(Cambridge South Asian Studies) Bina Agarwal - A Field of One's Own - Gender and Land Rights in South Asia-Cambridge University Press (1995)

Economic analysis and policies concerning women have long been
preoccupied with employment. In a radical shift of focus, Professor

Agarwal argues that the single most important economic factor affecting
women's situation is the gender gap in command over property.
In rural South Asia, the most significant form of property is arable land,
a critical determinant of economic well-being, social status, and empower-
ment. However, few South Asian women own land, and even fewer
control it. In a comprehensive and rigorous analysis that draws upon a
wide range of historical, economic, legal, and ethnographic sources and
her own field research, the author investigates the complex reasons for this
gender gap, and examines how existing barriers to women's land owner-
ship and control might be overcome. Regional variations on these counts
across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are also
identified. The study extends the boundaries of economic analysis to
explore the interface of economics, culture, and gender politics through an
interdisciplinary approach. It examines women's covert and overt resis-
tance to gender inequality, especially in the context of land struggles. And
it offers new theoretical insights by extending the 'bargaining approach' to
illuminate how gender relations get constituted and contested, both within
and outside the household.
Afield of one's own is the first major study on gender and property in
South Asia. It makes significant contributions to current debates on land
reform, women's status, and the nature of resistance. Its compelling and
original argument will interest scholars, students, policy makers, and
activists.
BINA AGARWAL is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic

Growth, University of Delhi. Educated at the Universities of Cambridge
and Delhi, she has taught at Harvard University as visiting professor, and
been a fellow of the Bunting Institute (Radcliffe College) and the Institute
of Development Studies (University of Sussex). She has published extensi-
vely on poverty and inequality, rural development, environmental issues,
and technological change, from a political economy and gender perspec-
tive. Her books include: Cold Hearths and Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel
Crisis in the Third World (1986), Mechanization in Indian Agriculture
(1983), and Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in
Modernising Asia, ed (1988).
Cambridge South Asian Studies
A field of one's own

Editorial Board
C. A. Bayly, G. P. Hawthon., Gordon Johnson, S. J. Tambiah
A list of the books in the series will be found at the end of the volume
A field of one's own
Gender and land rights in South Asia
Bina Agarwal
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Bina Agarwal
First published 1994
A catalogue recordfor this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Agarwal, Bina
Afieldof one's own: gender and land rights in South Asia/Bina
Agarwal
p. cm. - (Cambridge South Asian studies)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-521-41868-2 - ISBN 0-521-42926-9 (pbk.)
1. Land tenure-South Asia. 2. Land reform-South Asia. 3. Right
to property-South Asia. 4. Women's rights-South Asia. 5. Rural
women-South Asia. 6. Rural women-South Asia. 7. South Asia-
Social policy. I. Title. II. Series.
HD860.3.Z63A35 1994
323.4'6'0959-<ic20 93-37621 CIP
ISBN 0 521 41868 2 hardback
ISBN 0 521 42926 9 paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2003
SE
To my father for his wisdom and optimism
To my mother for her generosity and vigour
Contents
List of illustrations page xii

List of tables xiii
Preface xv
1 Land rights for women: making the case 1
I The backdrop 2
II Gender, property, and land: some conceptual links 11
(1) Household property and women's property 12
(2) The significance of land as property 17
(3) What do we mean by rights in land? 19
(4) Prospects for non-land-based livelihoods 24
III Why do women need independent rights in land? 27
(1) The welfare argument 27
(2) The efficiency argument 33
(3) The equality and empowerment arguments 38
IV Questions addressed, information base, and the book's structure 45
2 Conceptualizing gender relations 51

I Gender relations within the household/family 53
(1) The bargaining approach 54
(2) What determines intra-family bargaining power? 60
II Gender relations outside the household/family: the market, the
community, and the State 71
III Interactions: the household/family, the community, and the State 80
3 Customary rights and associated practices 82

I Which communities customarily recognized women's rights in land? 83
II Women's land rights in traditionally matrilineal and bilateral communities 100
(1) Northeast India: The Garos, Khasis, and Lalungs 101
(2) South India: The Nayars, Tiyyars, Bants, Mappilas, Nangudi
Vellalars, and others 109
(3) Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese, Hindu Tamils, and matrilineal Muslims 120
(4) Some cross-regional comparisons 132
III Women's land rights, structural conditionalities, and gender relations 133
(1) Women's land rights and associated practices 133
(2) Land rights and gender relations 146
x Contents
4 Erosion and disinheritance: traditionally matrilineal and
bilateral communities 15 3
I India 154
(1) TheGaros 154
(2) The Nayars of central Kerala 168
(3) Matriliny and development 179
II Sri Lanka 180
The Sinhalese 180
III In conclusion 192
Appendix 4.1: A marriage proposal among the Christian Garos 194
5 Contemporary laws: contestation and content 198

I India 199
(1) The formulation of contemporary Hindu law 199
(2) Anomalies resulting from existing land legislation 215
(3) Laws governing Christians and Parsis in India 223
II Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Muslims in India 227
(1) From custom to the Shariat 227
(2) Devolution under Islamic law 233
III Sri Lanka 237
IV Nepal 242
V Summary comments on women's legal rights in landed property
in South Asia 246
6 Whose share? Who claims? The gap between law and practice 249
I The gap between law and practice in traditionally patrilineal communities 249
II Barriers to women inheriting land in traditionally patrilineal communities 260
(1) 'Voluntary'giving up of claims 260
(2) The necessity of male mediation 268
(3) Hostility from male kin: pre-emptive steps to direct violence 271
(4) Responses of village bodies and government officials 276
III Glimmer of change: women claim inheritance shares in some traditionally
patrilineal communities 282
IV A look at traditionally matrilineal and bilateral communities 285
V Some hypotheses 291
7 Whose land? Who commands? The gap between ownership and

control 292
I Women's ability to retain their land 292
II Control over the transfer and use of land 294
HI Barriers to women self-managing land 298
(1) The physical and social confinement of women 298
(2) Post-marital residence: village exogamy and patrilocality 311
(3) Male control over labour and technology 311
8 Tracing cross-regional diversities 316

I Some hypotheses 317
II Information sources 321
Contents xi
III The cross-regional patterns 325
(1) Marriage location and post-marital residence 325
(2) Close-kin marriages, especially between cross-cousins 336
(3) Purdah practices 344
(4) Sexual control over women 345
(5) Rural female labour force participation rates 355
(6) Rural female literacy rates 358
(7) Total fertility rates 359
(8) Land scarcity 361
IV An overview of regional patterns 368
9 Struggles over resources, struggles over meanings 421

I On women's consciousness and individual resistance 422
II Group resistance: struggles over privatized land 438
(1) The Tebhaga struggle 438
(2) The Telangana struggle 441
(3) The Bodhgaya struggle 444
III Group resistance: claiming rights in public land 454
IV Further observations on gender construction and group contestation 458
10 The long march ahead 467

I Recapitulation 468
II Some suggestions, some dilemmas 478
(1) Reforming the laws 478
(2) Dowry v. inheritance 480
(3) Establishing de facto inheritance rights in land 483
(4) Strengthening land claims through channels other than inheritance 486
(5) Exploring joint management and promoting infrastructural support 488
(6) Building group support among and for women 490
III The macro-scenario 493
(1) Interlinking diverse concerns 493
(2) Bargaining with the State 496
(3) Increasing women's presence in public decision-making forums 499
(4) Some recent developments and the road ahead 502
Definitions 505
Glossary 507
References 510
Index 553
Illustrations
Diagram 4.1 Garos in transition: causes and effects page 166
Maps
1.1 South Asia: provincial/state divisions xxii
3.1 Traditional forms of land inheritance 100
3.2 Sri Lanka: provincial divisions 121
8.1 Village endogamy norms 329
8.2 Close-kin marriage norms 342
8.3 Purdah practices 348
8.4 Rural female labour force participation rates (1981) 357
8.5 Rural female literacy rates (1981) 359
8.6 Total fertility rates 361
8.7 Population density (1981) (persons per sq km) 365
8.8 Per cent landless to total rural households 366
8.9 Per cent geographic area under forest 367
8.10 A comparative perspective 372
Xll
Tables
A1.1 Village common lands in India by State: 1987-88 page 49

Al .2 Selected development indicators for South Asia 50
3.1 Some characteristic features of matrilineal and bilateral
communities in South Asia 141
4.1 Changes among the Garos of northeast India: a summary 167
4.2 Women in selected occupations: Sri Lanka, 1901-21 183
4.3 Ownership of paddy land and highland by gender among the
Kandyan Sinhalese 189
4.4 Post-marital residence among the Kandyan Sinhalese 190
5.1 Summary of oral and written opinions on the Draft Hindu
Code received by the Second Rau Committee, 1945 209
6.1 Widows in India who inherited land as daughters 253
6.2 Dowry land by type among the Jaffna Tamils 287
6.3 Landownership in three Jaffna villages by source of acqui-
sition 287
8.1 Village endogamy norms in South Asia 326
8.2 Marriage distance from a woman's natal home in South Asia 332
8.3 Close-kin marriage norms in South Asia 338
8.4 Purdah practices in South Asia 346
8.5 Rural female labour force participation rates and rural
female literacy rates in South Asia (1981) 356
8.6 Total fertility rates in South Asia (1988) 360
8.7 Population density, landlessness, land concentration, and
forest area in South Asia 362
8.8 Distribution of ownership holdings in South Asia among
rural landowning households 364
8.9 Summary for cross-regional comparisons 370
A8.1 Women's post-marital location and distance from the natal
home: detailed evidence from South Asia 379
A8.2 Close-kin marriage norms and practice: detailed evidence
from South Asia 390
xiii
xiv Tables
A8.3a Sexual control over women in South Asia: norms of pre-

marital sex and adultery 403
A8.3b Sexual control over women in South Asia: norms and practice
of divorce and divorcee remarriage 407
A8.3c Sexual control over women in South Asia: norms and practice
of widow remarriage 414
Preface
This book has grown out of two long-standing involvements. One is my

decade and a half of research on rural poverty, agrarian change, and the
political economy of gender. The other is my association with the women's
movement in South Asia, and my interaction over the years with peasant
women from across the region, and with the few grassroots activists who
were beginning to raise the issue of women's independent land rights within
mass-based peasant movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Both my
academic analysis and these interactions led me to investigate, and in that
process recognize the central importance of women's lack of effective rights
in property, especially land, in explaining their economic, social, and
political subordination in South Asia. It became increasingly clear that it
was critical for women to win those rights for establishing more equal
gender relations, both within and outside the household. Indeed while the
link between property and class relations has been well established in
political economy, the link between property and gender relations has
remained largely unexamined.
Land has been and continues to be the most significant form of property
in rural South Asia. It is a critical determinant of economic well-being,
social status, and political power. However, there is substantial evidence
that economic resources in the hands of male household members often do
not benefit female members in equal degree. Independent ownership of
such resources, especially land, can thus be of crucial importance in
promoting the well-being and empowerment of women. But as the present
analysis shows, the issue is not just one of property ownership; it is also that
of property control. Historically, even in matrilineal communities where
formal ownership of property (including land) was vested in women, its
effective control was often vested in men, as was jural authority. And this
scenario of women's virtual exclusion, in most regions, from control over
property and from most public decision-making bodies, continues to be a
familiar one today.
Although economic surveys typically do not give a gender breakdown of
land distribution, the ethnographic evidence examined here indicates that
xv
xvi Preface
despite gender-progressive legislation, in practice few South Asian women
inherit landed property, and even fewer control it. This book probes what
underlies the vast gap between law and its implementation, and identifies a
number of factors constraining women in exercising their legal claims,
including patrilocal post-marital residence and village exogamy, strong
opposition from male kin, the social construction of gender needs and roles,
low levels of female education, and male bias and dominance in administra-
tive, judicial, and other public decision-making bodies at all levels. The
analysis here points to the interactive effects of economic factors, cultural
norms, and gender ideologies and politics, in determining women's
property position, an interaction that has received little attention from
most economists or other social scientists, each typically operating in a
separate disciplinary domain. The constraints identified indicate that rural
women's struggle for effective land rights will not be an easy one. At the
same time, the considerable regional differences within and between South
Asian countries in the nature and degree of these constraints, suggests that
they are subject to contestation and change. More generally, the framework
of contestation and bargaining between actors with differential access to
economic and political power illuminates the process by which the hier-
archical character of gender relations is maintained and changed. In this
context, the process of acquiring land rights is likely to be as important in
empowering women, as the end result. And it is precisely the formidable
nature of the obstacles to be overcome that gives the struggle for land rights
a strategic importance and transformative potential which perhaps no
other gender-related issue singly possesses. As peasant women in Bodhgaya
(Bihar, east India) said on first receiving land in their own names in 1982:
We had tongues but could not speak.

We had feet but could not walk.
Now that we have the land
we have the strength to speak and walk!
I first began exploring the issue of gender and land rights in 1985, as part
of a larger project on this subject (covering several parts of the Third
World) launched by the International Labour Organisation (ILO),
Geneva. This issue had also emerged as significant in my own research on
the gender dimensions of agrarian change, and I welcomed the chance of
focusing on it in depth when Zubeida Ahmed invited me to participate in
the project. In that year I visited Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri
Lanka; talked with villagers, grassroots activists, lawyers, government
officials and academics; and attempted to locate written material on the
subject. There was hardly any material to be found. Indeed my explorations
revealed how little attention had been paid to this subject in South Asia,
Preface xvii
either in research or in policy; researchers, policy makers, and most non-
governmental (including women's) groups seemed preoccupied with
employment as the indicator of women's economic status, to the neglect of
property rights. In 1986-87, for a separate project, I spent several weeks
doing fieldwork on the survival strategies of poor, low caste women in a
village in Rajasthan (northwest India). During the course of that work, the
importance for rural women of having even a smallfieldof their own as a
security against poverty emerged clearly. In addition, I spent a few weeks
visiting Khasi and Garo villages in Meghalaya, drawn by the need to get a
first-hand feel of how women's situations and self-perceptions in matrili-
neal communities differed from those in the strongly patrilineal north-
western states with which I had greater familiarity. A number of research
papers followed (Agarwal 1988, 1989, 1990b, 1990c), but I began work on
the book itself only in the winter of 1989 at Harvard University.
My travels, both within India and to other South Asian countries, were
financed by the ILO, and I am very grateful to them for this support. The
success of my field visits depended greatly on the generous help and
hospitality of many friends and colleagues. In particular, for my trip to Sri
Lanka I thank Kumari Jayawardena, Charles and Sunila Obeyesekera,
Newton Gunasinghe (a dear friend who is no more), and Radhika
Coomaraswamy. Newton accompanied me to Kandy, and with his help I
was able to talk to a number of villagers and tea plantation workers in the
stunningly beautiful Kandyan Highlands. It was already a period of severe
ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, which has escalated tragically since. What I have
to say in the book about Sri Lanka's social and economic relations must be
read against this backdrop. There is no easy way of predicting the long-term
effects of these conflicts on the norms that govern rural life there. I therefore
make no attempt to speculate about future trends, and hope that much of
what I have said continues to be valid. In Pakistan, I especially thank
Farida Shaheed, Khawar Mumtaz, Nighat Khan, Akmal Hussain, Nigar
Ahmed, Samina and Anjum Altaf, and Akbar Zaidi for their hospitality,
for useful discussions on women's position in the country, and for helping
me make contact with others (lawyers, academics, activists) and locate
research material. During that trip, meeting with members of the Women's
Action Forum in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad was particularly illumi-
nating. In Bangladesh, I owe special thanks to Khushi Kabir, Mahmuda
Islam, Jahan Ara Huq, B. K. Jehangir, Shireen Huq, Muhammad Yunus
(founder of the Grameen Bank), F. H. Abed (founder) and the staff
members of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC),
Zafarullah Choudhury (founder) and staff members of Gonoshastheya
Kendra, and the faculty of the Bangladesh Institute of Development
Studies, for useful discussions, sharing with me theirfieldexperiences, and
xviii Preface
facilitating my travel to rural areas near Dhaka. For my Nepal trip, I am
especially grateful to Bina Pradhan, Shilu Singh, Chandini Joshi, and
Deepak Bajracharya for helping me to locate research material and
organize my visits to villages on the outskirts of Kathmandu. I also thank
Mr and Mrs Narendra Agarwal for their warm hospitality during my stay
in Nepal.
My exposure to village life in Rajasthan extends over many years and
numerous visits: initially during childhood and adolescence to see my
maternal grandparents in Jhunjhunu district; subsequently in the mid-
1980s to meet with activists of the Social Work and Research Center
(Tilonia, Madanganj district) and to participate in a large festive gathering
(meld) of village women that they had organized; and later still in 1986-87
to undertake a spell of systematicfieldworkin a village (in Alwar district)
which the anthropologist Miriam Sharma and her research assistant
Urmila Vijnani were also researching, and whose help in facilitating my
entry into the lives of the villagers I gratefully acknowledge. Finally, I am
extremely grateful to Yogeshwar Kumar, without whose help my 1989 field
visit to the Khasi and Garo Hills in Meghalaya would not have been
possible. On that trip I benefited greatly from discussions with D. N.
Majumdar, Gilbert Shullai, and R. T. Rymbai; and my visits to the Khasi
villages with Helen Giri and to the Garo villages with Debila Marak were
most illuminating. Although most of the village visits in various parts of
South Asia were not long enough to permit a systematic collection of
information, they were invaluable in giving me a broad sense of the
perceptions of rural women and men, village leaders, and local bureaucrats
on the question of women and land. And I have drawn upon thesefieldtrips
in various parts of the book.
My two and a half years at Harvard University (September 1989-March
1992) were critical in the shaping and writing of this book. Harvard's
superb library facilities and its inter-library loan services gave me access to a
vast body of historical and contemporary material including many unpub-
lished social science doctoral dissertations on South Asia, submitted to
American universities. Also invaluable were several rounds of stimulating
discussions on parts of my work with faculty members at Harvard and
other US universities, many of whom had done detailedfieldworkin South
Asia. My stay at Harvard was made possible through the support of several
institutions: the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute (Radcliffe College),
which awarded me a Bunting Fellowship for 1989-90 and affiliation as a
Fellow for 1990-91; the Harvard Center for Population and Development
Studies, of which Lincoln Chen kindly invited me to be a member during
1990-91; the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Committee of Women's
Studies, Harvard University, where I taught as visiting professor in 1991-
Preface xix
92; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which awarded
me a Research and Writing Grant for Individuals for 1990-91; and the
Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (NORAD, Delhi),
which provided supplementary financial assistance and a travel grant to the
USA for my first year at Harvard. I am most grateful to all these
institutions. In particular the Bunting Institute - its fellows, staff and
Director, Florence Ladd - provided an atmosphere which was wonderfully
conducive to discussion, reflection, and writing. I thank the administrative
staff of the Harvard Committee on Women's Studies for their warmth and
helpfulness, Barbara Johnson for generously lending me use of her office in
Pusey library during my teaching term, and my students for their lively and
challenging discussions on parts of my work.
I have presented some aspects of my research at several invited lectures
and seminars both in India and abroad, including the Ninth European
Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (Heidelberg) in 1986; the
Center for Development Studies (Kerala) in 1988; the National Seminar on
Women and Access to Land and Productive Resources (University of
Delhi) in 1988; the Planning Commission of India (Delhi) in 1989; the
Association for Women in Development International Conference (Wash-
ington) in 1989; the International Food Policy Research Institute (Wash-
ington) in 1989; the Bunting Institute Public Colloquium Series in 1990;
and the Distinguished Lecture Series of the Center for Advanced Study of
International Development, Michigan State University, in 1990. The
responses of the audiences following these presentations, and Amartya
Sen's comments as a discussant on my Bunting Colloquium presentation at
Harvard, were encouraging, stimulating, and helpful.
Comments from and discussions with many other friends, colleagues,
and associates provided essential feedback as the book progressed. It is not
possible to name them all, but a few need particular mention. One person
whose meticulous comments on several drafts of the book were invaluable
is Janet Seiz - friend and fellow-economist at the Bunting Institute. I am
deeply indebted to her for so generously sparing time to read the manu-
script and brainstorm over parts of it, and for her unflagging interest and
belief in the value of this research. I also greatly value Geoffrey Hawthorn's
keen support for this study since its inception; and owe a very special thanks
to him, Nancy Folbre, Gail Hershatter, Primila Lewis, and the reviewer of
Cambridge University Press, all of whom read the manuscript in its
entirety, in one or other of its incarnations, and offered most useful,
detailed and encouraging comments. Gail found time to do this while
settling into a new teaching job and parenting two young children. To
Amartya Sen and S. J. Tambiah I am most grateful for sparing time from
their extremely busy schedules during the teaching terms at Harvard to
xx Preface
comment on and discuss some of my chapters over several tasty lunches at
the Harvard Faculty Club. Discussions with Nur Yalman on some aspects
of his earlier research on Sri Lanka were also most helpful. Joan Mencher
offered a number of valuable suggestions and insights on the Nayars of
Kerala along with a sumptuous south Indian dinner in New York; and with
my friend and colleague, Gillian Hart, I shared many an evening of
challenging discussions on my work and hers. I also greatly appreciate the
comments on selected chapters by Michael Lipton, Lourdes Beneria,
Pauline Peters, Gunanath Obeyesekere, John Mansfield, Paul Seabright,
Uday Mehta, Christopher Fuller, Raghav Gaiha, Kate Gilbert, and
Patricia Uberoi. I thank Alice Thorner, Jean Dreze, Terry Byres, and Veena
Das for their responses to an earlier paper on the theme of the book. And I
am grateful to Marty Chen for sharing with me some results from her
ongoing study on widows in India; to Hilary Standing for digging out some
of her unpublished fieldwork findings on Bihar; and to Victor de Munck,
Dennis McGilvray, Hamza Alavi, Hanna Papanek, Savitri Goonesekere,
and Jack Goody for discussions which helped clarify specific points relating
to their own research findings. I would also like to thank Nick Stern at
STICERD (London School of Economics) for offering me STICERD's
hospitality for discussions and library work at the LSE over two summers.
In Delhi, I am immensely grateful to B. Sivaramayya for the care with
which he went over the legal sections of my manuscript, helping to correct
several subtle shifts in meaning resulting from my attempts as a social
scientist to translate legalese into simple English, and for drawing upon his
prodigious knowledge of inheritance laws to point out a number of
important cases and recent changes in legislation. I am also very thankful to
Lotika Sarkar for discussions on a number of legal aspects and for directing
my attention to some landmark judgements. Vina Mazumdar's descrip-
tions of her interactions with various government departments over issues
of gender, and of her fieldwork experience in West Bengal, added in
important ways to my understanding of government policy responses to the
gender question in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With Manimala I had
several illuminating discussions on developments in the Bodhgaya move-
ment over the last decade, and I am most grateful to her for sparing the
time. I also thank the staff of the Institute of Economic Growth for
facilitating my research on this book in various ways.
To my parents I owe very special thanks for their unending generosity,
patience, and interest in my work. I am especially grateful to my father,
S. M. Agarwal, for reading through a draft of the manuscript on trains and
planes and late into the night, and offering many valuable suggestions for
clarifying my arguments for the non-specialist reader. Finally, to my friends
in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and Delhi goes my gratitude for their
Preface xxi
forbearance while I closeted myself over long stretches of time to reflect on
and write the book.
It is my hope not only that this book will provoke serious academic and
policy debate, but that the issue of women's land rights will be given the
centrality it justly deserves by government policy makers, by political
parties and, most of all, by gender-progressive grassroots groups. For it is
on collective action by the women peasants of South Asia that change is
ultimately likely to depend.
North West
Frontier Province
Arunachal
Pradesh
Uttar
Rajasthan KPradesh Nagaland
Meghalaya
Manipur
Tripura
Mizoram
Lakshadweep .' ]•
Islands " *
Map 1.1 South Asia: provincial/state divisions

