Rahul ji, There Is More to Manusmriti Than One Verse

 

Rahul ji, there is a basic rule of intellectual honesty: when you quote a text, you cannot make the quotation the text.

Yet that is precisely what the current Manusmriti controversy seems to be doing.

One verse is quoted. A civilisation is indicted.

One prescription is held up. An entire tradition is placed in the dock.

That may make for good politics. It makes for poor history.

Let us be clear. Manusmriti contains prescriptions that are unacceptable to the constitutional India of today. Its formulations on the dependence of women cannot be reconciled with the modern principle of individual equality. They deserve criticism. There is no need to defend what cannot be defended.

But Rahul ji, there is more to Manusmriti than one verse.

The same text contains verses in Chapter III — particularly 55, 56 and 57 — that place the honour of women at the centre of family and social well-being. They speak of honouring women and warn that a household where women suffer or are dishonoured cannot prosper.

Do these verses erase the objectionable passages?

No.

But does the existence of objectionable passages permit us to erase everything else?

Again, no.

This is where history becomes inconvenient for politics.

And nowhere is that inconvenience more visible than in the case of Babasaheb Ambedkar.

Ambedkar's burning of Manusmriti at Mahad in 1927 was an unmistakable revolt against the social order he believed the text represented. It was a historic act against caste oppression.

But Ambedkar was not merely a protester. He was a scholar of India's social and legal traditions.

When discussing women's property and inheritance, he engaged with the Smriti tradition and referred to Manusmriti and Yajnavalkya Smriti. In the Constituent Assembly, he drew upon traditional legal provisions while arguing about the rights of daughters.

What does this tell us?

That Ambedkar could reject a social philosophy and still examine its texts.

That is the distinction today's political discourse repeatedly refuses to make.

Criticism is not the same as caricature.

A text can contain ideas that deserve rejection and ideas that deserve historical examination. A civilisation can produce both hierarchy and reform, exclusion and emancipation, conformity and rebellion.

Indeed, India's intellectual history is precisely a history of argument within tradition.

The problem begins when politics replaces scholarship.

The Right cannot defend Manusmriti merely by producing verses praising women. Those who defend tradition must confront its difficult passages honestly.

But the Congress cannot condemn Manusmriti merely by producing its most controversial verse. Those who reject tradition must confront its complexity honestly.

Otherwise, both sides are doing the same thing: selecting history to serve politics.

And there is a larger question.

If women's freedom is the principle, is it universal?

If patriarchy is wrong, is it wrong everywhere?

If a social practice restricts women's autonomy, does its acceptability depend upon the religion or community in which it occurs?

A genuinely liberal politics cannot have different standards for different communities. Equality cannot be selective. Freedom cannot be vote-bank dependent.

India's Constitution gives us the moral framework for the present. India's history gives us the complexity of the past.

We need neither to worship Manusmriti nor to demonise an entire civilisation through it.

So, Rahul ji, debate Manusmriti.

Criticise its unacceptable prescriptions.

But read it in full.

There is more to Manusmriti than one verse. And there is certainly more to India's civilisation than the politics of that one verse.