124 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
IX. 3. Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth, and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never for independence.
IX. 5. Women must particularly be guarded against evil inclinations, however trifling (they may appear); if they are not guarded, they will bring sorrow on two families.
IX. 6. Considering the higher duty of all castes, even weak husbands (must) strive to guard their wives.
V. 147. By a girl, by a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house.
V. 148. In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.
V. 149. She must not seek to separate herself from her father, husband, or sons; by leaving them she would make both (her own and her husband’s) families contemptible.
Woman is not to have a right to divorce.
IX. 45. The husband is declared to be one with wife, which means that there could be no seperation once a woman is married.
Many Hindus stop here as though this is the whole story regarding Manu’s law of divorce and keep on idolizing it by comforting their conscience with the thought that Manu regarded marriage as sacrament and therefore did not allow divorce. This of course is far from the truth. His law against divorce had a very different motive. It was not to tie up a man to a woman but it was to tie up the woman to a man and to leave the man free.