Land rights for women: making the case
To my brother belong your green fields

O father, while I am banished afar.
Always you said
Your brother and you are the same
O Father. But today you betray me ...
My doli leaves your house, O father
My doli leaves your house.
These dowry jewels are not jewels
but wounds round my neck, O father.
My doli leaves ... 1
Rural women in northwest India, married among strangers miles away

from their natal villages, use folksongs to decry their estrangement from the
green pastures of their childhood homes - homes to which their brothers,
who customarily inherit the ancestral land, have automatic access. In
Maharashtra (west India), women divorced or deserted by their husbands
can be found working as agricultural labourers on the farms of their
brothers who are substantial landowners (Omvedt 1981). Elsewhere in
India and in Bangladesh there are similar cases of widows who, deprived of
their rightful shares by prosperous brothers or brothers-in-law, have been
left destitute and forced to seek wage work or even beg for survival.2 Many
poor rural women from Rajasthan and Bihar told me: we must get some
land to take care of our children ... even a little land. In Bodhgaya (Bihar),
in 1979, landless labourer women, agitating alongside their husbands for
ownership rights to the land they had sown for years, protested the
1
These verses are taken from folksongs sung by Hindu women in northwest India when the
bride departs from her parents' home. The first was translated by me. The second was given
to me by Veena Das (Department of Sociology, Delhi University). Doli means palanquin.
2
For India: personal observation in Rajasthan (northwest India) and Bihar (east India)
during 1986—88; and personal communication on West Bengal (east India) from Vina
Mazumdar, Center for Women's Development Studies (CWDS), Delhi. For Bangladesh
see Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982), Cain et al. (1979), and Schendel (1981). In one case
described by Cain et al. (1979: 5-6) a widow was reduced to beggary after her husband's
death, although her brother-in-law was the richest man in the village.
1
2 Afieldof one's own
distribution of titles only to men, noting: 'If these men who are today
landless beat up their wives so badly, merely using the power derived from
being men, then tomorrow when they get the land will they not become
relatively even more powerful? We are part of the struggle so we should also
get land' (Manimala 1983: 8). And in the hills of Uttar Pradesh (northwest
India), women in the Chipko movement have been working along with the
men of their community to protect and restore the forests on which their
livelihoods depend. At times they have even gone against the wishes of the
village men (including their husbands), to resist income-generating schemes
that would have destroyed a local forest. 'Planning without fodder, fuel and
water', they assert, 'is one-eyed planning' (Bahuguna 1991: 152).
These images, and these voices of lament, protest and assertion that are
beginning to resonate across South Asia today, highlight the multiple facets
of rural women's relationship with land, and the importance many attach
to having afieldof their own. For a significant majority of rural households,
arable land (an increasingly scarce resource) is likely to remain for a long
time yet, the single most important source of security against poverty in
rural South Asia, even if it ceases to be the sole source of livelihood for
many. Land defines social status and political power in the village, and it
structures relationships both within and outside the household. Yet for
most women, effective rights in land remain elusive, even as their marital
and kin support erodes and female-headed households multiply. In legal
terms, women have struggled for and won fairly extensive rights to inherit
and control land in much of South Asia; but in practice most stand
disinherited. Few own land; even fewer can exercise effective control over it.
Yet the voice of the disinherited female peasant has until recently gone
largely unheard, not only by policy makers but also by grassroots groups
and academics. Instead, employment is taken as the principal measure of
women's economic status, obscuring what has been commonplace in
measuring the economic status of men or of households: property owner-
ship and control.
This book argues that women's struggle for their legitimate share in
landed property can prove to be the single most critical entry point for
women's empowerment in South Asia; and it seeks to bring this issue from
out of the wings onto centre stage.
I. The backdrop
Two decades ago, the question: 'Do women need independent rights in
land?' was not even admitted in public policy discourse in most parts of
South Asia. Today, the question is admissible, but the discussion on it is
limited and the answers to it disputed. Indeed gaining acceptance for the
Land rights for women 3
idea that women need independent rights in land is itself an arena of
struggle, an essential first step in the struggle to translate that need into
effective rights in practice.3
To begin with, to argue that women's economic needs require a specific
focus, distinct from those of men, is to challenge a long-standing assump-
tion in economic theory and development policy, namely, that the house-
hold is a unit of congruent interests, among whose members the benefits of
available resources are shared equitably, irrespective of gender. This
assumption has (until recently) been shared widely by governmental and
non-governmental groups, institutions, and individuals. To go further and
argue that women need independent rights in land- the most critical form
of property in agrarian economies - is to challenge the assumption that
women's economic needs can be accommodated adequately merely
through the employment and other income-generating schemes that typify
development planning. It means admitting new contenders for a share in a
scarce and highly valuable resource which determines economic well-being
and shapes power relations especially in the countryside; and it means
extending the conflict over land that has existed largely between men, to
men aw^/women, thus bringing it into the family's innermost courtyard.
The process by which the assumption of a unitary household, and more
generally of the gender-neutrality of development, has come to be chal-
lenged over the past twenty years is a complex one, which will not be
detailed here. What is notable is that it has been a process of negotiation
and struggle involving multiple actors - academics and researchers,
women's activist groups, government policy makers and bureaucrats, and
international agencies. It was set in motion by at least three interrelated
factors: the building up of gender-specific empirical evidence and analysis,
especially since the mid-1970s, which exposed a systematic gender gap in
how the benefits and burdens of development were being distributed; the
mushrooming of women's organizations loosely constituting a women's
movement, since the late 1970s; and changes in the international context.
This last included, in particular, the declaration of 1975-85 as the United
Nations (UN) Decade for Women, with associated fall-outs in terms of
research funding and dissemination, media coverage, and pressure on
countries to generate gender-specific data and status of women reports.4
3
'Independent' land rights are defined here as rights that are formally untied to male
ownership or control, in other words, excluding joint titles with men. By effective rights in
land I mean not just rights in law but also their effective realization in practice, as
elaborated later in this chapter.
4
Documents (Reports, Action Plans, etc.) from various international and national Confer-
ences, Symposia and Working Groups, that met during 1975-85 to focus on rural women,
provide interesting insights into the changing nature of concerns over this period. For a
selected compilation of such documents (international, and those relating to India), see
4 A field of one's own
Indirectly, feminist scholarship and activism in the West were also facilitat-
ing factors in promoting the issue internationally.
Today, as a result, the idea that development is not gender-neutral has
gained fairly wide acceptance in development enquiry and policy, even
though there is no consensus on the causes of the gender gap or on how it
could be bridged. At the level of policy, this recognition of gender
disadvantage has been reflected particularly in three types of developments:
—the establishment of separate cells, departments or ministries in
government bureaucracies to monitor and coordinate women's
concerns in the development process;
—the incorporation of policy directives on women and develop-
ment in the planning process, as in the Indian Sixth Five Year
Plan, 1980-85 (for the first time in the history of planning in
India), with subsequent plans following suit; and
—the initiation of special programmes targeted at women,
especially income-generating and literacy schemes.
However, the approach underlying these directives and programmes
treats gender as an additive category, to be added onto existing ones, with
women as a special focus or target group, rather than seeing gender as a lens
through which the approach to development should itself be re-examined.
The programmes are essentially couched in welfare terms, under the
umbrella of the 'basic needs' approach that gained currency in development
thinking in the mid-1970s. This approach emphasizes the provision of
'basic' goods and services (such as food, health care, education) to the
economically disadvantaged, but usually without seriously questioning the
existing distribution of productive resources and political power, or the
social (gender/class/caste) division of labour. Most governments typically
deliver such programmes in a top-down manner, involving little dialogue
with the people (especially women) themselves on the definition of their
needs or the best means of meeting those needs.
In this scenario, the issue of women's land rights has, until recently,
received little attention in policy formulation. In India, the numerous
CWDS (1985). The Report, Towards Equality, on the status of women in India, was also a
significant landmark (Government of India (GOI) 1974). Brought out by a Committee set
up by the Indian Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, the Report compiled evidence
of gender gaps in virtually every sector and made recommendations on how to bridge them.
The issue of women's land rights, however, was not raised in the Report, although it
included a discussion on gender inequalities in inheritance laws. On the role of inter-
national aid agencies in pushing the gender question, see especially White (1992) for
Bangladesh. In India, I understand, international organizations such as the UN Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) played an important role in pushing the government to
set up review committees on rural women, such as the 1979 National Committee to Review
and Analyse Participation of Women in Agriculture and Rural Development, set up by the
Ministry of Agriculture (personal communication, Vina Mazumdar, 1992).
Landrightsfor women 5
committees and working groups on the status of women that met between
1975 and 1979, focused almost exclusively on three elements: employment,
education and health.5 It is only in the Sixth Five Year Plan (1980-85) that
we see thefirstlimited recognition of women's need for land (and then only
in the context of poverty). Several factors appear to have contributed to this
recognition. In 1979, at a women's conference in Calcutta, a group of
elected women gram panchayat (village council) representatives from West
Bengal put forward a demand for joint titles (with their husbands) on behalf
of destitute Muslim women in their constituencies. They argued that many
Muslim women had been evicted by their husbands; women therefore
needed the economic security that land provides. This is said to be among
the earliest such public grassroots demands. A similar plea was made by
landless women in 1980 to a sympathetic Land Reform Commissioner at a
camp in West Bengal's Bankura district.6 Such demands were subsequently
included in the recommendations (placed before the Planning Commission)
of a pre-Plan symposium organized by eight women's groups in Delhi in
1980.7 Additional pressure came from the 1979 FAO Report of the World
Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD)
held in Rome, which recommended that gender discriminatory laws in
respect to 'rights in inheritance, ownership and control of property' be
repealed and measures be adopted to ensure that women get equitable
access to land and other productive resources (FAO 1979). These recom-
mendations were incorporated (albeit in very diluted form) in the country
review follow-up to WCARRD undertaken by the Indian Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development (CWDS 1985:89-94). The result of all
this was a policy statement which, asfinallyincorporated in the Sixth Plan
(in a separate chapter on women and development), said that the govern-
ment would 'endeavour' to give joint titles to spouses in programmes
involving the distribution of land and home sites.
However, even this limited formulation, which stops short of granting
women independent titles, remained only a promise on paper. In practice,
government land-redistribution programmes continued to reflect the old
assumption of a unitary male-headed household, and titles were granted
principally to men. In India's Seventh Plan (1985-90), although a separate
chapter on women and development was retained, the directive on joint
titles was not restated, despite strong recommendations for entitling
women by a governmental working group on women and development,
5
See various Indian documents compiled in CWDS (1985).
6
Both incidents were related to me in 1992 by Vina Mazumdar.
7
The group brought out a memorandum entitled: 'Indian Women in the Eighties:
Development Imperatives' (CWDS 1985: 95-8). The gender-sensitive response of some
State planners in authoritative positions within the Planning Commission was of critical
importance in ensuring that such recommendations were taken seriously.
during the plan-formulation stage.8 Meanwhile, the National Perspective
Plan For Women: 1988-2000 A.D., drawn up at the initiative of the Indian
Ministry of Human Resource Development, made a number of substantive
recommendations for closing the gender gap in access to land, amongst
other gender issues needing attention (GOI 1988a). And the report of a
National Seminar on Land Reform called by the Planning Commission in
1989, in which I had presented the case for women's land rights, incorpor-
ated most of my recommendations on this count (GOI 1989a).9
Reports, however, have a tendency to gather dust, their contents
forgotten. It is in this context that the passing of the National Commission
for Women Act, 1990, is an important step forward. The result of many
years of sustained efforts by women's organizations and gender-progressive
individuals, this Act has created a Commission with a wide mandate to
investigate and monitor 'all matters relating to the safeguards provided for
women under the constitution and other laws' (GOI 1990a: 4). In particu-
lar, it is mandatory on the government to place any recommendations made
by the Commission before both houses of Parliament (or, where relevant,
before the state legislatures), along with a memorandum of actions taken or
proposed to be taken by the government, and to give reasons in cases of
non-acceptance of such recommendations.10 Of course, it remains to be
seen what issues the Commission will focus on, and how much weight will
be given by the government to its recommendations.
Certainly, the recently formulated Eighth Five Year Plan (1992-97) for
India has left much of the responsibility for monitoring gender-related
issues (including keeping tabs on the enforcement of social legislation), on
the National Commission for Women, and on women's groups; the
appointment of a National Commissioner of Women's Rights is also
proposed (GOI 1992a-b). This Plan document (unlike the Sixth and
Seventh Plans) does not have a separate chapter on women and develop-
ment, but subsumes women's concerns largely under the chapter on social
welfare (which also deals with children, the disabled, the elderly, and the
destitute), and these concerns are couched essentially in the language of
8
This group, set up by the Department of Social Welfare, Government of India, made four
recommendations concerning women and land: that land and other property be registered
in revenue records in the joint names of both spouses; that single women be given
preference in land distribution by the government; that all property acquired after
marriage be in the names of both spouses; and that loopholes in the Hindu Succession Act
of 1956 be plugged (GOI 1983a).
9
These recommendations were based on some initial research I had done on the subject in
1985-86, and published in 1988 in a widely circulated paper (Agarwal 1988) which had
previously been presented in several academic and other forums, within and outside India.
1
° For further details on the Act and on how the National Commission for Women came to be
set up, see Women's Equality (1992).
women as victims, rather than women also as agents of change and
contributors to development.11 The Plan makes two specific points in
relation to women and agricultural land: one, it recognizes that 'one of the
basic requirements for improving the status of women' is to change
inheritance laws so that women get an equal share in parental property,
inherited or self-acquired (GOI 1992b: 392). However, it does not lay down
any specific directives to ensure that this is followed through.12 Two, and
this is the only concrete policy directive, state governments have been asked
to allot 40 per cent of surplus land (i.e. land acquired by the government
from households owning land more than the specified ceilings) to women
alone, and to allot the rest jointly in the names of the husband and wife
(GOI 1992b: 34). This sounds good until one recognizes how little land is
involved: only 1.04 million hectares (mha) remain to be distributed (GOI
1992b: 34). This constitutes just 0.56 per cent of the country's arable land.13
In other words, the process of incorporating the issue of women and land
into public policy in India has been extremely slow, involving negotiations
between the government, women's groups, individual women academics,
and international agencies, as well as between different elements within the
government. And today, despite the noted progress, it remains an issue of
marginal not central concern.
The situation in other South Asian countries is even more discouraging.
Nepal's Eighth Five Year Plan (1992-97) Summary highlights women's
employment and the need to encourage their participation in various
activities, but contains no reference to women's need for land.14 In
Bangladesh, the latest Fourth Five Year Plan (1990-95) contains two
special chapters on women and development, and some others incorporate
women's concerns (Government of Bangladesh (GOB) 1990). But the
emphasis throughout is on issues such as female employment, literacy,
health, nutrition and credit; there is no mention of land for women, not
11
In contrast, although the Sixth and Seventh Plans also mentioned women's concerns in
their chapters on social welfare, it was their separate chapters dealing with women's
programmes which outlined the primary thrust of policy in this regard; and these were
framed much more in the language of equality and rights, and recognized women's
productive contribution to the economy. Of course, in these documents, as noted, the issue
of women's land rights received marginal (Sixth Plan) or no (Seventh Plan) attention.
12
Indeed, as will be seen in chapter 5, Indian women of most communities already have
considerable legal rights of inheritance (although gender gaps remain on several counts). It
is in the implementation of laws that action is especially necessary.
13
Taking the aggregate of net sown area, fallow land (current and other fallows), cultivable
wasteland, and land under miscellaneous tree crops and groves, the country's arable land in
1987-88 was 184.73 million hectares (GOI 1992c). This tallies with the Ministry of
Agriculture's method of estimating arable land.
14
The full Plan document has yet to be released.
even in terms of government allocations for poor women.15 Similarly,
although Pakistan's Report of the Working Group on Women's Development
Program for the Sixth Plan (1983-88) recommended that all land distri-
buted under the land reform programme should be registered jointly in the
names of both spouses, this recommendation was not incorporated into the
formal plan document. And Pakistan's Eighth Five Year Plan (1993-98)
Approach Paper, in its chapter on 'Affirmative Action for Women and
other Disadvantaged Groups' promises women preferential treatment in
education and employment, but does not mention implementing their
property rights. It also casts gender relations in traditional terms, with the
State explicitly undertaking to 'protect the marriage, the family, the mother
and the child' and to forego any approaches 'which [could] antagonise male
members of the community ...' (Government of Pakistan 1991a: 22, 24).
What is especially striking is the disjunction between public policy
formulation and the rights encased in personal law. The idea of women
having independent property rights (including rights in land) was accepted
by most South Asian countries in laws governing the inheritance of
personal property in the 1950s (and even earlier in traditionally bilateral
and matrilineal communities).16 But such acceptance remained confined to
inheritance laws that affect private land; in development policy governing
the distribution of public land, the issue of women's land rights was not
discussed (as we've noted) till the 1980s. Hence the redistributive land
reform programmes of the 1950s and 1960s in India, Pakistan, and Sri
Lanka, and of the 1970s in Bangladesh, continued to be modelled on the
notion of a unitary male-headed household, with titles being granted only
to men, except in households without adult men where women (typically
15
In 1991, however, a Task Force set up by the Bangladesh Ministry of Planning to review the
country's development strategies made a modest recommendation that female heads of
households, with or without adult sons, and women in households with incapacitated male
heads, be given priority in the distribution of government land (see Report of the Task Force
on Bangladesh Development Strategies for the 1990s (1991)). At present, the Report notes,
under the conditions laid down by the Bangladesh Land Ministry in 1987 for the
distribution of government land to the landless, women can be given priority only if they
are widowed or abandoned and have an adult son who is able to work. It remains to be seen
whether the Task Force recommendations will be acted on.
16
Bilateral inheritance: ancestral property passes to and through both sons and daughters;
matrilineal inheritance: ancestral property passes through the female line; patrilineal
inheritance: ancestral property passes through the male line. The specific, complex
workings of such inheritance systems in South Asia will be discussed in later chapters. The
terms 'matrilineal', 'bilateral', and 'patrilineal' will be used throughout the book (unless
otherwise specified) to relate to inheritance practices, and not to those of descent. In any
case, in all the communities referred to in the book, those following any one of these
inheritance systems also practised the same type of descent system, with the exception of
the Nangudi Vellalars who practised matrilineal descent and bilateral inheritance.
widows) were clearly the heads. This bias was replicated again in resettle-
ment schemes, even in Sri Lanka where customary inheritance systems have
been bilateral or matrilineal.
Underlying this disjunction between government policy in relation to
public land distribution and the rights in private land granted to women
under inheritance laws are likely to be a complex set of factors. These would
include the continued assumption in most public policies of gender-
congruence in interests within the family; the dominant view that men are
the breadwinners and women the dependents; strong male vested interests
in all land, including public land; gaps between the central government's
policy directives and the shape these are given at the state/province level;17
and the belief that land distribution to women will further decrease farm
size and fragment cultivated holdings, in turn reducing agricultural produc-
tivity. The farm size and fragmentation arguments have also been used in
many Indian states to undercut post-independence, gender-progressive
personal laws,18 by retaining age-old customary laws that disadvantage
women in relation to agricultural land. The weaknesses in these arguments
will be discussed later in this chapter. Here it suffices to reiterate the limited
progress made in public policy towards entitling women with land and the
ambiguities that continue to surround even the idea of doing so.
A similar ambiguity toward this issue is found among groups which have
otherwise been strong advocates of redistributive land reform, namely
Marxist political parties and left-wing non-party organizations, most of
whom still see class issues as primary and gender concerns as divisive and
distracting.19 At the same time, most women's organizations (whatever
their political persuasion), with some recent exceptions, have been preoccu-
pied with employment and non-land-related income-generating schemes as
the means of improving women's economic status and welfare, paying little
17
In India, the term 'state' relates to administrative divisions within the country and is not to
be confused with 'State', used throughout the book in the political economy sense of the
word. In Pakistan and Sri Lanka these administrative divisions are termed provinces.
18
The term 'gender-progressive', as used here and subsequently, relates to those laws,
practices, policies, etc., which reduce or eliminate the inequities (economic, social, political)
that women face in relation to men. Individuals and organizations that work toward this
end are also so described. 'Gender-retrogressive' has the opposite meaning.
19
It is noteworthy that in West Bengal when the CPI(M) (Communist Party of India
(Marxist)) government carried out 'Operation Barga' (launched in 1978), a major land
reform initiative which sought to provide tenants with security of tenure by systematically
registering them, primarily men were registered. A similar male bias has characterized the
programmes of most left-wing non-party groups, among the notable exceptions being the
Bodhgaya (Bihar) peasant movement initiated in 1978 by the Chatra Yuva Sangharsh
Vahini, a Gandhian-socialist Youth organization which also took up the issue of women's
land rights (see chapter 9 for details).
attention to the issue of property rights.20 Several years ago, when I began
research on this subject and raised the question of women's land rights with
a number of left-wing women's groups across South Asia, the responses of
most were either that 'we haven't really thought about it', or that
advocating individual property rights went against their vision of a socialist
society. Yet, to my knowledge, this latter argument has not been used in
South Asia against redistributive land reform or peasant struggles through
which (typically male) heads of landless households gain rights in land.21
This neglect of women's land-related concerns by both governmental
and non-governmental institutions mirrors a parallel gap within academic
scholarship, where the relationship between women and property has
remained virtually unattended and little theorized. For instance, the social
science literature on rural South Asia of relevance to this discussion falls
broadly into three categories. First, a vast body of economic development
and political science studies document a strong interdependence between
the rural household's possession of agricultural land and its relative
economic, political and social position. Characteristically, these studies
focus on the household as the unit of analysis, neglecting the intra-
household gender dimension.
Second, there is a substantial body of (primarily descriptive) sociological
and anthropological literature on South Asia, especially that relating to
kinship and marriage. From this, a picture can be constructed of some
aspects of women's position in different communities, socio-economic
strata and parts of the subcontinent. But even in the best of ethnographies
up to the 1970s, the analysis is typically ungendered. Women appear
20
Among the exceptions is the Shetkari Sanghatana's Mahila Aghadi, the women's front of
the Shetkari Sanghatana - a farmers' organization founded in Maharashtra (west India) in
1980 (see chapter 9 for details). Also noteworthy is the role played by Manushi (a women's
journal from India) in reporting such initiatives, and by one of the journal's founders,
Madhu Kishwar, who in 1982 filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India challenging the
denial of land rights to Ho tribal women in Bihar (see Kishwar 1982, 1987).
21
Joshi (1974) who explains the background to the formulation of land reform programmes
in post-independence India and Pakistan, makes no mention of any resistance to
redistributive reform on these grounds. Rather he notes (1974: 167): 'The fundamental
question of land policy was the question of removing [the] discrepancy between ownership
of land and its actual cultivation'; ownership being largely concentrated in the hands of a
minority of landlords and cultivation being done by peasants with usually limited or no
proprietary rights. However, in a personal communication to me in 1992, Joshi added that
a minute section of the left did express unease about measures that could strengthen
individualistic tendencies among the peasantry, but this was not a widely shared concern:
the preoccupation of most was with the need to break the stranglehold of'feudal' elements.
What was discussed widely, though, both by the Planning Commission and various
political parties, was the need to encourage (largely voluntary) cooperation among the
peasantry in various forms, including joint cultivation, the joint ownership of non-land
assets, cooperative marketing and distribution, etc. (On this debate and the limited success
of efforts in this direction, also see Frankel 1978.)
principally as objects of study and exchange, not as subjects; they are
occasionally seen but rarely heard; their presence is registered but seldom
their perspective; and gender relations are depicted as essentially unproble-
matic. Usually (if not universally) implicit in these descriptions is the
assumption that the underlying basis of women's social subordination
(typically defined in terms of women's roles) is the cultural values of the
community to which they belong. In this emphasis on the ideological, the
possible material basis of this subordination, or the dialectical link between
the material context and gender ideology, is seldom recognized.22 And,
culture is often characterized as 'given' rather than in the process of
constant reformulation, or as an arena of contestation.
Third, over the last decade and a half a body of work has emerged which
incorporates gender analysis in diverse ways. This includes some gender-
sensitive ethnographies which bridge important gaps (mainly on women's
work and roles) and a spectrum of other studies which can loosely be
characterized as 'women and development' literature. This literature
examines gender biases in economic development, often giving primacy to
women's economic position as a significant indicator of gender inequality,
and sometimes also as a causal factor underlying non-economic dimensions
of that inequality. But the measure of women's economic status is still
typically employment and labour force participation, not property rights.
In giving centrality to the issue of gender and land distribution, the
question which gets spotlighted before all others is the one we began with:
why do women in South Asia need independent rights in land? An answer to
this question is attempted in section III. Before 'making the case' however,
it is useful to consider some of the wider conceptual links between gender
and property, and to explain why a focus on landedproperty is important,
and what I mean by 'rights' in land.
II. Gender, property, and land: some conceptual links

