The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that denying a tribal woman or her legal heirs a share in ancestral property on the sole ground of gender is both unreasonable and unconstitutional. The judgment affirmed equal inheritance rights for women in tribal communities, even in the absence of statutory personal law, reversing a long-standing assumption that customs restricting such rights must be presumed to exist unless proven otherwise.
While the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), 1956, does not apply to scheduled tribes (STs), the court made it clear that this exclusion cannot be stretched to infer that tribal women are not entitled to inherit ancestral property. It underlined that unless a specific customary bar is proved, equality must prevail.
The verdict, delivered by a bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Joymalya Bagchi, came in a case involving the legal heirs of a ST woman from Chhattisgarh, who had sought a share in the estate of her maternal grandfather. Their claim was opposed by male family members, who argued that tribal custom barred women from inheritance. Three lower courts, the trial court, the first appellate court and the high court, dismissed the claim, stating that she failed to establish a custom permitting female inheritance.
Reversing the concurrent findings, the top court criticised the approach of the courts below for requiring the women to prove a custom allowing inheritance, rather than asking the opposing party to show a custom that excluded them.
{{/usCountry}}Reversing the concurrent findings, the top court criticised the approach of the courts below for requiring the women to prove a custom allowing inheritance, rather than asking the opposing party to show a custom that excluded them.
{{/usCountry}}“The point of inception regarding the discussion of customs was at the exclusion stage…They assumed there to be an exclusionary custom in a place where the daughters would not be entitled to any inheritance and expected the appellant-plaintiffs to prove otherwise. An alternate scenario was also possible where not exclusion, but inclusion could have been presumed,” it emphasised.
The bench declared that excluding women, including trial women, from inheritance is both unreasonable and discriminatory. The court asserted the equal rights of women in a tribal family in a succession dispute, clarifying that even though HSA does not apply to STs, it does not inherently mean tribal women are denied inheritance. The onus, it added, is on proving any existing custom that restricts their right to ancestral property.
Calling this a “patriarchal predisposition” likely drawn from Hindu law despite its inapplicability to STs, the court noted that such an approach was flawed and failed to uphold constitutional values. “When applying the principle of justice, equity and good conscience, the courts have to be mindful… customs too, like the law, cannot remain stuck in time and others cannot be allowed to take refuge in customs or hide behind them to deprive others of their right,” the judgment read.
Article 14 of the Constitution, the bench held, guarantees equality before the law and includes gender equality. “There appears to be no rational nexus or reasonable classification for only males to be granted succession over the property of their forebears and not women, more so in the case where no prohibition to such effect can be shown to be prevalent as per law,” it said, also referring to Article 15(1), which bars the state from discriminating on the basis of sex.
“In view of the above discussion, we are of the firm view that in keeping with the principles of justice, equity and good conscience, read along with the overarching effect of Article 14 of the Constitution, the appellant-plaintiffs, are entitled to their equal share in the property,” concluded the bench, setting aside the earlier rulings.
The verdict holds wider significance as it revisits and reinforces an ongoing debate about gender justice in tribal communities, especially in the absence of codified personal laws. While HSA, by virtue of Section 2(2), expressly excludes ST members from its ambit unless the central government notifies otherwise, the apex court has now clarified that such statutory silence cannot become a basis for institutionalised inequality.
Thursday’s ruling also marks a significant departure from the Supreme Court’s own guarded stance in a December 2024 judgment, where it had stopped short of granting equal inheritance rights to tribal women. In that case, the court had urged the central government to consider amending HSA to ensure parity between tribal and non-tribal daughters, but it did not conclusively hold that a tribal woman could inherit property in the absence of an explicit statutory right.