The judgment emphasizes the legal requirements for inferring division from a long course of conduct, highlighting the need for approval by recognized heads and all adult members of the branches.

1. The following genealogical table will be helpful in understanding this case. Table:#1

2. The two plaintiffs and defendants 1 to 56, Eazhavas governed by Travancore Act 3 of 1100 are admittedly descendants in the female line of Aratha who heads this table, and, at the time of the suit, the 1st defendant (since dead) was the seniormost male member of this group. The question is whether when the suit was brought, these persons were members of an undivided joint family as claimed by the plaintiffs who asked for partition and separate possession of their 2/58th share of the 12 items of property in suit, or whether, as contended by the contesting defendants (defendants 1 to 13 and 15 to 39) they had divided long ago into the two branches of the two daughters of Aratha, Kali and Parvathi, each branch being in separate enjoyment of its half share in the properties. The first court found that there was no such division as set up by the defendants. But the lower appellate court found otherwise, and it remanded the suit to the first court for the purpose of effecting a partition within Parvathi's branch giving the plaintiffs their share in the half share of that branch. The plaintiffs have come up in second appeal.

3. Admittedly there was no partition deed; nor did the contesting defendants set up a specific case of an oral partition. They depended on a long course of conduct to prove the division set up by them, and it is to be remarked that even this division, as is clear from the evidence, is not a division of the property by metes and bounds, but only a severance of status as between the two branches resulting in each branch getting an undivided half share in the properties enjoyed in udukur. (The courts below have referred to the partition set up by the contesting defendants as partition by long course of conduct, phraseology not adopted by the defendants themselves who, in their written statements, spoke only of a division from along time ago. And although there would appear to be a number of decisions beginning from Authitchan Easwaran v. Easwaran Narayanan (24 T.L.R. 187) which speak of partition by long course of conduct I would prefer to call it a partition proved by long course of conduct. The disruption of a Marumakkathayam family (before the statutes giving a right of partition to individual members or groups of members) could only be effected by a consensus of intention, in other words by agreement express or implied, and it is this consensus of intention, which may be inferred from a long course of conduct, and not the course of conduct that effects the severance. Where division is proved by a long course of conduct as, something which can be inferred from that conduct, it seems to me that the division must be regarded as having taken place some time prior to the commencement of the course of conduct and not at the close of the course of conduct which would be the case if it had been the conduct that effected the division).

4. The defendants relied upon a number of documents in proof of the long course of conduct set up by them. I shall deal with them in chronological order. The first Ext. XIV dated 13-7-1064 M. E. (23-2-1889 A.D.) is an Otti executed by Palpan Madan and Mathi, both of Kali's branch, in favour of a stranger. The property comprised in this Otti was an undivided half of items 1 and 11 of the Suit properties. By Ext. XII dated 30-7-1066 M.E. (12-3-1891 A.D.) there was an assignment of this mortgage and by Ext. XIII dated 14-10-1084 M.E. (27-5-1909 A.D.) the assignee mortgagee released the property in favour of the 1st defendant who is of Kali's branch. By Ext. X of the same date the 1st defendant had executed a simple mortgage over the same property in order to raise the money necessary for the redemption. Ext. XVI dated 4-8-1085 M.E. (17-3-1910 A.D.) is a release deed in respect of a possessory mortgage of 1061 M.E. (1885-1886) and puravaipa of 1062 M.E. (1856-1887 A.D.) over item 3. The mortgage