History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c96.s2.101

v7.c96.s2.101

We must not shut our eyes to the peculiar and formidable difficulties of our country.²⁶⁵⁴ Even the present India (i. e. Bhārat) is a vast country. There are in present India adherents of eight great religious systems (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Moslem, Parsi, Christianity and Judaism), besides some tribes following none of these, but their own primitive systems; there are different States based on 14 different languages (mentioned in the 8th schedule to the Constitution of India), besides six Union territories and about 200 recognized dialects. These are likely to produce movements towards complete provincial autonomy and cultural separation. There are great contrasts among the inhabitants, at one end the primitive tribes and the people who were untouchables and at the other end highly educated men and, in between the two, groups of illiterate people numbering at present about 77 per cent of the whole population. *After centuries of conquests by alien people our country has gained independence. This opens* for us a new vista of creative thinking and work. We need not give up the basic principles of Hinduism, but should reorientate them to meet new and more complex conditions and work out a changed social order. Everybody says that what is wanted is an emotional integration of Indians and some have suggested that the caste system should be destroyed. If the caste system were a tangible thing it could have been easily and quickly destroyed. But it is not tangible. Legislation cannot destroy it. Only a change of heart with appropriate remedies and vast efforts persistently made over a long period may accomplish this Herculean task and not glib talk by people that hardly ever practise in their lives what they preach. In the present author's opinion States purely on linguistic basis should not have been created at all, but once it was resolved to create them, that should have been strictly adhered to and clear definite principles should have been laid down by the Central Government about assigning border villages to one State or another. The Central Government leadership has been most vacillating in this respect. For exmple, there were at least five different proposals put forward on Bombay City alone viz. a bilingual state (in which Bombay City was merged), a city State for Bombay alone with separate states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, central administration for five years, a return to the bilingual formula, and lastly separate Maharashtra (including Bombay City, Berar and Marathwada) and a separate State of Gujarat, with about 200 villages taken over from the Khandesh and Thana districts that had been part of Maharashtra for over one hundred years.