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Showing contexts for: parasnath hill in Ugamsingh & Mishrimal vs Kesrimal & Ors on 26 November, 1970Matching Fragments
It was further contended on behalf of the Appellants that the Respondents suit was not maintainable because it did not involve a dispute of a Civil nature. Respondents' learned Advocate though he first indicated that he would raise a preliminary objection to this contention being urged because when the High Court set aside the Judgment of the District Judge and remanded the case to be decided on merits holding that the suit was maintainable as it raised a dispute of a civil nature, the Appellants ought to have appealed to the Supreme Court. The learned Advocate for the Appellants however contends that the remand order of the High Court did not finally dispose of the rights of the parties as such it is open to him to urge in this appeal that the suit was not maintainable on the ground that it does not raise any dispute of a civil nature. Though the preliminary objection was not subsequently pressed even on the merits, the learned Advocate for the Appellant is unable to satisfy us that the suit is not of a civil nature. From the pleadings and the controversy between the parties it is clear that the issue is not one which is confined merely to rites and rituals but one which effects the rights of worship namely whether the Swetamberies by placing Chakshus, Dhwajadand and Kalash according to their tenets or by locking the temple could preclude the Digamberies from worshipping in accordance with their tenets. It is admitted that the Digamberies will not worship the idol which is not Nirakar' or which has Chakshus. If the Digamberies have a right to worship at the temple the attempt of the Swetamberies to put Chakshus or to place Dhwajadand or Kalash in accordance with their tenets and to claim that the idol is a Swetamberi idol was to preclude the Digamberies from exercising their right to worship at the temple. These findings clearly establish that the Appellants interfered with the rights of Digamberies to worship with respect to which a civil suit is maintainable under Section 9 of the Civil Procedure Code. This position is well established. If authority was needed we may refer only to two cases. The Privy Council in Sir Seth Hukam Chand & Ors. v. Maharaj Bahadur Singh & Ors.(1), had to deal with the practices observed by Digamberies and Swetamberies on the Parasnath Hill which is considered to be sacred by. both the Sects but in respect of which the Digamberies objected to the continuous employment of human beings on the Hill and against building thereon of Dwellings necessarily involving according to their tenets of a sacrilegious pollution and desecration of the sacred hill, while the Swetamberies had no such belief. Sir John Wallace delivering the opinion of the Board observed :"These are matters for the Jain themselves and the Civil Courts are only concerned with them in so far as they are relevant to questions of civil right such as an alleged interference with the Plaintiffs rights to worship on the hill, and in that case the issue must be not whether the acts complained of are in accordance with orthodoxy or with previous practice, but whether they do in fact interfere with the plaintiff's rights of worship". Again this Court in Nar Hari Sastri and Others v. Shri Badrinath Temple Committee (2 ) was concerned with the rights of the Deoprayagi Pandas to enter the Badrinath Temple alongwith their Yajmans or clients, which it was claimed the Pawal or the Trustee denied and threaten to obstruct the said Deoprayagi (1) 60 LA. 313.