DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 1107
structure of the Hindus or may have a hundred clauses in it relating to the social structure. But if it is going to affect the social structure of the Hindus, nobody can proceed with the matter unless he discusses that social structure and the way that clause is going to affect it. Social structure cannot be taken piecemeal in watertight compartments. It is not practicable.
After the discussion that has gone on before, I have a feeling that it will not be quite possible and correct to take a lop-sided attitude about one particular matter alone and leave the general aspect out. But I might assure you, Sir, that I shall throughout be guided by yourself and if at any stage you should think that I should not carry on with any particular argument that I may be making, I shall at once obey you.
It has been said that this Bill will now be confined to the two items of marriage and divorce. As the Hindu society stands, its entire structure rests upon the foundation of marriage. There is nothing in Hindu society which can be separated as unconnected with the marriage system of the Hindus. It is, therefore, not possible to discuss the marriage section of the Hindu society-without referring to the general aspect of the society as a whole. Whatever I was saying applies directly to the item of marriage and divorce also. What I was saying was that it is therefore as much the orthodox section of the people who will be opposed to this measure as the others—about whom so much has been said by some hon. Members in this House yesterday and the day before, as forming nearly eighty per cent of the population, among whom it was said the very provisions which have been proposed in this Bill exist today. I have my own doubts if that is so. For the large majority of those people who have today facilities of divorce and easy marriage, the provisions of this Bill are going to make a world of difference. I am not expressing any opinion of my own on the merits of these proposals. I am merely mentioning that to the simple men living in the villages today, who have not had the opportunity and benefit of the same growth, intellectually, morally, emotionally and spiritually, as some other members of society, like my esteemed friend the Hon. the Law Minister, have had—to them the habit of restraint, the habit of a discrimination between the finer shades of the good and the better, the bad and the worse, does not come so normally and spontaneously in some matters at least as it does to the others. Hindu society has been divided into groups not with any inhuman or malicious object of injuring any section or doing any