As the session during which, according to the President’s address, the Hindu Code Bill was to be passed began in the first week of August 1951, Ambedkar grew restive because of the Congress party’s growing pressure on the prime minister to defer it. He requested Nehru that the debate on the Hindu Code should begin immediately and at least the part dealing with marriage, divorce and monogamy be enacted. Nehru agreed but pointed out that discussion could start only on September 5. Actually it began only on September 10. Seven days later it became clear that the Congress party did not want to adopt any part of the measure before the general election.     

Ambedkar resigned on September 27. On October 11, he was prevented from making a statement on reasons for his resignation because he wouldn’t submit a copy to the Chair. Walking out in protest, he distributed the statement to the then compact press corps. In it, apart from other things, he gave vent to his frustration over the Hindu Code having been “killed, despite Nehru’s sincerity in supporting it”. 

Privately, he blamed Satyendra Narayan Sinha, the Congress chief whip for “convincing” the prime minister to put the Hindu Code on hold. Actually, Nehru had attached greater importance to the advice of his minister without portfolio, N. Gopalaswami Iyengar, who had written: “There is nothing to be lost, and everything to be gained by deferring it (the Bill) to sometime after the elections”.

Eventually, all parts of the Hindu Code Bill were passed, piecemeal and in slow stages, and President Prasad gave assent to them all, but not before an extraordinary event in the post-1952 Lok Sabha. Sarojini Naidu’s son and an eloquent first-time Leftist MP, J. Jaisooriya, ended his maiden speech with the words: “Sir, the honourable prime minister had assured us that his government would stand or fall by the Hindu Code. The Hindu Code has fallen but the government, to quote the famous Rampur telegram to Hakim Ajmal Khan, still stands”. There was a huge outburst of hilarity in the House. Nehru was one of the few members bewildered by it. Until Rafi Ahmed Kidwai explained to him that the telegram in question had bewailed the excessive consequences of an aphrodisiac.

... contd.