VIEWPOINT
Romit Bagchi
A few months before his death, when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was asked what he considered the greatest achievement of free India under his leadership, he promptly replied it was the implementation of the Hindu Code Bill notwithstanding the maelstrom of criticism it had left in its wake. His biographer S Gopal writes: “Nothing could be done for Muslim women because that might alarm the Muslim community. Even as regards Hindu women, faced with the inertia of orthodoxy, he could not secure the acceptance of the Hindu Code as a whole.”
Now, as the Uttarakhand government’s Uniform Civil Code initiative has elicited both applause and opprobrium, it is interesting to note that the same arguments are being raised for and against UCC as those raised when the Nehru government sought to pass the Hindu Code Bill. The opposition to the reforms in the Hindu society as envisaged in the bill was so fierce that an embattled Nehru had to shelve it for some years, resulting in the frustrated resignation of ailing BR Ambedkar from his Cabinet.
The Hindu Code Bill, introduced in the Constituent Assembly on April 11, 1947 and referred by select committee on April 9, 1948, stoked a stinging and the longest debate in independent India’s parliamentary history. Let us look back.
The origin of the Hindu Code Bill can be traced back to the Women’s Rights to Property Act that came into effect in 1937 followed by the formation of a committee with BN Rau as the chairman who later became the principal draftsman of the Constitution under Ambedkar. After exhaustive study with views gathered from diverse sections of the Hindu society, a draft Hindu Code was submitted in 1944. But things got stalled as the country got engulfed by waves of unrest that culminated in the partitioned independence amidst communal bloodbath.
After the dust had settled down a little, Nehru as the Prime Minister entrusted the task of framing the Hindu Code by overriding and repealing the faith-based Hindu personal laws governing marriage, divorce, adoption, maintenance and custody to Ambedkar in 1948. After the bill was drafted, the Cabinet decided to introduce it in the Parliament in February 1951. But the introduction was postponed until the next session slated in September. Alarmed with Nehru’s vacillation in the face of crippling resistance, Ambedkar requested him to ensure that the bill was taken up in August and passed by September, given his failing health. But unwilling to ram the bill down the throat of his orthodox colleagues in the government and the Congress, Nehru decided to bide his time. On August 30, 1951, Nehru wrote to Ambedkar: “There are quite a number of important Bills which we must pass. I had hoped, as you know, to take up the Hindu Code Bill on September 5 but, I fear, this will be difficult for a variety of reasons.”
On September 15, 1951, the then President Rajendra Prasad- determined to cross swords with the government on this issue-sent a scathing note to Nehru, saying that the Provisional Parliament could not enact such a momentous legislation because the members, indirectly elected, lacked the democratic mandate of election. He even threatened to use his power to force the Provisional Parliament to shelve it or, failing that, to veto it even against the advice of his Cabinet. He asked the government challengingly to make bold to introduce a Uniform Civil Code instead of singling out the Hindu community for ‘modernist’ reforms in their long-enduring personal laws.
Echoing Prasad’s view, the Jana Sangh founder Shyma Prasad Mookerjee said that the reformist agenda propelling the bill was meant to threaten the religious foundations of the Hindu society by wrecking the sanctity of marriage and lineage. He also threw a dare to Nehru to show spunk to reform the Muslim personal laws too through implementing Uniform Civil Code. Several outfits, opposed to the bill, hit the streets, venting anger through vitriolic campaigns. Things went to such an acrimonious pass that an ochre-robed ascetic said they would never acquiesce to an ‘untouchable’ intruding into the matters deemed to be the exclusive preserve of Brahmins.
The bill recommending elimination of caste-based limitations on marriage and facilitation of divorce and equal property rights for women stirred up the hornet’s nest of fear and loathing in the redoubt of Hindu orthodoxy. Nehru’s threat that his government might fall if the bill could not be passed fell flat.
Pilloried by the traditionalistic Congressmen, Nehru wrote to Prasad that when any social or economic changes were proposed in an existing structure of society, some elements favouring the status quo must be there to thwart any progressive legislation. “No reform can take place if this opposition is considered to be an adequate bar to change. The mere fact of long-established static conditions can hardly be considered an argument for no change, even though facts otherwise warrant it…”
With the pitch of opposition gaining intensity both inside and outside the Parliament, the bill could not be passed in its entirety, prompting a disillusioned Ambedkar to quit the Nehru Cabinet on September 27, 1951. “It was killed and buried, unwept and unsung…,” he said despairingly while lamenting that none of the prominent women leaders had dared stand behind him on the bill which was intended to end gender injustice in the country.
Undaunted by the rancorous campaign against the bill which he hailed as an attempt to re-engineer the Hindu society by fulfilling the modernist aspirations of the people, Nehru made it one of his principal campaign planks for the first Lok Sabha election held in 1952. His government received a massive mandate with the Congress having secured 364 out of 489 seats. Fortified by the public endorsement of his stance, Nehru had the Hindu Code Bill split into four separate parts and had them passed in 1955-56.
But why did Nehru refuse to go for the Uniform Civil Code? It seems he feared that its implementation would add more grist to the mill of the Muslim League’s propaganda that as the Congress was a party of the Hindus, it would never allow the Muslims to live according to Islam in India.
He, however, reiterated his commitment repeatedly to the implementation of Uniform Civil Code at the right time. But the right time never came for the Congress. Indira Gandhi chose to shelve it in cold storage and then Rajiv Gandhi precipitated things by his Shah Bano bungling. That is another story, but it can be said with absolute certainty that left to itself, the Congress will never move on with the UCC implementation.
Now when the BJP government at the Centre prodded the Uttarakhand government to implement the UCC to test the waters before moving on with it at the national level, the Congress has found itself in the unenviable predicament of being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
