AIR 1959 PUNJAB 428 ::61 Pun LR 857 ::ILR (1959) Punj 45

Punjab High Court

Hon'ble Judge(s): D. Falshaw, I. D. Dua , JJ

(A) Custom (Punjab) - Adoption - Prohibition against adoption outside got or tribe, whether mandatory - Validity of adoption. Once the power to adopt is conferred on a person, the matter of choice, whether it relates to the question of degree of relationship or of the adoptee being a kinsman of the adopter or belonging to a particular got, caste or creed, is certainly a matter, the regulation of which should not, generally speaking, be considered to be mandatory. This matter of choice depends on various considerations of detail which the adoptor alone can weigh and determine. Besides, the vital changes which our social and community life has undergone during the last 20 years, and specially during the last ten years or so, do warrant a new approach to the provisions of the Customary Law, particularly those relating to adoption, marriage, women's right to property and restrictions on power of alienation etc. The old conservative agnatic theory and the considerations of narrow minded reactionary tribal society in more or less isolated self-sufficient villages have, in the present set up, lost much of their sanctity, importance and usefulness. Our present social or community life has out-lived those static ideas and conceptions of the nineteenth or even of the early twentieth century. Sociology is, roughly speaking synonymous with "social welfare", "social scie....