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Issues: (i) Whether a marriage solemnised during the subsistence of a Hindu marriage becomes valid merely because one spouse converts to Islam and contracts a second marriage. (ii) Whether conversion by itself dissolves the first marriage or avoids criminal liability for bigamy. (iii) Whether the Court had issued a direction requiring enactment of a uniform civil code.
Issue (i): Whether a marriage solemnised during the subsistence of a Hindu marriage becomes valid merely because one spouse converts to Islam and contracts a second marriage.
Analysis: A Hindu marriage requires that neither party have a spouse living at the time of marriage. A marriage in breach of that condition is void under the Hindu Marriage Act. The Act also treats such a marriage as bigamous and attracts the penal provisions of the Indian Penal Code. Mere change of religion does not terminate an existing marital tie, and a second marriage during the continuance of the first marriage remains invalid in law.
Conclusion: The second marriage during the subsistence of the first Hindu marriage is void and cannot be validated by conversion alone.
Issue (ii): Whether conversion by itself dissolves the first marriage or avoids criminal liability for bigamy.
Analysis: Conversion to another religion is only a ground for divorce or judicial separation under the Hindu Marriage Act. Until a competent court dissolves the marriage, the matrimonial bond continues. If a person contracts a second marriage while the first marriage subsists, the ingredients of bigamy are attracted, and the complaint and prosecution provisions applicable to offences against marriage continue to operate according to the personal law governing the parties.
Conclusion: Conversion by itself does not dissolve the first marriage and does not shield the spouse from liability for bigamy.
Issue (iii): Whether the Court had issued a direction requiring enactment of a uniform civil code.
Analysis: The clarification records that the earlier decision did not issue any operative direction to enact a common civil code. The observations in the prior judgment were confined to the validity of a second marriage following feigned conversion and did not mandate legislative action under the Constitution.
Conclusion: No direction for enactment of a uniform civil code was issued.
Final Conclusion: The petitions were finally disposed of with the clarification that conversion to Islam does not dissolve an existing Hindu marriage, a second marriage during the subsistence of that marriage remains void, and the earlier decision did not compel enactment of a uniform civil code.
Ratio Decidendi: Mere conversion to another religion does not dissolve a subsisting marriage solemnised under the Hindu Marriage Act; a second marriage contracted during the continuance of that marriage is void and attracts the law on bigamy.
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