Amarendra Mansingh v. Sanatan Singh

Two propositions come from this case, and one of them has been abolished by statute. Both must be stated, because the abolition is unintelligible without the doctrine.

The first is about purpose: "the Privy Council held that adoption was more religious and that the secular aspect was secondary." That is the classical position from which the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act 1956 departed.

The second is the doctrine of relation back, which the 1956 Act abrogated by proviso (c) to section 12. The case is the standard illustration of the doctrine at its strongest, because there the adoption divested a man who had already succeeded to a Raj.

Raja Brijendra died unmarried. His collateral succeeded to the estate. "As the family custom prevented females from succeeding to the Raja; Indumati the mother of the Raja, adopted Amarendra to her husband Brijendra."

So the sequence was: the last male holder died; the estate vested in the collateral, Benamali; a custom shut the women of the family out of the succession; and the mother then took a boy in adoption to her deceased husband.

"Question was whether this adoption dated back to the death of the Raja, and divested Benamali of the estate."

Put in doctrinal terms: an adoption takes effect from the date it is made. Can an adoption made today put the adopted son in the position he would have occupied had he been the natural son of a man who died years ago — and so take the estate away from someone in whom it had already vested?

"The Privy Council held that she could be divested. Hence, Amarendra succeeded."

The reasoning is the classical purpose of adoption, and it is the reason the two propositions of this case are really one. The object of taking a son was "to perpetuate the lineage and to perform the obsequies", the son being one "who saves the father from the hell called 'Puth'". If adoption exists to continue the line of the deceased, then the adopted son must be treated as having been in that line — which means treating him as though he had been there from the moment the line would otherwise have failed, that is, from the death.

Hence the rule as it was stated: "If a widow took a boy in adoption, it related back to the death of the adoptive father for purposes of continuing the line and of divesting of the property."

The doctrine was later explained by the Supreme Court in Srinivas v. Narayan, which "stated that adoption dated back to the date of death of Brijendra."

Relation back made every title derived from a deceased Hindu provisional. A collateral who inherited could be divested years later by an adoption made by a widow he could not control, and a purchaser from that collateral took the same risk. The consequence is recorded in blunt terms: the rule of divesting "was the cause of ruinous litigation for about a century."

The Act removed it in three moves.

Section 12 provides that an adopted child is deemed to be the child of the adoptive parents "for all purposes with effect from the date of the adoption" — prospective words, deliberately chosen.

Proviso (c) to section 12 puts the matter beyond argument: "the adopted child shall not divest any person of any estate which vested in him or her before the adoption." The summary of the reform is that the child "shall not divest any person of any estate which is vested in him or her prior to adop" "tion", and that this "clearly abrogates the rule of the divestitute of estate".

Section 12(b) deals with the converse case, preserving to the adopted child "any property which vested in the adopted child before the adoption", subject to the obligations attaching to it.

And so the flat statement: of relation back, "This doctrine has no application now."

The problem the doctrine solved — how does a widow's adopted son get into her deceased husband's family and take his property? — did not disappear, and the modern law answers it by a different route. In Sawan Ram v. Kalawanti (1967) the Supreme Court held that a widow's adoption is made not only to herself but also to her deceased husband, so that the adopted son "became a member of the adoptive family" of the husband; and the property, having vested in the widow absolutely under section 14 of the Hindu Succession Act, passed to the adopted son by ordinary succession on her death.

The contrast is the examinable point. Under Amarendra Mansingh the son took by a fiction that reached backwards and unseated a vested owner. Under the modern law he takes by succession from the widow, forwards, and nobody is divested. The result in a case like Sawan Ram is similar; the mechanism is completely different, and only the modern mechanism is the law.

Amarendra Mansingh is cited for two things: that classical adoption was a religious act before it was a secular one, and that it could reach back in time to divest. The Act reversed the first and abolished the second — and an answer that gives the case without giving the abolition is stating repealed law.