The properties in the possession of the Mahants were not endowed properties not capable of alienation by a Mahant.

Judgement

MITTER, J. : -Bounded by the river Ganges on the east, in the locality named Tripura Bhairavi of the studded city of Benaras there stands a math popularly known as Uttam Giri s Math, the origin of which is lost in antiquity. For well over a century this Math has been a sanctuary of a spiritual brotherhood of Nihang Dasnami Sanyasis. Claim is laid that they belong to one of the ten orders of Sanyasis founded by the chelas of the four disciples of the famous philosopher, Sankaracharya. Starting probably without any nucleus of endowed immovable property, the heads of the Math appear to have, prospered enormously in matters material and temporal. Successive heads of the Math or Mahants as they were commonly known, seem to have been more keen about the acquisition of wealth and preservation of properties than about the furtherance of the spiritual benefit of the brotherhood. Gifts in the shape of endowments seldom came their way but the Mahants who uniformly pursued a money lending business also styled as a banking business in some of the documents, went on amassing wealth and property treating themselves as full owners thereof and directing their successors almost invariably nominated by their wills, to treat the property in the same way as they themselves were doing but paying scant regard to the cause of the brotherhood or the pursuit of any charitable purposes. One Mayanand Giri became the Mahant in 1904 and it is his acts and conduct which sparked off this litigation nearly forty years ago. The immediate cause of the legal proceedings was his marriage which led the plaintiff, Purushottamanand Giri, to file the suit in the court of the Subordinate Judge of Benaras claiming a declaration that by his marriage, the defendant No. 1, Mayanand Giri, had lost his right to continue as Mahant and that the plaintiff as his nearest collateral should, according to the custom of Nihang Dasnami Sanyasis, be put in occupation and possession of the Math and the properties appertaining thereto. The plaintiff also challenged a number of alienations impleading no less than forty-five persons as defendants and claiming that the transfers made by defendant No. 1 were invalid and not binding on the Mahant of the Math. The suit was contested not only by Mayanand Giri but also by a number of the transferees. The defences raised were many and various. The first defendant pleaded inter alia that the plaintiff was not his nearest collateral, that there did not exist a Math with the customs and usages alleged in the plaint and that all the properties scheduled in the plaint were not the subject-matter of any endowment.

2. The case of the transferees was that most of the properties were acquired by successive Mahants starting from Chaitanya Giri by the practice of a money lending business. It was said that a banking firm styled as Uttam Giri Shivdutt Giri was started by his successors and it was this business which was pursued by the Mahants that gave rise to the wealth accumulated in the Math. The common defence of all the transferee defendants who contested the suit was that Mayanand Giri was the absolute owner of the properties alienated and that they themselves were bona fide transferees for valuable consideration and as such the transactions entered into with them by Mayanand Giri could not be challenged. The suit was dismissed as against a large number of defendants who were found to he dead at the time of its institution or because they were not properly brought on the record in place of the origina1 defendants.

3. The Subordinate Judge after a protracted hearing came to the conclusion that the ancient documents on the record, coupled with the other evidence, established the existence of an ancient Math, that the Mahants from the time of Gangot Gir had been carrying on a money lending business, that an ancestor of Gangot Gir by name Gomtigir had established a Math on a humble scale, that Prem Giri, a grand disciple of his own, that Uttam Gir