The main legal point established in the judgment is the determination of the trust status of temple properties based on evidence, including the presumption of public charitable trusts and exceptions in specific districts.

Sir John Wallis, J.

1. In this case the three Plaintiffs, who describe themselves as Hindu Nairs residing within half a mile of the seven plaint temples and as habitual worshippers at the said temples, instituted seven suits, which have been tried together, under Section 92, Code of Civil Procedure, with the consent of the Advocate-General of Madras, against the first Defendant, who is described in the plaint as a Hindu Nair residing in Peringod amsam and desam of the Palghat Taluk, but is admittedly the karnavan or managing member of a Malabar tarwad or joint family. The plaint alleged that the Defendants predecessors, who were originally samudayis or committee members of the aforesaid temples, had been, in such capacity, in management of the affairs of the devaswom; that they had been for some time improperly styling themselves the uralans of the aforesaid devaswom; and that recently the Defendant and the members of his family had further begun to claim that the devaswom and its endowments belonged to the family, thereby repudiating the public character of the trust. After alleging various acts of mismanagement, they prayed for the removal of the Defendant and the appointment of a new trustee, an order vesting the devaswom properties in such trustee, accounts and inquiries as to the alleged misappropriation by the Defendant and his predecessor, and the settling of a scheme of management.

2. The Defendant, in his written statement, alleged that the plaint temples were founded, owned and maintained by the Defendants ancestors. Seeing that the worship of God is a holy and meritorious act, the Defendant and his ancestors had allowed those who came to the temples to worship there, not matter of right, but by the sufferance of the Defendants tarwad. By an understanding between the members of the tarwad, the income of certain tarwad properties was utilized for the maintenance of the devaswom, but there were no lands or properties forming the endowments of the devaswom. The Plaintiffs were not interested in the devaswom within the meaning of Section 92, Code of Civil Procedure, but were men of straw set up by a Nambudiri or Malabar Brahmin (the twelfth witness for the Plaintiffs), who was financing the suit to prevent his eviction from tarwad lands in his occupation under a melkanam, or new demise which had been granted, as appeared from the evidence, to a junior member of the Defendants tarwad. The statement in the plaint that the Defendants ancestors had been samudayis (that is to say, members of a temple committee) was false. The temples had never been public and the Defendants predecessors were never trustees, and could not be charged with repudiating the trust.

3. The second issue " Whether the properties are public religious trusts " was tried first, and the Subordinate Judge, finding that they were not, dismissed the suit. On appeal to the Madras High Court, Phillips and Odgers JJ., in separate but concurring judgments, answered the issue in the affirmative, reversed the decree of the Subordinate Judge and remanded the suit for disposal on the other issues.

4. In the greater part of the Madras Presidency, where private temples are practically unknown, the presumption is that temples and their endowments form public charitable trusts. This was laid down by Seshagiri Ayyar J. on an elaborate consideration of the whole subject in Subramania Ayyar v. Lakshmana Goundan (1919) 54 I.C. 177, which was affirmed by the Board in Pujari Lakshmana Goun-dan v. Subramania Ayyar (1923) 29 C.W.N. 112 (P.C.). In that case, which related to a temple in the Salem district founded by a religious devotee in 1814, Seshagiri Ayyar J. specially excepted temples in the Malabar district from the scope of this ruling, and in the later case of a Nair temple in Malabar, Kelu Achan v. Sivarama Pattar Karikar (1927) 113 I.C. 635, it was held by the High Court that there was no such presumption in Malabar. The learned Judges observed that it was very nat