DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 1149
Well, the sum and substance of my speech is that no such law as is against the Commandments of our religion and of God, be thrust on us, but as an Indian I shall have no objections to agree to any social or economic legislations.
- Kumari Padmaja Naidu (Hyderabad) : I welcome this opportunity of expressing my unqualified support for the Bill. I would like at the very outset to congratulate the Government on its courage in bringing forward this measure in spite of the widespread and fierce hostility towards it that has been so sedulously instigated by the forces of reaction that still, alas ! today dominate certain sections of this country. The author of this Bill does not stand in need of any words of praise from me. For, with this measure, whether this House chooses to accept or reject it, Dr. Ambedkar takes his place in the long line of social legislators who throughout the ages have laboured diligently, always in the face of opposition, often in the face of persecution, to eradicate social injustice and to enhance the sum total of human happiness.
For many years men and women throughout the length and breadth of this vast country have eagerly awaited the enactment of this Bill. They have watched with increasing alarm its decline from its original forcefulness because it was considered expedient for compromise after compromise to be made in order to win the maximum support for it. But even in its present and mutilated form this Bill is only comprehensive measure that has ever been shaped for the liberation of Hindu women from the age-old bondage of the unequal laws to which they are still subject. I do not ignore, neither do I make the mistake of over-estimating, the volume of protest from the poor deluded women whose ignorance and superstition has been exploited with subtle insidiousness by the vested interests of bigotry determined to defend their last bastions to the bitter end. What a tragic spectacle it is that we witness in India today of Hindu women allowing themselves to be hypnotised into denouncing the very measure that has been so carefully devised to secure for them the equality of laws to which they are entitled under the Constitution. But today it is neither as a woman nor as a Hindu that I plead for support to this Bill. I speak as an Indian, passionately jealous of the honour of India which is pledged not only to this measure but to every other form of social legislation necessary to redress grievous wrongs and to alleviate human
*P.D. Vol. XV, Part II, 20th September 1951, pp. 2929-33.