Introduction:

The foundational principle of a legal system is that it must recognise the subjects it seeks to govern. This is done by the law recognising distinct legal units or ‘legal persons’. To be a legal person is to be recognised by the law as a subject which embodies rights, entitlements, liabilities and duties. The law may directly regulate the behaviour of legal persons and their behaviour in relation to each other. Therefore, to be a legal person is to possess certain rights and duties under the law and to be capable of engaging in legally enforceable relationships

with other legal persons. Who or what is a legal person is a function of the legal system. The ability to create or recognise legal persons has always varied depending upon historic circumstances. The power of legal systems to recognise and hence also to deny legal personality has been used over history to wreak fundamental breaches of human rights. Roscoe Pound alludes to this in the following passage in “Jurisprudence”:

“In civilised lands even in the modern world it has happened that all human beings were not legal persons. In Roman law down to the constitution of Antonius Pius the slave was not

a person. He enjoyed neither rights of family nor rights of patrimony. He was a thing, and as such like animals, could be the object of rights of property. … In French colonies, before slavery was there abolished, slaves were put in the class of legal persons by the statute of April 23, 1833 and obtained a ‗somewhat extended juridical capacity‘ by a statute of 1845. In the United States down to the Civil War, the free Negroes in many of the States were free human beings with no legal rights.[1]”

Pound‘s observations were extracted by Court in Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, Amritsar v Som Nath Dass[2] where a two judge Bench of Supreme Court had to determine whether the “Guru Granth Sahib” possessed a legal personality.  While discussing ‘who is a legal person‘ Justice A

P Misra observed: 

“11. …If we trace the history of a ―person‖ in the various countries we find surprisingly it has projected differently at different times.    

13. With the development of society, where an individual‘s interaction fell short, … cooperation of a larger circle of individuals was necessitated. Thus, institutions like corporations and companies were created, to help the society in achieving the desired result. The very constitution of a State, municipal corporation, company etc. are all creations of the law and these ―juristic persons‖ arose out of necessities in the human development. In other words, they were dressed in a cloak to be recognised in law to be a legal unit.”

 Legal systems across the world evolved from periods of darkness where legal personality was denied to natural persons to the present day where in constitutional democracies almost all natural persons are also legal persons in the eyes of the law.  Legal systems have also extended the concept of legal personality beyond natural persons. This has taken place through the creation of the “artificial legal person” or “juristic person”, where an object or thing which is not a natural person is nonetheless recognised as a legal person in the law.  Two examples of this paradigm are, where a collection of natural persons is collectively conferred a distinct legal personality (in the case of a cooperative society or corporation) and where legal personality is conferred on an inanimate object (in the case of a ship). The conferral of legal personality on things other than natural persons is a legal development which is so well recognised that it receives little exposition by courts today.  The legal development is nonetheless well documented. Salmond in his work titled ‘Jurisprudence’ notes: 

“Conversely there are, in the law, persons who are not men. A joint-stock company or a municipal corporation is a person in legal contemplation. It is true that it is only a fictitious, not a real person; but it is not a fictitious man. It is personality, not human nature, that is fictitiously attributed by the law to bodies corporate. 

So far as legal theory is concerned, a person is any being whom the law regards as capable of rights and duties. Any being that is so capable is a person, whether a human being or not, and no being that is not so capable is a person, even though he be a man. Persons are the substance of which rights and duties are the attributes. It is only in this respect that persons possess juridical significance, and this is the exclusive point of view from which personality receives legal recognition.

No being is capable of rights, unless also capable of interests which may be affected by the acts of others. For every right involves an underlying interest of this nature. Similarly no being is capable of duties, unless also capable of acts by which the interests of others may be affected. To attribute rights and duties, therefore, is to attribute interests and acts as their necessary bases. A person, then, may be defined for the purposes of the law, as any being to whom the law attributes a capability of interests and therefore of rights, of acts and therefore of duties.”[3]

A legal person possesses a capability to bear interests, rights and duties. Salmond makes a crucial distinction between legal personality and the physical corpus on which legal personality is conferred: 

