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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes Participating actively in the national movement for years, women’s groups and organizations
were demanding revision of laws regarding women’s rights in the family, and in Nehru they had
a firm supporter. Already, before independence, Nehru had made his position on this issue clear
and quoted Charles Fourier, the French philosopher: ‘One could judge the degree of civilisation of
a country by the social and political position of its women.’
A major step forward in this direction was taken when the Hindu Code Bill was moved in parliament
in 1951. The bill faced sharp opposition from conservative sectors of society, especially from the
Jan Sangh and other Hindu communal organizations. Even though actively supported by the
vocal members of the Congress party and women MPs and other women activists, Nehru decided
to postpone enactment of the bill in order to mobilize greater support for it. He was, however, firm
in his determination to pass the bill and made it an issue in the elections of 1951-52.
After coming back to power, the government passed the bill in the form of four separate acts
which introduced monogamy and the right of divorce to both men and women, raised the age of
consent and marriage, and gave women the right to maintenance and to inherit family property.
A revolutionary step was thus taken for women’s liberation, though its practice would take decades
to take full effect. An important lacuna in this respect was that a uniform civil code covering the
followers of all religions was not enacted. This would have involved changes in Muslim personal
law regarding monogamy and inheritance. There was strong opposition to this from the Muslim
orthodoxy. The process of social reform among Muslims had in the modern period lagged far
behind that among Hindus and consequently social change had been quite slow even among
middle-class Muslim women. Nehru was not willing to alarm the Muslim minority which was, he
believed, even otherwise under pressure. He would make changes in Muslim personal law and
enact a uniform civil code but only when Muslims were ready for it.
Education

The founding fathers were fully aware of the need for better and wider education as an instrument
of social and economic progress, equalization of opportunity and the building up of a democratic
society. This was all the more urgent because in 1951 only 16.6 per cent of the total population was
literate and the percentage was much lower, being only 6 per cent, in the case of rural families. To
remedy this situation, the constitution directed that by 1961 the state should provide free and
compulsory education to every child up to the age of fourteen. Later, this target was shifted
to 1966.
The government provided large sums for developing primary, secondary, higher and technical
education: while the expenditure on education was Rs 198 million in 1951-52, by 1964-65 it had
increased to Rs 1,462.7 million, that is, by more than seven times. Since education was primarily
a State subject, Nehru urged the state governments not to reduce expenditure on primary education,
whatever the nature of financial stringency. If necessary, he suggested, even expenditure on
industrial development could be reduced. He told the National Development Council in May
1961: ‘I have come to feel that it [education] is the basis of all and, on no account unless actually
our heads are cut off and we cannot function, must we allow education to suffer.’
The Nehru years witnessed rapid expansion of education, especially in the case of girls. Between
1951 and 1961 school enrolment doubled for boys and tripled for girls. From 1950-51 to 1965-66
the number of boys enrolled in classes I to V increased from 13.77 million to 32.18 million. The
relevant figures for girls were 5.38 million and 18.29 million. The progress was equally rapid in
the case of secondary education. Between 1950-51 and 1965-66 enrolment increased from 1.02
million to 4.08 million (by nearly four times) in the case of boys and from 0.19 million to 1.2
million (by nearly 6.5 times) in the case of girls. The number of secondary schools increased from
7,288 to 24,477 during these years.
At the time of independence there were eighteen universities with a total student enrolment of
nearly 300,000. By 1964, the number of universities had increased to fifty-four, the number of
colleges to about 2,500 and the number of undergraduate and postgraduate students, excluding

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