The relationship between gender, property, and land can be explored from
several angles.23 In the present discussion, six interrelated issues need
particular focus: gender relations and a household's property status; gender
relations and women's property status; the distinction between ownership
and control of property; the distinctiveness of land as property; what is
meant by rights in land; and prospects of non-land-based livelihoods. The
first three issues are discussed in interrelation in the subsection below, and
the last three in separate subsections.
22
T w o notable exceptions are U . S h a r m a (1980) and Kishwar (1987).
23
Also see 'introduction' in Hirschon (1984).
(1) Household property and women's property

The links between gender subordination and property need to be sought in
not only the distribution of property between households but also in its
distribution between men and women, in not only who owns the property
but also who controls it, and in relation not only to private property but
also to communal property. Further, gender equality in legal rights to own
property does not guarantee gender equality in actual ownership, nor does
ownership guarantee control. The distinctions between law and practice
and between ownership and control are especially critical in the context of
gender: for most South Asian women there are significant barriers to
realizing their legal claims in landed property, as well as to exercising
control over any land they do get (as will be elaborated in chapters 6 and 7).
This formulation departs significantly from standard Marxist analysis,
particularly from Engels' still-influential, though much-criticized, The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, where intra-family
gender relations are seen as structured primarily by two overlapping
economic factors: the property status of the households to which the
women belong, and women's participation in wage labour. Engels argued
that in capitalist societies, gender relations would be hierarchical among
the property-owning families of the bourgeoisie where women did not go
out to work and were economically dependent on men, and egalitarian in
propertyless proletarian families where women were in the labour force.
The ultimate restoration of women to their rightful status, in his view,
required the total abolition of private property (i.e. a move to socialism),
the socialization of housework and childcare, and the full participation of
women in the labour force. In the context of industrializing Europe, Engels
(1972: 137-8) argued: 'the first premise for the emancipation of women is
the re-introduction of the entire female sex into public industry'.24
In his analysis, therefore, the presumed equality of gender relations in a
working class family rested on both husband and wife being propertyless
and in the labour force, and the inequality in the bourgeois family rested on
men being propertied and women being both propertyless and outside the
labour force. This underlying emphasis on the relational aspect of gender is
clearly important. So is the emphasis on women's economic dependency as
24
This is not meant as a summary of Engels' complex thesis, but merely of one part of his
argument. Critiques of different aspects of Engels' analysis abound: see especially, Sacks
(1975), Reiter (1977), Aaby (1977), Barrett (1980, 1985), Coward (1983), MacKinnon
(1989), Delmar (1976), Molyneux (1981), and various articles in Sayers et al., eds. (1987). In
particular, Engels' assumption that gender relations within propertyless groups such as the
industrial proletariat or under socialism would necessarily be egalitarian has been widely
criticized in the literature: see especially, Delmar (1976), Molyneux (1981), and Barrett
(1985).
a critical constituent of the material bases of gender oppression. However,
by advocating the abolition of all private property as the solution, Engels
by-passed the issue of women's property rights altogether, and left open the
question: what would be the impact on gender relations in propertied
households if the women too were propertied as individuals? Entry into the
labour force is not the only way to reduce economic dependency; indepen-
dent rights in property would be another, and possibly the more effective
way.
Engels' emphasis on women's entry into the labour force as a necessary
condition for their emancipation has been enormously influential in
shaping the thinking of left-wing political parties and non-party groups,
including left-wing women's groups in South Asia.25 As noted, they too
give centrality to women's employment, but the necessary accompaniments
emphasized by Engels, namely the abolition of private property in male
hands and the socialization of housework and childcare, have largely been
neglected, as has the question of women's property rights.
In my argument that independent property rights can play a pivotal role
in women's struggle for equality in gender relations, a critical additional
point (missed out in Engels' analysis and associated discussions) that needs
emphasis is that of property control. Property advantage stems not only
from ownership, but also from effective control over it. In societies which
underwent socialist revolutions, while private property ownership was
legally abolished, control over wealth-generating property remained pre-
dominantly with men; any positive effects on gender relations that could
have stemmed from the change in ownership if accompanied by gender-
egalitarian mechanisms of control, thus went unrealized.26 Indeed in most
societies today it is men as a gender (even if not all men as individuals) who
largely control wealth-generating property, whether or not it is privately
owned, including as managers in large corporations. Even property that is
under State, community, or clan ownership remains effectively under the
managerial control of selected men through their dominance in both
traditional and modern institutions: caste or clan councils, village elected
25
Also see Molyneux (1981) who describes how in socialist countries (including whose which
were socialist until recently), the influence of Engels' analysis led to a similar preoccupation
with women's entry into employment as the major means of eliminating gender oppression.
At the time of Molyneux's writing, although such entry had taken place in significant
degree in most of these countries, the types ofjobs women held were largely at the lower end
of the job hierarchy; progress toward the socialization of housework was extremely limited;
and the ideological basis of gender oppression (neglected by Engels) had persisted, in
greater or lesser degree.
26
Women's representation in the top political and economic decision-making bodies in such
countries remained minimal. For instance, in the late 1970s, in the USSR, Czechoslovakia,
Poland, and Yugoslavia, of some 557 top government posts only 27 (that is under 5 per
cent) were filled by women (Molyneux 1981).
bodies, State bureaucracies at all levels,2 7 and so on. Also in most countries,
men as a gender exercise dominance over the instruments through which
their existing advantages of property ownership and control get perpe-
tuated, such as the institutions that enact and implement laws,28 the
mechanisms of recruitment into bodies which exercise control over
property (private or public), the institutions which play an important role in
shaping gender ideology, and so on.
A second issue which arises in exploring the relationship between gender
and property is: how do we define a woman's class? Marxist analysis, for
instance, implicitly assumes that women belong to the class of their
husbands or fathers. Hence women of propertied 'bourgeois' households
are part of the bourgeoisie and women of proletarian households are
counted as proletarian, although they may also have a proletarian status by
virtue of being workers themselves. However, as is now well-recognized in
feminist literature, this characterization is problematic in at least two
respects: (a) A woman's class position defined through that of a man -
father, husband, etc. - is more open to change than that of a man: a well-
placed marriage can raise it, divorce or widowhood can lower it. As Millett
(1970: 38) notes: 'Economic dependency renders [women's] affiliations with
any class a tangential, vicarious, and temporary matter', (b) To the extent
that women, even of propertied households, do not own property them-
selves, it is difficult to characterize their class position;29 some have even
argued that women constitute a class in themselves.30
In fact, neither deriving women's class from the property status of men
nor deriving it from their own propertyless status appears adequate,
27
See chapter 10 for figures a n d a further discussion on this.
28
Scandinavian countries have a better record t h a n most others on this count: in N o r w a y a n d
Finland, for instance, w o m e n constituted 34 a n d 32 per cent of all elected and appointed
members of national legislative bodies in 1985—87. This contrasts sharply with the
analogous figures for India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan which ranged between 8 and 10, as
well as with those for the U S A a n d U K which were 5.3 a n d 6.3 respectively (United N a t i o n s
1990).
29
Also, property differences alone d o not distinguish classes. Education, life-styles, a n d so
on, count as well (see especially, Bourdieu 1984). Similarly a g r o u p of persons wielding
power or authority, which m a y or m a y not stem from property ownership, m a y be seen to
constitute a class. O n the concept of'class' within Marxist and n o n - M a r x i s t literature, also
see Wolff and Resnick (1989).
30
While several feminist a u t h o r s have denied the significance of class divisions between
women, they have d o n e so from different standpoints. Millett (1970) did so because she saw
w o m e n ' s class affiliations as basically impermanent. Firestone (1970) saw w o m e n as united
by their biology; she substituted the term 'sex' for 'class' a n d categorized w o m e n as a 'sex
class' as opposed to a n economic class. Delphy (1977), in a m o r e sophisticated analysis,
rooted the problematics of defining women by class in their not owning the means of
production and their economic vulnerabilities with marital b r e a k - u p , even when married to
men from the capitalist class. She located the material basis of w o m e n ' s oppression in
patriarchal exploitation which, she argued, cuts across classes. Also see the discussions in
Barrett (1980) and M a c K i n n o n (1989).
although both positions reflect a dimension of reality. Women of large
landed households in South Asia do gain from their husbands' class
positions in terms of their overall living standards, their typically lower
work burdens, the social status and influence they can command in relation
to other village women, and so on. Hence property mediates relationships
not only between men and women but also between women. At the same
time, there are significant commonalities between women which cut across
derived class privilege (or deprivation), such as vulnerability to domestic
violence; all women's responsibility for housework and childcare (even if
not all women are obliged to perform such labour themselves - the more
affluent ones can hire helpers); gender inequalities in legal rights; and the
risks of marital breakdown due to which even women of rich peasant
households can be left destitute and forced to seek wage work, reflecting
their propertyless state and economic vulnerability as women. In other
words there is an ambiguous character to women's class position.
This complexity impinges with critical force on the possibilities of
collective action among women, again in a double-edged way. Class
differences among women, derived through men, can be and often are
divisive in terms of relative economic privilege or deprivation, the asso-
ciated ability (or lack of ability) to dominate women's groups,31 percep-
tions about which aspects of gender relations need challenging, willingness
to engage in collective struggle, and so on. At the same time, the noted
commonalities between women's situations and the relatively vicarious
character of their class privilege make class distinctions between them less
sharp and divisive than those among men, and could provide the basis for
collective action on several counts (as will be elaborated in chapters 9 and
10).32
A third significant aspect of the relationship between gender and
property concerns the links between gender ideology and property. Several
types of interconnections impinge on our discussion, such as those outlined
below:
(a) Gender ideologies can obstruct women from getting property rights.
For instance, ideological assumptions about women's needs, work
roles, capabilities, and so on, impinge on the framing and implemen-
tation of public policies and laws relating to property (as noted earlier).
Again, ideas about gender underlie practices such as female seclusion,
control of women's mobility and sexual freedom, and so on. These
ideologies and associated practices restrict women's ability both to
exercise their existing property claims and to successfully challenge
31
O n this, see especially Dixon (1978: chapter 6) a n d C a p l a n (1985).
32
There are of course aspects of a person's identity other t h a n class which also can be divisive
or adhesive, such as caste, ethnicity, a n d religion.
persisting gender-inequalities in law, policy, and practice in relation to
such claims (as will be detailed in chapters 6 to 8). Hence ideological
struggles are integrally linked to women's struggles over property
rights.
(b) How property ownership and/or control is socially distributed can
significantly affect ideological constructions, including those of gender.
Those who own and/or control wealth-generating property can exer-
cise considerable direct or indirect control over the principal institu-
tions that shape ideology, such as educational and religious establish-
ments and the media (defined broadly to include newspapers, TV,
radio, film, theatre, as well as literature and the arts). These can be
instrumental in shaping views in either gender-progressive or gender-
retrogressive directions. But to the extent that such institutions repre-
sent a plurality of views there are possibilities of contestation over
ideological constructions through them.
(c) The impact of gender ideologies on women can vary according to their
households' property status (other sources of ideological variations
such as religion, caste, etc., being held constant). This variation could
result from two points of difference between propertied and property-
less households: in what ideas about gender are dominant, and in how
these ideas are put into practice. For instance, in both propertied and
propertyless households the ideology of female seclusion may be
espoused, but the former group would be in a better economic position
to enforce its practice, and in so doing reinforce its emulation by
unpropertied households as a mark of social status. But would there
also be differences in the ideologies espoused within propertied and
propertyless households? Over the years there has been considerable
debate on the degree to which ideological constructions of gender are
autonomous of economic circumstances (excellently summarized in
Barrett 1980). The view I take in this book is that gender ideologies and
associated practices are culturally specific, historically variable, and
dialectically linked to property ownership and control. The form and
practice of gender ideologies can differ among propertied and unpro-
pertied households; at the same time, gender ideologies and associated
practices are not derived from property differences alone, nor can they
be seen in purely economic-functional terms. Rather they would tend to
shift and change in interaction with economic shifts.33
A fourth issue that arises in relation to women and property is the
possible links of women's property rights with control over women's
33
For illustration, see the discussion on female seclusion in chapter 9.
sexuality, marriage practices, and kinship structures. Engels argued, for

instance, that in propertied households the need to ensure the legitimacy of
heirs would necessitate strict control over women's sexuality within mar-
riage and provide the logic for monogamy, while such control would be
unnecessary in propertyless families. That is, he saw the exercise of control
over women's sexuality in essentially economic-functional terms. The
observed emphasis on monogamy and male supremacy over women even in
European working class families and under socialism, that is even when the
presumed material necessity for that control was absent, has been widely
used to criticize Engels' formulation. 34 But his argument raises another
question: would women with independent rights in property (a category of
person which, as noted earlier, he did not consider) be subject to greater or
lesser familial control than those without them? Goody (1976) argues the
former; he proposes that in societies which recognize women's inheritance
rights in parental property, in order to keep the property intact and within
their purview, families or kin-networks would tend to emphasize and
ensure women's pre-marital virginity, and control women's choice of
marriage partners and post-marital residence. Some of the problems with
Goody's formulation are elaborated in chapter 3. The relationships them-
selves are, however, significant ones to explore and will be examined in the
book in some detail for South Asian communities.
(2) The significance of land as property

We want [arable] land, all the rest is humbug.
(A landless woman in Andhra Pradesh)35
Thus far our discussion has revolved around property in general, but not
all forms of property are equally significant in all contexts, nor are they
equally coveted. In the agrarian economies of South Asia, for instance,
arable land is the most valued form of property, for its economic as well as
its political and symbolic importance. It is a productive, wealth-creating,
and livelihood-sustaining asset. Traditionally it has been the basis of
political power and social status. For many, it provides a sense of identity
and rootedness within the village; and often in people's minds land has a
durability and permanence which no other asset possesses.36 Although
34
Moreover, notions a b o u t legitimate heirs' vary widely across cultures and are not linked
everywhere to m o n o g a m y or wedlock, even a m o n g propertied households (as will be
discussed in chapter 3).
35
This was in answer to a query by Mies et al. (1986: 134), to a g r o u p of landless w o m e n in
A n d h r a Pradesh, a b o u t whether they wanted better houses.
36
See e.g. Selvadurai's (1976) observations on a Sinhalese village in Sri L a n k a .
other forms of property such as cash, jewellery, cattle, and even domestic
goods (the usual content of, say, dowry in rural India and Nepal) could in
principle be converted into land, in practice rural land markets are often
constrained, and land is not always readily available for sale.37 In any case,
ancestral land usually has a symbolic meaning which purchased land does
not: within some village communities, continuity of ancestral land also
stands for continuity of kinship ties and citizenship (Selvaduri 1976); in
some others it has ritual importance;38 and so on. Hence in land disputes
people are often willing to spend more to retain a disputed ancestral plot
than its market value would justify.39 Also inheritance systems often have
different rules for the devolution of ancestral and self-acquired land (see
chapter 3 for details).
In other words, both the form that property takes and its origin are
important in defining its significance and the associated possibility of
conflict over it. Hence, for instance (as will be elaborated in chapter 3), in
terms of the possible relationship between a woman's property rights and
the control that her kin might seek to exercise over her sexual and marital
choices, we would expect families to be much more concerned about
keeping landedproperty intact and under their control, than about keeping
control over movables given say in dowry,40 even if such control over
movables were a practical possibility.
37
Rosenzweig and Wolpin (1985: 978), in an all-India sample of 1,523 landowning farm
households in 1970-71, found that less t h a n 1.75 per cent h a d sold land during the survey
year. Again, S h a n k a r (1990: 27) found that in U t t a r Pradesh (northwest India), over a
period of thirty years (1952-53 to 1982-83), only 4.1 per cent of owned agricultural land
was sold, viz. an a n n u a l average of 0.14 per cent. T h e sellers typically owned less t h a n 2.5
acres. In Bangladesh, similarly, Wallace et al. (1988: 112), observed that between 1983-86,
in two villages near D h a k a , only 9 and 12 per cent respectively of the land acquired was
t h r o u g h purchase; 83 a n d 86 per cent was t h r o u g h inheritance and the rest via gifts
(including dowry).
R u r a l land sales on any significant scale in South Asia have usually tended to be u n d e r
distress circumstances. Historically custom restricted the sale of ancestral land (see e.g.
Rattigan 1953, on the Punjab). F r o m the mid nineteenth century, large-scale land transfers
were largely in the n a t u r e of distress sales, say by severely indebted peasants to money-
lenders in the Punjab a n d the B o m b a y Presidency (Barrier 1966, Charleston 1985); o r by
starving peasants during the 1943 Bengal famine ( M a h a l a n o b i s et al. 1946). Also see
Binswanger a n d Rosenzweig (1986a) o n the theoretical reasons why in areas with poorly
developed capital m a r k e t s land is sold mainly for distress reasons, and why in such
circumstances it accumulates with persons with already large holdings.
38
F o r instance, in northwest Nepal, K r a u s e (1982) found that land inherited from an
ancestor was ritually associated by some communities with the kuldevta (ancestral G o d ) .
39
Selvaduri (1976) in his study of a Sinhalese village, describes several bitter disputes a r o u n d
ancestral land, including one where a w o m a n fought her brothers for twelve years for a
small plot of land, in the process spending m o r e t h a n its m a r k e t value.
40
F o r a definition of dowry see the appendix on 'definitions' (p. 505).
(3) What do we mean by rights in land?