“The law, in creating persons, always does so by personifying some real thing. Such a person has to this extent a real existence, and it is his personality alone that is fictitious. There is, indeed, no theoretical necessity for this, since the law might, if it so pleased, attribute the quality of personality to a purely imaginary being, and yet attain the ends for which this fictitious extension of personality is devised. Personification, however, conduces so greatly to simplicity of thought and speech, that its aid is invariably accepted. The thing personified may be termed the corpus of the legal person so created; it is the body into which the law infuses the animus of a fictitious personality. … Legal persons, being the arbitrary creations of the law, may be as of as many kinds as the law pleases. Those which are actually recognised by our own system, however, all fall within a single class, namely corporations or bodies corporate. A corporation is a group or series of persons which by a legal fiction is regarded and treated as itself a person. If, however, we take account of other systems of our own, we find that the conception of legal personality is not so limited in its application”.[4]

Legal personality constitutes recognition:

Legal personality is not human nature. Legal personality constitutes recognition by the law of an object or corpus as an embodiment of certain rights and duties.  Rights and duties which are ordinarily conferred on natural persons are in select situations, conferred on inanimate objects or collectives, leading to the creation of an artificial legal person. An artificial legal person is a legal person to the extent the law recognises the rights and duties ascribed to them, whether by statute or by judicial interpretation. Salmond presciently notes that the rights and duties conferred on artificial legal persons ultimately represent the interests and benefits of natural persons. In fact, it is precisely because of the substantial benefits derived by natural persons from such objects or collectives that legislators and courts are called upon to consider conferring legal personality on such objects or collectives.

At a purely theoretical level, there is no restriction on what legal personality may be conferred.  What is of significance is the purpose sought to be achieved by conferring legal personality. To the extent that this purpose is achieved, legal personality may even be conferred on an abstract idea.  However, Salmond notes that legal personality is usually conferred on objects which are already the subject of personification or anthropomorphisms in layman‘s language out of ―simplicity for thought and speech‖.  The question whether legal personality is conferred on a ship, idol, or tree is a matter of what is legally expedient and the object chosen does not determine the character of the legal personality conferred. The character of the legal personality conferred is determined by the purpose sought to be achieved by conferring legal personality. There is thus a distinction between legal personality and the physical corpus which then comes to represent the legal personality. By the act of conferring legal personality, the corpus is animated in law as embodying a distinct legal person possessing certain rights and duties. 

By conferring legal personality, legal systems have expanded the definition of a ‘legal person’ beyond natural persons. Juristic persons so created do not possess human nature. But their legal personality consists of the rights and duties ascribed to them by statute or by the courts to achieve the purpose sought to be achieved by the conferral of such personality.  It is important to understand the circumstances in which legal personality has been conferred and consequently the rights and duties ascribed to the inanimate objects on which this conferment takes place.

The Hindu idol and divinity  :

The conferral of legal personality on a Hindu idol is not the conferral of legal personality on divinity itself, which in Hinduism is often understood as the “Supreme Being”. The Supreme Being defies form and shape, yet its presence is universal. In the law of Hindu endowments and in the present proceedings, it has often been stated that legal personality is conferred on the ‘purpose behind the idol’. It is sufficient to note that legal personality is not conferred on the ‘Supreme Being’ itself.  As observed by Supreme Court in Ram Jankijee Deities v State of Bihar[5]:

“19. God is omnipotent and omniscient and its presence is felt not by reason of a particular form or image but by reason of a particular form or image but by reason of the presence of the omnipotent. It is formless, it is shapeless and it is for the benefit of the worshippers that there is a manifestation in the images of the supreme being. The supreme being has no attribute, which consists of pure spirit and which is without a second being i.e. God is the only being existing in reality, there is no other being in real existence excepting Him.”

In 1991, the English Court of Appeal in Bumper Development Corporation Ltd v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis[6] was called to decide the question whether a Hindu temple and a Hindu idol could sue in a courtof law.  In 1976, an Indian labourer discovered a ‗Siva Natraja‘ in Pathur, Tamil Nadu which the labourer subsequently sold to a dealer in religious artefacts. Other artefacts were subsequently found, including a ‗Sivalingam‘, and were reinstated in the Pathur temple. In 1982, Bumper Development Corporation purchased the ‗Siva Natraja‘ in good faith from a dealer in London who produced a false provenance of the Natraja for the purposes of the sale. The Natraja was subsequently seized by the Metropolitan Police. At trial, the Government of India and the state government of Tamil Nadu intervened, along with the Pathur Temple and the Sivalingam as ―juristic persons‖. The Court of Appeal engaged in a lengthy discussion on foreign law in English Courts.  However, in evaluating the maintainability of the claim by the Pathur temple as a legal entity, the English court made the following observations: 

