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THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REALIZATION
Hindus was quite different from the original  Manu-smṛti .
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  They have now made changes. Even our late Paṇḍita Jawaharlal Nehru introduced his own Hindu code. He introduced the right of divorce in marriage, but this was not in the  Manu-samhitā . There are so many things they have changed, but before this modern age the whole human society was governed by the  Manu-smṛti . Strictly speaking, modern Hindus are not strictly following the Hindu scriptures.
But our point is not to try to bring back the old type of Hindu society. That is impossible. Our idea is to take the best ideas from the original idea. For example, in the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  there is a description of the communist idea. It is described to Mahārāja Yudhiṣṭhira. If there is something good, a good experience, why shouldn't you adopt it? That is our point of view. Besides that, modern civilization is missing one all-important point—the aim of human life. Scientifically, the aim of human life is self-realization,  ātma-tattva . It is said that unless the members of human society come to the point of self-realization, they are defeated in whatever they do. Actually it is happening in modern society, despite all economic advancement and other advancement: instead of keeping peace and tranquillity, they are fighting—individually, socially, politically, and nationally. If we think about it in a cool-headed way, we can see that in spite of much improvement in many branches of knowledge, we are keeping the same mentality that is visible in the lower animal society. Our conclusion, according to the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam , is that this human body is not meant for working hard for sense gratification. But people do not know anything beyond that. They do not know about the next life. There is no scientific department of knowledge to study what happens after this body is finished. That is a great department of knowledge.
In the  Bhagavad-gītā  [2.13] it is said,  dehino 'smin yathā dehe. Deha  means “this body.”  Dehinaḥ  means “the one who owns this body.”  Dehino 'smin yathā dehe kaumāram yauvanam jarā . The  dehī , the owner of the body, is within, and the body is changing from one form to another. The child has a certain type of body that changes to another type when he is older. But the owner of the body still exists throughout. Similarly, when this body is completely changed, we accept another body. People do not understand this. We are accepting different bodies, even in this life, from babyhood to childhood to boyhood to youth. That is a fact—everyone knows it. I was a child, but that childhood body is no more. I have a different body now. What is the difficulty in understanding that