NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 10 Begum Aizaz Rasul on the equality of women, 22 November 1949 — LET'S EXPLORE

She was speaking of the Right to Equality — Article 14, ‘equality before law’, the article the chapter's own infographic (Fig. 10.14) lists first among the Fundamental Rights.

Look at what she actually claims: “the women of India are happy to step into their rightful heritage of complete equality with men in all spheres of life and activity” and “the rights of women in law will be wholly honoured in the Indian Republic”. Two words settle it — equality and in law. That is Article 14.

Because she was making a distinction between an ideal India had long held and the social practice that had fallen away from it. Read her own words carefully: this is “no new concept which has been postulated for the purposes of this Constitution, but is an ideal that has long been cherished by India, though social conditions for some time had tragically debased it in practice”.

Her reasoning has two halves:

• The ideal is old. The chapter lists respect for women among the fundamental principles “embedded in our culture”, alongside the acceptance of different points of view, Nature as sacred and the pursuit of learning. In earlier chapters you have met women rulers, poets, philosophers, donors and traders — India's past is not short of them.
• The practice had slipped. She says so plainly — social conditions had “debased it in practice”. She is not claiming that Indian society had always treated women equally; she is claiming that the equality being written into the Constitution was a return, not an import.

Why she chose to say it that way. A right that people believe is foreign is resisted; a right people recognise as their own is accepted. By calling equality an Indian ideal being reaffirmed, she made it much harder to argue against — and she made the Constitution's promise feel like a homecoming rather than an instruction.