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NEW DELHI: Lawmakers belonging to the Khasi tribe in northeast India are looking for to present equal inheritance rights to daughters and sons, in a transfer that ladies members of the group worry will introduce patriarchal norms to one of many world’s final matrilineal communities.

Within the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, ladies management property and inheritance.

In accordance with Khasi conventional legislation, youngsters obtain their mom’s final identify and husbands transfer into the houses of their wives. The youngest daughter is the custodian of ancestral land and property. She additionally takes care of the mother and father and turns into the top of the family after her mom’s dying.

For a while, male lawmakers of the group have been attempting to introduce change, and final week submitted to the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council a brand new legislation proposal, the Khasi Inheritance of Property Invoice 2021, which they are saying will permit Khasi mother and father to divide ancestral property in response to their wills.

“The target of the invoice is to streamline the inheritance of self-acquired property and ancestral property from the mother and father to youngsters,” the council’s head, Titosstarwell Chyne, informed Arab Information. “In line with the invoice, we give house to folks to get likelihood to present equal shares even to boys, not solely to ladies,” he mentioned.

“This isn’t a significant change, however an try to present mother and father higher leverage in distributing properties equally amongst youngsters.”

However ladies within the Khasi neighborhood see the adjustments advised by the male-dominated legislative physique as an try to remove their rights.

Hasina Kharbhih, founding father of the Meghalaya-based Impulse NGO community, mentioned that the event is “bringing patriarchal influences into the age-old custom.”

She informed Arab Information: “That is mainly taking away the rights which have been practiced by ladies — rights which have been inherited.”

What Kharbhih notably objected to is a provision within the invoice that may deprive Khasi ladies of their inheritance rights in the event that they marry exterior their neighborhood. “I’m the youngest daughter,” Kharbhih mentioned. “We’re allowed to marry exterior our neighborhood as lengthy you retain the surname and kids maintain the surname. It’s a observe that has been there for ages.”

Angela Rangad, one other Khasi lady activist in Meghalaya, mentioned that the invoice aimed to “destroy the matrilineal system,” including: “Together with lineage, custodianship of ancestral property is a defining organizing precept of Khasi matrilineal society, and therefore must be celebrated and guarded.

“This newly proposed legislation will destroy matrilineal society as we all know it and one must additionally query if the KHADC even has the jurisdiction to invent new customs which is what this new invoice is doing.”

Patricia Mukhim, editor of Meghalaya’s oldest English-language newspaper, The Shillong Instances, mentioned that the invoice is “aimed toward disempowering ladies and may be very patriarchal in nature.”

She additionally questioned how the invoice was proposed with no public dialogue. “Often, a public dialogue takes place earlier than tabling any invoice within the legislative meeting, however no such dialogue passed off within the case of this invoice,” Mukhim informed Arab Information. “The district council doesn’t have any ladies. It’s a male membership. Even when ladies need to give arguments, they will’t, as a result of they aren’t within the council.”

For some male commentators similar to Starfing Pdahkasiej, a Khasi journalist based mostly in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, the invoice is just not anti-women, however moderately an try and attempt for equality.

He mentioned: “Do these ladies who name the invoice anti-women need their daughters to reside in a mansion whereas their sons reside on the streets?

“The invoice was wanted a very long time again,” he added. “It is going to permit each female and male members of the family to inherit one thing.”