History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP. V.] APPOINTING A TRIBUNAL. 271

Legislature. The Parsi members take the opposite view. The Honourable the Governor in Council would commit this most difficult question to the careful consideration of the Government of India, with an expression of his own opinion that he takes the same view as Sir Joseph Arnould and Mr. Newton on the first, but not on the second provision. The Honourable the Governor in Council would not interfere with a contract entered into between two parties with their eyes open. But the question is more difficult as to a change of religious belief by one of the contracting parties after marriage. He is of opinion that the marriage should, in the event contemplated, be voidable at the instance of either party, due provision being made for the wife if her conduct be pronounced by the courts to be blameless. He arrives at this conclusion from a consideration of how much in the East the forms of religious belief enter into the domestic life, and that it is the duty of the British Legislature in a matter of this kind to regard Eastern rather than European feelings—the feelings, in other words, of the governed.”

The Legislature, therefore, in passing the Act agreed with the views expressed by Sir Joseph Arnould and Mr. Henry Newton, and by the Government of Bombay, on the two important questions just referred to, and the provisions proposed in the draft Act submitted by the Parsis in respect thereto were omitted.

There was one more question which the Commission had to consider and to give its opinion upon, and that was whether the Panchayet under the limitations proposed in the supplemental draft code, as amended, was likely to prove a satisfactory tribunal for the adjudication of questions of marriage and divorce

among Parsis.