The 'Jains as minorities' question in personal laws

The well-known adage "ignorance of law is no excuse" was once suffixed by the late justice VR Krishna Iyer with the words "except for the lower courts".

- Tahir Mahmood

He was lamenting the cases of miscarriage of justice resulting from misreading of laws often reported from the lower ladders of the judicial hierarchy. An astounding instance of this has been recently reported from Madhya Pradesh where a family court refused to apply the divorce law under the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 to several Jain couples on the ground that their community had been recognised by the central government as a minority under the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992. The court's preposterous idea reflects its shocking misconceptions about the nature and scope of the two Acts.