Long-delayed right

Women's rights within Hindu Undivided Families strengthened

India took a great leap across the gender divide after the Delhi High Court passed a landmark judgement enabling the eldest female member of a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) to be a karta, the term used to describe the family member who has full authority to manage the clan's property and other affairs. This judgement builds on a significant amendment to the Hindu Succession Act by Parliament in 2005, introducing Section 6, which gave women equal rights of inheritance - in legal terms, making them "co-parcenors" - in HUF property. That was a progressive move that signalled independent India's readiness to move further away from the 12th-century Mitakshara School of law that excluded women from inheritance and, like other ancient religious statutes, had long outlived its utility in modern society. The karta judgement, the result of a court case between the oldest surviving child of a Delhi business family and a younger male cousin, was based on the strictly logical extension of the provisions of Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act. Before the amendment, the judge pointed out, the main reason a female member was precluded from becoming a karta was that she did not possess the necessary qualification of co-parcenorship; once Section 6 had removed that impediment, there was no further reason to exclude her.

To this legalistic approach it could be added that excluding women from managing HUFs is decidedly archaic - after all, the private sector is rife with examples of successful women entrepreneurs, or women CEOs of banks and corporations. Even promoters of hitherto conservative family-owned enterprises have become more willing to pass the baton to their daughters. Establishing the rights of Hindu women to manage HUF estates could have other, important indirect ramifications too: for instance, it could strengthen the foundations for the transfer of cash subsidies to the woman of the family under the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme, a critical step in enhancing the currently unenviable status of women in poorer sections of society.

This judgement follows an earlier, equally enlightened, judgement in 2014 by a full bench of the Bombay High Court. The court ruled that even daughters born before September 2005, when Section 6 came into effect, would be entitled to be co-parcenors in HUF property - provided they were alive - thus avoiding the kind of iniquitous interpretation that could have hobbled this progressive legislation. It is heartening to see the steady improvement in the inheritance rights of Hindu women in the 21st century, especially when Christian and Muslim women had come to enjoy stronger rights earlier. But it also raises a broader question. India continues to have disparate personal laws based on religious scriptures shaped in very different social circumstances, few of them progressive by today's standards. This is scarcely a desirable situation in a diverse country that aspires to modernity. On the 66th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution and just one year ahead of the 70th year of independence, lawmakers may want to remember the Directive Principle of State Policy that advises "the endeavour to secure a uniform civil code". For India's women, in particular, a single progressive code could be the best guarantee of equality.