872 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
is discrimination between one community and another. Therefore, I think I am perfectly justified in opposing it.
I should however make it clear here that so far as some Chapters of this Bill are concerned, I am in complete agreement with them. I am only opposed to three portions of it. If different parts had been put before the House separately, certainly I believe that most of it would have been passed without any controversy. But as it stands we have to take them as a whole and, therefore, I stand up to oppose them, because I cannot permit them to be passed without my voice being heard.
The provisions to which I am opposed are (1) those relating to marriage and its dissolution by divorce, (2) adoption and (3) inheritance. ( An hon. Member: What is left then ?) Much remains even then. It has been said by Panditji that it applies to those persons who were already governed by Hindu Law. This is correct. But if we have consented to be governed by Hindu Law, that does not necessarily mean that we should be compelled to revolve round the wheel even though it goes into foreign spheres and borrows certain things from other religions and other laws simply because I have once been dragged into it. I should not be compelled to revolve round it, though it does not remain within its own sphere.
Then again, Sir, there is a misconception. The Hindu Code Bill says that the Sikhs are governed by Hindu Law. Now section 5 of the Punjab Customary Law—which has already been quoted by my hon. friend Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava says:
“ Custom in this province is the first rule of decision in all questions regarding succession, special property of females, betrothal, marriage, divorce, dowery, adoption, guardianship, minority, bastardy, family relations, wills, legacies, gifts, partitions, any religious usage or institution, or alluvion and diluvion.”
Now I ask : When I am governed on all these subjects by customary law, where is the Hindu Law that governs me ? I find that there is one subject that is not put down as such, namely, maintenance with which this Hindu Code deals. It is not put down in the Customary law that I am governed by the usage on that subject also.
I was submitting that I have three subjects on which I have certain objections and the Sikhs do not wish that they should be
3 p.m. forced to be governed by the Hindu Code that is being proposed here in respect of them. First I referred to marriage and the dissolution and divorce connected with it.