“(1) Neither God nor any supernatural being can be a person in law. A practical illustration of the truth of this statement is that if the endowments were to vest in God as a supernatural being litigation between different temples over their respective rights would be impossible. In any event the same ―person‖ would be both plaintiff and defendant since, as Dr. Mukherjea points out, all Hindus always worship the one Supreme Being. That there is much litigation between temples in India is clear beyond a peradventure. …  (4) Any juristic person must be capable of identification. This necessitates that ‗person‘ having a name or description. Since every Hindu idol is a manifestation of one Supreme Being, one must look elsewhere than to the name of God for an identification. The Pathur Temple bears the name of its founder in its title; and that appears to be the custom in Tamil Nadu. So any idol must in practice be referred to by association with the name of the temple in which it is.”      

Hinduism understands the Supreme Being as existing in every aspect of the universe. The Supreme Being is omnipresent. The idea of a legal person ispremised on the need to ‘identify the subjects’ of the legal system. An omnipresent being is incapable of being identified or delineated in any manner meaningful to the law and no identifiable legal subject would emerge. This understanding is reflected in the decisions of this Court as well. In Yogendra Nath Naskar v Commissioner of Income Tax, Calcutta[7], a three judge Bench of Supreme Court was called upon to determine whether a Hindu idol (or ‘deity‘) falls within the definition of an ―individua‖ under Section 3 of the Income Tax Act 1922. Justice V Ramaswami speaking for a three judge Bench of this Court held: 

“Sankara, the great philosopher, refers to the one Reality, who, owing to the diversity of intellects (Matibheda) is conventionally spoken of (Parikalpya) in various ways as Brahma, Visnu and Mahesvara. It is, however, possible that the founder of the endowment or the worshipper may not conceive of this highest spiritual plane but hold that the idol is the very embodiment of a personal God, but that is not a matter with which the law is concerned. Neither God nor any supernatural being could be a person in law. But so far as the deity stands as the representative and symbol of the particular purpose which is indicated by the donor, it can figure as a legal person. The true legal view is that in that capacity alone the dedicated property vests in it. There is no principle why a deity as such a legal person should not be taxed if such a legal person is allowed in law to own property even though in the ideal sense and to sue for the property, to realise rent and to defend such property in a court of law again in the ideal sense. Our conclusion is that the Hindu idol is a juristic entity capable of holding property and of being taxed through its Shebaits who are entrusted with the possession and management of its property.”

Legal personality is not conferred on the Supreme Being. The Supreme Being has no physical presence for it is understood to be omnipresent - the very ground of being itself.  The court does not confer legal personality on divinity. Divinity in Hindu philosophy is seamless, universal and infinite. Divinity pervades every aspect of the universe. The attributes of divinity defy description and furnish the fundamental basis for not defining it with reference to boundaries – physical or legal. For the reason that it is omnipresent it would be impossible to distinguish where one legal entity ends and the next begins. The narrow confines of the law are ill suited to engage in such an exercise and it is for this reason, that the law has steered clear from adopting this approach. In Hinduism, physical manifestations of the Supreme Being exist in the form of idols to allow worshippers to experience a shapeless being. The idol is a representation of the Supreme Being. The idol, by possessing a physical form is identifiable.An exploration of the method adopted for the conferral of legal personality on Hindu idols and the reason for the conferment is necessary. Chief Justice B K Mukherjea‘s, “The Hindu Law of Religious and Charitable Trusts” demonstrates a timeless quality and has significance in understanding the evolution of our law on the subject. Justice Mukherjea notes that even prior to courts regulating the Hindu practice of religious endowments, the clear public interest in regulating properties dedicated for religious purposes, resulted in the practice being regulated by the rulers of the day. He states:

“1.36 … It appears however that from very early times religious and charitable institutions in this country came under the special protection of the ruling authority. In the celebrated Rameswar Pagoda case, it was pointed out by the Judicial Committee that the former rulers of this country always asserted the right to visit endowments of this kind to prevent and redress the abuses in their management. ―There can be little doubt‖, thus observed Their Lordships, ―that the superintending authority was exercised by the older rulers.‖ Mr. Nelson in his Madura Manual says: ―… The Dharma Kartas held but little communication one with another and recognised no earthly superior except the king himself. Each was independent of all control and acted altogether as he pleased. This freedom led naturally to gross abuses and the king was compelled occasionally to interfere in the management of some of the churches.[8]”

