Daughter, equal citizen

Exactly sixty years ago, freedom fighter Hansa Mehta had observed with startling clarity that equality between the sexes should be the basis...

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Exactly sixty years ago, freedom fighter Hansa Mehta had observed with startling clarity that equality between the sexes should be the basis of citizenship in India. If the proposal to amend the Hindu Succession Act 1956 — which the Union Cabinet had cleared on Wednesday — gets translated into law, we may have come some way closer to achieving the ideal that Mehta had so passionately espoused. Property, after all, has defined social status in India more eloquently than almost every other institution. The exclusion of daughters from inheriting ancestral property within a traditional Hindu family has not just systematically undermined the status of at least 80 per cent of the women in India, it has led to social aberrations like dowry murders. The devaluation of women that is implicit in the existing inheritance law could, in fact, be perceived as a contributory factor to the distressing decline in the sex ratio, which now stands at 933, and falling.

In other words, coparcenary rights for daughters is an idea whose time had long come. If daughters are given the same status as sons and accorded socially recognised and legally enforceable rights, there would be less reason to discriminate against them. In any case, the times are changing rapidly. With growing literacy and employment opportunities, women today are no longer chattel to be passed on from one family to another. They are individuals in their own right, contributing to the well-being of their families, both as daughters and as wives. A growing percentage of families are female-headed households and examples of daughters supporting their parents and even lighting their pyres are now a legion. The very fact that the more progressive states in the country have already moved in this direction and struck off discriminatory provisions in their inheritance laws; the very fact that the All India Muslim Law Board recognised the equal inheritance rights of Muslim women just a few months ago, testifies to this new reality.

Let’s hope, therefore, that we will be spared any attempts to scuttle the Bill when it comes up in Parliament. Let’s hope that we do not have among our law makers retrogrades like Congressman M.A. Ayyangar who famously protested, “May God save us from… having an army of unmarried daughters”, during the debate on the Hindu Code Bill over 50 years ago. Let’s also hope that once this proposal becomes the law of the land, institutions like the judiciary play their part in taking the process forward and putting an end to the paraya dhan mindset once and for all time.