Source: https://www.legalindia.com/judgments/bapuji-apaji-vs-senavaraji-marvadi-and-ors-on-29-november-1877
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 22:56:19+00:00

Document:
Posted On November 29, 1877 by &filed under Bombay High Court, High Court.
1. The transaction, the subject of the present suit for redemption, is comprised in two documents, identical in date, which documents must, we think, he taken together in order to ascertain the nature of the contract between the parties. The date of each is the 12th Jeth sud Shakh 1780 (23rd June, A.D. 1858). Of these documents, one (Exhibit 18) executed by the plaintiff’s ancestors (the grantors) to the person whom the defendants represent (the grantee), recites a mortgage (dated 7th Magh sud Shakh 1776, 24th January, A.D. 1855) of the lands in question (consisting of upwards of ten bighas) by the former to the latter for Rs. 125, on which mortgage the parties agreed that there were, on the 12th Jeth sud Shakh 1780 (23rd June 1858) Rs. 200 due by the grantors to the grantee.
3. The fact that the grantee paid, according to the stipulation in that document, the sum of Rs. 75 to Lakma Raghoji on account of the grantors, has not been disputed.
4. The other document (Exhibit 14), dated the 12th Jeth-sud, Shakh 1780 (23rd June A.D. 1858), and upon which the plaintiff grounded this suit, purported to be executed by the, grantee of Exhibit 18 to the plaintiff’s said ancestors, the grantors of Exhibit 18, and runs thus: “I have given to you Rs. 275 Company’s currency, and having purchased your rice lands, containing, &c, on the 12th Jeth-sud 1780 (23rd June 1858), took in writing a deed of sale on that day. As to that, should you bring and pay the said Rs. 275 from the month of Magh 1781 to the 13th Vaishak-vad 178, [the document is here torn where the fourth figure ought to be] I will accept it (the money) and restore to you your land, and transfer it to your name in the Government records. Should you not pay the money according to the above conditions in the month of Vaishak, this chithi (writing) becomes null. Should I not take the money in the appointed time, and should you thereby have to stamp this chithi, I will make good the expense that will be incurred for that. Jeth-sud, 12 Shakh 1780.
5. A question as to the validity of the stamping of this last-mentioned document has been raised, but it is not necessary for us to decide it. It has been found as a fact, by both of the Courts below, that neither the plaintiff nor his ancestors paid or tendered the sum of Rs. 275 previously to the 13 Vaishak-vad 1789, which was the latest time that could have been specified in Exhibit 14 in the portion of it which is now torn, and it is not denied that this suit was not brought until after the time named for repayment had elapsed. But it is contended that the two documents, of the 12th Jeth-sud, 1780, constitute a mortgage and not a sale with a condition to repurchase; and that this suit for redemption, having been brought in A.D. 1872, and, therefore, within sixty years from the date of those documents, is, according to Act XIV of 1859, Secion 1, Clause 15, sustainable.
6. The date of the transaction being the 23rd June 1858, it becomes necessary, with respect to certain important observations of their Lordships of the Privy Council in Thumbasawmy Mudelly v. Mahomed Hossain Rowthen (L.R. 2 Ind. Ap., 255; S.C.I.L.R. 1 Mad., 1,) decided in 1875, to resolve whether we should approach the consideration of this case from the point of view that the doctrine laid down in 1864 by three of the former Judges of this Court in Ramji v. Chinto (1 Bom., H.C. Rep., 199) and ever since uniformly followed here (9 Bom., H.C. Rep., 69, 79) is that which regulates the law of redemption in this Presidency. If it do not, and if the law as laid down for Madras in Pattabhiramier v. Vencatarow Naicken (13 Moore I.A. 560), prevails now in Bombay, the decision of this case would be a very simple matter, and it would be sufficient to say that, whether or not the transaction of the 12th Jeth-sud Shakh 1780 (23rd June 1858) was in the first instance a mortgage, the plaintiff’s suit for redemption must fail, because the time named, within which the plaintiff might have re-acquired the land by payment of the sum of Rs. 275, had elapsed before suit brought. In Pattabhiramier v. Vencatarow Naicken (13 Moore I.A. 560), Lord Chelmsford, in delivering the judgment of the Privy Council in 1870, said: “What is known in the law of England as the ‘equity of redemption’ depends on the doctrine established by Courts of Equity, that the time stipulated in the mortgage deed is not of the essence of the contract. Such a doctrine was unknown to the ancient law of India; and if it could have been introduced by the decisions of the Courts of the East India Company, their Lordships can find no such course of