A child brought up solely by her mother cannot be forced to carry her father’s name, surname and caste simply because the format once required it, the Bombay High Court said, allowing 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 the full parent for the purpose of the child’s civil identity is not an act of charity but a constitutional allegiance.
“It reflects a movement from patriarchal coercion to constitutional choice, from lineage as destiny 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 the father, who is absent from the child’s life, while the mother, who bears all the educational burden, remains administratively sidelined, the court said.
“A child raised exclusively by a mother cannot be forced to bear, as the state chooses, the father’s first and last name simply because the format once required 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 caste from ‘Maratha’ to ‘Scheduled Caste-Mahar’.
According to the lawsuit, the child’s mother is a single parent and her natural guardian. The child’s father was accused by the mother of sexual assault. Later, however, both sides came to an agreement and it was agreed that the child would remain in the mother’s permanent care.
The child’s request to change her name and caste was rejected by the school management last year, after which she approached the HC.
The petition states that the mother has sole custody of the child and the father is not part of the minor’s life in any legal or functional sense.
In its order, the court said that when the Maharashtra government has recognized as a matter of policy that the mother’s name is central to identity documentation, then the subordinate authority cannot reject such a request.
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“The Constitution provides for a dignified life, which includes the right to an identity that is not forcibly attached to an absent parent if such attachment serves no social purpose and causes avoidable social harm,” the HC said.
School records are not a private note but a public document that follows a child across years, institutions and sometimes into the professional sphere, the court said.
The assumption that identity must pass through the father is not a neutral administrative failure but a societal assumption inherited from a patriarchal structure that treated lineage as the property of men and women as appendages for public identity purposes, the court said.
“Insisting on this presumption in contemporary India, particularly in cases of unmarried motherhood and sole maternal care, poses a structural burden on women and their children,” the court said.
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This makes the mother fully visible for responsibility and accountability, but insufficiently visible for identity purposes, the HC said, saying such asymmetry violates the principle of equality.
“The administration insisting on the father’s name is indispensable but the mother’s name is optional, it is not merely following custom but reproducing inequality through documentation,” the bench said in its order.
The Constitution requires the state to develop, the HC said while noting that the father was accused of a serious crime in this case.
Besides, the child grew up exclusively in the mother’s social milieu and within her caste community, she observed, directing the school administration to make necessary changes in its records on her request.
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