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| << September14, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net] Manipur Watch & other updates |
September15, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]Army not for withdrawal of Special Powers Act >> |
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http://www.hindu.com/2004/09/15/stories/2004091500510900.htm dated September 15, 1954: PM on uniform code Prime Minister Nehru, unexpectedly intervening in the debate on the Special Marriage Bill in the Lok Sabha on September 14, said that the Bill was the first step in the direction of having a uniform civil code applicable to all citizens of India. While he had no doubt that every Indian would wish to belong to some kind of a common community without giving up his own religion, things could not be rushed through and the necessary preliminary spadework must be done. The Prime Minister warned that religion should not be invoked every time a social reform was undertaken. His own reading of the Hindu religion was that it was capable of adapting itself to changing circumstances. A certain rigidity set in when the Britishers came on the scene and sought to modify the laws with the assistance of orthodox pundits and moulvis. The Prime Minister, whose presence in the House enabled the disposal of the clauses according to schedule, said that if anyone brought forward a Bill for a common civil code, it would have his sympathy. "But I confess I do not think that at the present moment the time is ripe in India to try to push it through." Mr. Nehru said he looked upon the Bill not from a strictly legalistic point of view but from the point of view of social reform. Hindu law, he said, was not an unchanging thing in previous times but assumed a certain rigidity with the coming of the British. The British consulted the learned pandits about Hindu law and learned moulvis about Muslim law, and they naturally gave what was written down in books of many thousands of years ago, although all that had been changed by custom in many places. Today the rigidity could not be got rid of by custom; it had to be done by legislation. "I do not wish to say anything which might hurt any colleague of mine here, but I do submit that this extraordinary reverence shown to what is called personal law seems to me completely misplaced, whether it is Hindu personal law or Muslim personal law or any other." ------------------------------------------------------------ Posted by:Ram Narayan |
| << September14, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net] Manipur Watch & other updates |
September15, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]Army not for withdrawal of Special Powers Act >> |
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