letter ‘S’ has changed into letter ‘H’ and in this way the word ‘Sindhu’ changed in to the word ‘Hindu’. The word Hinduani occurs at several places. It is difficult to ascertain the source of this word. I visited Central Secretariat Library but found it to be too poor. I have never seen a poorer library than this one. I asked for books related to this matter but I was told that they had no special