The Hindu Succession Act of 1956, whose ostensible purpose was to give women equal inheritance rights, actually ended up placing severe restrictions on women’s right to own and control property. Sons are treated as co-parceners by birth in joint family property — that is, they become equal partners with their fathers from the day of their birth, whereas daughters and wives are excluded. A wife or daughter has to wait for her husband/ father to die before she can claim a much smaller share than the sons in the joint family property. For example, if a family that is dividing co-parcenary property has two sons and two daughters, the share of the widow and the two daughters would be about one-sixth that of the son. • Even this share is often taken away. In most cases, daughters are forced into signing away their inheritance rights in favour of their brothers before they are married, presumably to prevent their husbands from encouraging them to claim their share. • Under the Hindu Succession Act, daughters are entitled to an equal share in self-acquired family property, if the father dies without making a will. However, after 1956, very few fathers leave this world before writing their testaments in favour of sons, and excluding daughters. This culture of disinheritance of women is an important reason why the culture of dowry is getting more widespread. • Andhra Pradesh, under NTR’s leadership, took the lead in amending the Hindu Succession Act and bestowing co-parcenary rights to women. It was followed by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. But even in these States, women are persuaded to surrender their inheritance rights in favour of their brothers, thanks to the cultural conditioning which views daughters as temporary members of the family. Land ceiling laws systematically exclude women from inheriting land because our government laws recognise only the share of sons as worthy of computation when a family is dividing landed property. Even today, over 70 per cent of women live by working on the land. Their status in most cases is worse than that of wage labourers, who at least get daily payment. Women working on their family land are neither entitled to ownership of land nor the income accruing from it.
