Marriage does not change women's religious status
Says India's SC during hearing on a Parsi woman's rights
India's Supreme Court has said a woman does not lose her religious identity after marrying a man from another faith until she converts and law does not sanction the concept of a wife's religion getting merged with her husband's faith after inter- religion marriage.
"There is no law which says that a woman loses religious identity after marrying a man from another faith... Moreover, the Special Marriage Act is there and allows that two persons can marry and maintain their respective religious identities," said a five-judge Constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra on Thursday. The bench was dealing with a legal question whether a Parsi woman loses her religious identity if she marries a man from a different religion.
The bench, also comprising Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, asked senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, representing the Valsad Parsi Trust, to take instruction and apprise it on December 14 as to whether it can allow Goolrokh M Gupta, a Parsi woman who had married a Hindu, to attend the last rites of her parents.
Gupta has challenged the customary law, upheld by the Gujarat state High Court in 2010, that a Parsi woman marrying a Hindu loses her religious rights in the Parsi community and hence, loses the right to visit the Tower of Silence in the event of her father's death to perform the last rites.
The Tower is used for funerary purposes by the adherents of the Zoroastrian faith, in which the traditional practice for disposal of the dead involves the exposure of the corpse to the sun and vultures.