DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 1103
*Pandit Malaviya : I have not so far taken any time of this House at any stage with regard to the Hindu Code Bill. I had been hoping all this time that the evil day would never come when we would be faced with the need of seriously applying ourselves to a proposal of the nature that is before us. I had known, and many of us had known, the intense desire and keenness of some people in this House and outside, it to have the Code enacted, but we had somehow felt that the obvious could be seen, that the preponderating public opinion throughout the length and breadth of this land would not be ignored, and even while the idea was being toyed with, no serious attempt would be made to put on the statute book a Bill which should affect the very foundations and the entire fabric of the society of the people of this land, in the haphazard manner in which it has been proposed to be done. People have been agitating in this country either for one view or the other and many who have felt distressed over the prospect of such a law being enacted have been doing what they could to draw the Attention of the Government to the widespread resentment and dissatisfaction against it. But personally, I have not once stood up anywhere on a public platform, not once have I tried to take part in any such agitation, in the hope and faith that a thing so wrong in principle, so atrocious in details and so uncalled for in expediency would never come up seriously before the House. But one lives and learns and I am now faced with the spectacle that in Parliament which is now on the last lap of its journey, a controversial measure which is going to affect the lives of more than
300 million people is going to be taken up and an attempt is going to be made to enact, it and to put it on the statute book to the teeth of fierce opposition to it. I do not say that there is nobody in this country who supports the principle of this Bill ( Pandit Maitra : Very few). I do not wish to say that there are not people who are honestly of the opinion that it is in the interests of society that such a law should be enacted. I have no quarrel with them. I am a Hindu and intolerance in any shape or form—intellectual or ideological—does not come to me. If, therefore, there are people in this country who feel that a measure of this nature or that a measure of even a more revolutionary nature should be applied to society, I may not agree with them—I may regret their opinion—but I can have no quarrel with them. I will, therefore, not take the position that there is no one in this country who wants this Bill. But it is obvious and it is something which only those can fail to see who would not see, that by far the largest majority of the people are not only not in favour of this Bill.........
*P.D., Vol. XV, Part II, 19th September 1951, pp. 2872-96.