What Mary Roy did for the Succession Rights of Indian Women

Women in India have fought a long and hard battle for their property rights — and some legal discrimination still exists. One such battle was fought by Mary Roy — an educator in Kerala belonging to the Syrian Christian community — who was denied the right to inherit her family property under the Travancore Succession Act (1916).

The Case

Mary Roy sued her brother George Issac in 1960 to gain equal access to the property of her deceased father P.V. Issac. The battle lasted for 39 long years and finally settled in favor of Mary Roy in 2009 (The Supreme Court ruled in her favor in 1986). The case became a landmark judgment cited by many lawyers in Will contests and property dispute cases.

In the year 2000, she approached the Kottayam sub-court for the final decree. In 2009, she filed an execution petition and finally received her inheritance — nearly four decades after her father died intestate.

There could have been a better, more amicable way of avoiding this family feud, had her father left a Will, and in it, pronounced her daughter Mary as an equal claimant to his property.

Contrasting Issues

Mary Roy’s case was complex in that a number of Acts and laws applied, leaving the court at crossroads. The Travancore Succession Act 1916 applied to the erstwhile state of Travancore. However, after the merger of Travancore into Cochin, the Part States (Laws) Act 1951 came into play. Moreover, there existed — and sometimes still does — the technical issue of whether the Indian Succession Act, which was enacted in 1925 with a view to consolidating the laws for succession in India, repealed the Travancore Succession Act? To complicate matters further, the state of Cochin had its own laws regarding succession — the Cochin Succession Act (1092) — and after the merger of Travancore, this applied to the new citizens of Cochin too.

Under the Travancore Christian Succession Act, 1092, a daughter was not entitled to the property of her intestate father except to the extent of 25% of the son’s share or Rs. 5000 whichever is less; and that only in the absence of any Streedhanam — or even the promise of one.

Mary Roy’s case posed several questions –

What the court held

The court held that the Part-B States (Laws) Act of 1951 repealed the Travancore Succession act of 1902. The right to inheriting the property of intestate parents was now governed by the Indian Succession Act, 1925 and applied to the Indian Christian Community in the earlier state of Travancore now merged with Cochin. The Indian Succession Act 1925 replaced most succession laws in force at the time including the Indian Succession Act 1865. Moreover, the Indian Succession Act has a much wider scope than the Travancore Succession Act, as well as the Part-B Travancore State of Cochin law, which was limited to Christian Women in the state of Travancore.

Interestingly, Christians in various parts of the country follow their own rules. For example, Christians in Travancore followed a different set of rules than the Christians in Cochin. In Pondicherry, Christians adopted French rules while those in Goa, Daman, and Diu followed Portuguese laws. All these laws were repealed by the Indian Succession Act. However, the old laws are still followed by some Christians around the country.

The Impact

The erstwhile laws had general social sanction because of the prevalence of the dowry system, which the community considered equivalent to the daughters’ right to the father’s property. However, as in the case of Mary Roy — inter-caste marriages and the abolition of dowry left many women bereft upon the passing or estrangement of the husband.

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