In an article which was published in 2010 in the Economic and Political Weekly, Gautam Patel traces the historical evolution of endowments. He noted the reason for the conferment of personality in law on idols:

“Emperors and rulers routinely donated property and cash for the establishment, maintenance and upkeep of Hindu shrines. When land was made over to a temple, it was in the form of a sanad, or grant, or firman, by edict. The Shrinathji temple at Nathdwara, for instance, was said to have received a firman from the emperor Akbar. Given the colonial obsession with orderliness and documentation, this situation presented a problem – large areas of land were owned, managed and cultivated by shebaits and mohunts who were clearly not the owners. Temples were, by their nature, malleable and apt to grow and change. The entity with some permanence was the idol and it is presumably for that reason that the legal concept of the Hindu idol as a juristic entity owning land evolved.  The reason may have been purely fiscal – these lands had to be surveyed, their ownership ascertained, and then assessed for (or exempted from) land revenue and other taxes. But the ownership of land almost always depended on the establishment of a positive act of giving – by firman, sanad or any other instrument that unequivocally shows a dedication of the land to the idol.”[9]  

The reasons for the recognition of the idol as an entity in law are intrinsically tied to the historical circumstances in which recognition took place. The setting up of religious endowments by individuals, merchants and rulers is an age-old practice in India. However, the colonial administration in India and English law of the time lacked the legal framework within which to record, tax and ultimately adjudicate upon claims with respect to Hindu religious endowments. Disputes arose with the increase in the value of the properties dedicated. The establishment of courts across the country led to their increasingly having to adjudicate upon claims concerning endowments, idols, and debutter properties.

Idols and juristic personality 

 English and Indian judges in India were called upon to determine the legal characteristics of Hindu idols and the properties associated with them. In Manohar Ganesh Tambekar v Lakhmiram Govindram[10], the plaintiffs were persons interested in the religious foundation of the temple of Dakor and the defendants were recipients of the temple‘s offerings. The plaintiff‘s prayer was that the court appoint a receiver for the accountable disposal of the offerings made at the temple.  On the other hand, the defendants submitted that the temple offerings were their own absolute and secular property. A Division Bench of the Bombay High Court analysed the circumstances in which the case took place and considered the need to confer legal personality on the Hindu idol. The Court, speaking through Justice R West observed:

“For a period extending over several centuries the revenues of the temple seem to have but slightly, if at all, exceeded the outlay required to maintain its services, but recently these revenues have very largely increased. The law which protects the foundations against external violence guards it also internally against mal-administration, and regulates, conformable to the central principle of the institution, the use of its augmented funds.”

The Hindu practice of dedicating properties to temples and idols had to be adjudicated upon by courts for the first time in the late nineteenth century. The doctrine that Hindu idols possess a distinct legal personality was adopted by English judges in India faced with the task of applying Hindu law to religious endowments. Property disputes arose and fuelled questions about the ownership of the properties. Two clear interests were recognised as subjects of legal protection.  First, there existed the real possibility of maladministration by the shebaits (i.e. managers) where land endowed for a particular pious purpose, ordinarily to the worship of an idol, was poorly administered or even alienated. Second, where the land was dedicated to public worship, there existed the threat that access or other religious benefits would be denied to the public, in particular to the devotees. Where the original founder of the endowment was not alive and the shebait was not the owner of the lands, how were the courts (and through them the State) to give effect to the original dedication? To provide courts with a conceptual framework within which they could analyse and practically adjudicate upon disputes involving competing claims over endowed properties, courts recognised the legal personality of the Hindu idol. It was a legal innovation necessitated by historical circumstances, the gap in the existing law and by considerations of convenience. It had the added advantage of conferring legal personality on an object that within Hinduism had long been subject to personification. The exact contours of the legal personality so conferred are of relevance to the present case to which this judgement now adverts. 

In conferring legal personality on the Hindu idol, courts drew inspiration from what they saw as factual parallels in Roman law. Justice B K Mukherjea summarises the position: 

“…from the fifth century onwards – foundations created by individuals came to be recognised as foundations in the true legal sense, but only if they took the form of Pia Causa, i.e., were devoted to ‘pious uses’ only, in short, if they were charitable institutions.  Whenever a person dedicated property whether by gift inter vivos or by will – in favour of the poor or the sick, or prisoners or orphans, or aged people, he thereby created ipso facto a new subject of legal rights – the poor house, the hospital and so forth and the dedicated property became the sole  property of the new subject – it became the property of the new juristic person whom the founder had called into being.”

