This is a study of an aspect of the legislative history of the coordinated 1954-56 Acts of the Indian Parliament, called the 'Hindu Code.' These Acts collectively comprise a comprehensive codification and modernization of Hindu family law. The aspect studied is the understanding, formally expressed by legislators and committee members, of the problem of reconciling or compromising modernity and tradition in regard to the issues of legal, social, and political reform raised in that legislative history. The concentration of the study is on the pre-independence consideration given to the Code proposals by the British Indian Central Legislature and by the Hindu Law Committee. The balance of the legislative history, in the Constituent Assembly-Provisional Parliament and the First Parliament, is treated in an Epilogue. . . . Each chapter on a period of the legislative history of the Code is preceded by a chapter outlining the historical context regarding political, social, and legal reform. . . . Very close analysis of the legislative or committee argument is presented, especially in the case of the 1941 Hindu Law Committee Report (known as the Rau Committee Report after B.N. Rau, its chairman) and in the case of the Sanskritic rationales offered in the 1943-44 debate.