Her Right To Property

Context: The significance of the Supreme Court’s judgement on women’s inheritance property rights relies on its efficient implementation and change in societal attitudes.

Defining Women’s Rights as Natural Rights

• Basing the rights of women on birth: makes the rights of women as natural rights as opposed to the limited positive rights based on any law.

• Jeremy Bentham, strongly argued in favour of positive/legal rights, both for their comprehensibility and tangibility. 

• Efficacy of natural rights depend on progressive legislative interventions and executive capabilities, and, most significantly, on periodic judicial reviews and decrees. 

• The judicial interpretation of Right to Life under Article 21 of the Constitution set this out in Indian context.

Women Centric Progressive Judgments of Courts

• The recent judgement of SC: Declared coparcenary rights of women as birthrights, free from limitations imposed by the dates of any legal notifications. 

• C B Muthamma (1979) or Nergesh Meerza (1981) judgments: continues to be persistent in breaking stereotypes of patriarchy.
• Sabarimala judgment(2018) of allowing women entry in the temple.
• Granting of permanent commission to women officers in the Indian Army.

Significance of SC’s Judgement: Upholding the principles of substantive justice for women both in theory and practice.

• Highlights the patriarchal practices of the Mitakshra school of Hindu law: the guiding force of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956.
• Settles the confusion created by two of its antagonistic judgments: in Prakash vs Phulawati (2016) and Danamma @ Suman Surpur vs Amar (2018) cases.
• First case: amendments to the Hindu Succession Act (2005) applied only to women whose parents were alive on the date of the notification of the act. 
• Second case: coparcenary rights were declared birthrights. 

Issues in implementation of SC Judgement

• The provision of Stree Dhan (Section 14 (1)): in Hindu Succession Act 1956 has given way to the unethical and illegal practices of dowry transaction.
• After the recent judgement, women are seen as double beneficiaries of property laws (through lineage and marriage).
• Right to possession may not be easy for women: who are married and do not reside in their ancestral homes. 
• Property transactions may be more convenient for urban settings and may not be that easy in the rural context where the property is in the form of agricultural land.
• Lengthy and expensive legal process: women will have to go through the long process of litigation for claiming their share.
• Male heirs might not share property-related documents or do not initiate legal processes.

• Litigation processes need to be simplified and made accessible, inexpensive and time-bound.

• Persisting Religious and Cultural Barriers: 
• Emotional abuses and denial of property rights: to women for asking what is rightfully theirs.
• Denied Literacy, Dignity and Identity: in rural areas where women are still addressed as someone’s wife or by the name of their villages.

Conclusion: Judicial pronouncements for women’s substantive justice is incomplete without the complete overhaul of patriarchy based societal norms and values.