THE REPUBLICintroduced as constitutional amendments, as they were incompatible with
the paragraph guaranteeing due compensation. In this respect, Nehru’s
prediction was right.
One subject that deeply interested Nehru was the reform of Hindu law,
particularly with regard to the rights of Hindu women, and he found an
able supporter in Dr Ambedkar in this work. Afraid of arousing the
opposition of Hindu society, the British had been content to codify rather
than substantially amend Hindu law. The Indian government now
continued the same cautious attitude with regard to Muslim law: it did not
want to be accused of tampering with the law of a minority. Therefore, a
specific effort was made to modernise Hindu law alone. Critics pointed out
that this was incompatible with the idea of a secular state which ought to
have a civil law applicable to all citizens, regardless of their creed. But the
incongruity of a secular government sponsoring a reformed Hindu law was
still preferable to doing nothing at all and giving in to conservative Hindu
opinion which was hostile to any reform.
Unreformed Hindu law reflected the structure of a patriarchal agrarian
society. A man could marry several wives. This was often done when no
son was born. On the other hand, the wife had no right to ask for a
divorce. Daughters received a dowry but were excluded from any right of
inheritance. Consequently, women were always kept dependent on men
and had no rights of their own. Patel supported the conservative
opposition to the reform of the Hindu law and Dr Ambedkar was finally
so frustrated that he resigned. Nehru himself did not give up and
completed this reform—though he could not do so by means of one reform
code and was obliged to introduce piecemeal legislation, dealing with
divorce, right to property and inheritance, etc., separately. He later stated
that he considered this to be his greatest achievement in Indian politics.
Patel died in December 1950 when Nehru’s reform work was in full
swing and Nehru then entered the ring in order to eliminate the conservative
challenge to his policy. Purushottamdas Tandon, a conservative follower of
Patel, was Congress president at that time. Nehru defeated him by himself
standing for election as Congress president. He thus broke with a tradition
established in 1937, according to which office acceptance disqualified a
Congress member from holding a party office so as to keep ministerial and
organisational duties apart. Actually, this was by now an anachronism,
although it had been observed until Nehru found it necessary to dislodge
Tandon in order to put the conservative opposition in its place.
The mixed economy and the planning commissionIn addition to the reform of Hindu law, Nehru considered economic
planning as one of his major fields of interest. He had chaired the Congress
Planning Committee of 1938, but the work of this committee had been