MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 2 of 100

The Maharashtra Public Service Commission cancelled this question. It appears among the questions the Commission withdrew from this paper in its final answer key, so it carries no keyed choice, and this card therefore names none — what follows teaches the subject the question was reaching for, which is the fight over the Hindu Code Bill. That fight is one of the central episodes of the first decade of independent India. The project began before independence: a committee under B. N. Rau was appointed in 1941 and reported again in 1947 with a draft code intended to replace the tangle of Hindu customary and shastric law with a single codified system covering marriage, divorce, maintenance, succession, adoption, guardianship and the joint family. The draft was carried into the Constituent Assembly acting in its legislative capacity, and Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, as Law Minister, took charge of steering it. What he was asking Parliament to do was radical in substance rather than in rhetoric: monogamy made compulsory for Hindus, divorce made available to a wife on stated grounds, the daughter admitted to a share in her father's property alongside the son, and the widow's limited estate converted into full ownership. Opposition inside the legislature came overwhelmingly from men, and largely from within the Congress party that was sponsoring the Bill, on the ground that a secular legislature had no business rewriting a religious personal law and that the reform should wait for Hindu society to change of its own accord. Support was organised outside the House as well as in it, most visibly by the All India Women's Conference and other women's organisations, for whom the Bill was the concrete content of the equality the new Constitution had just promised. The Bill was ground down in the debate, only a fragment of it survived to be passed, and Ambedkar resigned from the Cabinet over its fate. It returned after Nehru fought the first general election partly on it, and was enacted in four separate pieces — the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 and, in 1956, the Hindu Succession Act, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act and the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act.

Personal law in India governs marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption, guardianship, succession and the family estate, and it applies to a person according to the religious community they belong to rather than according to where they live. At independence the Hindu branch of it was not a statute at all but an accumulation of shastric texts, two rival schools of succession — Mitakshara across most of the country and Dayabhaga in Bengal and Assam — and a mass of local custom that the colonial courts had been interpreting piecemeal for a century and a half. Codification meant three things at once: replacing that accumulation with a single written law, extending it uniformly to all Hindus including Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, and using the occasion to change the substantive rules in favour of women. The last of those three is what made it explosive. Article 44 of the Constitution had placed a uniform civil code among the Directive Principles, non-justiciable and aspirational, and the Hindu Code Bill was in effect an attempt to do for one community what Article 44 imagined for all — which is why the argument over it has never really ended.

MPSC examines social reform and the making of modern Indian law heavily, and the Hindu Code Bill sits at the junction of both. It also sits at the junction of two people the commission asks about constantly — Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, whose career MPSC treats as core Maharashtra material, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The productive way to hold the episode is as a sequence with dates attached: Rau Committee 1941 and its second report in 1947, introduction and select committee at the end of the 1940s, the collapse of the Bill and Ambedkar's resignation, the general election of 1951-52, and the four Acts of 1955 and 1956. Around that spine, examiners ask what each of the four Acts changed, which communities the term Hindu was defined to include, and which specific reform — compulsory monogamy, the daughter's share, the widow's absolute estate, divorce — belongs to which statute. Because this particular question was cancelled, treat it as a prompt to revise the episode itself rather than as a settled item to memorise.

• A committee under B. N. Rau was appointed in 1941 to examine the codification of Hindu law and submitted a comprehensive draft code in 1947; the draft was then revised in the Law Ministry and introduced before the Constituent Assembly sitting as the legislature.
• Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, as Law Minister, piloted the Hindu Code Bill and chaired the select committee on it; he resigned from Nehru's Cabinet after the Bill was defeated in substance, its fate being one of the reasons he gave.
• Opposition in Parliament came overwhelmingly from men, and largely from members of Nehru's own Congress party, who argued that a secular legislature should not rewrite a religious personal law.
• The All India Women's Conference and other women's organisations were the most visible organised support for the Bill outside Parliament.
• After the first general election the code was enacted in four pieces: the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, and the Hindu Succession Act, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act and the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, all of 1956.

• Treating the Hindu Code Bill as a single statute that was passed; the composite Bill failed, and what reached the statute book was four separate Acts in 1955 and 1956
• Dating the reforms to 1950 because that is when the Constitution came into force; the Constitution promised equality but the personal law was not rewritten until the middle of the decade
• Confusing codification of Hindu law with a uniform civil code — the Hindu Code Bill applied to one community only, which is precisely the point of the Article 44 debate
• Assuming that support and opposition split along party lines; the sharpest resistance came from inside the Congress, which was the party sponsoring the Bill

MPSC asks about the Hindu Code Bill from three directions. First as pure chronology — who chaired the drafting committee that preceded it, when the Bill was introduced, when the successor Acts were passed. Second through Dr Ambedkar's biography, where the Bill supplies the reason for his resignation from the Cabinet and connects the constitutional chapter of his life to the social-reform chapter. Third as a substantive law question, asking which specific change belongs to which of the four Acts, or which communities the statutes define as Hindu. The commission also likes to place the episode against the nineteenth-century reform legislation, so a candidate who can line up 1829, 1856, 1891, 1929, 1955 and 1956 with the reform each date carries is prepared for most forms the question takes.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The composite Hindu Code Bill was eventually enacted after the first general election as four separate statutes. Which of these was passed in 1955 rather than in 1956 ?

  • (a)The Hindu Succession Act
  • (b)The Hindu Marriage Act
  • (c)The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act
  • (d)The Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act

  Answer(b) The Hindu Marriage Act — it was passed in 1955, a year ahead of the other three. The Hindu Succession Act, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act and the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act were all enacted in 1956, which is why the set is usually revised as one Act of 1955 followed by three of 1956.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The committee appointed in 1941 to examine the codification of Hindu personal law, whose draft became the basis of the Hindu Code Bill, was headed by which of the following ?

  • (a)B. N. Rau
  • (b)B. R. Ambedkar
  • (c)K. M. Munshi
  • (d)Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar

  Answer(a) B. N. Rau — the Rau Committee was appointed in 1941 and submitted a comprehensive draft code in 1947, which the Law Ministry then revised. Ambedkar's role came later and was as Law Minister piloting the resulting Bill and chairing the select committee on it, not as head of the original drafting committee.