VAITHILINGA ODAYAR Vs. ATYATHORAI ODAYAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiffs, Christians, sued to recover the estate of a deceased Hindu, as his reversioners, that is, they claimed in virtue of their own relationship to him, not through any earlier reversioner such as Swaminatha Odayar, the member of their branch of the family, who first embraced Christianity. The lower Appellate Court following the ruling in Bhagwant Singh v. Kallu (1889) I.L.R. 11 All. 100 held that they were relieved from all religious disability by Act XXI of 1850 and remanded the suit for decision on its merits. The question is whether this decision is right.

(2.) The persons relieved by the Act are those, who (1) renounce, (2) have been excluded from the communion of, a religion and (3) deprived of caste. Renunciation and deprivation are applicable only to rights which have accrued, and therefore are irrelevant in the case of plaintiffs, who were born Christians, before the succession opened. They therefore are not covered by descriptions (1) and (3). As regards (2) there is more difficulty. For the word "exclude" is applied in ordinary parlance to refusal of rights newly claimed and also deprivation of rights already enjoyed, the meaning as given in Webster s Dictionary being: "(1) to shut out; to hinder from entrance or admission; to debar from participation or enjoyment; the opposite of to admit and (2) to thrust out; to expel." It is an argument against the interpretation of "exclude" in the Act in the first of these senses that it is used in the context between two terms, which as I have pointed out, express a different idea. It is further material that, if the Legislature had intended the result entailed by plaintiff s contention, the perpetual right of the descendants of a convert to rely on the law of his birth for purposes of inheritance from unconverted relatives, it could and would have effected it by shorter and more explicit language.

(3.) These arguments are supported by the fact that plaintiffs contention entails consequences repugnant to reasonableness and consistency. In the case of the original convert his status will be fixed at the date of his conversion and his original law will be invoked only in order to determine whether his relationship entitles him to inherit, not whether that relationship exists. No anomalies therefore, beyond the initial one involved in the application of his original law, will be entailed; with his descendant the case is different. He, having to establish both the points referred to above, will find the concession involved in plaintiffs interpretation of the Act illusory, since his descent will have to be traced through some Christian marriage which will not be valid according to the law under application and can be established, only if the claimant is allowed to apply both his abandoned and his present law, as may suit each portion of his case. And, if it be said that this is contemplated, the suggestion is so startling that a clearer expression of it than the Act contains may fairly be required.