A Symbolic Blow for Women’s Equality

Context: The Supreme Court pronouncement on the Hindu Succession Act has given Hindu women equal rights on par with their male siblings, however, limitations remain

Evolution of Hindu Succession Act in India

• Legal Evolution:
• Conflict with the Ethos: The Hindu Code Bill could not be enacted and was broken down into four separate laws and passed.

• Since it came into conflict with the ethos of non-discriminatory equal treatment in matters of inheritance.

• Progressive Amendment: 

• The Hindu Succession Act, 1956, was amended in 2005: to give daughters the right to be a coparcener on par with their male sibling.

• Judicial Pronouncements:
• Prior Conflicting Judgements :

• SC ruling of 2015: equal property right to daughters if the father was alive when the amendment to the 1956 law came into force. 
• SC ruling of 2018: coparcener derives his or her legal entitlement from being born and has nothing to do with whether the father was alive at the time of the 2005 amendment. 

• Recent SC ruling has emphasised that it is a right “by birth” of a Hindu woman to become a joint heir to ancestral property. 

• Limitation: the law gives women automatic right only over the ancestral property of the Hindu Undivided Family, but not over individually earned property.
• Individually earned property succession would still be based on intestate succession.

Conclusion: Society has evolved much since the 1950s. The principal forms in which wealth is held has evolved even more. Being a coparcenary matters increasingly ever less — for property, but not for equality.