decision. In fact, the weight of authority seems to be the other way. It must not then be supposed that, in allowing this appeal, their Lordships design to disturb any rule of property established by judicial decisions so as to form part of the Law of the Forum, wherever such may prevail, or to affect any title founded thereon.” In 1872, in Shankarbhai v. Kassibhai (9 Bom. H.C. Rep., 69), it became necessary for this Court to consider whether the decision in Pattabhiramier v. Vencatarow Naicken (13 Moore I.A. 560) rendered it necessary that the course pursued in Ramji v. Chinto (1 Bom., H.C. Rep., 199) should be abandoned, and a Full Bench of three Judges sat for the purpose. That Court, having regard to the concluding sentence in the passage just quoted from the judgment of Lord Chelmsford, and to the fact that, from August 1864 down to May 1872, a period of about eight years, the doctrine of Ramji v. Chinto (1 Bom., H.C. Rep., 199) had been uniformly followed in this Presidency in a multitude of cases, arrived, without hesitation, at the conclusion that their Lordships of the Privy Council did not desire or intend that the decision in Pattabhiramier v. Vencatarow Naicken, (13 Moore. I.A. 560) which case had been pending in the Privy Council for about ten years, and which went from the Presidency of Madras, should have the effect of overturning the practice so firmly established in the mofussil of this Presidency, and which had always prevailed in the island of Bombay. On the same day a Full Bench of four Judges, in Krishnaji v. Ravji (9 Bom., H.C. Rep., 79) and in two other cases mentioned in the note to the report of that case (At p. 83) came to the same decision. We do not gather from the judgment of the Privy Council in the subsequent Madras case of Thumbasawmy Mudelly v. Mahomed Hossain Rowthen (L.R. 2 Ind. Ap. 255; S. c. I.L.R. 1 Mad., 1) that this Court misunderstood the concluding sentence in the passage of the judgment of Lord Chelmsford which we have quoted. In Thumbasawmy Mudelly v. Mahomed Hossain Rowthen (L.R. 2 Ind. Ap. 241, 255; Section c. I.L.R. 1 Mad., 1), their Lordships, after adverting to the cases, said: “The state of the authorities being such as has been described, it may obviously become a question with this Committee in future cases whether they will follow the decision in 13th Moore (Pattabhiramier v. Vencatarow Naicken), which appears to them based upon sound principles, or the new course of decision that has sprung up at Madras and Bombay, which appears to them to have been in its origin radically unsound. On a stale claim to redeem a mortgage, and dispossess a mortgagee, who had, before 1858, acquired an absolute title, there would be strong reasons for adopting the former course. In the case of a security executed since 1858, there would be strong reasons for recognizing and giving effect to the Madras authorities, with reference to which the parties might be supposed to have contracted. Their Lordships abstain from expressing any opinion upon this question until the necessity for determining it shall arise. They deem it right, however, to observe that this state of the law is eminently unsatisfactory, and one which seems to call for the interposition of the Legislature. An act affirming the right of the mortgagor to redeem until foreclosure by a judicial proceeding, and giving to the mortgagee the means of obtaining such a foreclosure, with a reservation in favour of mortgagees whose titles, under the law as understood before 1858, had become absolute before a date to be fixed by the Act, would probably settle the law without injustice to any party.” In Madras the system of permitting redemption was adopted in 1858, and in Bombay the decision in Ramji v. Chinto (l Bom. H.C. Rep. 199), was made in 1864. The observations of Lord Chelmsford guarding against the supposition of any design on the part of their Lordships of Her Majesty’s Privy Council to disturb any established course of decisions, were general, and took no distinction between mortgage transactions in Madras before 1858 and in Bombay before 1864, on the one hand, and mortgaged transactions of latter date on the other; and they were accepted as general by this Court, when, in 1872, it became necessary for it, in the cases already mentioned, to consider the scope of the judgment in Pattabhiramier v. Vencatarow Naicken (13 Moore I.A. 560). That case was heard ex parte in the Privy Council,–a fact which appeared to this Court to have probably been a special reason for the cautious reservation in the judgment given on behalf of their Lordships by Lord Chelmsford. Ramji v. Chinto (1 Bom. H.C. Rep. 199) and the subsequent Bombay decisions were not then brought to their attention, and under all the circumstances we do not perceive how the Judges of this Court could have interpreted that reservation otherwise than they did.
