GHELABHAI GAVRISHANKAR Vs. HARGOVAN RAMJI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The suit, out of which this second appeal arises, was brought by the appellant to establish his right "as hereditary priest of the Kachhia Kunbis of the Kasba section of Surat to officiate as family priest in the family of defendant No.1". He alleged in his plaint that, from the time of the ancestors of defendant No.1, his ancestors had continued to be their family priests and that the defendant and his ancestors had continued to recognize his own ancestors as their hereditary priests. The claim was thus one known to Hindu law as that of yajman vritti of which the learned Editors of West and Buhler s Digest on Hindu Law say (page 411, 3rd Edition): "The right to the fees and offerings thus becoming due from particular families or classes is regarded as a family estate...a subject for inheritance and partition like other sources of income."

(2.) The lower Courts, however, have negatived the appellant s claim on the ground that it involves a caste question. Their reason for so holding is shortly this. They find that the caste, to which the parties belong, had originally appointed one of the appellant s ancestors as "the hereditary priest" of the caste, and that on that account "the hereditary priest is removable from his office" by the caste. The learned District Judge thinks that, where a caste has conferred a hereditary office of this character, it has the right to take it away, and that the contrary proposition is "no less repugnant to Hindu notions of the priest or any other caste officer being a servant and not a master of the caste than to English notions of liberty and of liberty of contract." This view of the law ignores the nature of the right which is in dispute in the present case.

(3.) "English notions of liberty and of liberty of contract" are out of place in a case arising under the Hindu law and custom, which from of old has recognized a kind of estate termed yajman vritti and ranked it among hereditary rights of immoveable property. Where a caste has appointed a man to a mere priestly office, there is doubtless no right of property conferred. His continuance or removal is exclusively within the competence of the caste and it is a caste question. But it is different where the office of hereditary priest is created for the performance of religious ceremonies in certain families, provided, according to Hindu law, either the caste or the families, have power to create such an office and give it the character of immoveable property.