On September 1, 2022, women’s rights activist and educator, Mary Roy, whose efforts led to equal rights to ancestral property being granted to Syrian Christian women, passed away at the age of 89. Mary Roy is the mother of prominent author and Booker Prize awardee, Arundhati Roy. Mary became famous for her legal battle to ensure equal rights for Syrian Christian women in ancestral property which she won in the Supreme Court in 1986. She was a visionary educationist, social worker, and the doyen of women’s rights in India.
Career
Mary Roy was born in 1933 in a Christian family in Kottayam, Kerala. Her father, P.V. Isaac, was an entomologist, trained in England. She completed her graduation from the Queen Mary’s College in Chennai. She later moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and worked as a company secretary. She married Rajeeb Roy, a Bengali Hindu tea plantation manager in Shillong but the marriage ended in a divorce due to an abusive relationship. Thereafter, she moved along with her two children into a cottage in Ooty, Tamil Nadu, owned by her late father. However, her brother asked her to vacate the cottage immediately as Kerala Syrian Christian women did not have equal property rights.
Thereafter, she started the Pallikoodam School (formerly Corpus Christi High School) in Kottayam, in 1967. After becoming financially independent, Mary went to Delhi in 1983 to hire lawyers to fight her case for equal property rights for women in the court. The case is seen as a milestone in achieving gender justice in India.
The Case In 1983, Mary Roy filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution. In her petition, she challenged the discrimination against Syrian Christian women regarding intestate (a person who has died without leaving a will about his property) succession. Then, the succession among Syrian Christians in Kerala was governed by the Travancore Christian Succession Act 1916.
Under this Act, women belonging to the Syrian Christian community had no right to inherit property. The Act stated that ‘a daughter shall not be entitled to succeed to the property of the intestate in the same share as the son but she would be entitled to one-fourth the value of the share of the son or Rs 5,000/-, whichever is less’. Furthermore, even the amount/share would not be available to daughters, if the sthreedhanam (patrimony or property inherited from one’s father or male ancestor as dowry) had been paid on account of her marriage.
Mary Roy stated in her petition that the Travancore Christian Succession Act violated Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution by discriminating on the basis of gender. Her case was represented before the Supreme Court by lawyers Indira Jaising and Kamini Jaiswal, who essentially argued that the relevant provisions of the Travancore Christian Succession Act were discriminating between man and woman on the basis of gender. Therefore, the Act was repugnant to the Indian Succession Act of 1925, which does not discriminate on the basis of gender.
Mary Roy’s case was considered by a bench comprising Justices P.N. Bhagwati and R.S. Pathak. The judgment was delivered on February 24, 1986 (Mrs Mary Roy Vs State of Kerala and Others, AIR 1986 1011). In the judgment, the bench noted that the princely state of Travancore had merged with the Union of India in 1949, and was regarded as a Part-B State. (Part-B states are a group of princely states which did not merge with the Union of India immediately after independence of India, under the Constitution.) With a view to bringing uniformity of legislation in the whole of India, including Part-B States, Parliament enacted the Part-B States (Laws) Act, 1951, providing for extension to Part-B States of certain parliamentary statutes prevailing in the rest of India. The Indian Succession Act of 1925 was one of the laws mentioned in the Part-B States (Laws) Act, 1951. Section 6 of the 1951 Act repealed those laws which were prevalent in the Part-B States corresponding to the parliamentary laws extended to Part-B States.
Therefore, the Supreme Court held that the Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916 stood repealed with effect from 1951 when the Indian Succession Act 1925 was extended, and applied to the State of Travancore-Cochin, which later became the State of Kerala. Thus, the Supreme Court, in its 1986 judgment, upheld the supremacy of the Indian Succession Act, 1925. The Bench stated that in case the deceased parent has not left a will, succession would be decided as per the Indian Succession Act 1925, which would apply to Indian Christian community in the erstwhile State of Travancore. The consequence of the declaration was that Syrian Christian women became entitled to equal share in intestate succession as men with retrospective effect from 1951.
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