NEW DELHI, India -- India's Supreme Court, in a landmark judgment, has recognized a child's mother as a guardian equal to the father under Indian law, officials said on Friday.
The ruling on Thursday came in response to a petition from Githa Hariharan, an English language writer, and her husband, who challenged the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act framed in 1956 saying it discriminated against women.The couple went to the country's highest court after the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), refused to accept an application to issue bonds in the name of their teenaged son because the application was not signed by the father.
"Be it noted that gender equality is one of the basic principles of our (the Indian) Constitution," said one of the two concurring judgments issued in the case.
India is a signatory to the CEDAM (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women) having accepted and ratified it in June, 1993, the court said.
"It is an axiomatic truth that both the mother and father of a minor child are duty bound to take due care of the person and the property of their child and thus having due regard to the meaning attributed to the word 'guardian' both the parents ought to be treated as guardians of the minor," Judge U.C. Banerjee said.
The ruling implies a precedent from the highest court of the land that would help stamp out any trace of official gender bias in guardianship based on laws framed decades ago and help identify the mother as a "natural guardian" equal to her father.
The ruling covered two key laws covering guardianship, the Hindu law of 1956 and the Guardian and Wards Act, framed in 1890 during British colonial rule.
The law governing the nation's majority Hindus had so far identified the father ahead of the mother as natural guardian in the case of minor boys and unmarried girls.