TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1969 (2) TMI 9
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....rty was to be spent. For a long time the income from the property was assessed in the hands of the she baits as trustees. In respect of the assessment years 1950-51 and 1951-52, the two she baits contended that there was no trust executed in the case and as such the income from the property did not attract liability to tax and particularly the assessments made in the name of Hem Chandra Naskar and his brother, Yogendra Nath Naskar, as trustees of the debuttar estate could not be sustained. The Appellate Assistant Commissioner accepted this contention on appeal and set aside the assessments. Finding that the assessments have been set aside on the footing that the status of the assessee had not been correctly determined, the Income-tax Officer initiated proceedings for the assessment years 1952-53 and 1953-54 against Hem Chandra Naskar and Yogendra Nath Naskar, the she baits of the two deities and completed the assessments on the deities in the status of an individual and through the she baits. The claim for exemption under the proviso to section 4(3)(i) of the Income-tax Act was rejected. On appeal the Appellate Assistant Commissioner upheld the assessment orders of the Income-tax O....
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.... these appeals is whether a Hindu deity can be treated as a unit of assessment under sections 3 and 4 of the Income-tax Act, 1922. 5. It is well established by high authorities that a Hindu idol is a juristic person in whom the dedicated property vests. In Manohar Ganesh v. Lakhmiram, called the Dakhor temple case, West and Birdwood JJ. state: "The Hindu law, like the Roman law and those derived from it, recognises, not only corporate bodies with rights of property vested in the corporation apart from its individual members, but also the juridical persons or subjects called foundations. A Hindu, who wishes to establish a religious or charitable institution, may, according to his law, express his purpose and endow it, and the rule will give effect to the bounty, or at least protect it so far, at any rate, as it is consistent with his own dharma or conceptions of morality. A trust is not required for this purpose; the necessity of a trust in such a case is indeed a peculiarity and a modern peculiarity of the English law. In early times a gift placed, as it was expressed, 'on the altar of God' sufficed to convey to the Church the lands thus dedicated....... It is consistent....
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....fant and it is not according to law that infants should be disinherited by the negligence of their guardians or be barred of an action in case they would complain of things wrongfully done by their guardians while they are under age' (Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law, volume I, 483)......" In Pramatha Nath Mullick v. Pradyumma Kumar Mullick Lord Shaw observed: "A Hindu idol is, according to long established authority, founded upon the religious customs of the Hindus, and the recognition thereof by courts of law, a 'juristic entity'. It has a juridical status with the power of suing and being sued. Its interests are attended to by the person who has the deity in his charge and who is in law its manager with all the powers which would, in such circumstances, on analogy, be given to the manager of the estate of an infant heir. It is unnecessary to quote the authorities; for this doctrine, thus simply stated, is firmly established." It should however be remembered that the juristic person in the idol is not the material image, and it is an exploded theory that the image itself develops into a legal person as soon as it is consecrated and vivified by the....
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....ेवस्वम् मुख्यस्य स्वस्वामिसबंन्धवस्य, देवाना असंभवात् । "Property of the Gods, Devaswam, means whatever is abandoned for Gods, for purposes of sacrifice and the like, because ownership in the primary sense, as showing the relationship between the owner and the property owned, is impossible of application to Gods". Thus, according to the texts, the Gods have no beneficial enjoyment of the properties, and they can be described as their owners only in a figurative sense (Gaunartha). The correct legal position is that the idol as representing and embodying the spiritual purpose of the donor is the juristic person recognised by law and in this juristic person the dedicated property vests. As observed by Mr. Justice B. K. Mukherjea: "With regard to Debutter, the position seems to be somewhat different. What is personified here is not the entire property which is dedicated to the deity but the d....
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....e poor, or the sick, or prisoners, orphans, or aged people, he thereby created ipso facto a new subject of legal rights--the poor-house, the hospital, and so forth--and the dedicated property became the sole property of this new subject; it became the sole property of the new juristic person whom the founder had called into being. Roman law, however, took the view that the endowments of charitable foundations were a species of Church property. Piae causae were subjected to the control of the Church, that is, of the bishop or the ecclesiastical administrator, as the case might be. A pia causa was regarded as an ecclesiastical, and consequently, as a public institution, and as such it shared that corporate capacity which belonged to all ecclesiastical institutions by virtue of a general rule of law. A pia causa did not require to have a juristic personality expressly conferred upon it. According to Roman law the act--whether a gift inter vivos or a testamentary disposition--whereby the founder dedicated property to charitable uses was sufficient, without more, to constitute the pia causa a foundation in the legal sense, to make it, in other words, a new subject of legal rights." 7. ....
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....t. We see no reason why the meaning of the word "individual" in section 3 of the Act should be restricted to human beings and not to juristic entities. In Commissioner of Income-tax v. Sodra Devi, Mr. Justice Bhagwati pointed out as follows: "...the word 'individual' has not been defined in the Act and there is authority for the proposition that the word 'individual' does not mean only a human being but is wide enough to include a group of persons forming a unit. It has been held that the word 'individual' includes a corporation created by a statute, e.g., a University or a Bar Council, or the trustees of a baronetcy trust incorporated by a Baronetcy Act." We are accordingly of opinion that a Hindu deity falls within the meaning of the word "individual" under section 3 of the Act and can be treated as a unit of assessment under that section. 8. On behalf of the appellant Mr. Chagla referred to section 2, sub-section (31), of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (49 of 1961), which states: "2. In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires--... (31) 'person' includes-- (i) an individual, (ii) a Hindu undivided family, (iii) a company, (iv) a f....