A recent Supreme Court judgement has focused attention on gender discrimination in the Hindu Succession Act. V. Kumara Swamy investigates

Gender warp: According to the Hindu Succession Act, a woman’s property is inherited by her husband’s family in case she dies childless and intestate and not by her blood relatives
Narayani Devi had been married for just three months when her husband died of a snake bite. Her in-laws promptly accused her of being a woman who brought ill luck and threw her out of the house. Narayani was only 15 years old at the time.

With the help of her parents in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind district, Narayani decided to concentrate on her education, and after almost a decade joined a government school as a teacher and continued in that position until her death, at the age of 56, in 1996. All this while she had never been in touch with her in-laws.

Narayani, who died without leaving a will, left around Rs 20 lakh in her bank accounts and provident fund. But when her mother, Ram Kishori, filed an application for the grant of a succession certificate to take possession of her money, she was in for a shock. The sons of Narayani’s dead husband’s sister had filed a similar petition.

After more than a decade of legal battle between the two parties, a Supreme Court bench, comprising justices S.B. Sinha and Mukundakam Sharma, recently ruled in favour of Narayani’s in-laws.

Many legal experts and women’s activists are outraged by the apex court’s decision to award Narayani Devi’s property to her deceased husband’s family, especially because they had treated her so badly.

“The court has rewarded Narayani’s tormentors with her hard earned money,” says Om Prakash Upadhyaya, elder brother of Narayani, the lead petitioner in the case after her mother died.

Of course, in giving its verdict, the Supreme Court went strictly by the Hindu Succession Act, noting that it was a “hard case” and that “sentiment or sympathy alone could not be a guiding factor” in deciding a particular case.

Sub-section 1 of Section 15 of the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), 1956, states that the property of a female Hindu dying intestate shall devolve “(a) firstly, upon the sons and daughters (including the children of any pre-deceased son or daughter) and the husband; (b) secondly, upon the heirs of the husband; (c) thirdly, upon the mother and father; (d) fourthly, upon the heirs of the father; and (e) lastly, upon the heirs of the mother.”

Sub-section 2 of Section 15 lays down the rules for property inherited by a female Hindu from her father or mother and from her husband or from her father-in-law. It prescribes that if a property is inherited from a husband or a father -in-law, it would go to her husband’s heirs. If the property is inherited from her father or mother, it would go to the heirs of the father and mother. Significantly, no mention is made of property that a woman may have acquired on her own.

In 2005 women’s activists forced the government to amend the Hindu Succession Act so as to give the daughter equal coparcenary right (wherein a person has a right to the family property from birth) to property as the son. But the latest ruling has reminded them that their fight to make the law gender just is far from over.

“The framers of the original law did not foresee that one day women would earn money and property on their own. This judgement is an eye opener and the government needs to change this archaic law,” says Ranjana Kumari, director, Centre for Social Research (CSR), Delhi.

The ruling, according to Rukmini Sen, lecturer, National University of Juridical Sciences, Calcutta, “reinforces the patriarchal attitude that after marriage an Indian woman’s identity is completely engulfed by her husband’s family, even if she has been ill-treated by it.”

The Hindu Succession Act is, in fact, patently unfair to women on several counts. For instance, though an intestate Hindu woman’s property can be claimed by her husband’s relatives, this is not true when a Hindu man dies without leaving a will. And experts contend that no other succession law in India, including the Muslim personal law, gives statutory preference to the in-laws of a married woman over her own blood relatives.

“It is ironical that when a Hindu man dies issueless and intestate, none of his wife’s relatives can inherit his property and the property goes to his next of kin. However, if a Hindu married woman dies issueless, the property cannot be taken by her parents or her blood relatives when there is even a remote relative of the husband,” says Poonam Saxena, Delhi University professor of family law.

Calling Section 15 the “most gender unjust provision in the Hindu Succession Act,” Saxena says that in this particular case, the Supreme Court could have taken a more progressive and sympathetic view. “It is not whether a person deserved the property of the deceased or not, but justice demanded that the blood relations of the woman be given preference. And there have been precedents of the courts deviating from rigid provisions,” she says.

Many legal experts second that view. “It was a fit case for the Supreme Court to consider it under Article 142 of our Constitution which empowers it to go beyond the laid rules for doing complete justice,” says N.R. Choudhury, Supreme Court counsel for Narayani’s brothers.

There has been some effort to address this particular anomaly in the Hindu Succession Act. In its Report no. 207 last year, the Law Commission of India had suggested changes to Section 15 of the HSA. “Section 15 should be amended so that in case a female Hindu dies intestate, leaving her self-acquired property with no heirs … the property should devolve on her husband’s heirs and also on the heirs of her paternal side,” noted Justice A.R. Lakshmanan, chairman of the Law Commission.

But Saxena has a different view on this. “The need now is to have a uniform scheme of succession and to give these succession rights only to the blood relations, and not relations by marriage except the surviving spouse,” she says.

Some of the other changes that would go a long way in making the Hindu Succession Act more fair to women include a clear definition of what happens to the property of single women, women in live-in relationships and divorced women should they die intestate and without any children.

“We clearly got a raw deal. But I am sure that my sister’s soul will rest in peace if the ruling in our case moves the government to make the necessary changes to the Hindu Succession Act,” says Narayani’s brother Om Prakash Upadhyaya.
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