Showing The Mirror

Joint-family and indissoluble marriage have been the basis of Hindu society.

- Aakar Patel

Laws that alter this basis will ultimately lead to the disintegration of society. Jana Sangh will, therefore, repeal the Hindu Marriage and Hindu Succession Acts.”

This is from the party’s manifesto of 1957. The Jana Sangh/BJP’s opposition to divorce and its championing of joint families was accompanied also by an attack against the rights of women. In his draft legislations in the early 1950s, Dr BR Ambedkar had proposed modest changes to Hindu personal law, especially on the question of inheritance for women. He identified the two dominant forms of traditional inheritance law and modified one of them to make inheritance fairer for women. In its 1951 manifesto the Jana Sangh opposed this proposal in the Hindu Code Bill, saying social reform should not come from above but from society. In 1957, the one that is quoted above, it said that such changes were not acceptable unless rooted in ancient culture. ‘Riotous individualism’ would ensue as a result, it feared. One part of its opposition to divorce was the idea of eternal marriage. However, the material element was not letting divorced women and widowed daughters-in-law inherit property. This position changed over time, but there is no explanation why the party changed its position on its manifestos. As divorce became less rare in India society and as urban, upper caste, middle-class families (the base of the BJP) became more nuclear, the pledged loyalty to joint families eroded.