MARIAPPA NADAN Vs. VAITHILINGA MUDALIAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) I have had the great advantages of reading the judgment which my learned colleague has prepared and will now deliver, and I accept his conclusion and agree in the decree and the order as to costs which he proposes to make.

(2.) While the defendants have not adduced evidence proving that any public urani or drinking water tank such as the niravi in dispute has been reserved for the use of the higher castes alone, the plaintiffs have shown that in some villages in the vicinity of Kalloorani, there are wells which are used by Shanars as well as higher castes. This renders it the less difficult to reject the defendants contention that the niravi and the well in its bed have been reserved for the higher castes, and the disputes, which have before the present suit resulted in the intervention of the Magistrates, do not clearly make out an assertion by the higher castes of their right to exclude the Shanars except when attempting to bathe, on occasions of funerals, when, it is not, I think, denied, special impurities are conceived to attach to the bathers.

(3.) Though the parties have not separated niravi and the well outside it in their pleadings and have dealt with both as though they are subject to the same condition, in regard to the rights of different castes to make use of the water, there is strong evidence that the well outside the tank has been reserved for castes higher than the Shanars, and the fact that both sides have tried to get more than is their due should not prevent us from making a decree in accordance with the evidence. Sadasiva Aiyar, J.