Rights are defined here as claims that are legally and socially recognized
and enforceable by an external legitimized authority, be it a village-level
institution or some higher-level judicial or executive body of the State.41
Rights in land can be in the form of ownership or of usufruct (that is rights
of use), associated with differing degrees of freedom to lease out, mortgage,
bequeath, or sell. Land rights can stem from inheritance on an individual or
joint family basis, from community membership (e.g. where a clan or
village community owns or controls land and members have use rights to
it), from transfers by the State, or from tenancy arrangements, purchase,
and so on. Rights in land also have a temporal and sometimes locational
dimension: they may be hereditary, or accrue only for a person's lifetime, or
for a lesser period; and they may be conditional on the person residing
where the land is located, say, in the village.
As distinct from rights in land, we could also speak of'access' to land, a
term very loosely used in the development literature that needs some
clarification. Access can be through rights of ownership and use, but it can
also be through informal concessions granted by individuals to kin or
friends. For instance, a man may allow his sister to use a plot of his owned
land out of goodwill, but she cannot claim it as a right and call for its
enforcement. There are thus several possible ways by which a woman may,
in theory, have access to land, but of these, having 'rights' provides a
measure of security that the others typically do not.
In relation to land rights, four additional distinctions are relevant. First
we need to distinguish between the legal recognition of a claim and its social
recognition, and between recognition and enforcement. For instance, a
woman may have the legal right to inherit property, but this may remain
merely a right on paper if the law is not enforced, or if the claim is not
socially recognized as legitimate and family members exert pressure on the
woman to forfeit her share in favour, say, of her brothers. Second, as noted
earlier, is the distinction between the ownership of land and its effective
control. (Control itself can have multiple meanings, such as the ability to
decide how the land is used, how its produce is disposed of, whether it can be
leased out, mortgaged, bequeathed, sold, and so on.) It is sometimes
assumed incorrectly that legal ownership carries with it the right of control
in all these senses. In fact legal ownership may be accompanied by legal
restrictions on disposal: for instance, among the Jaffna Tamils in Sri Lanka,
a married woman needs her husband's consent to alienate land which she
41
Also see Bromley (1991), Feder and Feeny (1991), and Friedman (1977) for some useful
discussions on property rights, as well as on rights in land.
legally owns. Or there may be no legal restriction on disposal but social
constraints on doing so: for instance, the sale of ancestral land to strangers
is often socially disapproved by kin and the village community. Third, it is
important to distinguish between ownership and use rights vested in
individuals and those vested in a group; and fourth one might distinguish
between rights conferred via inheritance and those conferred by State
transfers of land (as will be elaborated further on).
Although the different possible forms (ownership or usufruct, as vested
in individuals or in groups, and so on) that rights in land can take are not
equivalent, it is not always obvious a priori which may be superior: much
depends on the accompanying organization of production and distribu-
tion. Hence, for instance, in terms of fulfilling an individual's consumption
needs, communal ownership by a clan, where all members (irrespective of
rank or sex) have equal use rights, cannot a priori be designated as inferior
to a system where each member privately owns a plot. Similarly, legal
ownership of land without effective control over its use and the disposal of
its produce need not leave a person better off than if s/he had control
without legal ownership.
Given the above complexities, it is not possible to specify with precision
for all contexts what may be the most desirable form for women's rights in
land to take, but a specification in broad terms is attempted here. When
speaking of the importance of women having 'independent rights in land' I
mean effective rights, that is rights not just in law but in practice. This needs
emphasis, given the popular tendency to equate property rights only with
legal rights. When referring to legal rights alone I will say so explicitly. By
'independent rights', as explained earlier, I mean rights independent of
male ownership or control (that is excluding joint titles with men).
Independent rights would be preferable to joint titles with husbands for
several reasons: one, with joint titles it could prove difficult for women to
gain control over their share in case of marital breakup. Two, women would
also be less in a position to escape from a situation of marital conflict or
violence; as some Bihari village women said to me: T o r retaining the land
we would be tied to the man, even if he beat us.' Three, wives may have
different land-use priorities from husbands which they would be in a better
position to act upon with independent land rights. Four, women with
independent rights would be better placed to control the produce. Five,
with joint titles the question of how the land would subsequently be
inherited could prove a contentious one. This is not to deny that having
joint titles with husbands would be better for women than having no land
rights at all; but many of the advantages of having land would not accrue to
women by joint titles alone.
Here the distinctions mentioned earlier between rights vested in
individuals and those vested in groups, and between privatized land
transfers via inheritance and land transfers by the State, need elaboration.
In relation to privatized inheritable landed property, by effective land rights
for women today I mean inheritance as individuals linked with full rights of
control over land use (viz. sale, bequest, etc.) and the disposal of its
produce. Where land transfers by the State to women are involved, the issue
is more complex. Here effective land rights for women could either mean
individual titles conferring ownership and control rights exactly as with
private land; or they could take the form of land transfers to groups of
women (such as to those belonging to landless households) who could hold
it in joint ownership or long lease, having full control over land use and
disposal of its produce, but excluding the right to sell or bequeath the land.
Although many of the potential advantages for women in having rights in
land would accrue whichever of the above forms those rights take, some
advantages are specific to the form: for instance, individually owned land
can be sold or mortgaged, which could be advantageous in distress
circumstances. But group rights over land which women could use for joint
or individual projects could, in certain contexts, strengthen women's ability
to retain the land and to use it more productively (as will be elaborated in
chapter 10). When specific issues such as these are involved, the discussion
will seek to make clear what form of rights I mean, even though it is not
possible to so nuance every step of the argument.
Finally, some further elaboration is necessary on a specific form of group
rights in land that has both historical and contemporary importance in
South Asia, namely, usufruct rights in village common lands and in forests.
In most South Asian village communities in the pre-British period and even
up to the mid nineteenth century, a significant percentage of land was
available for communal use. This included forests, woodlots, pastures, and
other multiple-use land. Communal access to these lands took complex
forms, but could be seen as linked in broad terms to the prevailing (also
varied) systems of village land tenure. For instance, at the time of British
accession to power, in villages of India where individual peasant proprie-
torship prevailed, cultivated land was separately held by each peasant
household. But all uncultivated land of the village, often consisting of
reportedly vast tracts extending beyond the fields, could be used by the
villagers for grazing, for gathering multiple forest produce, as well as, in
consultation with the village headman, to extend cultivation. This system
(or variations thereof) was reportedly common in western and southern
India.42 In contrast were villages where group proprietorship prevailed
42
See e.g. Baden-Powell (1892, 1896). Whether one can see this form of tenure as a
characteristic feature of these regions is more contentious, given the variety of land systems
existing therein (see e.g. Fukazawa 1984, D. Kumar 1984, and Stokes 1978).
(also termed as the 'joint-village' system): 43 here a founding family or clan
claimed proprietorship of the village's cultivated and uncultivated land.
Male members of the family/clan held ancestral shares in the uncultivated
tracts which could technically be partitioned but, in practice, were left
undivided for use by the family/clan members, as well as for the use of other
village residents serving as tenants to or servicing the founding family(ies).
This system was to be found especially in northwest India. 44 Even here,
however, there were additional common lands outside the village - scrub
forests, hill grazing runs, riverain grazing tracts, open 'primeval' waste-
lands, etc. - to which the villagers had easy access (Kaul 1990).
Hence, unlike individually held land, communal lands within and outside
the village bounds were accessible, in one way or another (restrictions being
greater under the group-proprietorship system), to all members of the
village, irrespective of sex, age, caste, and ethnicity. Where individual
peasant proprietorship prevailed, women had grazing and gathering rights
on these lands by virtue of their membership in the village community,
rights typically neither mediated by dependency relationships on men, nor
dependent on inheritance, purchase, or tenancy which governed access to
private land. Where group proprietorship prevailed, although access to
village common land was more restricted, women resident in the village still
had significant rights of grazing and gathering. 45
Such communal land has always contributed in important ways to the
livelihoods of rural households, especially of poor households, serving as
pastures and as sources of a wide range of subsistence items: fuel, fodder,
fibre, food products, medicinal herbs, materials for house construction, and
so on. Even today, village commons (VCs) provide a significant percentage
of the needs of the landless and landpoor. 46 Much of the gathering of
43
See e.g. Baden-Powell (1896), and Mukerjee and Frykenberg (1969).
44
For a detailed description of this system in undivided Punjab and the Delhi region, see
Rattigan (1953) and Kaul (1990); also see Baden-Powell (1892, 1896).
45
For instance, male members of the village proprietary body (the maliken-deh) in Punjab
had inheritance rights in the cultivated land, as well as ancestral shares in the unpartitioned
communal land. Widows and daughters of the proprietary families had no inheritance
rights in this communal land, but did have use rights in it as long as they resided in the
village (Kaul 1990). The use rights of women belonging to the families of tenants or service
castes would have been circumscribed by their own and their households' relationship with
the proprietor families.
46
Jodha's (1986) study of semi-arid regions in seven Indian states during 1982-85 showed
that among the rural landless and landpoor households, VCs account for 9-26 per cent of
total household income, 91-100 per cent of the firewood used, and 69-89 per cent of the
grazing needs. Gathered food items are particularly important during extreme food crises.
Forests serve a similar function. An estimated 30 m people in India depend on non-timber
forest produce for a livelihood (Kulkarni 1983). The dependence on communal sources of
firewood is especially critical, since this is the single most important source of domestic fuel
in rural South Asia, and in the villages is still largely gathered rather than purchased
(Agarwal 1986a, 1987).
needed items is done by women and children. Where women's access to the
cash economy is limited, access to communal land can serve as a means of
some independent income and economic support.
However, the availability of communal land has been declining rapidly,
both in quantity and quality, especially since the mid nineteenth century,
and noticeably so over the last three decades: between 1950-84, the decline
in area under communal access (now largely in the form of village
commons) ranged between 26 and 63 percentage points across seven Indian
states, and the productivity of such land also fell (Jodha 1986). Much of the
area decline was due to the dual processes of Statization (appropriation by
the State) and privatization (appropriation by individuals). In India, for
instance, both under colonial rule and continuing in the post-colonial
period, State control over forests and village commons has expanded, with
selective access being granted to a favoured few.47 Especially in the late
nineteenth century, the British established State monopoly over forests,
and cut large tracts for timber extraction and for the setting up of railways
and shipbuilding. They also severely curtailed the customary rights of local
populations over these resources,48 granted private contractors the right to
clear forest land for establishing tea and coffee plantations, and encouraged
farmers to expand crop area to increase the government's land revenue
base. Post-colonial policies have continued this process, with forest land
also being increasingly absorbed for commercial exploitation, urban/
industrial expansion, and large-scale irrigation and other development
schemes.49 The nationalization of non-timber forest produce has further
reduced the availability of such products to villagers.
The privatization of community resources in individual hands has
paralleled the process of Statization. State policy has typically acted to
benefit selected groups over others: there has been legalization of encroach-
ments by farmers; auctioning of parts of the commons to private contrac-
tors for commercial exploitation; and the distribution of VC land to
individuals under various land reform and anti-poverty schemes ostensibly
designed to benefit the landless but effectively endowing the already landed.
47
F o r elaboration see G u h a (1983, 1985) a n d A r n o l d and Stewart (1989). In Nepal a similar
process of Statization took place under the local m o n a r c h s , especially in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries (Bajracharya 1983).
48
Also see T h o m p s o n (1976) for interesting parallels in terms of state interventions in
eighteenth-century England which curtailed the peasants' customary rights to the
commons.
49
In India, by the 1985-87 satellite survey, only 64.0 m h a or 19.5 per cent of the geo-area is
today under forests, a n d this is estimated to be declining at the rate of 1.3 m h a a year. In
m u c h of Pakistan a n d Bangladesh, less than 10 per cent of the geo-area is under forest. T h e
gender implications of this loss are particularly adverse, given the noted dependency of
rural women on these resources, a n d their domestic responsibility for fetching fuel, fodder,
and water (for elaboration, see Agarwal 1991).
In some regions of India the poor received less than 20 per cent of the land
so distributed. 50 A similar process of declining village commons due to
illegal encroachments and government redistribution programmes is
observed in Pakistan (Cernea 1981).
Today in many parts of South Asia there are virtually no VCs left (see
table A1.1 for India), and population growth has compounded the pressure
on what remain, speeding their degradation. 51 This has both class and
gender implications. The process of privatization has been accompanied by
an increasing concentration of previously communal land in the hands of
the male members of relatively few households. Poor households have thus
lost out collectively while gaining little individually. Within poor house-
holds, women's loss has exceeded men's due to women's greater depen-
dence on communal resources, given their little control over private
resources (Agarwal 1991). In effect this has deepened both class and gender
differentiation among the peasantry.
With the decline in communal land, access to privatized land acquires a
critical importance today which it did not have even a century ago. In India,
for instance, by a rough estimate about 85.6 per cent of arable land is likely
to be in private hands. 52 Hence the case for women's land rights spelt out in
the next section, while couched in general terms, is especially focused on
rights in privatized land, with two caveats: one, given the importance of
communal land to the rural poor, and especially to poor women, there is a
strong case for protecting the communal nature of any land which still
exists in that form. Two, it is necessary to explore the possibilities of new
institutional arrangements for jointly owned/controlled land holdings by
groups of women, rather than by groups of households (as is the usual
focus). Joint ownership need not, however, imply joint cultivation.
(4) Prospects for non-land-based livelihoods

It is commonly argued that as a country's manufacturing and service
sectors expand, the dependence on land as a source of livelihood is likely to
decline. This may certainly be expected, and indeed is desirable for relieving
the population pressure on land. But at present agriculture is still either a
50
For elaboration, see Jodha (1986). Also see Brara (1987) for Rajasthan state.
5
' There has also been significant degradation of both public and private land as a result of
factors such as: (a) waterlogging and soil salinity associated with large irrigation works: in
some Indian projects, half the irrigable potential created has been lost in this way (Joshi and
Agnihotri 1984); (b) soil and wind erosion: an estimated 56 per cent of cultivable area in
India is so affected; and (c) large-scale deforestation (for details, see Agarwal 1991).
52
This was calculated from India's land-use statistics for 1987-88 (GOI 1992c) as follows:
total arable area, as noted in footnote 13, comes to 184.73 mha. Of this, 158.09 mha, which
is the aggregate of net sown area, land under current fallows, and land under miscellaneous
tree crops and groves, could broadly be assumed to be in private hands.
primary or an important supplementary source of income for the bulk of
the rural population in South Asia. Only a small proportion of the total
labour force, and even less of the female labour force, is employed in the
manufacturing sector; and sectoral labour force projections, where avail-
able, do not predict any dramatic increase in labour absorption into formal
industry in the near future. Also (as noted), whether or not engaged in
agriculture, a significant proportion of the rural population (which in 1990
constituted 74 per cent of South Asia's population)53 is dependent on VCs
and forests for its supplementary survival needs. Hence the importance of
land-dependent livelihoods is unlikely to decline quickly.
Consider, more specifically, the Indian situation; in other South Asian
countries the scenario would differ in degree but not dramatically in
substance. In India, in 1987-88, 85 per cent of rural female workers and 75
per cent of rural male workers were employed in agriculture and allied
activities such as forestry andfishing(GOI 1990b: 99). Only 11.1 per cent of
the total (rural plus urban) labour force was employed in the manufactur-
ing sector. Moreover, the growth rates of employment in the manufactur-
ing and service sectors have fallen sharply over the past decade (GOI 1992b:
129); and employment in organized sector manufacturing was stagnant
between 1983 and 1988 (GOI 1992b: 130).54 According to the Eighth Five
Year Plan projections, some 94 million persons (new entrants plus unem-
ployed backlog) who will seek employment between 1997-2002 (GOI
1992b: 120) will have to find work largely as self-employed or casual
workers.55 The bulk of these will still be located in the rural areas.
Wasteland development through reforestation schemes etc., which has
been emphasized in the Eighth Plan, is directly land dependent. Rural non-
farm employment is another outlet, but at present, although 25 per cent of
male rural workers are engaged in non-agricultural activity as their primary
or subsidiary income source, only 15 per cent of female rural workers are so
engaged (GOI 1990b: 99). Moreover the non-farm sector is very hetero-
geneous, containing both high return/high wage activities and low return/
53
This is taking a n average for five countries: India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, a n d Sri
Lanka (for individual country figures see table A 1.2).
54
Manufacturing enterprises, as defined by the A n n u a l Survey of Industries, are enterprises
employing ten workers or more if using power a n d twenty workers o r more if not using
power. Assessments of employment shifts in the 'organized' part of the manufacturing
sector (and for the organized sector in general) are likely to be rather rough: all organized
sector employment data are collected by the Ministry of Labour, a n d the return of
information by certain categories of private (non-agricultural) sector enterprises is o n a
voluntary basis a n d therefore tends to be incomplete (see G O I 1991a: 1).
55
T h e National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) gives a breakdown of total employ-
ment into regular employment, casual employment a n d self-employment. In 1987-88 only
18 per cent of the male and 8.3 per cent of the female labour force had regular and salaried
employment, about half the workers of both sexes were self-employed, a n d the rest were in
casual employment ( G O I 1992a: 133).
low wage ones. Existing evidence suggests that although in some highly
agriculturally prosperous regions, such as Punjab and Haryana, there has
been a marked growth in non-farm activities which provide high returns for
the self-employed as well as high wages for the wage earners, in agricultur-
ally less-developed regions, where the bulk of the poor are located, low
return, low wage activities (which people undertake for distress reasons) are
more typical. 56 This appears to be the case in even greater measure for
women than men: both the country-wide survey undertaken in 1987 by the
National Commission on Self-Employed Women and Women in the
Informal Sector (see Shramshakti 1988), and micro-studies of women
workers in individual occupations, 57 suggest that women are largely
concentrated in the low-and-insecure-earnings end of the non-farm occu-
pational spectrum.
The picture for most other parts of South Asia appears to be similar.58
Moreover, how well someone does in the rural non-farm sector through
self-employment is itself often significantly related to land access.59 Even a
small plot can considerably expand the range of non-farm opportunities for
56
See e.g. Islam (1986), Papola (1987), Hazell a n d Haggblade (1990), Saith (1991), a n d
Basant a n d K u m a r (1989). Hazell a n d Haggblade, in a cross-state analysis for India for
1981, found that it was the agriculturally most prosperous areas of Punjab a n d H a r y a n a
which h a d the best-developed service, commerce a n d factory manufacturing activities in
the rural areas, while household manufacturing (which brings relatively low returns) was
less important. In states with low agricultural development, household manufacturing was
the main form of rural manufacturing activity. Papola's (1987) cross-state analysis for rural
industries also suggests this difference. A n d in a cluster of West Bengal villages, Islam
(1986) similarly found that non-farm activities typically provided very low earnings (also
see footnote 59).
57
See e.g. various case studies in Singh a n d Kelles-Vitanen, eds. (1987), a n d Mies' (1982)
study on the lace makers of N a r s a p u r (Andhra Pradesh).
58
See e.g. Islam (1986, 1987). Taking a sample of villages in India (in West Bengal),
Bangladesh, Pakistan, a n d Sri Lanka, Islam (1986) found that non-farm activities usually
took the form either of very low wage employment, or of small enterprises doing petty
trading, servicing, a n d manufacturing with very low productivities a n d / o r returns.
Typically non-farm wages or earnings were lower than farm wages or earnings. Non-farm
wage employment was also negatively related to farm size. Similarly, Hazell a n d H a g g b -
lade (1990) found a negative relationship between farm size a n d dependence o n non-farm
earnings (especially wage earnings), in a n all-India analysis for 1970—71 a n d 1980-81. In
addition, in relation to women, Islam (1987:4) notes that cottage industries, which are the
main source of women's employment in rural manufacturing in Bangladesh, Nepal,
Pakistan, a n d India, have been doing poorly in the former three countries (in terms of both
employment a n d contribution to Gross Domestic Product), although India presents a
mixed regional picture.
59
See e.g. Islam (1986), Papola (1987), Saith (1991), a n d C h a d h a (1992). C h a d h a , in a recent
survey of eighteen villages in three states (Bihar, A n d h r a Pradesh, a n d U t t a r Pradesh),
found that access to land m a d e a significant difference to daily household earnings from
self-employment in the rural off-farm sector: in all three states, small farmer households
earned substantially more from this source than landless labour households; in A n d h r a
Pradesh the former's earnings from rural off-farm self-employment were eight times those
of the latter.
poor rural households. And for many rural non-farm wage workers, access
to land as a supplementary source of income would be critical in reducing
the risk of poverty. In addition, the growth and labour-absorbing capacity
of the rural non-farm sector depend in considerable degree on how much
local demand for labour-intensive products is generated; and South Asian
experience suggests that more egalitarian land (and farm income) distribu-
tion is likely to generate greater non-farm employment, especially through
consumption linkages (Islam 1986: 172; Harriss 1991: 454-5).
All said, therefore, it would be realistic to expect that for a significant
majority of persons in rural South Asia, for a considerable time to come,
viable livelihood systems are likely to need access to at least some land. For
rural women this appears even more necessary. As noted, rural non-farm
activity does not, in itself, tend to be especially high paying for most
women. Also there is the prevailing tendency of the non-farm sector to
absorb more men than women; if this gender gap continues as this sector
expands, and it is associated too with male outmigration, the number of de
facto female-headed households in agriculture will tend to increase. At the
same time, as argued below, an increase in male-earned income, whether
from farm or non-farm work, does not automatically translate into equal
benefits for women and children. Moreover (also as argued below), land
rights have an importance for rural households in general and for women in
particular not only for reasons of livelihood, but on many other counts as
well.
III. Why do women need independent rights in land?

The case for women having independent rights in arable land rests on
several interconnected arguments which can be grouped into four broad
categories: welfare, efficiency, equality, and empowerment. 60
(1) The welfare argument

To begin with, especially among poor households, rights in land could
reduce women's own and, more generally, the household's risk of poverty
and destitution. The reasons for this stem partly from the general positive
effect of giving women access to economic resources independently of men;
and partly from the specific advantages associated with rights in land
resources.
Consider first the general case. There is considerable evidence of
60
The discussion here will concern land linked in one way or another to rural livelihoods,
especially arable land, but will exclude homesites, even though the available data on land
ownership do not always separate land under homesites from the rest.
intra-household gender inequalities in the sharing of benefits from the
household's resources. For instance, in large parts of South Asia a
systematic bias against women and female children is found in intra-
household access to basic necessities such as health care, and in some degree
also food. 61 This is revealed in gender differences in one or more of the
following indicators: malnourishment, morbidity, mortality, hospital
admissions, health expenditures, and (especially) in female-adverse sex
ratios (females per 100 males), although the evidence on food allocation/?^
se is less conclusive. 62 The extent of this anti-female bias varies cross-
regionally, 63 but it exists in some degree almost everywhere, particularly as
revealed by the sex ratios which are female-adverse across all of South Asia,
except Kerala in southwest India. The bias is strongest in northwest India,
Pakistan, and Bangladesh, where sex ratios are particularly low, 64 and
much less in south India and Sri Lanka, where the sex ratios, although still
female-adverse, are closer to parity (see table A 1.2).
Further, in many states of India notable differences have been found in
how men and women of poor rural households spend the incomes under
their control: women of poor households typically spend almost all their
incomes to purchase goods for the family's general consumption and for the
children; men usually spend a significant part on their personal needs
(tobacco, liquor, etc.). 65 Mencher's (1988) findings are especially note-
6l
F o r a discussion on this bias and its possible causes in India, see Agarwal (1986b), Harriss
(1990), K y n c h and Sen (1983), Sen and Sengupta (1983), B e h r m a n (1986), B a r d h a n (1974),
Dreze and Sen (1989), G h o s h (1985), Miller (1981), D a n d e k a r (1975), G o r d o n et al. (1965)
and D a s g u p t a (1987a). F o r Bangladesh, see C h e n et al. (1981). F o r Pakistan, see Miller
(1983); and for Sri L a n k a , see Schrijvers (1988). Harriss (1990) covers several South Asian
countries.
62
Harriss' (1990) extensive review of literature and detailed d a t a analysis on intra-household
food allocation in South Asia illustrates the difficulties of arriving at firm conclusions on
this count. Nevertheless, her tentative conclusions include the following two: one,
'discrimination in energy and protein intakes t h r o u g h the allocation of food within the
household seems to be greater in the n o r t h [of the subcontinent] t h a n in the south'; two, 'in
the north it is least "fair" for very young and very old females, and probably for adult
w o m e n with special needs associated with pregnancy and lactation' (p. 405).
63
Some studies also find a cross-class variation, the bias (measured in a n t h r o p o m e t r i c
indices) being higher a m o n g landless households relative to the landed (see e.g. Sen a n d
Sengupta 1983, for West Bengal; a n d Levinson 1974, for the Indian Punjab). But contrary
findings for some other regions m a k e generalizations problematic (on this see Harriss
1990).
64
According to Dreze and Sen's (1989: 52) estimate, India would have 36.9 million additional
women today, and Pakistan and Bangladesh an additional 5.2 and 3.7 million respectively,
if these countries h a d the same sex ratios as s u b - S a h a r a n Africa, namely 102. As they note,
for most developed countries in E u r o p e and N o r t h America the sex ratio averages a b o u t
105, essentially indicative of women's survival advantages over men in the absence of
serious anti-female bias in the distribution of food and health care.
65
There is considerable evidence on this from different parts of India: see Gulati (1978) for
Kerala; Mencher and S a r a d a m o n i (1982) and Mencher (1988) for Kerala, Tamil N a d u and
West Bengal; D a s g u p t a and Maiti (1986) for H i m a c h a l Pradesh, M a d h y a Pradesh, U t t a r
worthy in this regard: based on a sample of landless and near landless

