‘Duty of Family Head to Support Female Relatives’: SC Cites Manusmriti in Judgment on Maintenance

The bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and S.V.N. Bhatti was deciding on whether the widowed daughter-in-law of a deceased Hindu man was entitled to maintenance from his estate.

The Wire Staff

The bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and S.V.N. Bhatti was deciding on whether the widowed daughter-in-law of a deceased Hindu man was entitled to maintenance from his estate.

‘duty of family head to support female relatives’ sc cites manusmriti in judgment on maintenance

The Supreme Court dome lit up at night. Photo: guidedtour.sci.nic.in.

New Delhi: While adjudicating on a dispute over whether the widowed daughter-in-law of a deceased Hindu man is entitled to maintenance from his estate, the Supreme Court on Tuesday (January 13) invoked the Manusmriti to say that Hindu law calls on family heads to support their female relatives.

Its judgment comes even as the Manusmriti (‘The Laws of Manu’), a Hindu law code dating back to at least the first century CE, is criticised for upholding caste and gender inequalities.

A bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and S.V.N. Bhatti was on Tuesday deciding whether the widowed daughter-in-law of one Mahendra Singh was entitled to maintenance from his estate under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act of 1956.

Although a family court had ruled that the woman, Geeta Singh, was not eligible for maintenance because she was not a widow at the time Mahendra Singh died, the Delhi high court had set that judgment aside, after which two others in the family filed an appeal each.

However, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the 1956 Act ‘clearly and unambiguously’ states that among those relatives of a Hindu man who would qualify as his dependants is “any widow of his son”. This phrase applies “irrespective of the time she becomes a widow”, it said.

To say that the phrase only applies to those daughters-in-law who had already become widowed by the time their father-in-law died would have “no rational nexus with the object and purpose of the Act, which is to secure maintenance to dependants who are unable to maintain themselves”, the court said.

In the context of “fundamental principles of Hindu law”, the bench cited verse 389 in Chapter 8 of the Manusmriti, which they translated into English as:

“No mother, no father, no wife and no son deserves to be forsaken. A person who abandons these blameless (relatives) should be fined six hundred (units) by the king.”

“This verse emphasises duty of the family head to support female family members,” the court said before disposing of the two appeals against the high court's order.

Some have pointed out that the Manusmriti also contains verses advocating for the subjugation and dispossession of women by men, in addition to others codifying caste hierarchies.

This article went live on January fifteenth, two thousand twenty six, at forty-seven minutes past one at night.

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