Women’s Day: An uphill battle for tribal women in Himachal for rights to ancestral property

Shimla, March 7 (IANS) Wajib-ul-Urj, a customary law among tribals which fosters inequality in the close-knit community, is still followed religiously in Himachal Pradesh’s remote mountainous districts. This is despite the Supreme Court clarifying on several occasions that daughters will be treated on par with sons and will be granted equal coparcenary rights in their father’s property.

The deep-rooted statutory provision Wajib-ul-Urj has been in existence for almost a century and does not recognise the amended Hindu Succession Act of 1956, which grants equal rights to men and women to inherit ancestral property.

The result is that women, unmarried, widows and even divorcees don’t have the right to inherit the property of their father or husband, if not bequeathed.

The Wajib-ul-Urj customary law came into existence in Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti districts and in some pockets in Chamba district — the tribal belts infamous for polyandry owing to limited land and resources.

Several brothers married a single woman to avoid division of land.

However, for over a decade this discriminatory law has faced several protests even at the grassroots and spawned several legal battles.

One household name is Rattan Manjri, who has been organising panchayat meetings and signature campaigns to get the law overturned.

Old-timers recall that the law came into existence to save the scarce fertile land in high altitudes with single crop cultivation, or monoculture.

The law stems from the belief that giving inheritance rights to women will give an opportunity to outsiders to become owners of the land if they marry outside the community.

Local women activists, requesting anonymity, plead with the government of India, especially President Murmu, India’s first tribal and second woman President, on International Women’s Day to look into the plight of the tribal women, who are unable to inherit property owing to local customs.

This is despite the Supreme Court in December last upholding tribal women’s inheritance rights and observing that if required, amend the provisions of the Hindu Succession Act.

The apex court was hearing an appeal challenging a 2019 decision of the Chhattisgarh High Court, disallowing a plea by people who were members of the Sawara tribe but wanted to be governed by the Hindu law in matters of inheritance.

“The provision to inherit parental property in Himachal Pradesh, too, will help women facing social injustice and all forms of exploitation,” a woman social activist based in Shimla told IANS.

She said the number of widows and orphaned unmarried women is increasing in Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti district owing to the discriminatory customary law.

Often, the male family members ill-treat their unmarried sisters and sisters-in-law after the death of the parents and the spouse, respectively.

Interestingly, in the Spiti region of Lahaul-Spiti there is the law of primogeniture, the right of succession belonging to the first-born child like the feudal rule by which the whole estate of an intestate passed to the eldest son and deprived the rest of the male siblings of their legal right to property.

In the absence of an heir, inheritance gets passed on to male relatives, in order of seniority.

Newlywed information technology professional Bhawna Negi, a native of Kalpa in Kinnaur who works in Chandigarh, told IANS, “Despite local men, who live in a family, supporting the cause to end the discriminatory law, politicians are silent. Maybe they are doing vote bank politics by not annoying the men, the prime beneficiaries of the law.”

In June 2015, a Himachal Pradesh High Court ruling gave land inheritance rights to tribal women, which was later challenged.

“The daughters in the tribal areas shall inherit property in accordance with the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 and not as per customs. This is in order to prevent women from facing social injustice and all forms of exploitation,” Justice Rajiv Sharma of the High Court had ruled.

He had upheld an order passed by the District Judge of Chamba in 2002 to grant legal property rights to women.

Justice Sharma in a 60-page judgment had observed: “The tribal belts have modernised with the passage of time. Their culture may be different but customs must conform to the constitutional philosophy. The laws must evolve with the times if societies are to progress.”

Woman activist Manjari, 73, an educated apple grower in Ribba village, some 250 km from the state capital Shimla, preferred not to get married. She believes, “If a woman marries an outsider then she will have to bequeath her right over the ancestral property. But in all circumstances, this discrimination has to end.”

Manjari, daughter of military veteran Colonel P.N. Negi who was commissioned in the British Indian Army, is one of the rare women in the district who was bequeathed the agricultural land by her mother who opted for her over her three brothers.

She recalled that her struggle to get justice for the fair sex started when she was 22 and was elected the village pradhan (head). She was also the first woman from Kinnaur to contest an Assembly election, but owing to the patriarchal society she remained unsuccessful.

But her goals are bigger than the Himalayan mountains of ending male dominace.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)

–IANS

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