Women of the Rayja Sabha: The role of the former Deputy Chairman of the Rayja Sabha, Dr the Hon. Najma Heptullah, (left) was significant in guaranteeing female representation in the House; and Smt. Sonia Gandhi, MP, President of the Indian National Congress Party (right).
significant development after women got the right to vote. Several Members of the Rajya Sabha, cutting across party lines, while participating in the debate on the Bill, referred to Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the principal architect of our constitution. Shri D. Raja remarked that gender equality must be the objective of the entire Parliament and nation. He fortified his argument by quoting Dr Ambedkar who in his address to thousands of women belonging to the depressed classes had said: “I measure the progress of community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.”
Dr Ambedkar, as the then Law Minister of India, drafted the Hindu Code Bill which was supposed to ensure women their legitimate rights which were denied to them for centuries. Its enactment would
have brought about an
unprecedented social revolution in our country spearheaded by women.
Many organizations and conservative sections of society came to the streets and shouted “Down with the Hindu Code Bill”. They were against equality and equal opportunities for women. Our first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was saddened by those developments. In a letter to Chief Ministers he wrote that even “as a considerable majority in Parliament at that time wanted to pass the Bill with minor
modifications, they were helpless before a determined minority and therefore had to concede defeat for the moment”. Those words of Prime Minister Nehru sound so contemporary for our own time when the Constitution (One Hundred Eighth Amendment) Bill
2008 is facing stiff opposition only from a small group.
The Nehru government’s intention to make the Hindu Code Bill the law of the land was best reflected when it was incorporated in the address of the then President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad, to both Houses of Parliament assembled together in 1952.
However, the arduous exercise of DrAmbedkar to frame the Hindu Code Bill did not go in vain. Its progressive content and reformative features commanded attention of all right-thinking people from across the nation. Country-wide debate on those aspects moulded public opinion in its favour.
Hindu Law Reform Bills and Nehru’s observations Eventually many Bills incorporating
the basic ingredients of the Hindu Code were introduced in the Rajya Sabha. The Hindu Marriage and Divorce Bill 1952, The Hindu Minority and Guardianship Bill 1953, The Hindu Succession Bill 1954, and The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Bill 1956 became law after originating in the Council of States.
It is of extraordinary education to know that then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was making profound remarks after the passage of each and every Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha for protecting the rights of women. When those Bills were passed he observed in a letter to the Chief Ministers on 15 June 1956 “there is something revolutionary about them” and “they have broken the barrier of ages and cleared the way somewhat for our womenfolk to progress”. Then he remarked: “I