“A private person might make over property by way of legacy or gift to a corporation already in existence and might, at the same time, prescribe the particular purpose for which the property was to be employed, e.g., feeding the poor, or giving relief to the sick or distressed. The receiving corporation would be in the position of a trustee and would be legally bound to spend the funds for the particular purpose. The other alternative was for the donor himself to create an institution or foundation. This would be a new juristic person, which depended on its origin on nothing else but the will of the founder, provided it was directed a charitable purpose. The foundation would be the owner of the dedicated property, and the administrators would be the trustees bound to carry out the object of the foundation.”[11]

In Roman law, where property was dedicated to a particular religious or charitable purpose and not to an identified donee, the religious/charitable purpose itself was elevated to the status of a legal foundation. The foundation was a separate legal entity and came to own the dedicated property. Hindu law does not make a distinction between religious and charitable purposes. However, a clear parallel exists in the case of Hindu endowments. 

The conferral of juristic personality by courts is to overcome existing shortfalls in the law and ensure societally satisfactory and legally sound outcomes. A key societal interest sought to be protected by the conferral of juristic personality on the idol was the protection of the devotees interests. Such protection could also be achieved by conferring juristic personality on the devotees as a collective. However, given the widespread personification of the idol, he holds that juristic personality should vest in the idol on considerations of practicality and convenience.

In Bhupati Nath Smrititirtha v Ram Lal Maitra[12], a five judge Bench of the Calcutta High Court was constituted to answer the question whether bequests by a testator to trustees for the establishment of an idol of the Goddess Kali and the worship of the idol after the testator‘s death were invalid due to the Hindu law principle which stated that gifts could only be made to sentient beings. The testator in that case had dedicated certain properties to an idol.  While the testator died in 1890, the idol was not consecrated until 1894. A question arose as to whether the non-existence of the idol at the time of the testator‘s death invalidated the provisions of the will dedicated the property. In an erudite opinion holding that such bequests were valid, Chief Justice Lawrence Jenkins held:

“but the testator directed all his property to be placed in the hands of persons named by him and subject to certain payments these persons were directed to spend the surplus income which might be left in the sheba and worship of Kali after establishing the image of the Kali after the name of his mother. Now this manifestly was a disposition for religious purposes and such dispositions are favoured by Hindu Law.

 …In England it has been held that gifts ―for the worship of God‖ or ―to be employed in the service of the Lord and Master‖ are good. Then does it invalidate the disposition that the discretion is for the spending of the surplus income on the sheba and worship of Kali ―after establishing the image of the Kali after the name of my mother.‖ I think not: the pious purpose is still the legatee, the establishment of the image is merely the mode in which the pious purpose is to be effected”.

A Hindu may make an endowment for a religious purpose. There is a public interest in protecting the properties endowed and ensuring that the original pious purpose of the dedicator is fulfilled. The law confers legal personality on this pious purpose. The idol as an embodiment of a pious or benevolent purpose is recognised by the law as a juristic entity. The state will therefore protect property which stands vested in the idol even absent the establishment of a specific or express trust. The pious purpose, or ‘benevolent idea’ is elevated to the status of a juristic person and the idol forms the material expression of the pious purpose through which legal relations are affected. It is the pious purpose at the heart of the dedication which is the basis of conferring legal personality on the idol and which is the subject of rights and duties. The need to confer juristic personality arises out of the need for legal certainty as to who owns the dedicated property, as well as the need to protect the original intention of the dedicator and the future interests of the devotees. It was open for courts to even confer the personality on the community of devotees in certain situations, but the idol is chosen as a centre for legal relations as the physical manifestation of the pious purpose.  