agricultural labour households in ten villages each of Tamil Nadu and
Kerala states in India, and taking a weighted average per village, she found
that with both spouses earning the wife usually contributed 90-100 per cent
of her earnings to general household expenses, while the husband rarely
gave over 75 per cent, spending the rest on himself.66 Where the wife
contributed somewhat less than 90 per cent of her earnings, it was
accounted for, in most cases, by work-related transport and lunch
expenses. The portions that men kept back were spent on food and drinks
with friends and their own clothes. The women's contributions in absolute
terms were also substantial in all cases.67
A corollary to the noted gender differentials in spending patterns are
research findings which suggest that children's nutritional status tend to be
much more positively linked to the mother's earnings than the father's
(Kumar 1978; Gulati 1978). Kumar, for instance, found that among
landless and marginal farmer households in Kerala, where the mother was
in the wage labour force it was her own wages that primarily accounted for
the positive household wage income effect on child nutrition; where the
mother was not in the wage labour force an increase in household wage
income showed no incremental effect on child nutrition.68 Of course the
Pradesh, M a h a r a s h t r a , and Assam; and Per-Lee (1981) for Rajasthan. ( F o r evidence from
outside South Asia, see especially the literature surveys in Bruce 1989; Blumberg 1991; and
H o d d i n o t t 1991.)
Moreover, male expenditure on liquor can have a high cost in p o o r households in terms
of basic necessities foregone. In one survey in the Indian Punjab a n average household with
a heavy drinker was found to spend 40 per cent less on food per capita and less also on
clothing, education, and medicine, than a household without this disability (cited in
Harriss 1990).
66
The median contributions (calculated from Mencher by Blumberg 1991: 102) were 90 per
cent of w o m e n ' s earnings in Kerala and 98 per cent in Tamil N a d u , relative to male median
contributions of 70 per cent and 74 per cent respectively.
67
Some other aspects of Mencher's (1988) findings are also i m p o r t a n t . She found that: (a) a
w o m a n ' s absolute contribution to household maintenance from earned income exceeded
her h u s b a n d ' s in six of the twenty villages, was quite close to equal in five others, a n d
substantial in the rest; and (b) the m i n i m u m contributed by all household males was less
than by all females in thirteen of the twenty villages. This is despite w o m e n ' s lower absolute
earnings due to lesser access to employment and lower wages relative to men. It is also
noteworthy that these contributions d o not include the values of items such as fuel, fodder,
food, etc. that are gathered by women. Moreover, in a subsample of six villages, three each
from the three states, Mencher found that even in the m o n t h when the wives earned least,
h u s b a n d s kept back some earnings for personal expenses: in fact they kept back a larger
percentage t h a n in a m o n t h when the wife earned the most.
68
There is also considerable evidence from other Third W o r l d countries that resources
controlled by m o t h e r s have a greater impact on children's health t h a n those controlled by
fathers. F o r instance, in a sample for u r b a n Brazil, T h o m a s (1990) found that the effect on
child survival probabilities was almost twenty times greater when unearned income (from
rent, physical and financial assets, gifts, etc.) accrued to the m o t h e r than the father. Also see
H o d d i n o t t (1991) and Blumberg (1991) for evidence on this relationship from several other
countries.
relationship between the mother's wage earnings and the child's health
status is complex: for instance, the positive consumption effect of maternal
earnings could be offset by reduced maternal time in childcare. However,
Kumar's results held, even when the length of the mother's employment
was taken into account. 69 It is notable too that among the marginal farmer
households, the mother's cultivation of a home garden (the output of which
she controlled) had a consistently high positive effect on child nutrition. (In
any case, for certain types of land-related incomes (e.g. those from rent)
there need be no conflict between maternal income and time devoted to
childcare; and where such conflict arises there is a case for providing
substitute childcare support.)
In other words, the risk of poverty and the physical well-being of a
woman and her children could depend significantly on whether or not she
has direct access to income and productive assets such as land, and not just
access mediated through her husband or other male family members. For
female-headed households with no adult male support, the link between
direct access to economic resources and physical well-being needs no
emphasis. Such households constitute an estimated (and by no means
negligible) 19-20 per cent of all households in India and Bangladesh. 70
Moreover, as noted earlier, a woman's economic status cannot be judged
adequately by the economic status of her family. Even women whose
parental or marital households are classified as rich peasant can be rendered
economically vulnerable in the absence of independent economic resources
in case of divorce, desertion, separation, or widowhood. At the beginning
of this chapter we noted how in the Indian states of Maharashtra and
Rajasthan, not uncommonly, rural women - divorced, deserted or
widowed - have been found working as agricultural labourers on the farms
of their well-off brothers or brothers-in-law. We also noted how elsewhere,
as in West Bengal (east India) and Bangladesh, there are many cases of
women, married into prosperous households, being left destitute and
forced to seek wage work or even to beg after widowhood. This fact', as
Omvedt (1981: 21) observes, 'perhaps . . . more than any other, shows the
essential propertylessness of women as women.''
69
Also see Leslie's (1989) fairly comprehensive review of studies on Third World countries on
the effect of maternal employment on infant feeding practices and child nutritional status.
She concluded that the research did not suggest that maternal employment would have a
negative effect either on breast feeding or child nutritional status: several studies found
better nutrient intake a m o n g children whose mothers worked, especially where the m o t h e r s
were high income earners; and studies which found a negative association were open to
m o r e t h a n one interpretation. T h e quality of substitute childcare support was also a
significant factor in determining the effects.
70
See Buvinic and Youseff (1978) for India a n d Safilios-Rothschild a n d M a h m u d (1989) for
Bangladesh. According to the Indian census some 10 per cent of households are headed by
women, but this is a significant underestimate (see Agarwal 1985b, on reasons for the
undercounting).
Within this general argument in favour of women's independent access
to economic resources, the case for rights in land is especially strong. In a
context of limited non-farm opportunities, land serves as a security against
poverty - a means to meet basic needs. Consider, for a start, the relationship
between a household's access to land and poverty. In India, in 1982 an
estimated 89 per cent of rural households owned some land (GOI 1987b: 9),
and an estimated 74 per cent operated some (GOI 1986a: 12).71 In
Bangladesh, in 1978, the percentage of rural households owning some land
(arable or homestead) was 89, and those owning arable land was 67
(Jannuzi and Peach 1980: 101). In Sri Lanka, in 1982, 89 per cent of
agricultural operators owned some land (including home gardens).72
Although, given the high degree of land concentration, the majority of these
households only have marginal plots,73 they are likely to have a signifi-
cantly lower risk of absolute poverty than landless households. A negative
relationship between the incidence of absolute poverty and land access
(owned or operated) has been noted in several studies;74 and landless
labourers are found to be worse off than the near-landless during famines
71
The estimates are based on the 37th r o u n d of the N a t i o n a l Sample Survey (NSS) carried
out in 1981-82. T h e figure for land ownership covers all land owned by the household,
whether or not cultivated, including that used for non-agricultural uses.
72
In the Sri L a n k a n Agricultural Census, agricultural operators include land cultivators as
well as purely livestock and poultry operators ( G o v e r n m e n t of Sri L a n k a 1984b: 17).
73
In rural India, according to the N S S , 41.6 per cent of l a n d o w n i n g households owned one
acre or less and accounted for only 3.6 per cent of all land owned by rural households ( G O I
1987b: S-18). The distribution of operational holdings was somewhat less skewed ( G O I
1986a). High inter-household inequalities in land ownership a n d control also characterize
other South Asian countries. In Bangladesh, in 1978, 43.3 per cent of the households
owning some arable land owned 1 acre or less and accounted for only 9.6 per cent of total
owned area (Jannuzi and Peach 1980: 100). In Sri L a n k a , 42.8 per cent of landowning
agricultural operators owned u n d e r one acre a n d accounted for 9.4 per cent of land owned
(Government of Sri L a n k a 1983: 17). Also see chapter 8 (table 8.7) for estimates of Gini
coefficients measuring land concentration.
74
See, Ali et al. (1981), S u n d a r a m and T e n d u l k a r (1983), G a i h a a n d K a z m i (1981), a n d
Lipton's (1985) survey of issues and literature. Estimates for 1975 by Ali et al. (1981)
quoted in S u n d a r a m (1987: 179) indicate a consistent decline in the percentage of rural
population below the poverty line as the operational holding size increases. F o r instance,
a m o n g those operating no land the percentage below the poverty line was 81.7; a m o n g
those operating 0.0-0.5 ha the percentage was 75.4; for the 2-4 ha category of farms it was
45.3; and a m o n g those operating over 8 ha it was 4.5.
S u n d a r a m a n d T e n d u l k a r (1983), o n the basis of N S S d a t a for 1977-78, found that the
incidence of poverty a m o n g households dependent mainly on agricultural wages for a
livelihood was almost twice that a m o n g cultivating households (58.8 per cent relative to
30.1 per cent). G a i h a and K a z m i (1981) again found the highest risk of poverty a m o n g
agricultural wage labour households, on the basis of all-India d a t a for 1970-71 from the
National Council of Applied Economic Research.
Lipton's (1985) review of literature shows that the relationship between land a n d poverty
varies regionally a n d by land quality, the negative relationship between land (owned a n d
operated) and risk of poverty is strongest for good quality, irrigated plots (in which case
even an acre can significantly reduce the risk of poverty), and weakest for very p o o r quality,
rainfed land (in which case m u c h larger plots are needed to m a k e a n o t e w o r t h y difference).
(Sen 1981). Land access helps in both direct and indirect ways. The direct
advantages stem from production possibilities, such as of growing crops,
fodder, trees, or a vegetable garden (unless of course the land is of very poor
quality), or keeping livestock, practising sericulture, and so on. In addition,
land provides indirect advantages, such as facilitating access to credit from
institutional and private sources, helping agricultural labour maintain its
reserve price and even push up the aggregate real wage rate, 75 and, where
the land is owned, serving as a mortgageable or saleable asset during a
crisis. Moreover, for vulnerable groups such as widows and the elderly,
ownership of land and other wealth strengthens the support they receive
from their relatives, by increasing their bargaining power within the
household. 76 As an old man (cited in Caldwell et al 1988: 191) put it:
'Without property, children do not look after their parents well.'
However, given the noted biases in the intra-family distribution of
benefits from household resources, exclusively male rights in land, which
would render the household less susceptible to poverty by some average
measure, will not automatically provide this protection to all its members,
and especially not to its female members. Thus on grounds of both women's
and children's welfare, there is a strong case for supporting women's
effective rights in private or public land, independently of men. Equally,
there is a case for protecting and ensuring women's interests in land which is
as yet non-privatized, possibly by granting groups of women usufructuary
rights in public land (as will be elaborated in chapter 10). Although rights in
private or public land are especially important as a poverty-alleviation
measure for women in poor households, they are also relevant for women of
better-off households, given the risk of poverty following marital break-
down faced by all rural women.
It needs emphasis here that the welfare case for women's land rights
stands even if the plot is too small to be economically viable on its own.
Indeed those opposing female inheritance in land often emphasize that
women might end up inheriting economically non-viable holdings. In my
view, this could be a problem where cultivation is seen as the sole basis of
subsistence, but not where land-based production is only one element in a
diversified livelihood system. For instance, a plot of land which does not
produce enough grain to economically sustain a person or family could still
support trees or provide grass for cattle. Many landless widows I spoke to in
the Indian state of Rajasthan said they could not take advantage of the
government's anti-poverty loans for cattle purchase because they had
75
See e.g. Raj and T h a r a k a n (1983) and B a r d h a n (1984). F o r details of their findings see
chapter 2.
76
See e.g. White (1992) for Bangladesh; and Caldwell et al. (1988), Dreze (1990: 68-70),
Sharma and D a k (1987), and Raj and Prasad (1971) for India.
nowhere to graze the animals. With even small plots of land for growing
grass, animal upkeep would have been more viable. Moreover, although
forced collective farming is likely to be inefficient, cases of people voluntar-
ily cooperating to undertake land-based joint productive activities also
exist: there are several successful instances of small women's groups doing
so in India and Bangladesh (as will be described in chapter 9).
Of course the emphasis here on land for women is not to deny the need to
expand women's employment and earning opportunities in non-land, or
non-farm activities. Indeed, thinking of land as one income source among
others points toward the importance of planning along these lines as well.
But, as my earlier discussion suggests, this necessitates promoting a
productive non-farm sector and ensuring women's entry into the higher-
earning segments of that sector.77
(2) The efficiency argument

To trace the likely efficiency effects of women having land rights is a much
more complex undertaking than tracing the potential welfare effects.78
Consider the issue situationally.
In a variety of contexts women are today operating as household heads
with the primary and sometimes sole responsibility for organizing cultiva-
tion and ensuring family subsistence, but without titles to the land they are
cultivating. For instance, due to long-term male outmigration many
women are serving as de facto household heads, especially but not only in
the hill regions of the subcontinent.79 Or widows are cultivating plots given
to them out ofjoint family estates (as part of their inheritance claims to their
deceased husbands' lands) but the plots are still in their in-laws' names.80
Again, tribal women cultivating communal land rarely hold titles to their
fields, which are typically given out by the State only to male farmers.
Titling women in these circumstances and providing them infrastructural
support could help increase output, by increasing their access to credit,81
77
Also see the recommendations in Shramshakti (1988).
78
This includes b o t h productive efficiency and efficiency in the m o r e general sense of meeting
the target goals of a p r o g r a m m e such as a poverty-alleviation p r o g r a m m e .
79
Jain (1984: 1789) found that 20 per cent of households in C h a m o l i district ( U t t a r Pradesh
hills, northwest India), were de facto female-headed due to male outmigration. F o r India,
also see Jetley (1987) and for Pakistan, see Shaheed (1981).
80
I found several such cases in Rajasthan in 1987.
81
There is considerable evidence from Asia that titling can significantly enhance farmers'
access to credit (in terms of sources, a m o u n t s , and terms) by enabling them to use land as
collateral (see e.g. Binswanger and Rosenzweig 1986b; Binswanger 1986; Feder 1989;
Feder et al. 1986; and Feder a n d N o r o n h a 1987). Also see Staudt (1975/6), and Saito and
W e i d e n m a n n ' s (1990) discussion (mainly in the African context) on the problems women
farmers face in obtaining credit in the absence of titles.
and to technology and information on productivity-increasing agricultural
practices and inputs (in the dissemination of which both a class and gen-
der bias prevails). 82 Land titles could make it easier for women to adopt
improved agricultural technology and practices as well as enhance their
motivation to do so, and so increase overall production. This is not
dissimilar to the argument made in land reform discourse favouring
security of tenure for tenants to encourage technical investments in land by
increasing the tenants' capacity and incentive to invest.
A more general issue, however, is the likely efficiency effect of women
inheriting land. Female inheritance is often opposed in South Asia on the
grounds that it will further reduce farm size, increase land fragmentation,
and thus reduce output. Is this fear valid? The efficiency implications of
female inheritance could be separated analytically into three parts: (a) a
farm-size effect: the average size of ownership holdings would be less than if
only men inherit; (b) a land-fragmentation effect:83 fragmentation could
increase in so far as the land is parcelled out to heirs say according to land
quality; and (c) a gender-transfer effect: some of the land which would have
gone only to men would now go to women.
The concerns surrounding the farm-size effect are similar to those that
arise in relation to redistributive land reform, namely the effects of
redistributing land from big to small farmers on farm output, on the
adoption of new technology, and on marketed surplus. Those who oppose
redistribution argue that it will have a negative effect on all three counts.
However, existing evidence does not support this view. Studies relating to
the 1950s and 1960s, that is the pre-'green revolution' period, 84 clearly
show that small-sized farms had a higher value of annual output per unit of
cultivated area than large-sized ones, typically because small farms tended
to have higher cropping intensities and a more labour-intensive and higher-
value crop-mix. 85 It is significant that this inverse size-productivity rela-
tionship, which some had predicted would disappear with the new agricul-
82
F o r a review of South Asian material o n the class bias in agricultural extension, see
Dasgupta (1977) and Byres (1972), a n d o n gender bias see Agarwal (1985a), Goetz (1990),
and Kilkelly (1986).
83
T h e term 'fragmentation' as used here relates t o the division of a farm into several n o n -
contiguous parcels of land, a n d farm size relates to the aggregate area of such parcels held
by the cultivator. T h e analytical distinction between the farm size effect a n d the fragmen-
tation effect is important, as will be seen from the discussion which follows. In popular
parlance the term 'fragmentation' has come to be used rather loosely (and incorrectly) to
refer also to the process of declining farm size.
84
T h e term 'green revolution' is popularly used to describe the dramatic increases in
agricultural o u t p u t in Asia during the late 1960s and early 1970s, following the adoption of
a package of agricultural inputs a n d practices, principally high-yielding cereal varieties
with chemical fertilizers a n d a n assured water supply.
85
F o r a review of studies see especially Agarwal (1983: chapter 7), Boyce (1987: chapter 2),
and Berry a n d Cline (1979: chapter 4). Also see Bharadwaj (1974).
tural technology, has persisted, as evidence from India, Bangladesh, and
Pakistan bears out. 86 Small farmers have adopted the new technology in
most areas where large farmers have done so, although after a time lag,87
and the inverse size-productivity relationship remains strong, even if
somewhat weakened in some areas in comparison with the pre-green
revolution period.88 Again, the evidence on marketed surplus does not bear
up to the sceptics' claim that this will decline because small farmers will tend
to retain a larger percentage for self-consumption. For non-foodcrops the
marketed surplus is found to be very high on farms of all size groups
(Lipton 1992), and on foodcrops the higher productivity effect of small
farms may well outweigh their higher propensity-to-consume effect.89 In
any case, an improvement in the consumption standards of the poor in the
farm sector cannot in itself be seen as an inefficient outcome. In fact a diet
improvement among the very poor may add to labour productivity (as
elaborated later).
In other words, the existing evidence suggests that land redistribution
from big to small farmers would probably increase agricultural output;
certainly there is no reason to expect an output decline. Although these
studies do not differentiate between male and female farmers, the argu-
ments presented above can also justifiably be extended in response to the
farm-size concerns raised by opponents of female inheritance. The same is
true for the land fragmentation argument: it would be of relevance for both
male and female heirs, and in both instances there would be a case for land
consolidation.
86
See Berry a n d Cline (1979) for India a n d Pakistan; Agarwal (1983) for India (Punjab); a n d
Boyce (1987) for India (West Bengal) a n d Bangladesh. It is noteworthy that farms at the
lower end of the size spectrum in Bangladesh are on average m u c h smaller t h a n farms
elsewhere in the subcontinent. T h e persistence of the inverse relationship in that country
therefore adds further strength to the argument for redistribution.
87
See the considerable evidence for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, a n d several other countries
presented in Lipton a n d L o n g h u r s t (1989:115-16). Large farmers usually a d o p t first, given
their better economic a n d institutional access to inputs. But smaller farmers typically catch
up, especially if State support is forthcoming.
88
See e.g. Boyce (1987: 213) w h o notes: 'the agricultural census d a t a reveal little tendency for
the inverse relation to disappear with the advent of the new seed-fertilizer technology. A s of
1976/7 . . . the p r o p o r t i o n of acreage devoted t o H Y V s was inversely related to farm size'. I
found the same for d a t a relating to the Indian Punjab for 1971-72 (Agarwal 1983).
Similarly Berry a n d Cline (1979: 111)conclude from Indian d a t a relating to several states
that 'the inverse relationship persists in [ 1 9 7 0 - 7 1 ] . . . , although its steepness is moderately
reduced'.
It is argued by some (e.g. Bhalla and R o y 1988) that the inverse relationship is
significantly weakened (although not eliminated) if land quality (treated as an exogenous
variable) is controlled for (small farms having better quality land t h a n large ones); but as
Lipton (1992) points out, land quality is not an entirely exogenous variable but itself
depends in fair degree on the quality-improving l a b o u r of small farm families, in activities
such as bunding, levelling, maintenance of irrigation channels, etc.
89
As found, for instance, in Kenya (Lipton 1992).
However, female inheritance, as noted, raises an issue in addition to
those of farm size and fragmentation, namely the possible output impli-
cations of land transfer between the genders, that is from potential male
heirs to female heirs. (This issue also arises in relation to the transfer of
public land to women.) In this context, it needs emphasis that ownership
rights can co-exist with a variety of cultivation arrangements. In so far as
women owners do not cultivate the land themselves, but lease it out to male
relatives or to other male tenants, there need be no gender-transfer effect on
output. But women who seek to manage the land themselves tend to
encounter several obstacles that a male farmer typically does not: gender
biases in access to technical information and inputs, difficulties in com-
manding family labour, social constraints to operating freely in factor and
product markets, and so on (for elaboration, see chapter 7). These could
have a negative effect on output. The solution, however, lies in providing
women farmers with the necessary technical and institutional support to
reduce the constraints they face, and not in disinheriting them. 90 After all,
the ability of male farmers to adopt modern technologies and increase
output is also dependent on access to support services.91
Indeed, the experience of several non-governmental credit institutions,
such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which cater to the very poor,
indicates that women usually have better repayment rates and are therefore
often better credit risks than men (Hossain 1987).92 Here the perceptions of
poor peasant women in Bihar are also revealing. During a discussion on
90
Some African case studies are illustrative. F o r instance, in west Kenya, maize yields were
almost 7 per cent more on female-managed farms relative to male-managed ones when they
had the same access to extension services (cited in Dey 1992: 14).
1l
A n additional question arises here, which impinges o n the issue of marketed surplus raised
earlier, namely: would p o o r peasant women's immediate concern with ensuring family
subsistence have implications for cropping patterns (with a possible bias towards subsis-
tence crops a n d lower marketed surplus), if they h a d direct control over farm production?
This needs further probing. M y own observation in Rajasthan a n d the hills of U t t a r
Pradesh, of widow-managed or de facto female-managed fields, does not suggest this need
follow: in both places, cultivation for sale (onions in Rajasthan, potatoes in the U P hills)
was popular with m a n y women. A Sri L a n k a n village study too, found n o preponderance
of men growing crops for sale a n d women growing only subsistence crops ( G u n a w a r d e n a
1989). A more systematic examination of this issue is, however, possible using case studies
for sub-Saharan Africa where men a n d women typically cultivate separate plots. In Dey's
(1992) literature review, for instance, cases of women not adopting higher value crops or
improved varieties, could be traced either to specific constraints, such as inadequate labour
at their c o m m a n d , or to their having greater control over the incomes from traditional
crops. Again, Whitehead (1990: 459), from her extensive survey of the African material,
concludes: T h e historical record shows that rural wives have . . . changed their labour time
use quite considerably in response to the development of a market for rural products . . .
they have adopted new crops, new crop mixes, and new techniques . . . they have marketed
crops ... [while] seeking to maintain within their farming a viable food-producing element
for self-consumption.'
92
Since 1983, the G r a m e e n Bank has been giving special preference to female household
members in providing credit: only one member per household, from households owning
less than 0.5 acres of cultivable land, is n o w eligible for a bank loan. In June 1988 the
land access and government credit, some insisted: 'If the land is in women's
names, the loan money cannot be spent on drink or frittered away' (Alaka
and Chetna 1987: 26). We might thus find greater efficiency in the use of
investment resources on farms managed by women. Also, supporting
women as farm managers could make for a more talented and better
informed pool, than one consisting solely of men. 93
An efficiency corollary stems from the welfare argument as well. In so far
as the allocation of economic resources such as land to women within poor
households improves their own and their children's nutrition and health, it
could increase labour productivity as well, both immediately and in the
future (through the children). 94
Moreover, it is possible that land in women's hands could lead to a
different, more environmentally sound use of the resource. Where men's
and women's land-use priorities fail to correspond, whose priorities prevail
can significantly affect the use patterns of both public and private land.
Examples from the Chipko movement for forest protection and regene-
ration, which began in 1973 in the hills of Uttar Pradesh, reveal noteworthy
gender divergence on this count: for instance, in tree-planting schemes, men
have usually opted for fruit trees for cash and women for fuel and fodder
trees for subsistence.95 Again, women successfully resisted the axing of the
Dongri-Paintoli oak forest for setting up a government potato-seed farm,
in opposition to the village men who favoured the new scheme for its
potential cash benefits. These women's direct concern with the protection
and regeneration of the forest as a source of 'fuel, fodder, food, fibre, and
fertilizer' and of 'soil, water, and pure air', has had significant positive
implications for ecological preservation in the region. However, as I have
argued in some detail elsewhere,96 the basis of poor peasant and tribal
scheme covered 9,000 villages, providing credit to 413,000 members, of which 83.8 per cent
were women (Hossain 1988).
93
Women in many rural communities, for instance, are often better informed about crop
varieties than men. Burling (1963) found that among the Garos of Meghalaya (northeast
India) the women knew of some 300 indigenous rice varieties and the men always deferred
to the women on this count. In Nepal, it is women who do much of the seed selection work
among almost all agricultural communities (Acharya and Bennett 1981). In Pakistan
Punjab again, women play an important role in the selection of crops and seed variety (D.
Merry 1983).
94
There is some empirical evidence to support this view: see, for instance, Strauss (1986) and
Deolalikar (1988) on the positive association between nutritional intake and labour
productivity, although admittedly the interaction between nutritional intake and human
functioning could be subject to interpersonal and intrapersonal variation (see discussion in
D r e z e a n d S e n 1989).
95
Brara (1987) found a similar gender divergence in tree choices in Rajasthan (northwest
India).
96
See Agarwal (1991, 1992). These papers also criticize the tendencies within 'ecofeminist'
discourse to trace the connection between women and the environment either to female
biology or to ideology (e.g. the symbolic identification of women with nature), while
neglecting the material basis of the connection in the gender divisions of labour, property,
and power.
women's concern with environmental protection in movements such as
Chipko needs to be sought not in some biological connection between
women and nature, but in the prevailing gender division of labour, which
makes hill women primarily responsible for fetching fuelwood, fodder, and
water. In the Dongri-Paintoli incident, for instance, the loss of the forest
would have added several miles to women's fuelwood journeys, while they
feared that the scheme's cash benefits would flow to men alone.
Finally, the provision of land to women could have other indirect
benefits, such as reducing outmigration to the cities, both of the women
themselves and of the family members dependent on them. Given the
already high pressure on urban facilities and the inability of cities to
continue absorbing new immigrants in economically viable ways, a reduc-
tion in outflow of labour from the countryside would be a decided benefit.
Also, improved farm incomes in women's hands could generate a higher
demand for non-farm goods that are produced locally and labour-intensi-
vely, in turn creating more rural jobs. 9 7
(3) The equality and empowerment arguments

