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INDIAN MAJORITY ACT, 1875 INDIAN MAJORITY ACT, 1875 9 of 1875 2nd March, 1875 STATEMENT OF OBJECTS AND REASONS "The mass of persons domiciled if this country may roughly be divided into (1) Hindus, (2) Muhammadans, (3) European British subjects, (4) persons to whom the Indian Succession Act applies. In the present state of law, the ages at which persons belonging to these classes respectively attain their majority may be stated as follows: 1. By the Hindu sastras, except those prevailing in Bengal, the end of the sixteenth year is the limit of minority, in Bengal the end of the fifteenth year is deemed to be the limit of minority, according to the Hindu law as understood there. By Bengal Regulation XXVI of 1793 and Madras Regulation V of 1804, the minority of Hindu proprietors of estates paying revenue to Government was extended, in case of such persons in each presidency respectively, to the end of the eighteenth year. By Acts XL of 1858 and XX of 1864, for the care of the persons and property of minors in the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal and in the Presidency of Bombay, respectively, it was enacted that, for the purposes of those Acts, every person should be deemed to be a minor who had not attained the age of eighteen years. European British subjects are excluded from the purview of the Acts. The effect of those Acts clearly was, for the purposes of those Acts, to alter the Hindu law as to the age of majority in the cases of persons to whom the Acts applied, and in course of time the question was raised in the Calcutta High Court as to whether the Acts did not similarly affect the age of majority of Hindus subject to the ordinary original jurisdiction of that Court, and was decided in the affirmative. This opinion was not, however, accepted by other Judges of the same Court before whom the question arose and the matter having been by one of them expressed to be in a complicated and unsatisfactory state was the other day referred to a Full Bench of the Court, which decided that a Hindu resident in Calcutta, who had no property in the mofussil, attained, his age of majority on the completion of his fifteen year, and refrained from deciding what was the effect of the Acts upon persons resident in Calcutta and possessed of property in the mofussil. In Bombay it has been decided that, notwithstanding Act XX of 1864, a Hindu resident in the mofussil came of age on attaining sixteen years, so as to be able to prosecute a claim by suit. In a case which came before the late Sadr Diwani Adalat of Bengal, it was held that, according to the Jain law, majority begins on the completion of sixteen years.