Factually wrong to say Hindu law is based on Manusmriti: Solicitor General Tushar Mehta

Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta on Saturday said that it was factually incorrect to claim that Hindu law was based on Manusmriti.

He made the remarks while delivering an address on Ancient Wisdom and Legal Intelligence at the Research and Innovation Park of the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) at Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi (IIT Delhi).

“Those who allege that Hindu law is based on Manusmriti are factually wrong since most of India follows the Mitakshara school of thought, which is based on Yajnavalkya Smriti,” he said.

Mehta explained that the Vedas were not a direct source of law. Instead, they offered guidance on living in harmony with one’s surroundings and inner self. He described them as the oldest written words of wisdom in the world.

Hindu law principally emanated from the Smritis, he said. These included the Yajnavalkya Smriti, Manusmriti, Narada Smriti and Parashara Smriti. They were commentaries written by ancient scholars who specialised in law.

Mehta said Hindu law historically developed through two principal schools - Mitakshara and Dayabhaga.

The Mitakshara school was developed by the scholar Vijnaneshwara solely on the basis of the Yajnavalkya Smriti. It prevailed across most of India. The Dayabhaga school, founded on Manusmriti, was followed principally in the erstwhile Bengal and Assam.

The two schools also differed in their approaches to inheritance, Mehta said.

Under the Dayabhaga school, inheritance was historically linked to a person’s ability to perform pind daan. This involved offering rice cakes to ancestors during shraddha ceremonies. Mehta described this as a restrictive understanding of inheritance.

The Mitakshara school adopted a broader approach. It recognised a right to inheritance by birth and treated pind as comparable to what is now understood as DNA, although the scriptures did not use that expression.

Mehta said this principle continued in modern Hindu law through the concept of coparcenary, under which a person acquires an interest in ancestral property by birth.

He also highlighted the flexibility with which Hindu legal texts could be interpreted. Referring to the prohibited degrees of relationship in marriage, Mehta said these restrictions had been stipulated in Hindu scriptures as early as 700 AD and continued to be reflected in laws enacted by parliament.

Concluding the lecture, Mehta said that while the law had progressed over time, India’s penal law had remained substantially unchanged and continued to reflect British preferences.

He said the British had framed laws for Indians as their “subjects”. That framework continued after Independence in the form of the Indian Penal Code.

“It was only in 2023 that the present government brought the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for its own citizens and rearranged the sections according to the preferences of a sovereign democratic republic,” he said.