The idol constitutes the embodiment or expression of the pious purpose upon which legal personality is conferred. The destruction of the idol does not result in the termination of the pious purpose and consequently the endowment. Even where the idol is destroyed, or the presence of the idol itself is intermittent or entirely absent, the legal personality created by the endowment continues to subsist. In our country, idols are routinely submerged in water as a matter of religious practice. It cannot be said that the pious purpose is also extinguished due to such submersion. The establishment of the image of the idol is the manner in which the pious purpose is fulfilled. A conferral of legal personality on the idol is, in effect, a recognition of the pious purpose itself and not the method through which that pious purpose is usually personified. The pious purpose may also be fulfilled where the presence of the idol is intermittent or there exists a temple absent an idol depending on the deed of dedication. In all such cases the pious purpose on which legal personality is conferred continues to subsist. After independence, the principles applicable to the Hindu law of endowments were affirmed by a four judge bench of this Court in Deoki Nandan v Murlidhar[13]. In 1919, a Hindu testator executed a will bequeathing his lands to the idol (or ‘Thakur’) of Shri Radhakrishnaji.  A dispute arose between the direct descendant of the testator and his distant agnates on the management of the Thakur. It was contended that the Thakur was being mismanaged and the public was denied worship. A declaration that the Thakurdwara was a public temple was sought. The issue facing Court was how to construct the scope of the dedication in the testator‘s will. Justice Venkatarama Ayyar, speaking for  Court, held:

“6. …The true purpose of a gift of properties to the idol is not to confer any benefit on God, but to acquire spiritual benefit by providing opportunities and facilities for those who desire to worship. In Bhupati Nath Smrititirtha v Ram Lal Maitra it was held on a consideration of these and other texts that a gift to an idol was not to be judged by the rules applicable to a transfer to a ‗sentient being‘, and that the dedication of properties to an idol consisted in the abandonment of the owner of his dominion over them for the purpose of their being appropriated for the purposes which he intends. Thus, it was observed by Sir Lawrence Jenkins C.J at p. 138 that ―the pious purpose is still the legatee, the establishment of the image is merely the mode in which the pious purpose is to be effected‖ and that ―the dedication to a deity‖ may be ―a compendious expression of the pious purpose for which the dedication is designed. 

 7. When once it is understood that the true beneficiaries of religious endowments are not the idols but the worshippers, and that the purpose of the endowment is the maintenance of that worship for the benefit of the worshippers, the question whether an endowment is private or public presents no difficulty. The cardinal point to be decided is whether it was the intention of the founder that specified individuals are to have the right of worship at the shrine, or the general public or any specified portion thereof.”

Upon making an endowment, the donor relinquishes all claims to the endowed property. The property now vests in the pious purpose at the heart of the endowment which is recognised as a legal person. The idol forms the material manifestation of the pious purpose and the consequent centre of jural relations.

The beneficiaries of the endowment are worshippers and the proper maintenance of worship to the idol is to enable the worshippers to achieve the spiritual benefit of being in communion with the divine. 

The recognition of the Hindu idol as a legal or ―juristic person is therefore based on two premises employed by courts. The first is to recognise the pious purpose of the testator as a legal entity capable of holding property in an ideal sense absent the creation of a trust.  The second is the merging of the pious purpose itself and the idol which embodies the pious purpose to ensure the fulfilment of the pious purpose.  So conceived, the Hindu idol is a legal person. 

The property endowed to the pious purpose is owned by the idol as a legal person in an ideal sense.  The reason why the court created such legal fictions was to provide a comprehensible legal framework to protect the properties dedicated to the pious purpose from external threats as well as internal maladministration. Where the pious purpose necessitated a public trust for the benefit of all devotees, conferring legal personality allowed courts to protect the pious purpose for the benefit of the devotees.

[1] Roscoe Pound, Jurisprudence, Part IV, 1959 Edition

[2]  (2000) 4 SCC 146

[3] J W Salmond, Jurisprudence, Steven and Haynes (1913)

[4]  J.W. Salmond, Jurisprudence, Steven and Haynes (1913)

[5] (1999) 5 SCC 50

[6]  [1991] 1 WLR 1362 (2)

[7]  (1969) 1 SCC 555

[8]  B.K. Mukherjea, The Hindu Law of Religious and Charitable Trust, 5th Edition Eastern Law House, (1983) at page 28

[9] Gautam Patel, Idols in Law, Vol. 45, No.50, Economic and Political Weekly (11-17 December 2010) at page 49 

[10]  ILR (1888) 12 Bom 247

[11]  B.K. Mukherjea, The Hindu Law of Religious and Charitable Trust, 5th Edition, Eastern Law House (1983) at page 9

[12] ILR (1909-1910) 37 Cal 128

[13] 1956 SCR 756