1168 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
is no obligation on any Muslim to have more than one wife nor is there any obligation on any Hindu to have more than one wife. The personal religion of both is the same on this point. Similarly, it is not enjoined upon a Mussalman to practise child marriage, nor is it enjoined upon a Hindu to practise child marriage, for the Smriti and the Hadis of both say the same thing on this point. Therefore, the Child Marriage Act was applied to the Muslims also. It is not going against the Muslim law or the Shariat law if we make this law applicable to them today. So far as article 25 is concerned you will not be following this …..
Dr. Ambedkar : I am answering the other argument that we are making a discrimination. To that I am giving the answer that the Constitution permits us to treat different communities differently and if we treat them differently nobody can charge the Government with practising discrimination. That is the point. That being so, another thing I would like to tell the House is that article 25 is an article of great importance, for this reason. As the House will remember, all throughout the history of Europe there has been a great contest between the Church and the State. The State has said that the Church shall not interfere in religion and that the State is supreme over Church. The Church, on the other hand has said that the State is subordinate to the Church, it is only when the Church permits that the State can enact. That has been the general position. In our Constitution we adopted a middle course ; the course that we adopted was this, that while we will permit people to practise and to profess their religion and, incidentally, to have their personal law because the personal law is so imbedded in their religion, yet the State has retained all along in article 25 the right to interfere in the personal law of any community in this country. There can be no argument against that. That is my point. The only question is the time, the occasion and the circumstances.
I want to assert in this House while I am here that I shall hear no argument from any community to say that this Parliament has no right to interefere in their personal law or any other laws. This Parliament is absolutely supreme and we deal with any community so far as their personal law is concerned apart from their religion. Let no community be in a state of mind that they are immune from the sovereign authority of this Parliament.
Shri A. C. Shukla : You pass a law but cannot administer it.
Dr.. Ambedkar : The point really is a very narrow one and that point is this ; whether right now we should make our Bill applicable