8. Mr. Macpherson’s treatise on mortgages is written only with reference to Bengal and the N.-W. Provinces. It, consequently, is seldom referred to here, and has but little bearing upon the law or usage as to mortgages in this Presidency, of which that learned writer had not any experience. He speaks (p. 11, 2nd edition) of the bye bil wufa–a term almost wholly unknown here to mortgagors and mortgagees; and of the kut kubala–also unknown here in the sense of “conditional sale,” that in which he employs it. Literally, kut kubala signifies a written agreement, and would not here be understood as having the technical sense of “conditional sale.” The term here usually applied to contracts, which undoubtedly are, in their inception at least, mortgages, but which contain a clause of conditional sale if the mortgage debt be not paid within a given time, is gahan lahan.
9. In Shankarbhai v. Kassibhai (9 Bom. H.C. Rep. 72) it was said, with reference to Ramji v. Chinto (1 Bon. H.C. Rep. 199) that “the recognition of the right to redeem” (in gahan lahan mortgages, where the time fixed for the sale to become absolute had expired), “was, having regard to the previous decisions of the Sadr Adalut, perhaps somewhat a strong measure,” and that remark was justified, inasmuch as there had been several decisions of the Sadr Adalut which had given a strict operation to the clause of conditional sale contained in gahan lahan mortgages. Ramji v. Chinto (l Bom. H.C. Rep. 199), therefore, must be viewed as, to a certain extent, a breach of the venerable rule stare decisis, and in that respect to be regretted; but it was not intended by the remark in Shankarbhai v. Kassibhai (9 Bom. H.C. Rep. 72), to intimate any opinion that those decisions of the Sadr Adalut were in conformity with the usage of the people of this Presidency as to such mortgages, which usage the Sadr Adalut was bound to follow, or, in default of usage, “equity and good conscience.” (Bom. Reg. II of 1800, Section 14; Bom. Reg IV of 1827, Section 6.) In Ramji v. Chinto (1 Bom. H.C. Rep. 199) it was said: “It does not appear that there is any law, or usage having the force of law, among Hindus, justifying such a departure from the established rule of the English Courts of Equity, which is, besides, manifestly ‘a rule of good conscience’.” The Court was there speaking of the usage of this Presidency, and the circumstance should not be overlooked that the members of that Court associated with Sir Joseph Arnould, himself an able Judge, were a Hindu gentleman and a European member of the Civil Service, both of extensive experience in the mofussal of this Presidency. Not only is there not any reason for believing that the Courts of justice, or Nyadesh, which existed here anterior to British rule, treated such mortgages as irredeemable, after the time fixed had expired, or enforced them as effective sales; but there is strong ground for believing that those mortgages never were so regarded by the people at large. Instances were, and still are, of frequent occurrence in which, after the time fixed for the payment of such mortgages had elapsed, and, according to the terms of the gahan lahan clause, the mortgage had, ostensibly, become converted into a sale, the mortgagee made to the mortgagor further advances on the property the subject of the mortgage, and, as a general rule, the mortgage money is far below the value of the land, and would be wholly inadequate for its fair purchase. We do not know of any instance in which a suit, in British Courts, to foreclose gahan lahan mortgages has been rejected, and it is within the knowledge of the Judges of the present Division Bench that decrees for foreclosure and sale in such suits have been made, in which decrees a reasonable time (generally six months) has been given to the mortgagors to redeem. Although the High Court in Ramji v. Chinto (1 Bom. H.C. Rep. 199), were guilty of an infraction of the maxim stare decisis, we believe the original innovation upon a well-settled and most beneficial usage was that of the Sadr Adalut, and that the Judges who decided Ramji v. Chinto reverted to the generally-understood construction of gahan lahan mortgages.