While the welfare and efficiency arguments are concerned with women
having some land in absolute terms, especially in a situation of poverty
when they have little or none, the empowerment and equality arguments are
concerned also with women's position relative to men, and particularly with
women's ability to challenge male oppression within the home and in the
wider society.
The equality argument for land rights can be approached in several
different ways, but two aspects are especially important here. One is the
larger issue of gender equality as a measure of a just society, in which
equality of rights over productive resources would be an important part. In
India, for instance, the Constitution of 1950 promises equality as a
fundamental right. This includes equality before the law, and prohibition of
discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, and place of birth.
These provisions are commendable, as Beteille (1987) points out, for a
society which has traditionally been hierarchical to an unusual degree,
especially in terms of caste and gender. However a vast gap remains
between stated principles and State practice, as revealed, for instance, in the
gender biases in existing laws concerning landed property, the functioning
of legal institutions, public policies and their implementation, and so on.
97
This is partly because women's lesser mobility tends to confine them more than men to local
markets, and partly derivative of the more general argument, made earlier, that villages
with greater equality in land distribution in South Asia are likely to generate more demand
for local non-farm products.
Also obstructing women's ability to achieve equality of land rights are
gender disadvantages (some already noted, others discussed later in the
book) in the social, ideological, and political spheres. These gender gaps
need closing if indeed we are to move toward a more just society.
Two, there is the specific aspect of equality in land rights both as an
indicator of women's economic empowerment and as a facilitator in
challenging gender inequities in other (e.g. social and political) areas. In the
present discussion, the links between gender equality in land rights and
women's empowerment are of special interest and importance. But first,
what do we mean by empowerment? The term has been used variously (and
often loosely) in academic writing and by social action groups across the
world, including South Asia. In the present context, it could be defined as a
process that enhances the ability of disadvantaged ('powerless'') individuals
or groups to challenge and change (in their favour) existing power relation-
ships that place them in subordinate economic, social, and political
positions.9* Empowerment can manifest itself in acts of individual resis-
tance as well as in group mobilization. Entitling women with land would,
on the one hand, empower them economically, and, on the other hand,
strengthen their ability to challenge social and political gender inequalities.
That is, land rights would enhance women's 'freedom to achieve' (or
'capability to function') in non-economic spheres as well."
A telling illustration is provided by the Bodhgaya movement (see chapter
9 for details) that emerged in the state of Bihar in eastern India in the late
1970s, in which women and men of landless households jointly participated
in an extended struggle for ownership rights in the land they cultivated,
which was under the illegal possession of a local Math (a temple-monastery
complex). During the struggle, women raised a demand for independent
land rights, not only for reasons of economic security but also because this
impinged on marital relations. As the quotation towards the beginning of
this chapter indicates, they feared that if land titles went only to their
husbands, they would be rendered relatively even more powerless, and
vulnerable to domestic violence. Their fears proved correct: where only
men got titles there was an increase in drunkenness, wife-beating and
threats: 'Get out of the house, the land is mine now' (Manimala 1983: 15);
while where women got the titles they could now assert: 'We had tongues
but could not speak, we had feet but could not walk. Now that we have the
98
B o o k m a n and M o r g e n (1988: 4) arrive at a very similar definition in the context of
working-class w o m e n ' s resistance and political activity in the United States.
99
See Sen (1992) for an exposition of the notion of 'freedom to achieve 7 which he
distinguishes from actual achievement. H e notes (1992: 31) 'Achievement is concerned with
what we manage to accomplish and freedom with the real opportunity that we have to
accomplish what we value'. F r e e d o m , in his schema, is reflected in a person's 'capability to
function'.
land, we have the strength to speak and walk' (Alaka and Chetna 1987: 26).
Similar responses were noted in China, when the Chinese Communist Party
promulgated the Agrarian Reform law in 1947, which entitled women to
hold separate land deeds for the first time. The women were quick to realize
the law's potential for freeing them from oppressive marital lives: 'When I
get my share I'll separate from my husband. Then he won't oppress me any
more'; and 'If he divorces me, never mind. I'll get my share, and the children
will get theirs. We can live a good life without him' (Hinton 1972: 470). In
Chaojia village, Croll (1978) notes, every poor peasant, man or woman, was
allotted a piece of land. Where earlier women had been referred to as 'so-
and-so's wife' or 'so-and-so's mother', now their own names were written in
the land certificates: 'They had acquired a name alongside a share of the
land'(Croll 1978:215).
Land rights can also make a difference to women's relationships (as
indeed to men's) with other family members. For instance, during field-
work in Rajasthan (northwest India) in 1987, I found that landowning
widows living with their adult sons were treated with much greater respect
and consideration than those who were landless and economically depen-
dent. Dreze (1990) makes similar observations for some other parts of
India. Although better treatment from family members can also result from
an improvement in the women's economic position through employment or
other means, 100 in the rural context land offers a specific form of security
which other sources of income do not - at the very least, a space of one's
own. In the Bodhgaya case, for instance, the women were already wage
labourers and were therefore not economically dependent; but their
husbands were still able to threaten them with eviction.
It is also notable that the Bodhgaya women saw intra-household gender
relations being affected not just by their own propertyless state, but by their
remaining propertyless while their husbands became propertied. In other
words, land titles were important to women not only for improving their
economic well-being in absolute terms (the welfare argument), but also for
improving their relative position vis-a-vis their husbands: their sense of
empowerment within the home was linked to economic equality.101
Outside the household as well, having land rights can empower women in
various ways. First, it can impinge on the social treatment received from
other villagers: low caste women members of a rural voluntary organiza-
tion in Andhra Pradesh (south India), attributed their powerlessness
mainly to their lack of land: 'If we had a little land they [the upper-caste
100 p o r elaboration a n d examples see chapter 2.

101
The importance of women's rights in land in strengthening their overall bargaining
position within the household will be discussed in detail in chapter 2, which also seeks to
provide a conceptual framework for characterizing gender relations.
landlords] would not talk like this. But now they keep us at a distance
because they say we are untouchables and shameless' (Mies et al 1986:115).
Second, it can enable poor rural women to bargain with employers for
higher wages from a stronger fall-back position. Third, land ownership is
widely linked to rural political power. Traditionally, influential villagers
usually came from landed backgrounds, and even today this is true, more
often than not, of those elected to local village councils. 102 Of course land
ownership by individual women, in itself, is not a sufficient condition for
their greater participation or influence in social and political institu-
tions. 103 The ideological barriers to women's participation in public
decision-making bodies, even women endowed with land, could be con-
siderable (see chapter 7 for details).
In addition women's participation in decision-making within local social
and political institutions is likely to be linked to the class and caste (or
ethnic) structure of the village. 104 The ability of low caste women to have a
say in the decision-making processes of village councils, for instance, will
not necessarily improve solely by their having small plots of land in a village
dominated by upper-caste, rich, male landowners. Nevertheless, land rights
could play a significant role in facilitating such participation. And the
barriers of individual isolation could be overcome by group solidarity
among the women: for instance, an individual woman or a few women with
landed property may yet find it difficult to assert themselves politically or
socially in the village, especially where social norms dictate seclusion.
However, a large group of women acting in unity could be in a position to
do so. 105 (Here there could be some congruence of interests even between
women of diverse class and caste backgrounds.)
Indeed the term 'empowerment' has been equated by some with collec-
tive action. However, as a definition of empowerment this would appear
102
F o r Bangladesh, see Alamgir (1981), C h o w d h u r y (1978), C h o w d h u r y (1987), R a h m a n
(1979), and Solaiman and A l a m (1977). F o r Pakistan, see A h m a d (1968), Alavi (1982), D .
Merry (1983) and Raza (1969). F o r India, see Singh (1961), a n d R. Singh (1988).
103
It m a y not be a sufficient condition even for men. F o r instance, in Pakistan Punjab, Alavi
(1982) notes that landowners typically build their political power by organizing factions of
supporters consisting of their sharecroppers and other economic dependents, and forging
alliances with fellow landlords w h o t o o are faction leaders. Here economic power
becomes 'the aggregated power of members of a landowning class w h o are in close alliance
with each other, rather t h a n the power of a single individual or a family' (p.50).
104
This issue needs m o r e probing. But it is notable that those environmental movements in
India in which entire communities or villages have participated, and in which w o m e n ' s
participation in particular has been high, have emerged primarily in hill and tribal areas
that are m a r k e d by relatively low levels of class, caste, and gender differentiation (also see
Agarwal 1991). Further, the experience of w o m e n ' s cooperatives suggests that class and
caste h o m o g e n e o u s institutions are m u c h m o r e conducive to the participation of poor,
low caste women than are heterogeneous ones: mixed class/caste cooperatives, for
instance, tend to be dominated by upper-caste, rich peasant w o m e n (see e.g. Dixon 1978).
105
F o r elaboration and illustrative examples, see chapter 9.
too narrow. In a limited sense, collective action may itself empower women
by enhancing their self-confidence and their ability and willingness to
challenge oppression, but in a larger sense it is a means to empowerment,
wherein empowerment lies not only in the process of challenging gender
inequality but in eliminating it. In this sense, collective action is one channel
for change. What is important, nevertheless, is that it is often the most
effective one. And it is likely to be critical in the struggle for land rights (as
will be elaborated in chapter 9).
While each of these arguments for women's independent rights in land is

of importance, are they of comparable weight? Do some merely serve what
have been described as practical gender needs, while others serve strategic
gender needs? This distinction between practical and strategic needs, first
made by Molyneux (1985) and elaborated by Moser (1989), is worth
exploring since it also appears to define where, in public policy itself, a line is
drawn on questions of gender. Practical gender needs, as defined by these
two scholars, are the needs of basic subsistence (such as food, health care,
water supply, etc.); to satisfy them does not challenge women's position
within the gender division of labour, or a given distribution of property or
political power. By contrast, strategic gender needs, they argue, are those
needs that would help overcome women's subordination, including trans-
forming the gender division of labour, removing institutionalized forms of
discrimination, such as in rights to own and control property, and
establishing political equality. In these terms, women's land rights would
fall under strategic gender needs.
However, the apparent analytical neatness of this distinction is con-
founded when we examine it from the perspective of practice, on several
counts: First, certain strategic gender needs, such as for rights in landed
property, are also, in specific contexts, necessary for fulfilling practical
gender needs, as evidenced from the welfare and efficiency arguments spelt
out earlier: for instance, entitling poor rural women with land may be a
necessary component for improving female nutrition and health status. At
the same time, we also noted the significance of land in empowering women
to challenge unequal gender relations within and outside the home. In other
words, the case for women's land rights has both a welfare-efficiency
('practical') component and an empowerment ('strategic') component.
Second, even meeting subsistence needs often requires challenging
existing political-economic structures. For instance, a demand for wage
increases by poor women workers is a practical need in that it would
improve their living standards, but it is strategic in that it challenges existing
production relations and requires confronting the (often violent) resistance
of employers.
Third, and relatedly, the same process, viz. group organization, is often
necessary for fulfilling both practical and strategic gender needs: for
instance, organizing into groups would often be just as necessary for poor
women to effectively fight for wage increases, as it would be for them to
fight for land rights or to confront gender violence.
Fourth, action in pursuit of 'practical' needs may easily turn into action
to meet 'strategic' needs. Group organization around economic issues often
opens the door for women to raise questions about other aspects of their
lives, such as gender violence within and outside the home, their low
representation in local decision-making institutions, and so on. In several
instances in India over the past decade, rural camps held to discuss
problems of low wages and employment among village women workers
have ended with the women marching to the concerned government office
to report and protest cases of rape in their village. 106 Similarly women
organized into groups for the better delivery of credit or other economic
programmes by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, or the Bangladesh Rural
Advancement Committee, or the Self-Employed Women's Association in
north India, have in many cases also been able to challenge gender violence
or restrictive social practices such as female seclusion (see chapters 2 and 9
for details). Indeed for women to even participate in group meetings often
requires them to challenge and overcome the constraints of social norms, to
face the disapproval and even wrath of their husbands, to negotiate the
domestic division of labour and childcare with their husbands and other
family members, and so on.
In other words, the process of fulfilling 'practical' gender needs cannot
always be delinked from that of fulfilling 'strategic' gender needs. To some
extent even elements in the State apparatus are beginning to realize this:
in India a recent government attempt to promote adult female education
(the Mahila Samakhya (Education for Women's Equality) Programme
launched in 1989) is not only couched in terms of female 'empowerment'
but recognizes that organizing rural women into groups to discuss gender
relations can be a necessary first step toward that end (GOI 1991c). The
eventual fall-outs of this process may indeed be more than the State
bargained for. That it may often be more 'politic' to couch gender concerns
in terms of practical rather than strategic gender needs, in that welfare and
efficiency arguments for focusing on these concerns appear to resonate
more easily with State planners, should not detract from this linkage.
We might of course ask why welfare and efficiency arguments resonate
more with State planners. Part of the answer certainly lies in the fact that
these arguments (especially those concerning welfare) focus especially on
poor women, and can be subsumed within the poverty-alleviation compo-
106
Personal observation in Rajasthan and personal communication from several grassroots
activists in India.
nent of planning, with special targeting towards 'the most vulnerable'
groups, identified as women and female children. But part of the answer
must also lie in deep-rooted notions of appropriate gender relations shared
by many men who make and implement policy, for whom empowering
women to transform those relations would appear inappropriate and even
threatening to existing family and kinship structures. 107 Hence it would be
easier to push for changes where the goal appears to be to give poor women
a slightly better deal, than where the goal is to challenge basic inequities in
gender relations across classes. It is also the case that programmes for
health and nutrition are more readily perceived in welfare terms than
programmes which call for gender-redistributive land reform. It is not a
coincidence that land rights have yet to become a necessary component even
of women-directed poverty-alleviation programmes.
Against this background, the question (which I am sometimes asked) -

how will providing women ownership rights in land change gender rela-
tions, given the enormity of gender inequities in the economic, social and
political power structures? - is misleading. It is not just an increase in
women's command over economic resources, but also the process by which
that increase occurs that has a critical bearing on gender relations. Land
rights are not a 'given' and will not be 'provided' to most South Asian
women without contestation. Acquiring those rights (as will be made clear
from the body of this book) will require simultaneous struggles against
many different facets of gender inequities embedded in social norms and
practices, access to public decision-making bodies at every level, gendered
ideas and representations, and so on. It will require shifts in power balances
in women's favour in several different arenas: within the household, in the
community and market, and at different tiers of the State apparatus. Even
to organize collectively often requires challenging existing norms, such as
breaking the traditional bounds of female seclusion in some communities
for attending public meetings.
Land thus has a strategic importance that other gender concerns such as
employment and education appear not to share in equal measure. These
latter concerns are already a part of the political agenda in most South
Asian countries, there being a broad consensus in public policy that
women's education and (in lesser degree) employment are important for the
national good (even if these may still be resisted by many households and
communities). But redistributive land reform, even in favour of men, does
not appear to be seriously on the political agenda at the moment, and the
distribution of land in favour of women on any significant scale not at
107
See the many quotations in chapters 2, 5, 6, and 9.
108
all. To have the issue of land rights for women become one of the
objectives which political parties are actively pursuing (as opposed to
merely including in their rhetoric), to have the issue be given centrality in
public policy, will itself need a major struggle against multiple obstacles;
and to make those rights a reality, an even greater one. But it is precisely the
complex and wide-ranging nature of these obstacles that gives the struggle
to overcome them a transformative potential; and this is also why a
successful struggle by women for land is likely to have more far-reaching
implications for gender relations in South Asia than possibly any other
single factor.
IV Questions addressed, information base, and the book's structure

In further pursuing the issue of women's independent rights in land, a
number of related questions arise, such as: how should we characterize
gender relations within the household, the community, the market, and the
State, and what role might land rights play in constituting and changing
those relations? What rights in land have women historically enjoyed, and
how and why did these change over time? Were gender relations more
egalitarian within traditionally matrilineal and bilateral communities?
Were there structural links between women's land rights in these communi-
ties and other aspects of women's lives, including post-marital residence,
choice of spouse, and so on? What inheritance rights in landed property are
granted to women under contemporary law, and to what extent are they
108
In their 1991 election manifestos, all the major political parties in India, when spelling out
their policy proposals concerning women, spoke of women's employment, and most also
spoke of female education, but very few mentioned the issue of land. And those that did
appear only to be paying lip service, since they did little to promote women's access to land
in the states where they were (or continue to be) in power. The Communist Party of India's
manifesto did not mention the issue at all. The Congress (I) manifesto did so only in terms
of distributing titles to public land jointly or individually in the names of women, and
although some steps have been taken in this direction under the Congress government, the
amount of land involved (as noted earlier), is minimal. The Bharatiya Janata Party
manifesto promised to make women equal shareholders in the husband's wealth, but
ignored women's rights in the patrimony, and in practice the party appears to have done
little to promote even the rights of widows in the states in which it was elected in 1991. The
manifesto of the National Front likewise held that women would be assured equal rights
in family property, and that gender-discriminatory laws, including inheritance laws,
would be reviewed, but the party's policies during its tenure in the central government
(December 1989-June 1991, including the Janata Dal period) give little reason to expect
that this was more than rhetoric. Similarly the CPI (M), which alone explicitly promised to
take measures to ensure women's equal rights in landedproperty, gives little hope that this
promise is meant to be taken seriously, since when it had had the opportunity of
implementing such measures in its Operation Barga programme, say by registering both
spouses, it paid little attention to women's interests. It remains to be seen how these
election promises will be dealt with by these parties in the future.
able to exercise these in practice? What factors obstruct women from
claiming or being able to exercise effective control over their shares, and
what kinds of measures would strengthen their ability to overcome these
obstacles? To what extent have women's claims received recognition in
organized land struggles? What are the likely future scenarios?
These questions are addressed in this book in the context of five South
Asian countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. These
countries constitute a region, given the many common elements in their
histories, languages, and cultures that cut across national boundaries; but
today they are also distinct entities, with different State structures, politics,
economic programmes, and welfare outcomes. This dual character of
South Asia is reflected throughout the book, as the discussion shifts
between a regional focus and a country-specific focus. (Table A 1.2 gives a
comparative picture of selected development indicators by country.)
Most of the questions mentioned above have never been raised, let alone
adequately addressed, in the South Asian context. No country in South
Asia, with the exception of Sri Lanka, even collects gender-disaggregated
land ownership and land-use data in its agricultural or centennial censuses
or its large-scale rural surveys. The available data are usually aggregated by
household, so it is not possible to say how much land is owned by women
relative to men. In Sri Lanka, although gender-disaggregated land owner-
ship and use data were collected in the 1982 agricultural census, they were
limited to agricultural operators and did not cover all rural households; and
the published data I have seen do not give a gender-wise breakdown of land
ownership even among agricultural operators. Similarly, although a large
number of village studies have focused on questions of agrarian structure,
land use, and land ownership, virtually none has gathered gender-disaggre-
gated information on these aspects. Hence to gain an idea of where women
have been given or have claimed their shares in landed property and under
what circumstances, we have to probe historical, anthropological, and legal
sources.
To answer the larger body of questions raised above is equally difficult
and again requires spreading the analytical and disciplinary net wide. The
historical story presented here of women's customary land rights and
changes therein has been woven from colonial documents, accounts by
medieval travellers, historical ethnographies, and legal sources. The theore-
tical framework for understanding gender relations builds on and extends
aspects of recent work by a few economists (including my own work), using
the bargaining approach to conceptualize social relations. For delineating
contemporary law and its formulation I have drawn on historical and legal
documents and commentaries, parliamentary debates, and accounts by
women leaders of the struggles for property rights in the early twentieth
Landrightsfor women 47
century. The obstacles women face in realizing their rights and the regional
variations in these have been conceptually inferred and empirically docu-
mented by sifting through a vast body of ethnographies and village studies,
mostly available in the form of unpublished dissertations. And amidst all
these texts, I have searched, not always with success, for rural women's own
voices.
Most ethnographies and village accounts on South Asia are studies of
single villages and/or communities, and the majority date from the post-
independence periods, especially the 1960s and 1970s. With occasional
exceptions, their concern is not specifically with gender issues, and virtually
none focuses on women's rights in land. They are preoccupied variously
with kinship and marriage practices, land tenure, village politics, and so on.
A large number consist of unpublished doctoral dissertations in anthropo-
logy, sociology and, occasionally, economics. The questions I am seeking to
answer using some of the material they provide are not the central questions
(and at times not even the tangential questions) these studies ask. What this
has necessitated, therefore, is a gleaning (something village women are
adept at) for information, amidst a harvest from a different crop of
questions. Out of several hundred doctoral dissertations and other village
accounts which I examined, only a small number provided much useful
information. And even these few mostly focus upon norms rather than
actual practice. For instance, the accounts are more likely to mention that
women are allowed to inherit in the absence of sons, than to say what
proportion, if any, actually do so in the village under study.
Also there is a noticeable regional and temporal clustering of ethnogra-
phies (as will be apparent from the tables in chapter 8). Regionally,
Pakistan Punjab, the middle-hills of Nepal, Bangladesh, India's north-
western states and the state of Karnataka, and the Kandyan Highlands in
Sri Lanka, have been particularly favoured. But I found no ethnographies
on Sind in eastern Pakistan, and few on central and eastern India, northern
Sri Lanka, and the terai plains in Nepal. Time-wise, since the 1970s, there
appears to have been a marked decline in ethnographies on India and Sri
Lanka and a parallel rise of such research on Bangladesh and Nepal. 109
Despite these limitations and biases, however, it is possible to paint a broad
picture and point out emerging trends.
These materials have been supplemented by my fieldwork in northwest
and northeast India, especially Rajasthan (in 1986-87) and Meghalaya (in
1989); discussions in each of the five South Asian countries with social
109
Among factors which probably contributed to this shift would be the cooling of Indo-US
relations after the 1971 Bangladesh war, the increased availability of international
funding for research on Bangladesh, and the greater ease with which foreign scholars got
governmental permission for research in parts of South Asia other than India.
activists, village women, lawyers, government functionaries, and aca-
demics; and village visits in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
In the chapters which follow, chapter 2 is theoretical and suggests how a

bargaining approach may be used to analyse the process by which gender
relations are constituted and how they are maintained and change over
time, both within and outside the household. Chapters 3 and 4 are primarily
historical. The former details what rights in landed property were custo-
marily enjoyed by women under patrilineal, matrilineal, and bilateral
systems of inheritance. It also traces the structural links between women's
land rights in matrilineal and bilateral communities and social practices
governing post-marital residence, choice of spouse, and sexual restrictions
on women. Chapter 4 analyses how and why these rights were eroded
within these communities. The historical process of contestation by which
contemporary property laws in relation to women came to be formulated,
the contents of these laws today, and the gender inequalities still inherent in
them, are elaborated in chapter 5. Chapters 6 to 8 then identify, respecti-
vely, the obstacles women face in claiming their legal shares in landed
property; what constrains them from exercising control over the land they
do possess; and the cross-regional variations in the obstacles and constrain-
ing factors. These chapters also demonstrate how women's struggle for
effective land rights needs simultaneously to be a struggle to change existing
ideological constructions of gender. Chapter 9 examines how women have
sought to resist gender inequities through both covert individual action,
and overt collective action, the latter especially in the context of grassroots
land-related movements. Finally, the issues which will need particular focus
in the long and difficult struggle for realizing women's land rights, and the
macro-context which will impinge on such a struggle, are discussed in the
concluding chapter 10.
Table A1.1: Village common lands in India by State: 1987-88
VC area as a VC area 2
1
Total VC area percentage of per rural
State (in '000 ha) geographic area person (ha)
Andhra Pradesh 5465 19.9 0.12

