WOMAN’S RIGHT TO INHERIT UNDER HINDU SUCCESSION ACT 1956 AS AMENDED IN 2005 ? LEGAL ENTITLEMENTS AND SOCIAL BARRIERS

‘Woman’s right to property’ has direct relationship to ‘Empowerment of woman’ and they are cause and effect concepts wherein law is a benefactor conferring rights to women as a measure of empowerment and removal of gender disequilibrium within the family relationship and woman is a beneficiary. ‘Right to inherit and succeed to Property’ is one of the most significant legal strategy favouring women who are striving hard to come out of patriarchal clutches reflected in joint family system and coparcenery, that distinguish Hindu jurisprudence from the remaining world family order. Women perform different roles in her family as mother, daughter and wife and law takes cognisance of it in recognising and conferring property rights. The rights and their incidence also differ in the context of nature of the property which is either separate or ancestral. Despite these divergences, it is an important tool of economic emancipation of woman, indispensable for realisation of her potentials for self-emancipation. But legal justice with legal hurdles, social barriers and deep rooted customs has no meaning for justice in real sense. This paper throws light on the consequent lag between the legal entitlement and societal acceptance leading to socio-legal tension to women folk and analyses how law operates on socio-psychological phenomenon in Hindu society, in an important area of personal law of Succession. The scope of the paper is confined to Hindu women in the light of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 as amended in 2005.