Tribe in northeast India seeks to change inheritance laws

NEW DELHI: Lawmakers belonging to the Khasi tribe in northeast India are searching for to provide equal inheritance rights to daughters and sons, in a transfer that girls members of the group concern 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, kids obtain their mom’s final title 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 dad and mom and turns into the pinnacle of the family after her mom’s demise.

For a while, male lawmakers of the group have been making an attempt 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 dad and mom to divide ancestral property in keeping with their wills.

“The target of the invoice is to streamline the inheritance of self-acquired property and ancestral property from the dad and mom to kids,” the council’s head, Titosstarwell Chyne, advised Arab Information. “In response to the invoice, we give house to oldsters to get likelihood to provide equal shares even to boys, not solely to women,” he mentioned.

“This isn’t a serious change, however an try to provide dad and mom better leverage in distributing properties equally amongst kids.”

However ladies within the Khasi group see the adjustments recommended 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 advised Arab Information: “That is mainly taking away the rights which have been practiced by ladies — rights which have been inherited.”

What Kharbhih significantly objected to is a provision within the invoice that might deprive Khasi ladies of their inheritance rights in the event that they marry exterior their group. “I’m the youngest daughter,” Kharbhih mentioned. “We’re allowed to marry exterior our group as lengthy you retain the surname and kids hold the surname. It’s a follow 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 “geared toward disempowering ladies and could be very patriarchal in nature.”

She additionally questioned how the invoice was proposed with no public dialogue. “Normally, a public dialogue takes place earlier than tabling any invoice within the legislative meeting, however no such dialogue happened within the case of this invoice,” Mukhim advised Arab Information. “The district council doesn’t have any ladies. It’s a male membership. Even when ladies wish to give arguments, they’ll’t, as a result of they don’t seem to be within the council.”

For some male commentators similar to Starfing Pdahkasiej, a Khasi journalist primarily based in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, the invoice isn’t anti-women, however somewhat an try and try for equality.

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

“The invoice was wanted a very long time again,” he added. “It can permit each female and male relations to inherit one thing.”