Arunachal Pradesh 111 1.3 0.16
Assam 3 1913 24.4 0.09
Bihar 2623 15.1 0.04
Gujarat 4 5515 28.1 0.21
Haryana 229 5.2 0.02
Himachal Pradesh 1549 27.8 0.35
Jammu and Kashmir 551 2.5 0.10
Karnataka 2811 14.7 0.10
Kerala 219 5.6 0.01
Madhya Pradesh 7590 17.1 0.16
Maharashtra 5376 17.5 0.12
Meghalaya 817 36.4 0.65
Mizoram 5 538 25.5 1.21
Nagaland 201 12.1 0.25
Orissa 1945 12.5 0.08
Punjab 114 2.3 0.01
Rajasthan 13794 40.3 0.44
Sikkim6 252 35.5 0.79
Tamil Nadu 1830 14.1 0.05
Uttar Pradesh 3371 11.1 0.03
West Bengal 377 4.2 0.01
Other areas 1578 33.2 0.30
All India 58769 17.9 0.10
Notes: l This includes the following categories of land: fallow land, other than under
current fallow; cultivable wasteland; permanent pastures and other grazing lands; and
barren and uncultivable wasteland. It excludes protected and unclassed state forests and
private land to which people may have use access by local custom. The estimates for village
commons given here are very rough and likely to be inflated since: (a) some part of the
cultivable wasteland is likely to have been encroached upon and de facto privatized; and (b)
in some states the barren and uncultivable wasteland would include rocky land, marshes,
sand dunes, mountainous slopes, etc. which would effectively be inaccessible or likely to
provide little of use to the village communities. In Rajasthan, for instance, the high figures
for village commons are primarily accounted for by barren land, a significant part of which
would consist of desert dunes.
2
Per capita estimates are based on the Rural Population Projections, as on 1 January 1988,
made by the Expert Committee on Population Projections and reproduced in GOI (1990b:
16).
3
Area figures relate to the year 1981-82.
4
5
6
Source: Computed from the Government of India's 'Land Use Statistics' which classify
geographic area into various categories (see GOI 1992c).
1.2: Selected development indicators for South Asia
Life Litera
Per cent labour Sex expectancy rate
GNP/ Area Per cent force1 ratio at birth (% 1
caoita ('000 Population rural F/100
(US$) sq. km.) (millions) population Agr Ind Ser M F M F
(1990) (mid-1990) (1990) ( 1986-89) (1990) (1990) (19
h 210 144 106.7 84 56.5 9.8 33.7 94 51 52 22

350 3288 849.5 73 62.6 10.8 26.6 93 58 60 34
170 141 18.9 90 93.0 0.6 6.5 95 51 53 13
380 796 112.4 68 49.6 12.4 38.0 92 55 56 21
470 66 17.0 79 42.6 11.7 45.7 99 73 69 84
ncludes both rural and urban sectors.

le; M = male
griculture; Ind = Industry; Ser = Services
For information on the literacy rate, sex ratio, and sectoral distribution of the labour force, see UNDP (1992): 136-7, 144-5, 158
figures are from World Bank (1992): 218, 278, 280.
Conceptualizing gender relations
Please go and ask the sarkar [government] why when it distributes land we
don't get a title? Are we not peasants? If my husband throws me out, what
is my security?1
Economists of both persuasions [neoclassical and Marxist] tend to treat
the household as though it were an almost wholly cooperative, altruistic
unit. Today, however, they are confronted by certain 'anomalies' -
empirical evidence of economic conflict and inequality within the house-
hold. (Folbre 1986: 245)
Gender relations are neither uniform across societies nor historically static.
A vast array of studies of different cultures, regions, and communities bears
this out, as does the material on South Asia in this book. However, these
call for a conceptual framework that would help us characterize gender
relations, explain how they are maintained, and identify the processes by
which they might change over time. This chapter is an attempt in that
direction.
The term gender relations as used here refers to the relations of power
between women and men which are revealed in a range of practices, ideas,
and representations, including the division of labour, roles, and resources
between women and men, and the ascribing to them of different abilities,
attitudes, desires, personality traits, behavioural patterns, and so on.
Gender relations are both constituted by and help constitute these practices
and ideologies in interaction with other structures of social hierarchy such
as class, caste, and race. They may be seen as largely socially constructed
(rather than biologically determined),2 and as variable over time and place.
1
A message conveyed by poor peasant women to the West Bengal Government at its
seminar on Women and Development in January 1979, through the women they had
elected to the village panchayat (personal communication, Vina Mazumdar, 1992).
2
This is not to deny the possible role of biology (pregnancy, childbearing, etc.) in the
historical construction of some aspects of gender relations, such as the division of labour.
But biology cannot explain the entire gamut of gender inequalities we observe today, nor
even the perpetuation of an observed gender division of labour (e.g. technical develop-
ments have minimized the importance of muscular strength; contraceptive technology
reduces the disability of frequent pregnancies; and a variety of possible childcare
arrangements make childcare a less binding constraint). In any case, the considerable
variation of gender relations across cultures indicates the enormous importance of non-
biological factors.
51
Further, although gender relations are defined here as relations between
women and men, gender hierarchies also influence and structure relations
between individuals of the same sex - e.g. how two women of the same
household relate to one another is affected by the gendered character of
their relations with the household men. 3 The relationship between a woman
and her daughter-in-law is one example.
It is suggested here that gender relations are characterized by both
cooperation and conflict, and that their hierarchical character in any given
context is maintained or changed through a process of (implicit or explicit)
contestation or bargaining between actors with differential access to
economic, political, and social power. This contestation can vary:
—inform, ranging from women's covert individual acts of resis-
tance to overt group mobilization, with varying degrees of overt
individual action and covert group resistance in-between;4
—in content, relating to a spectrum of economic, social or political
rules, practices, and institutions. For instance, contestation can
occur over how women are perceived and ideologically con-
structed, or over what economic returns their work commands,
or the interlinks between the two; and
—in the arenas within which it takes place: for instance, the
household/family, the community, the market, and the State.
These arenas are interactive rather than mutually independent
and can reinforce or weaken each other's impact.
In suggesting this framework I do not seek to delve into the contentious
question of how women's subordination originated historically.5 Rather
my concern is to explore how gender inequities are currently structured and
perpetuated, and how they could be subject to change. In particular, what
role might women's rights in landed property (or lack thereof) play in
structuring, maintaining, and changing these relations? The discussion
below explores this issue both within the household/family and outside it -
the latter especially in relation to the community and the State. The possible
interactive effects of these three arenas are also discussed.
Although a distinction is sometimes made between the terms 'household'
and 'family', 6 for my purpose here I have used the terms in conjunction or
3
See Moore (1991) for a useful discussion on this point.
4
For a detailed discussion on covert and overt resistance, see chapter 9.
5
At the same time, the notion that gender relations were historically constructed by a
process of contestation could be a useful one to explore, although existing evidence appears
inadequate to trace the process concretely.
6
For instance see Shah (1973), who differentiates household from family, defining the
household as a commensal and residential unit composed of members sharing one hearth
and roof, and the family as a wider kinship group whose members may be living in more
than one household.
Conceptualizing gender relations 53
interchangeably, given the considerable empirical variability of these units
across regions, and their definitional variability across the literature. For
instance, households can be commensal and residential units, and/or units
of joint property ownership, production, consumption or investment, or
they can constitute some intersection of these dimensions. They also vary in
membership composition from units of single persons, to those of parents
and children, and those with additional relatives: siblings, grandparents,
and so on. 7
Consider then the issue of gender relations in the household/family.
I. Gender relations within the household/family

Are you suggesting that women be given rights in land? What do women
want? To break up the family? (Minister of Agriculture to the author at an
Indian Planning Commission seminar on Land Reform, June 1989)
Whether or not so intended, the Minister's reaction implies at least two
assumptions about the family:
—that the stability of the family as an institution is linked to the
maintenance of unequal resource positions between women and
men; and
—that economic self-interest plays a significant role in intra-family
gender relations, which would be revealed with particular
starkness in gender conflict over a critical form of property such
as land.
Such a picture of the family is a far cry from the assumption implicit in
much of standard economic theory that the family is an undifferentiated
unit, or that it is governed primarily or solely by altruism. 8 Indeed, as
pointed out in some recent feminist critiques, there is a noteworthy
similarity between neoclassical and Marxist economic theories on this
count (Folbre 1986, Hart 1990). Yet the growing evidence (noted in chapter
7
For a useful review of regional variations in household composition across India, see
Kolenda (1987). As Kolenda's study shows, Indian families operate variously as joint
consumption and/or production units; and joint consumption units themselves vary
enormously in composition. For instance, in patrilineal contexts, there are cases of parents
and one or more married sons maintaining a common hearth, dwelling, and landholding.
There are others of sons establishing separate hearths and dwellings but cultivating jointly
with the father. And there are yet others where each son has a separate hearth, dwelling,
and landholding. In Rajasthan I have also seen families which live under one roof but sub-
units of which maintain separate hearths. In the African context, spouses often maintain
separate farm enterprises and budgets and may even live in separate residential units (see
various essays in Guyer and Peters, eds. 1987).
8
As Folbre (1986: 247) notes: There is something paradoxical about the juxtaposition of
naked self-interest that presumably motivates efficient allocation of market resources and
perfect altruism that presumably motivates equitable allocation of family resources.'
1) of persistent intra-family inequalities in the distribution of resources and
tasks, and of gender differences in expenditure patterns, as well as cross-
cultural anthropological descriptions of intra-family interactions and
decision-making, indicate the need for a very different conceptualization of
the household: one that takes account of multiple actors, with varying
(often conflicting) preferences and interests, and differential abilities to
pursue and realize those interests. 9
(1) The bargaining approach

In the context of the present discussion, it would be useful to conceptualize
the household/family as a complex matrix of relationships in which there is
ongoing (often implicit) negotiation, subject to the constraints set by
gender, age, type of relationship (kinship association), and what could be
termed 'undisputed tradition' (elaborated later).
The nature of this intra-household interaction could usefully be des-
cribed as simultaneously containing elements of both cooperation and
conflict.10 The members of a household cooperate in so far as cooperative
arrangements make each of them better-off than non-cooperation. How-
ever, many different cooperative outcomes are possible in relation to who
does what, who gets what goods and services, and how each household
member is treated. These outcomes are beneficial to the negotiating parties
relative to non-cooperation. But among the set of efficient cooperative
outcomes,11 some are more favourable to each party than others - that is,
one person's gain is another person's loss - hence the underlying conflict
between those cooperating. Which outcome will emerge depends on the
relative bargaining power of the household members. A member's bargain-
ing power would be defined by a range of factors, in particular the strength
of the person's fall-back position (the outside options which determine how
well off he or she would be if cooperation ceased), and the degree to which
his/her claim is seen as socially and legally legitimate.12 The person who has
a stronger fall-back position (better outside options), and/or whose claim
9
For interesting discussions on some of the problems associated with a unitary conceptuali-
zation of the household, also see the writings of economists Sen (1983,1990a), Hart (1990),
Kabeer (1991a), Folbre (1986, 1988), and Agarwal (1990a); anthropologists Guyer (1981),
Moore (1991), Harris (1981), and several others in Guyer and Peters, eds. (1987); and
various articles in IDS Bulletin (1991) on 'Researching the Household: Methodological
and Empirical Issues'.
10
The term 'cooperative conflict' to describe these intra-household interactions has been
popularized by the writings of Amartya Sen (1983, 1985,1990a), which will be discussed in
more detail below.
11
An efficient outcome, in economic parlance, is one in which it is not possible to make any
party better off without making some other party worse off.
12
By social legitimacy I mean that which is accepted and enforced as legitimate by the
community (identified by kinship, caste, religion, or location) of which the household is a
part. By legal legitimacy I mean that which is established in law. The two need not coincide.
enjoys greater legitimacy, would emerge with a more favourable outcome,
although both parties would be better-off than if they did not cooperate. 13
The application of a bargaining perspective involving cooperation and
conflict and the notion of a fall-back position to characterize intra-
household dynamics is relatively new, but growing. Although he did not
focus on the household, these concepts were at the core of Nash's (1950,
1953) formulation of'bargaining problems' within game theory, and have
recently been applied in various ways (within and outside the game-
theoretic format) to the household by a number of economists, including
Amartya Sen (1983, 1985, 1990a). 14 These efforts are in contrast to the
simplistic model of a unitary household that has typified economic
analysis. 15
How we characterize the household - as an arena of bargaining and
contestation, or as a place where all decisions are made by consensus or by
an altruistic household head (as typically assumed under the unitary model)
- is not merely of academic interest. It can impinge critically on policy
decisions regarding whom resources and programmes get directed toward.
As we had noted in chapter 1, policy makers in South Asia have (implicitly
or explicitly) assumed a unitary household model and have tended to direct
resources principally at male household heads, trusting that the resources
will be shared equitably within the household; but empirical evidence shows
considerable intra-household inequities, and not only in resource sharing.
The bargaining approach, suggested here as an alternative conceptualiza-
tion, implies that government policies and resources would need to be
directed differently.
At the same time, as Sen has effectively pointed out, it is critical to think
beyond the restrictions imposed by fully specified quantitative bargaining
models that have characterized most economic work on this issue, and to
move towards a less restrictive formulation which incorporates qualitative
aspects. 16 In other words, the bargaining perspective or approach has
13
My emphasis on these factors is not to deny that feelings of love and concern are also
important in shaping family relations and economic outcomes.
14
Among others, see especially Manser and Brown (1980), Jones (1983, 1986), McElroy and
Horney (1981), and Seiz's (1991) review piece.
15
It is argued by some that since available data don't usually permit us to test hypotheses that
would help choose between the bargaining and neoclassical household models, the
analytically simpler neoclassical model is preferable. This, however, is not an adequate
reason for dismissing the bargaining approach, but merely strengthens the case for more
adequate data gathering. Also see Hoddinott (1991) for a useful summary discussion
comparing the 'altruistic' and 'bargaining' models of the household.
16
The social legitimacy of claims, mentioned above, is one such qualitative aspect. Formal
bargaining models generally ignore these and focus only on fall-back positions as
determining bargaining power. For some extensions and applications of such qualitative
dimensions by economists in relation to South Asia, see especially, Sen (1990a), Agarwal
(1990a), and Kabeer (1991a). Some recent anthropological writings also seek to elaborate
on the concept of intra-household bargaining (see especially, Moore 1991).
particular usefulness in examining gender relations, in the application
of which we need not restrict ourselves to formal game-theoretic
formulations. 17
Sen's point of departure from formal bargaining models stems from his
recognition that the outcome of bargaining will depend not only on a
person's fall-back position should cooperation cease, but also on what he
terms perceived interest response and perceived contribution response. The
outcome would be less favourable to a person (a) the less value s/he attaches
to her/his own well-being relative to the well-being of others (perceived
interest response), and (b) the smaller her/his contribution to the household
economy is perceived to be (perceived contribution response). Sen argues
that both types of perceptions are usually biased in women's disfavour,
although these biases operate in varying degrees in different societies: they
tend to be especially adverse in 'traditional societies' such as India, where
women may tend not to think in terms of self-interest or their individual
well-being, and where women's economic contributions to the household
are seriously undervalued. Since notions about legitimate shares in the
family's resources are linked to such perceptions, women will get less
because they are seen (by both themselves and men) as 'naturally' deserving
less. Sen places considerable importance on a woman's earnings outside the
home for giving her a stronger fall-back position, a clearer perception of her
own well-being, and a higher valuation of her contribution. (Although he
appears to emphasize only other people's valuation of women's contribu-
tions, clearly a woman's own valuation of her contribution would also be
relevant here.)
Sen's emphasis on notions of legitimacy as determinants of what a person
gets, in addition to the person's fall-back position, is important, and I
concur with it. But I extend his analysis and, in some respects, depart from
it, in five ways: (1) I extend his specification of the factors that might
determine a person's fall-back position in intra-household bargaining over
consumption, by identifying additional factors. What factors might affect a
person's bargaining power over a share in family land are also specified
here. I argue that there are several levels of bargaining, and some variables
such as land rights are determinants of bargaining at one level but outcomes
at another. (2) I debate his conceptualization of 'perceived interest res-
ponse' and its importance in determining the outcomes of bargaining
within the family in terms of women's welfare. (3) I argue that the notion of
legitimacy needs to be broader than that captured by Sen's 'perceived
contribution response'. (4) I explore the effect of gender differentials in
Also see Seiz's (1991) succinct exposition of this distinction between bargaining models and
the bargaining approach.
bargaining power not only on outcomes in relation to specified items/issues,
but also on what is bargained about. (5) I apply the bargaining approach
also to gender relations in arenas outside the household.
The first point, on the factors determining women's fall-back position
and bargaining power, is discussed in subsection (2) below; and the last
point on extra-household bargaining is elaborated in Section II of this
chapter. On the second point, regarding women's perceptions of their self-
interest, I see the problems as three-fold (further elaborated in chapter 9):
(a) That women tend to have a less sharp perception of their individual
interests in societies such as India, that is that they may suffer from a form
of 'false consciousness' about their own well-being, is debatable. The
empirical evidence on this is limited, and that which exists (described in
chapter 9) points more to the contrary: it suggests that women's overt
compliance with practices which disadvantage them does not necessarily
mean that they accept those practices as legitimate; their perceptions are
better revealed in their many covert forms of resistance to gender inequities.
(b) To the extent that women do seek to maximize 'family' welfare, this
could still be consistent with their long-term self-interest (even if it is at the
cost of their immediate well-being), in so far as women are more dependent
on the family for their survival than are men. This dependence can be both
economic and social (the last especially in contexts where female seclusion is
important and women need male mediation to deal with outside-family
institutions). 18 Also women's dependence on the family can extend over a
long period in so far as they often tend to survive longer into old age than
men, and widowhood carries with it social disabilities that widowerhood
does not. In the circumstances, women may well come to believe that no
other option than compliance is possible. The appropriate conclusion
would then be not so much that women need to realize they deserve better,
but that they need to believe they can get a better deal, and to know how that
would be possible. In other words, in explaining intra-household gender
inequalities and gender gaps in measures of well-being, I would place much
less emphasis than Sen does on women's perceptions of their self-interest
and much more on the external constraints to their acting on those interests.
Or, to put it another way, what may be needed is less a sharpening of
women's sense of self-interest than an improvement in their ability to
pursue that interest, including by strengthening their bargaining power. A
part of this strengthening would come from improving their fall-back
position, and a part from strengthening the legitimacy of their claims as
perceived by others, (c) Women may of course sacrifice their individual
interests for the interests of family members out of conscious choice, but
18
For elaboration see chapter 7.
here the notion of'family' also needs probing. The 'family' for whose well-
being women may be willing to make sacrifices may include only their
children, on whose behalf women may still seek to strike a hard bargain
with their husbands or kin. Indeed they may do so more overtly than if they
were acting only on their own behalf. Again there is some evidence on this
from South Asia, outlined in chapter 9, which suggests that women usually
see their interests as congruent to those of their dependent children, but
often potentially antagonistic to those of their husbands. Also, sacrificing
for one's children may well reduce a woman's material well-being, but this
need not be a case of false perception on her part. Both altruism and the
pursuit of self-interest can be self-aware actions.
On the third point, notions of legitimate shares may stem from a variety
of ethical principles, of which a person's contribution is only one. Among
others could be needs. Reducing the gap between women's actual economic
contributions and social perceptions about their contributions may not, on
its own, strengthen the legitimacy of their claims and improve their
consumption shares (as Sen suggests) if, for instance, the criterion for
justifying particular shares is needs rather than contributions. Indeed,
contributions and needs are often posed as competing principles in
justifying the shares of individuals: 'to each according to her work' vs. 'to
each according to her needs'. To change perceptions about economic
contributions may in fact be easier than to change perceptions about needs,
in so far as the former may be easier to quantify than the latter. But
whichever criterion (contribution or need) one uses, the recognized social
and legal legitimacy of a claim could be both a determinant of bargaining
power and an outcome of bargaining power. And, to establish the
legitimacy of a claim would typically require not just a change in ideas, but
their enforcement through some system of social and/or State sanctions.
On the fourth point, gender differentials in bargaining power are likely to
affect not only outcomes in relation to specified items/issues but also what is
bargained about. Not all issues may be accepted as legitimate ones for
contestation. At any given time, for a given society, some decisions would
fall in the realm of what the French sociologist Bourdieu (1977: 167-70)
terms 'doxa' - that which is accepted as a natural and self-evident part of the
social order, which goes without saying and is not open to questioning or
contestation - the 'undiscussed, unnamed, admitted without argument or
scrutiny'. A good deal of what is justified in the name of'tradition' would
fall in this category: 'the tradition is silent, not least about itself as
tradition'. In contrast to doxa is the 'field of opinion, of that which is
explicitly questioned', 'the locus of the confrontation of competing
discourses.' 19
19
Within 'the field of opinion' Bourdieu further distinguishes between orthodoxy and
heterodoxy. He does not fully spell out this distinction, but implies that orthodoxy would
In the present context, doxa could include widely accepted practices that
favour group over individual interests (such as strategic marriage
alliances), or that favour some groups over others (such as a given gender
division of labour, or women eating last and the least nutritious foods in
many regions of South Asia), or that favour some individuals over others
(such as an older daughter-in-law who has sons being allowed to participate
in household decision-making where a new bride may not), and so on. The
acceptance of such practices also reflects the dominant perceptions of the
needs and rights of people (say of women in relation to men, or of younger
people in relation to older) prevailing in a community, 20 and contestation
may be necessary to establish the legitimacy both of alternative notions of
needs and rights, and of specific persons as contestants.
The interest of the dominant groups would be to maintain the space of
doxa, while that of the dominated would be to reduce it by exposing the
arbitrariness of the taken-for-granted. In other words, what constitutes
doxa may itself be subject to challenge and change. In Bourdieu's (1977:
169) schema, such change would come about 'when the dominated have the
material and symbolic means of rejecting the definition of the real that is
imposed on them'; or, putting it in terms of our bargaining framework,
when the dominated have a stronger bargaining position. For our
purposes, what is noteworthy here is that the strength of a person's
bargaining power: (a) is defined not only by material circumstances but also
by symbolic meanings; and (b) not only affects the outcomes of bargaining
over those issues/items which are admitted into the realm of contestation
but also what issues/items are so admitted.
The notion of contestation implies that the disadvantaged perceive the
conflict between their self-interest and the socially defined order. A critical
question then is: to what extent do dominated groups in fact perceive such
conflict? Do they comply with the ideologies and practices of the dominant
groups because they have internalized them through a process of socializa-
tion, or because of a lack of choice, or some combination of both? These
questions are also relevant for Sen's discussion on women's perception of
self-interest. Neither Bourdieu's notion of doxa, nor Gramsci's characteri-
zation of hegemony which closely parallels it, explicitly addresses or
resolves these questions, although it can be inferred from Gramsci's
writings that his emphasis was on consent via internalization. 21 Observa-
tionally this issue is not easy to settle, since it is difficult to infer from
be at one end of the spectrum and heterodoxy at the other, the former representing one
d o m i n a n t system of beliefs a n d the latter representing several alternative systems of beliefs.
20
O n h o w discourses a b o u t w o m e n ' s needs tend to be structured by the power relations
between women and men, see Fraser (1989).
21
Gramsci's (1971) discussion on hegemony, scattered t h r o u g h his Prison Notebooks, has
been subject to n u m e r o u s commentaries. O n this specific point, Femia's (1987) lucid
discussion is particularly useful. Gramsci distinguishes between 'hegemony' a n d 'domina-
people's overt behaviour whether they are conforming because they fully
accept the legitimacy of an unequal order, or partially accept it, or out of
fear, or because they have (or believe they have) no other options. More
clues are provided by examining the covert ways in which disadvantaged
groups resist authority and power. As noted, observational evidence for
South Asian women (that will be discussed in chapter 9) appears to conform
more with women's lack of (or belief that they lack) options than with their
unquestioning acceptance of male dominance. 22
In any case, what is important here is that the outcomes of bargaining
over work, economic resources, and so on, are critically and dialectically
linked with the meanings attached to them, and with the accepted legiti-
macy (or otherwise) of certain claims, needs, rights, etc. Ideological
contestations are therefore an integral part of contestations over material
resources.
(2) What determines intra-family bargaining power?

