Edit: In the father’s name

In alleged declaration in the passport manual cited by a Ministry of External Affairs’ lawyer in the Mumbai High Court requiring an unwed mother to state “how she has conceived” or “if she was raped” before expurgating the biological father of her child is reflective of how governance does not keep pace with social change. The case, proceeding for some years, involves a now 21-year-old woman whose request to name her step-father in place of her biological father in her passport application form was rejected by the Regional Passport Office. The biological father had abandoned her at birth and she did not want to be associated with his name. This convention of using the father’s name to establish a person’s identity, when the mother’s name can serve the same purpose, does not merely reflect gender bias. It also accentuates the trauma of those brought up by single mothers, abandoned by biological fathers, whose parents divorced, or who were abused by their male parent. 

However, the MEA spokesperson has distanced itself from the reported stand of the MEA’s lawyer saying it runs counter to Indian Government policy. He said that a birth certificate and a gender-neutral affidavit sworn before a judicial magistrate by a single parent were the only requirements for applying for a minor child’s passport. If true, this indicates that at least some passport offices and their law officers are blissfully unaware of subsequent updations of anachronistic rules. Change is clearly happening but is reaching the grass roots only in trickles. Institutions like the CBSE and many private sector companies have made it optional for students to use the father’s or mother’s name to identify themselves. However, with the government desisting from notifying this as official policy, most identification documents continue to demand the father’s name. Interestingly, countries like UK are moving towards removing entries for father’s and mother’s name from passport application forms to respect the sentiments of same-sex parents. The forms would have entries for Parent 1 and Parent 2 instead. 

Even the judiciary which routinely forces the pace of governance with decisive interventions has shied away from activism here. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that the mother could act as the natural guardian of a child even when the father was alive by evolving a fresh interpretation of Section 6 of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act. The section granted natural guardianship of a Hindu minor to the father “and after him” the mother. The “after” was earlier interpreted as after the father’s death. Despite the evident gender bias of this section tripping the fundamental right to equality, the Supreme Court evolved a laboured interpretation to “balance” gender equality and what it said was the imperative of law courts to retain legislation in the statute book rather than scrap it unless gross constitutional violations happen. The court interpreted “after” as “in the absence of” which could be “temporary or otherwise or total apathy of the father towards the child or even inability of the father by reason of ailment or otherwise”. Strangely, this “gender-just” interpretation excludes the mother from aspiring for natural guardianship unless the father is “absent”. This July, the Supreme Court was seized of a fresh petition seeking identification by the mother’s name in all official documents. The SC issued notices to all states seeking responses. Rather than waiting for this long-winded judicial process to culminate, the Modi government which trusted citizens to self-attest their documents could initiate similar reforms respecting the rights of mothers, and of adults, to choose which parent to be identified with.