What the Law Says

Inability to claim their rights on parental property has affected women across all religions. The amendments of personal laws have thus played an important role in strengthening our legal system against such set ups in the patriarchal society.

According to the Hindu Succession Amendment Act, 2005, every daughter, whether married or unmarried, is considered a member of her father’s HUF and can even be appointed as ‘karta’ (manager) of his HUF property. The amendment now grants daughters the same rights, duties, liabilities and disabilities that were earlier limited to sons.

Therefore, if a Hindu person dies intestate (without a will), his sons and daughters are equally entitled to inherit his property and will be accorded equal shares of said property.The daughter is then free to dispose of the property as she pleases that were earlier limited to sons.

Over here the term Hindu controversially encompasses women of Sikh, Buddhist and Jain religion. Thus this Act prevails over women from all these religious backgrounds.

On the other hand the Muslim personal law has a slightly different approach. The Muslim law is divided into two schools - Hanafi and Shia. The Hanafi provides for inheritance of property through a male descendant. For example, a son's son or a son's daughter. The Shia school on the other hand doesn't discriminate in such a manner. However, the distribution of property is not equitable between the genders.

It is often claimed that a close reading of the law shows that a wife receives about 1/8th of the property if they have children and 1/4th otherwise. The men receive about 1/4th of the wife's property on her death if they have children and about half the property if otherwise. Moreover, a daughter receives just half the share of the son's in terms of inheritance.

What the Reality Is

Unfortunately, this amendment has not been very successful in changing mindsets in India- people still believe that sons, not daughters are more entitled to parental property. Upon a parent’s death, the son usually inherits the entirety of his/ her property while daughters remain dependent on other male family members. Awareness of this amendment is remarkably low and even when women are aware, they do not have the time or resources to pursue the issue in court. As a result, millions of women remain stuck in a cycle of poverty and dependency, making any sort of upward social mobility impossible.

Denial of rights usually comes from family members themselves, and since these women are already dependent on their family, it becomes difficult for them to refute this denial. Social barriers also exist, specifically for women from rural areas, for whom earning their livelihood is an arduous task because of their inability to secure their rights due to little exposure to the law along with almost no corperation from tax officers.The law, in this case, becomes insufficient.

Mission Statement

People. Power. Partnership was born out of the founders’ desire to make legal resources accessible to all, particularly single women with limited resources. We believe that all women have a fundamental right to economic and emotional stability. People. Power. Partnership aims to connect NGOs who help these women and legal networks/ organizations and ensure that they get the help and justice they deserve.

Our project aims to provide NGOs with a quick and easy to access portal where they can upload cases, which will then be taken on by legal agencies pro bono. In this way, we wish to connect the organisations at the two ends of the spectrum, while simultaneously guiding women in realizing that their rights are not out of their reach, and the law is, in fact, binding and unalterable.

We started out as three high school students with a collective goal to harness change, and in the coming future, we wish to take this project forward on a much larger scale- expanding our base of organisations and also furthering the network and diversity of women we are able to reach.

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