10. The reluctance of the people of this country to sell their immoveable property may be traced back for a long period. It is strongly manifested in chapter I, Section 1, pl. 32 of the Mitakshara, which approves of mortgages, but reprobates sales, without absolutely pronouncing them to be invalid, adding that “if a sale must be made it should be conducted, for the transfer of immoveable property, in the form of a gift, delivering with it gold and water,” as Mr. Colebrooke states, “to ratify the donation.” The Rishi Usanas went so far as to enumerate land amongst those species of property which are impartible. His Smriti to that effect is quoted by Vijnyanesvara in the Mitakshara, chapter I, Section 4, pl. 26, and by Devanda Bhatta in the Smriti Chandrika, chapter VII, pl. 44. Devanda Bhatta, however, says that this text is to be overlooked and partition made. Usanas, however, did not stand alone in his doctrine. Prajapati also treated land as indivisible. His text is quoted by Devanda Bhatta (Smr. Chand., chapter VII, pl. 49), as laying down that “no one is competent even to make a partition of the inheritance descended from ancestors. It is simply to be enjoyed; there can be no gift or sale of the same.” Against this may be placed what the same Smriti writer is quoted by Devanda Bhatta (pl. 47) as saying in favour of partition of houses and land. We are not to be understood as treating these texts of the Rishis denouncing partition of immoveable property as of any present operative force. We merely refer to them as showing how deep-seated in remote times was the antipathy of Hindus to aught even approaching an alienation of land. Mr. Steele, in his Law of Caste and Custom in the Deccan, p. 78, 1st ed., pl. 81 (p. 72, 2nd ed.) says: “There is no limit to the right of ownership of (immoveable) property pledged, by lapse of time; heirs of the original pledger may always claim it on repayment of the debt and interest.” And, so far as regards usufructuary pledges, of which the gahan lahan mortgage on land is one, he is supported by an ancient text of the Rishi Vyasa, who, distinguishing between usufructuary and other pledges, says: “But a pledge to be used of which the term has elapsed, the debtor shall only recover on then paying from other funds the exact amount of the principal;” (I. Dig. Bk. I., ch. 3, pl. cxvi, 2nd cl.) and also by a text from Narada, who, speaking of pledges, generally, says that they are not lost to the owner through their being possessed by a stranger; (Jolly’s trans of Narada, p. 24, pl. 9) and Yajnyavalkya similarly favours pledges (I. Dig. Bk. I., pl. cxiii, cxiv). Subsequently, however, at p. 80, pl. 86 (p. 74, 2nd ed.), of his book, Mr. Steele says, that, “after Smarte Karl (Kale), the period beyond which recollection does not extend, viz., 100 years, he (the mortgagor) loses his ownership in the property.” In this also he is supported by Narada (Jolly’s trans. p. 25, pl. 18) who, it must be remembered, represents a more modern phase of doctrine than the Smriti writers, Usanas, Prajapati, and Yajnyavalkya, above quoted.
13. Notwithstanding this general reluctance to sell, sales were, to some extent, made and carried into effect anterior to British rule; but (generally speaking) those were from the commencement of the transaction intended to be sales, and not contracts which, in their inception, were mere securities for money lent. Such sales were made of immoveable property, as well of superior as of inferior classes of tenure, and have been subsequently, and still are, supported by the British Courts when not restricted by special legislation (Such ex. gr. as Bom. Reg. XVI of 1827, Section XXI, Clauses 1 and 2) (see Krishnarav v. Rangrav, 4 Bom. H.C. Rep. 1 A.C.J. and the cases and authorities there collected, and Vyakunta Bapuji v. The Government of Bombay) and when not prohibited by the common law or usage of the country for by some special law affecting the parties. Our reports are full of cases in which private sales of immoveable property, which were complete, have been supported.
16. So recently as the 4th July last, in Regular Appeal 23 of 1877 (Subabhat v. Vasudevbhat I.L.R. 2 Bom. 113) a Division Bench of this Court acted on the principle laid down by Lord MANNERS in Goodman v. Grierson (2 B. & B. 279) where the grantee under a deed had no remedy to recover as a debt the consideration money for the deed, which we held to be a sale, liable, on a contingency which did not happen, to be converted into a mortgage, and not, like Ramji v. Chinto (l Bom. H.C. Rep. 199) and Shankarbhai v. Kassibhai (9 Bom. H.C. Rep. 69), and the cases collected in it, which were instances of mortgages liable in terms to be converted into sales.
17. We see no ground for supposing that the defendants, or the persons whom they represent, had, from the 12th Jeth-sud, Shak 1780, the date of exhibits 18 and 14, any right to sue for or recover the sum of Rs. 275 (the consideration for exhibit 18,) or any part of it; we must, therefore, hold the transaction of that date to have been a sale and not a mortgage, and that the plaintiff’s suit to redeem was rightly dismissed. On these grounds we affirm the decree of the District Judge, with costs of the special appeal.
18. We have consulted our brothers Melvill and Pinhey as to the views expressed in this judgment, and are authorized by them to say that they concur in those views.

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