Indian culture has consistently recognised the condition of women with regard to their societal position. A look at the social ideals and rights prevalent in the Indian subcontinent since the Vedic era might help us appraise this concern from a better perspective

The status of women in the contemporary world has progressed to a certain extent. And this might be attributed to the cultural and gender-based movements which proposed the doctrine of “rights” and “demands”.

For instance, in the contemporary scene, these rights include the right to education, electoral rights, freedom of expression, right to ancestral property etc; those which have become quite ubiquitous and political in their usage.

Numerous laws have been passed throughout the years catering to the issues concerning women. But arguably, the most important of these, besides basic civil rights, would be their right to inherit property. Indian culture has consistently recognised the condition of women with regard to their societal position. A cursory look at the social ideals and rights prevalent in the Indian subcontinent since the Vedic era might help us appraise this concern from a better perspective.

In fact, a figure like Gooroodas Banerjee asserts that the other western systems may have imitated the need for women’s rights much later and claimed this to be a contribution of the West. However, an intimate knowledge about the Indian situation may provide us with a more coherent view.

Let us briefly look at India’s historiography when it caters to this debate.

In the Vedic era, the woman (wife) had no legal claim to the property. However, Vedic literature acknowledged her ownership of stridhan.

However, such a term is not evenly placed. To speak the truth, there are various interpretations of stridhan as it varies in ancient texts.

Debarati Halder and K Jaishankar state that a woman may only own a certain amount of movable property when she gets married, known as stridhan, which could include things like jewellery, clothing, household items, or even livestock. Immovable property, like landed property, was bestowed as stridhan in a few uncommon instances.

There was an exception to inherit paternal property by the brotherless daughters. During Smriti’s time, its scope was expanded. Early codes by Manu had emphasised six different types of stridhan; later codes either included new items or characterised women’s property in a way that suggested the six enumerations were merely indicative and not exhaustive.

Katyayana has precisely explained stridhan in twenty-seven paragraphs. Manu, Narada, Yajnavalkya, Apastamba, Vyasa, Katyayana and various Smritikars explained that the gifts, ornaments, household utensils, etc, given to her at the time of marriage before the nuptial fire by her father and husband’s family, relatives and strangers; only those gifts counted as her stridhan.

The Apastamba Dharmasutra mentioned that the wife had the right to make regular household expenses in the absence of her husband based on the shared ownership principle.

The fiction of the identity between the husband and the wife, along with the shared ownership notion, allowed women the right to inherit. But the wife was still deprived of her claim to ownership and she received slight benefits from the principle of shared ownership in the household.

She was granted the right to use her husband’s property as a usufruct rather than as her sole property, so she can enjoy it. Baudhayana, Taittiriya Samhita, Apastamba disqualifies the widow from inheriting her husband’s assets. Apastamba talked about one exception for a widow to inherit her dead husband’s property; which is that a childless widow had the right to inherit her husband’s estate. But since Niyoga was practised often throughout the Vedic era, it may be stated that widows without sons were relatively uncommon.

Inheritance was gradually taking the shape of a formal law and getting more condensed with the evolution of various schools of law which, originally, varied from region to region. There were two prominent schools of inheritance i.e., Mitakshara School (followed in every part of India except eastern India), subdivided into Dravida, Banaras, Maharashtra and Mithila; and Dayabhaga School (followed in Bengal and Assam). These schools relied on Yajnavalkya Smriti which differed from one another in several inheritance-related ways. But they were comparable because they both had to do with inheritance law. Dayabhaga School was founded on religious efficacy, while Mitakshara  School was based on close blood ties. As per Mitakshara, the only head of family members, the fathers, and three direct male descendants, were allowed to be coparceners.

The doctrine of survivorship governs the dissolution of property. The share of a coparcener who passes away is split among the remaining coparceners. As per Dayabhaga, male and female participants could be coparcenaries. Only after the father’s passing could one get a coparceny. One coparcener is transferred to his legitimate heirs, such as his son, daughter, wife, etc.

PC Majumdar states that the Dayabhaga law and Mitakshara law, including sub-schools of Banaras and Mithila, Madras and Bombay recognised the ability of a more significant number of female heirs to inherit.

These five female relations were daughter, mother, widow, paternal grandmother, and paternal great-grandmother.

Over the centuries, women’s legal rights were never static and kept changing. The Hindu Succession Act was established on the fundamentals of Mitakshara and Dayabhaga approaches.

This shows the authenticity of ancient Hindu laws. The Hindu Succession Act 1956, Section 14, acknowledged and incorporated the concept of “Stridhan” and through Section 15 of the same Act, it establishes a unified guideline for the various heirs.

Several women’s property laws have been passed and the recent one is the Hindu Succession Act (Amendment) 2005. As per these property laws, Hindu women now have a considerably better standing.

(The writer is an internship at Institute for Educational and Developmental Studies, Noida. This article is an outcome of BGSamvahini-2 Internship Program (2022-2023) sponsored by IKS Division, Union Ministry of Education. This falls under intellectual property of IKS Division.)