Mumbai, February 18 A child raised exclusively by her mother cannot be compelled to carry her father's name, surname, and caste simply because a format once demanded it, the Bombay High Court has said while permitting a girl to change her name and caste in school records.
Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Hiten Venegavkar of the Aurangabad bench said in their February 2 judgment, a copy of which was made available on Wednesday, that recognizing a single mother as a complete parent for purposes of a child's civic identity is not an act of charity but constitutional fidelity.
"It reflects the movement from patriarchal compulsion to constitutional choice, from lineage as fate to dignity as right," the HC 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 court said.
"A child raised exclusively by her mother cannot be compelled to carry, as the state's chosen description of her, the father's name and surname merely because the format once demanded it," the court said.
The order came on a petition filed by a 12-year-old girl seeking correction of her name in school records and also correction of the caste entry from 'Maratha' to 'Scheduled Caste- Mahar'.
According to the plea, the child's mother is a single parent and her natural guardian. The child's father was accused by the mother of sexual assault. But later both the parties reached a settlement, and it was agreed that the child would remain in the permanent custody of the mother.
The child's request to change her name and caste was rejected by the school authorities last year, following which she approached the HC.
The petition said the mother has exclusive custody of the child and the father is not part of the minor's life in any legal or functional sense.
The court in its order said that when the Maharashtra government has, as a matter of policy, accepted that a mother's name is central to identity documentation, then a subordinate authority can not deny such a request.
"The Constitution provides a life with dignity which includes the right to an identity that is not forcibly tethered to an absent parent where such tethering serves no welfare purpose and causes avoidable social harm," HC said.
A school record is not a private note but a public document that follows a child across years, institutions and sometimes into the professional domain, the court said.
The assumption that identity must flow through the father is not a neutral administrative default, but a social presumption inherited from a patriarchal structure that treated lineage as male property and women as appendages for purposes of public identity, the court said.
"To insist on this presumption in contemporary India especially in cases of single motherhood and exclusive maternal custody imposes a structural burden upon women and their children," the court said.
It makes the mother fully visible for responsibility and accountability, but insufficiently visible for purposes of identity, HC said, adding such an asymmetry violates the equality principle.
"An administration that insists the father's name is indispensable, but the mother's name is optional does not merely follow a custom; it reproduces inequality through documentation," the bench said in its order.
The Constitution requires the State to evolve, the HC said, while also noting that the father was accused of a grave offence in the present case.
Moreover, the child has grown up exclusively in the social environment of the mother and within her caste community, it noted, directing the school authorities to make necessary changes in its records as per her request.