Apex court stays order on Arya Samaj weddings

The petitioner has claimed that the weddings performed at Arya Samaj mandirs were governed by the Arya Marriage Validation Act, 1937, and the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, and the high court was wrong

The Supreme Court has stayed an order of the Madhya Pradesh high court that stopped the Arya Samaj society from issuing marriage certificates and directed them to conform to the procedure prescribed under the Special Marriages Act, 1954.

The Supreme Court has stayed an order of the Madhya Pradesh high court that stopped the Arya Samaj society from issuing marriage certificates and directed them to conform to the procedure prescribed under the Special Marriages Act, 1954

The order of the high court, passed on December 17 last year, was challenged before the top court by the Madhya Bharat Arya Pratinidhi Sabha. A bench of justices KM Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy issued notice on the petition on Monday and stayed the HC judgment.

The petitioner has claimed that the weddings performed at Arya Samaj mandirs were governed by the Arya Marriage Validation Act, 1937, and the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, and the high court was wrong to hold that the Special Marriage Act, 1954, will govern these marriages.

Although the high court order applied to weddings performed by Arya Samaj societies situated within the state of Madhya Pradesh, the petition filed by advocate Vanshaja Shukla said, “The judgment can set a bad precedent for all the marriages conducted by the Arya Samaj society across India and abroad.”

Senior advocate Shyam Divan, who appeared for the petitioner, told the court that the December 17 order of the high court failed to notice that on January 13 last year, another division bench of the same high court had stayed a similar order passed by a single judge applying Special Marriage Act to weddings performed under Arya Marriage Act. The January 13 order was passed on a petition filed by the Sabha (which has filed an appeal in the top court) and the matter is still pending before the high court.

As a result of the latest decision of the high court, the petitioner was aggrieved as a completely different procedure is prescribed for weddings under the 1954 Act, requiring notice of intended marriage, publication of notice, marriage notebook, objections to marriage and marriage certificate to be issued by a competent authority designated by the state.

On the other hand, the Arya Marriage Act allowed a certificate to be issued acknowledging the marriage between two individuals (not necessarily Hindus) in the presence of authorised persons and there is no cumbersome procedure as prescribed under the Special Marriage Act. It also recognised inter-caste marriages between two different castes or sub-castes of Hindus or where either or both parties at any time before their marriage belonged to a religion other than Hinduism.

Divan told the court that the Arya Samaj, established by Swami Dayanand Saraswati, had been solemnizing weddings as per Vedic rituals for over a century prior to the codification of Hindu personal laws.

Referring to the HC order asking the petitioner to include provisions of the 1954 Act in its guidelines on marriage issued in August 2016, Divan submitted that it amounted to interference with the fundamental rights of Arya Samajis, as a religious denomination preserved under Article 26 of the Constitution, which deals with freedom to manage religious affairs.

The HC order was passed in the context of a petition filed by a couple seeking protection from the state following their wedding at an Arya Samaj mandir run by Arya Mool Shankar Samaj Samiti in December 2019. On December 9, 2020, a single judge of the high court applied the 1954 Act to all weddings performed by the Arya Samaj society. Although this judgment was later stayed, in another petition, the high court relied on the December 9 order to pass similar directions.