A Response to Some Commonly Expressed Fears
This article was first published in the print edition of Manushi Journal. (Issue-57, Mar-Apr 1990)
In 1956, in the course of the parliamentary debate on the Hindu Succession Bill, Smt Ammu Swaminadhan, MP, arguing in favour of the Bill and of equal inheritance rights for women, said “I would ask the hon.
Members to turn to Kerala… If you will only see what is happening and what has happened there all these years when women have had equal right, I am sure that you will agree that… nothing terrible will happen in this country if they had equal rights.”
Yet, many today continue to fear that terrible things will happen if women actually (not just on paper) get an equal share in inheritance. The arguments put forward against daughters inheriting parental property equally with sons are the same arguments that were put forward over 50 years ago, when the Hindu Succession Bill was first mooted. The Bill, when it finally became law, gave women very unequal rights and even those remained largely on paper. Hence, today, we still need to work for actually getting women equal inheritance rights, as the majority of women in our country, even those of wealthy families, do not own income generating property independently in their own right, and are disinherited by their fathers for no reason other than their gender…