Can't force dad's caste on child raised by single mom: Bombay HC

MUMBAI: A child raised exclusively by her mother cannot be compelled to carry her father's surname and caste merely because the format once demanded it, Bombay HC said recently. The order was in response to a petition filed by a 12-year-old girl seeking correction of her name in school records and also of the caste entry from 'Maratha' to 'Scheduled Caste'. The child's request was rejected by school authorities last year, citing Secondary School Code. The HC ruling, made available on Wednesday, stated: "Recognition of a single mother as a complete parent for purposes of a child's civic identity is not an act of charity; it is constitutional fidelity. It reflects the movement from patriarchal compulsion to constitutional choice, from lineage as fate to dignity as right." The court further said, "A society that claims to be developing cannot insist that a child's public identity must be anchored to a father who is absent from the child's life, while the mother, who bears the entire burden of upbringing, remains administratively secondary. The state's formats must not become moral judgments; they must become accurate instruments of welfare." A school record was not a private note but "a public document that follows a child across years, institutions, and sometimes into the professional domain", observed Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and H S Venegaonkar in a Feb 2 judgment from Bombay HC's Aurangabad bench. "If lived guardianship is maternal, the record cannot insist on paternal visibility as a matter of routine, and then call it administrative neutrality.'' The child's mother was a single parent and her natural guardian, HC said. The mother had accused the child's father of sexual assault. Later, they reached a settlement, and it was agreed that the daughter would remain in the permanent custody of the mother. The minor and her mother, both petitioners, asserted that continuation of the father's surname in the school record did not merely create an inaccuracy but also "an avoidable social vulnerability for a child who must grow up, learn, and form her identity in society that often treat names as identity for family history".