In a major blow to patriarchy among Hindus, the Union Cabinet today cleared a legislative proposal to introduce equality between men and women in their rights over joint family property. Amending the Hindu Succession Act 1956, the proposed Bill gives the daughter entry for the first time into the “coparcenary” of her family—which means she will be counted among those members who are entitled to seek partition and get equal shares in the ancestral property. The Bill states that in a joint Hindu family, the daughter of a coparcener shall “by birth become a coparcener” and have “the same rights in the coparcenary property as she would have had if she had been a son.” As a corollary, the daughter will be bound by the common liabilities and can even become the “karta” (or loosely the head) of the joint family. Since coparcenary relates only to ancestral property, the Bill does not affect one’s discretion to will away one’s self-acquired property any which way. The impact of the Bill is likely to be felt the most in the Hindi belt as the peninsular states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka have already carried out this reform of making daughters coparceners. Kerala went even further by abolishing the system of coparcenary. The Bill, seeking to realise the Constitutional guarantee of gender equality, was drafted four years ago by the Law Commission which was then headed by former Supreme Court judge B P Jeevan Reddy. The proposed reform will not, however, apply to daughters married before the enactment of the amendment. This means that a woman who is already married cannot become a coparcener in her father’s family. The Law Commission justified this discrimination on the ground that a married daughter would have already received substantial gifts from her father at the time of her wedding, whether in the form of dowry or not. On the other hand, a daughter who is married after the amendment comes into force will be entitled to her share in the ancestral property and may therefore not get much gifts from the family at the time of her wedding. In fact, the Law Commission believes that the conferment of equal rights on sons and daughters over the joint family property may be more effective than any other measure in combating the evil of dowry.
