DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 1105
An Hon. Member: In north India ?
Pandit Malaviya: Anywhere in the whole country—if they get returned, then I shall be prepared to withdraw my opposition.
Shri Munavalli (Bombay) : Challenge accepted.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : There are two sides to the picture. Let him proceed.
Pandit Malaviya: I do not mind the interruption. Words are of two types. One is words which are mere sound; the other is words which have a meaning and when any Member says ‘Challenge accepted’ I would wish he meant that and not merely created the sound.
Shri Munavalli: I mean it.
Pandit Malaviya : My request is this. Let the government, let the Law Minister, put the Bill to that test and if they are willing to do that, then I am willing to propose—and I hope other Members also who feel like me will be willing to agree—that we should have a session even before the elections for a week, after the results of those bye-elections are known, to work in accordance with the results. But the Members who say that they accept this challenge say it, if I may say so without meaning any disrespect, knowing that they will have no occasion to be put to the test. The only way in which we could decide about this matter is by one of these courses. If we are not going to do that, then I do not know how to accept the questioning of my statement that by far the largest majority of the people in this land are entirely opposed to the provisions of this Bill. ( An Hon. Member: Question.) And when I say this, I am not referring merely to those people who are called “orthodox”, but I am referring even to the most advanced of the advanced people of this country, people who find themselves weak and wanting in the strength to stick to the restrictions which time and experience of the elders of this nation have imposed upon us, who wish to have the easy way of life, who wish to have the good of both the worlds for themselves, who wish to remove restrictions and restraints which have descended through the ages, through the millennia that have gone before us reaching back into the dim unknown past of human history; the traditions, the culture, the life, the ideology, the principles of the one race which can claim with pride that it has had a continuity of that tradition from time immemorial. Those gentlemen today are impatient and I wish to submit that even from their point of view, from the point of view of