MAHARANI HEMANTA KUMARI DEBI Vs. GAURI SHANKAR TEWARI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The sanctity which Hindu thought and feeling attribute to the Ganges and the special veneration which its stream commands as it flows past the holy city of Benares (Kashi) are manifested by the temples and bathing ghats upon the banks. The efficacy of its waters to wash away every form of sin and pollution, is widely accepted doctrine among the orthodox and brings the Hindu pilgrim in large numbers seeking to acquire religious merit and advantage. According to evidence given in the present case Mankarnika, Dasaswamedh, Panch Ganga, Assi and Barna are the panch tirthas of Kashi; one who comes to Kashi on pilgrimage has to visit all these five places.

(2.) In this appeal their Lordships are concerned with a bathing ghat which is known as the Prayag or Puthia ghat and which is covered by the name Dasaswamedh - the name of a mohalla of the city. The suit was brought on 15 February 1929 in the Court of the additional subordinate Judge of Benares. The plaintiff was Maharani Hemanta Kumari Debi, widow of the last male owner of the Puthiya Raj estate. She claimed to be owner of the ghat. She will be referred to as "the plaintiff" notwithstanding that pending this appeal she has by relinquishment accelerated the interest of her husband's reversioners who have been joined with her as appellants to His Majesty in Council. She impleaded six sets of defendants, 14 persons in all, alleging that they belonged to a class of Brahmins known as ghatias and that they and their predecessors, had been allowed by the owners of the ghat to sit on different portions of it in order to gain a livelihood by receiving alms and gifts from pilgrim bathers. She complained that the defendants were abusing the permission granted to them, by altering the condition of the steps, putting down platforms of earth and wood, erecting canopies and blocking up the free space to the detriment of the utility, cleanliness and beauty of the ghat. She alleged that the defendants were mere squatters; that she had been willing to allow them to continue to sit on the ghat if they would execute written agreements for the proper conduct of the ghat; but that they had failed or refused so to do. She asked for relief in different forms - a declaration that she was the owner of the ghat and that the defendants had no right to sit on any portion of it; an order of ejectment of the defendants; an order for removal of the various obstructions put up by the defendants; and an injunction restraining the defendants from using any portion of the said Prayag ghat as ghatias in any season of the year and from sitting and squatting over the same for the purposes of collecting dan dakshina from the bathers.

(3.) A number of written statements were filed. The defendants numbered 2, 8 and 11 pleaded that they were mere servants of other defendants. The main defence as pleaded on behalf of the rest denied the plaintiff's proprietary right and set up that the ghatias were a community whose business and duty it was to assist bathers; that a ghat necessarily involved a right on the part of some members of this community to occupy portions of it by the use of seats or platforms of the kind known as chaukis or takhts; that this right was a form of property heritable and transferable by the Hindu law; that the defendants and their ancestors had been in occupation of definite sites on the ghat for hundreds of years; and that they had been guilty of no impropriety. They maintained that a right to occupy sites on the ghat by laying out chaukis and takhts had become vested in them by lost grant, prescription or custom.