Friday, February 21, 2014

Supreme Court Ruled for Muslim's Right to Adopt

The Supreme Court of India in a landmark order indirectly pushing for the Constitution-suggested Uniform Civil Code, on Wednesday ruled that personal law prohibition against adoption would not bar a Muslim from adopting a child if he chose the secular Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act route. By this ruling the minority community can take care and protection of children as adoptive parents and not as a guardian as was earlier.


Giving the judgment on a PIL filed by Shabnam Hashmi  nine years ago, a bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and S K Singh said the JJ Act was a secular law which gave prospective parents the option to adopt a child. "A Muslim was always free to exercise his option either to adhere to the personal law prohibition against adoption or choose JJ Act route to take a child into his/her family," the bench said, adding "To us, the Act is a small step in reaching the goal enshrined by Article 44 of the Constitution." 

Article 44 of the Constitution says, "The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a Uniform Civil Code throughout the territory of India." The bench said, "The vision contemplated in Article 44 of the Constitution, that is a Uniform Civil Code, is a goal yet to be fully reached." 

However, the Muslim Personal Law Board had opposed Hashmi's plea for a uniform adoption law that would prevail over all religious prohibitions. The board gave their elaborate arguments against permitting Muslims to adopt children.

The board had said that Islam did not recognize an adopted child to be treated on a par with a biological child. The Islamic law professes 'kafla' system under which the child is placed under 'kafil' who provides for the well-being of the child, including financial support, and this is legally allowed to take care of the child though the child remains the descendant of his biological parents and not of the 'adoptive' parents.

The muslim board attempted to give legal recognition to its religious 'kafla' system by informing the court that even United Nation's Convention of the Rights of Child recognized it as an alternative to child care contemplated under the JJ Act. The court, however, refused to restrain a Muslim if he/she chose to take JJ Act route to adopt a child on the grounds that the faith did not permit it.

Justice Gogoi said, "An optional legislation (JJ Act) that does not contain an unavoidable imperative cannot be stultified by principles of personal law which, however, would always continue to govern any person who chooses to so submit himself until such time that the vision of Uniform Civil Code is achieved. The same can only happen by the collective decision of the generation(s) to come to sink conflicting faiths and beliefs that are still active today.

"The conflict in thinking fuelled by dictates of religions was also the reason why the court felt the time was not ripe to lift the statutory right to adopt to the level of a fundamental right. It said, "Conflicting viewpoints prevailing between different communities as on date on the subject makes the vision contemplated in Article 44 of the Constitution, that is a Uniform Civil Code, a goal yet to be fully reached and the court is reminded of the anxiety expressed by it earlier with regard to the necessity to maintain restraint. All these impel us to take the view that the present is not an appropriate time and stage where the right to adopt and the right to be adopted can be raised to the status of a fundamental right and/or to understand such a right to be encompassed by Article 21 of the Constitution," the court said.