JUDGMENT

Mookerjee and Beachcroft, JJ. - The subject matter of this litigation is ancestral immovable property, owned at one time by a Hindu family, of which one Amrita Lal Pandey was the head. The father of Amrita Lal Pandey, originally resident in Oudh, in 1857 migrated to Bengal, where he continued to live with his family in the district of Bankura, and acquired the properties now in dispute, which passed after his death to his sons. Amrita Lal had eight sons, of whom two, the husbands of the eighth and ninth defendants, respectively, died in his life-time, in 1880 and 1883. Three other sons, the first and the second plaintiffs and the fifth defendant, embraced the Christian faith; the first plaintiff became a convert in 1890, the second plaintiff in 1896, and the fifth defendant in 1904. On the 19th March, 1900, Amrita Lal transferred the disputed property for a sum of Rs. 2,000 to the first four defendants, and he was joined in the execution of the conveyance by three of his sons, the fifth, sixth and seventh defendants. Amrita Lal died on the 26th December, 1900. The third plaintiff, one of the sons of Amrita Lal, attained majority in 1902. On the 19th March, 1907, the plaintiffs, the three sons of Amrita Lal who had not joined him in the conveyance, and of whom two were Christians at the time of the transfer, while the other was, and is still, a Hindu, commenced the present action for declaration that the transfer was not operative against them in respect of a three-seventh share of the property, and for recovery of khas possesion and mesne profits. The plaintiffs founded their claim on the assumption that the transfer had been effected for the satisfaction of illegal and immoral debts of their father, which they would otherwise be presumably liable to satisfy out of their share of the ancestral property. The purchasers-defendants contested the claim, and alleged that the plaintiff's who had. embraced Christianity had lost all interest in the ancestral property, that the other plaintiff, who was still a Hindu, was liable to satisfy the debt, and that in any event his claim was barred by limitation, as he had attained majority in 1902 and had failed to obtain cancellation of the conveyance within three years thereof. The Courts below have concurrently dismissed the suit. They have found that the debts satisfied by the consideration for the conveyance were neither illegal nor immoral, and that, consequently, the father could make a valid alienation of the ancestral property for the discharge of those debts. The plaintiffs have appealed to this Court, and on their behalf the decision of the District Judge has been assailed on two grounds, namely, first, that the two plaintiffs who had embraced Christianity during the life-time of their father, had, by reason of their conversion to the Christian faith, ceased to be members of a. joint Hindu family, and were consequently not liable to satisfy any debts incurred by their father; and, secondly, that the effect of the conversion of the first two plaintiffs to Christianity was a complete dissolution of the family, and, that, from this point of view, it was not competent to Amrita Lal to alienate the share of the third plaintiff who did not join him in the conveyance, and could not do so, as he was an infant at the time. These positions have been controverted on behalf of the respondents as unsound in law, and it has further been suggested that the plaintiffs have sought to put forward a case inconsistent with that set out in the plaint, though it has not been disputed that it is in some measure conformable to the position taken up by the defendants in their written statement.

2. Before we deal with the questions argued at the Bar, it is necessary to premise that the family must be taken, before the conversion of the first plaintiff to Christianity, to have been governed by the Mitakshara law. When the grandfather of the plaintiffs migrated from Oudh to Bengal, the presumption is t