A Comprehensive Study On Adoption Laws In India With Special Reference To The Hindu Adoptions

Anam Husain, Faculty of Legal Studies, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti Language University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

Dr. Piyush Kumar Trivedi, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Legal Studies, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti Language University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

ABSTRACT

Adoption is one those fictions of law which have been marshalled for furtherance of the individual interest. The law of adoption enables a childless person to make somebody else’s child as his own. The concept of adoption in India is prevalent since antiquity and the dept goes stronger in case of Hindu Law, it being the only major personal law that permits adoption even before its codification. In India, THE HINDU APOTION AND MAINTENANCE ACT, 1956, is the only personal law that governs adoption. Since Indian religions such as Muslims, Christians, Jews and Parsis lack their own personal law regulating adoption, they are unable to adopt a child and give them their family name. Under THE GUARDIANS AND WARDS ACT of 1890, they can only become the child’s guardian. This paper puts emphasis on how the practice of adoption has changed over the years and how THE HINDU APOTION AND MAINTENANCE ACT, 1956, has been able to set up equality between men and women in terms of their rights to adoption and how customs and practices are kept in harmony with the codified law. The focus of this paper is to thoroughly examine and to offer a comprehensive and exhaustive report of India’s adoption laws.

Keywords: Adoption, Hindu Law, Adoptive, Legal, Custom.