To identify the factors which are important in determining the outcomes
of bargaining is complex for several reasons: First of all, as noted, a wide
range of (not always quantifiable) factors could define a person's bargain-
ing power, such as individual economic assets and communal/external
economic support systems which determine the person's fall-back position,
as well as social and legal recognition of the legitimacy of the claim. The
complexity of bargaining would be considerably less if the social legitimacy
of a person's claim to some share of the contested item is recognized and
only the size of that share is in dispute, than if the legitimacy of claiming any
share at all in the item is unaccepted. Cases in point are the intra-household
gender division of subsistence resources and of ancestral land. The rights of
female family members to basic subsistence are usually not in dispute,
although the proportionate shares may be, while any share for them in
arable ancestral land might be disputed in many communities.
tion', the latter constituting power exercised (by the dominant class or social group)
through direct coercion, hegemony representing a more subtle and insidious exercise of
power by obtaining the 'consent' of the dominated. However, as Femia elucidates, what
Gramsci meant by 'consent' and what sort of conforming behaviour he had in mind, can be
subject to varied interpretations. Also see Williams' (1977) discussion on hegemony.
i2
Sen too recognizes that deprived groups may comply for many different reasons - habit,
hopelessness, resignation, etc. - but appears to see this as resulting in their willingness to
accept the legitimacy of the established order rather than in their covertly resisting that
order. He writes (1990a: 127):
Deprived groups may be habituated to inequality, may be unaware of possibilities of social
change, may be hopeless about upliftment of objective circumstances of misery, may be
resigned to fate, and may well be willing to accept the legitimacy of the established order.
Second, in bargaining for something like a share in arable land, in so far
as the social or legal legitimacy of any share at all for women mayfirstneed
to be established, the outcomes of intra-household bargaining would be
pre-conditioned by the outcomes of extra-household bargaining with the
community and the State (as elaborated later in this chapter).
Third, some resources would both be determinants of a person's bargain-
ing power vis-a-vis other resources, and themselves need to be bargained
for. Again arable land is a good example. We could argue that women with
independent ownership in arable land (which could be used productively
for subsistence) would have a stronger fall-back position and greater
economic bargaining power than landless women, vis-a-vis the allocation of
household subsistence. At the same time, to gain a share in arable land may
itself require bargaining, and another set of factors would determine
women's bargaining power in relation to land. This could also be seen as
two levels of interlinked bargaining.
Fourth, the outcomes of bargaining at a given point in time, by
strengthening or weakening a person's fall-back position, could affect the
outcomes of bargaining at a later point in time.23
Fifth, the outcomes of contestation or bargaining may or may not be the
result of an explicit observable process of discussion and negotiation
between two or more parties. Nevertheless they could be seen to result
implicitly from relative bargaining power. For instance, a man does not
necessarily have to tell his sister in a north Indian village that he will break
off all contact with her if she demands her share of ancestral land. That he
can do so at low economic and social cost to himself, but at high potential
cost to her, may be enough for her to forego her claim. Indeed the fact that
one party can get a favourable outcome even without open contestation,
suggests a considerable bargaining power.
To help concretize the discussion, consider the issue of land rights as a
factor in bargaining at the two levels mentioned: for household subsistence
and for land itself.
Bargaining for subsistence within the family. What determines a

woman's bargaining power within the family in relation to subsistence
needs such as food and health care? Sen (1981), in his entitlement approach
to famine, highlights two factors as significant in determining a person's (or
a family's) ability to command goods (including food) and services:
endowments (ownership of productive resources) and the exchange entitle-
ment mapping (that is, the exchange possibilities that exist through
production and trade, which determine the consumption set available to a
23
Also see Sen (1990a) on this point.
person with a given endowment). 24 For our purposes here (that is in the
context of rural families), the most important determinants of exchange
entitlement would be ownership of land and access to employment and
other income-earning means (given the production and trade possibilities
and the structure of factor and commodity prices).
In addition, Sen's approach can usefully be extended to cover three other
types of entitlements which do not derive from private ownership nor
usually from market exchange, namely those stemming from traditional
rights in communal resources, from traditional external social support
systems, and from the State and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Social support systems are constituted of relationships between persons or
social groups in which considerations other than the solely economic take
precedence, falling under the rubric of what has been termed by some as 'the
moral economy' (see e.g. Scott 1976, Greenough 1982). These typically
relate to non-market transactions, such as relatives or friends providing
informal credit without interest during an economic crisis, or inter-
generational transfers between parents and children during times of need,
and so on.
In other words, it could be suggested that a rural person's fall-back
position (and associated bargaining strength within the family vis-a-vis
subsistence needs) would depend especially on five (although not always
unrelated) factors:
—private ownership and control over assets, especially arable
land;
—access to employment and other income-earning means;
—access to communal resources such as village commons and
forests;
—access to traditional external social support systems; and
—access to support from the State or from NGOs. 2 5
These five factors impinge directly on a person's ability to fulfil subsistence
needs outside the family. The premise here is that the greater a person's
24
Sen, in this context, does n o t address the question: how d o families, or individuals within
them, arrive at a certain endowment position, a question critical t o the present analysis.
25
T h e category, N G O s , used here very broadly, is vast a n d varied, containing within it
organizations that differ in the size a n d social backgrounds of their membership, their
objectives, ideological positions, the issues they take u p a n d their approaches to those
issues, their forms of operation, sources of funding, physical locations, a n d so on. F o r
many N G O s , gender is not a concern at all; for others it is a tangential concern, a n d for yet
others a central one. I will use the term 'gender-progressive N G O s ' to include all those
whose activities are centrally o r partially aimed at reducing gender inequities. This could
include organizations with mixed (male and female) membership but with a specific gender
focus in their activities, as well as women's groups, such as women's cells or wings of
political parties, women's groups a u t o n o m o u s of political parties having a mass base, or
those with small memberships promoting gender-specific programmes, gender-focused
research institutions, a n d so on.
ability to physically survive outside the family, the greater would be her/his
bargaining power (at least in relation to resource sharing for subsistence)
within the family. Inequalities among family members in respect of these
factors would place some members in a weaker bargaining position relative
to others. Gender is one such basis of inequality, age another. 26
While my focus here will be on the determinants of well-being if
cooperation should break down, it is important to note that many of the
factors which determine a person's fall-back position also influence her/his
ability to make contributions within the relationship. If a woman loses
access to employment, for example, it both worsens her fall-back position
and diminishes the income she can bring into the family. This dual effect
may have devastating consequences for her in periods of severe crisis (such
as a famine), as we shall see below.
These factors can be complementary to, as well as substitutes for, one
another. The significance of the first two, namely ownership of privatized
land and access to employment, in strengthening a person's survival ability
outside the family, is self-evident; that of access to communal resources and
social support systems needs elaboration. In South Asia, village commons
(VCs) and State forests acquire importance especially for two reasons: (a)
the high overall dependence on them of rural households, and especially of
the poor and tribal populations, for a wide variety of items essential for
daily use, a dependence which becomes critical during drought and
famine;27 (b) the fact that products from VCs and forests, which are
primarily gathered by women and children, 28 provide women with an
independent source of subsistence unmediated by dependency relationships
on men. As noted in chapter 1, women usually have rights to use the VCs by
virtue of their membership (through birth or marriage) in the village
community, whereas their access to the cash economy and (in areas of
26
It is suggested by some that w o m e n ' s reproductive responsibilities, such as their childbear-
ing role, could also weaken their bargaining position in the household (e.g. A n n e Marie
Goetz, personal communication, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, 1992). In my
view the likely effect of this factor is difficult to judge a priori in South Asia. O n the one
h a n d , frequent pregnancies and looking after a large n u m b e r of y o u n g children could affect
w o m e n ' s bargaining power adversely, especially by limiting their employment options; on
the other hand childlessness m a y be equated with 'barrenness' which carries a social
stigma, a n d could even be a cause for divorce (as Cain 1988, found in Bangladesh). Again if
a w o m a n has a son (or sons) this would increase her bargaining power (e.g. by improving
the social legitimacy of her claims), b u t if she has only daughters this m a y weaken it. Also
the extent of w o m e n ' s reproductive responsibilities varies across cultures and m u c h
depends on the a u t o n o m y a w o m a n can exercise in limiting the n u m b e r of children she has
a n d her access to childcare support (through relatives or the State). This last aspect could be
subsumed under 'external support systems' listed above. Moreover, the extent of a
husband's contribution to childcare is itself an item of contestation.
27
See Agarwal (1990a), Pingle (1975), and Banerjee (1988).
28
See D a s g u p t a (1987b), Brara (1987), and Agarwal (1991).
strong female seclusion) to the market place itself, is constrained and often
dependent on the mediation of males.29
Similarly, social support systems of patronage, kinship, caste groupings,
and even friendships built up in different ways by male and female family
members can be extremely important means of economic support,
especially in tiding individuals and families over social and economic crises.
However, not all the factors noted would carry equal weight in all
contexts. In South Asia today, it can be argued that rights in private land
hold a privileged position for several reasons. First, the rapid decline in
forests and VCs, especially in semi-arid areas, noted in chapter 1, is
effectively eroding this source of supplementary economic support for the
poor in general and for women in particular. Second, erosion is also
occurring in social support systems of patronage, kinship, friendship, and
caste groupings.30 The decline in kin support is especially apparent among
communities and groups which have become poorer over time, making it
increasingly difficult for families to offer such support. The effects are
particularly dramatic in tribal communities traditionally characterized by a
high degree of communal and intra-gender cooperation in work and social
life.31 The worst affected are women, especially the widowed and the
aged.32
Third, access to wage employment and to other income-earning opportu-
nities (such as in non-farm activities) may themselves be linked with access
to land. We noted in chapter 1, for instance, that the opportunities for and
earnings from non-farm activities tended to be substantially greater among
households with some land, relative to the totally landless. Also there is
some evidence to suggest that women from landed households have a
greater probability of rinding wage employment than women from landless
29
Also see the discussions in chapters 6 a n d 7.
30
F o r discussions of the erosion of patron-client relationships, see Breman (1985), Dasgupta
(1987b), a n d C o m m a n d e r (1983). O n declining support from kin, see Fernandes a n d
M e n o n (1987) a n d Dreze (1990) for India; and Cain et al. (1979) a n d Jansen (1983) for
Bangladesh.
31
This decline is linked partly to the shift from c o m m u n a l , swidden cultivation to settled
individual farming (a shift to which State policies towards land use a n d forests have
contributed in crucial ways), a n d partly to the growing impoverishment of these tribal
populations. (For a case study of the effects and causes of the shift from swidden to settled
farming a m o n g the G a r o tribe in northeast India, see Agarwal 1990b, a n d chapter 4; a n d
for a graphic a n d poignant description of the adverse effects, especially on women, of
growing impoverishment a n d associated erosion of intra-community support a m o n g the
tribal groups in Orissa, see Fernandes and M e n o n 1987.) The decline in customary systems
of patronage, however, is associated particularly with the growth of capitalist farming
(Breman 1985, Bhalla 1976, Banerjee 1988).
32
See Dreze (1990) and Fernandes and M e n o n (1987) for India; and Jansen (1983) and White
(1992) for Bangladesh.
33
households. Families with some land, relative to the totally landless,
would also tend to have a higher reserve price for their labour, which is
likely to push up aggregate wage rates, as was found to have happened after
redistributive land reform in Kerala in the 1960s and 1970s (Raj and
Tharakan 1983); and as is also indicated by Bardhan's (1984: 54) finding in
his district-level analysis for West Bengal for 1970-71, of a negative
association between the percentage of asset-poor rural households in a
district and the average daily wage rate of farm labourers in the district.
Effective rights in land thus have the potential for strengthening women's
fall-back position not only directly but also indirectly by improving returns
from other income sources.
In terms of relative intra-family bargaining power, therefore, effective
independent rights in private land could strengthen rural women's fall-back
position in ways that employment alone may not. Recognizing this does not
in any way weaken the case for also enhancing women's employment
opportunities or stemming the erosion of common property resources.
Indeed, given the complex hurdles in the path of making women's land
rights a reality (as will be discussed in later chapters), there is a strong case
for taking steps in all these directions. At the same time, as noted in chapter
1, land ownership provides more than employment can, including a
stronger base for social and political participation, and so for challenging
gender inequality on several other fronts.
Alongside the factors mentioned above are external systems of potential
support in the form of the State and non-governmental (including
women's) organizations. These can add to a person's intra-household
bargaining power both by direct provision of subsistence, and indirectly by
increasing access to some of the other mentioned factors such as employ-
ment, assets, etc. For instance, in recent years many NGOs in South Asia
have come to play a noteworthy, even if localized, role in enhancing
subsistence possibilities by providing income-earning opportunities, credit,
and infrastructural support, including support for pressing legal claims;
influencing the perceived legitimacy of claims (such as via the media);
pushing for legislative change and the implementation of laws such as
33
See e.g. Ryan and Ghodake (1980), who in a study of six semi-arid villages in Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu found that in three of the villages the probability of
employment was significantly greater for women from small and medium farm households,
relative to landless households; in the other three villages the findings were not statistically
significant. The authors do not give reasons for their observation, but do note that women
from different socio-economic groups tend to compete for the same jobs. Presumably then,
landholding households have better connections with the (also landed) employers than
agricultural labour households. Caste connections may also be a factor. See Lipton (1983)
for a review of additional evidence.
minimum wage laws; supporting (in some cases) the landless or near
landless in their struggles for land and higher wages; confronting and
contesting biases in State policies and practice; and so on. However,
whether these interventions increase or decrease women's bargaining power
will depend on the gender bias inherent in the programmes and gender
differences in the benefits which accrue from them. For instance, organiza-
tions which enhance credit and income-earning opportunities for women
relative to men, as have the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the Self-
Employment Women's Association and Working Women's Forum in
India (to name but a few), would tend to strengthen women's bargaining
power. But NGO interventions which enhance only men's access to land,
credit, etc. would tend to reduce women's intra-household bargaining
power. The same would be true of State interventions (in the form of
development programmes, policy directives, laws and their implemen-
tation, and so on): these can increase or decrease women's intra-household
bargaining power, depending on whether they are gender-progressive or
gender-retrogressive.
In other words, the mentioned five factors, by impinging on women's and
men's subsistence opportunities and access to resources from outside the
family, would affect their bargaining power and so their access to subsis-
tence within the family as well.
Bargaining for family land. Contestation within the household

over subsistence resources, given gender differences in endowments etc., is
only one level of bargaining. The second, more basic, involves women
bargaining over the endowments themselves, such as for a greater share in
the family land, or the freedom to seek wage work outside the home, and so
on. At this level, the factors determining women's bargaining power
become even more complex. For instance, in South Asia, a daughter's
ability to successfully claim a share in parental property (assuming she is
not voluntarily given it) is likely to depend especially on the following
factors: 34
—the existing inheritance laws (legal legitimacy);
—the woman's literacy, including legal literacy (that is, her
knowledge of her legal rights);
—the social legitimacy of her claim, that is, whether the claim is
considered a valid one in the community of which the household
is a part;
—her access to government officials who administer land-related
matters;
34
For an empirical elaboration of the relevance of these factors see chapter 6.
—her economic and physical access to legal machinery (lawyers,
law courts); and
—her access to economic and social resources for survival outside
the support systems provided by contending claimants such as
brothers or kin.
In other words, individual women's struggles to acquire a share in family
land would require interlinked struggles outside the household arena as
well, such as struggles to legitimize women's need for independent rights in
land and to mobilize economic, social, and political support for the cause. A
change in the law to make it more gender-equitable, for instance, would
require contestation with the State; establishing social legitimacy for the
claim would require contestation with the community; and so on.
Gender differences in intra-household bargaining power are thus linked
with the person's extra-household bargaining power with the community
and the State. This would be especially so in contestation over landed
property, since control over arable land helps define (and is also defined by)
wider access to economic, social, and political power.
Revealing intra-family relative bargaining power: empirical evi-

dence. In a limited sense, relative bargaining power within the family/
household could be revealed in who participates in decision-making and
about what. Hence, women who participate in decision-making concern-
ing, say, agricultural production or cash expenditure in the home, may be
said to have greater bargaining strength than those who are excluded from
such decision-making altogether. But more fundamentally, relative bar-
gaining power is revealed in whose interests prevail in the decisions made,
namely in final outcomes: in the intra-family distribution of resources,
goods, services, and tasks, the treatment meted out by family members, the
control exercised over resources, and so on. As noted, these outcomes
cannot always be traced to an observed or observable process of discussion
and negotiation, but nonetheless reflect implicit bargaining strengths.
Since this approach to the issue of intra-household gender relations is
relatively new, empirical evidence is rather limited. What does exist is
indicative. First, several recent studies show a positive relationship between
women's access to independent earnings from employment (or other
income-generating activities) and (a) their participation in household
decision-making processes;35 and (b) their self-esteem and the treatment
they receive from husbands and other family members.36 For instance,
35
See e.g. A c h a r y a and Bennett (1982) for Nepal; Bhatty (1980) for India; and R a h m a n
(1986) for Bangladesh.
36
See Bhatty (1980) for India; R a h m a n (1986), M . A h m e d (1985), and Chen (1983) for
Bangladesh; Shaheed (1988) for Pakistan; and R o l d a n (1988) for Mexico.
Acharya and Bennett (1982), drawing on detailed data from seven village
studies in Nepal, found that women who were largely confined to domestic
and subsistence production played a much less significant role in major
household economic decisions, than did women who participated actively
in the market economy. They note (1982: ix):
Women's involvement in market activities gives them much greater power within
the household in terms of their input in all aspects of household decision-making. At
the same time, confining women's work to the domestic and subsistence sectors
reduces their power vis-a-vis men in the household. Two explanations are offered for
this phenomenon. First, women who participate in the market activities make a
measurable contribution to the household income and second, they are more likely
to control their own production assets, while women working in subsistence
agriculture are generally laboring on land controlled by the male household head.
In her study of beedi workers in Uttar Pradesh, Bhatty (1980: 41) similarly
observes:
A greater economic role for women definitely improves their status within the
family. A majority of them have more money to spend, and even more importantly,
have a greater say in the decisions to spend money. Most women claim to be better
treated as a result of their contribution to household income ... A substantial
proportion of women feel that they should have a recognized economic role and an
independent source of income ... Their attitudes evidence a clear perception of the
significance of their work to family welfare and their own status within the family.
Also studies from outside South Asia indicate that access to independent
income tends to increase women's leverage, especially over fertility
decisions. 37
That women's self-esteem and how they are treated by family members
likewise tend to improve, is illustrated by Rahman's (1986) and M.
Ahmed's (1985) studies of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and Chen's
(1983) of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). Both
organizations draw members from very poor households and provide
credit to small gender-homogeneous groups. The women loanees in Rah-
man's study reported that access to fixed assets through the loans gave them
a special status in the family, and other family members, including
husbands, became more conscious about their comfort and well-being.
Data collected on intra-household decision-making also showed a notably
greater participation of women loanees relative to the women who were not
loanees themselves but were wives of male loanees. Ahmed found a
significant reduction in verbal and physical abuse and threats of divorce by
husbands after their wives joined the Grameen Bank. Similarly the women
members of BRAC told Chen that they were better respected by their
See e.g. Roldan (1988) for Mexico and Blumberg (1991) for Guatemala.
husbands and faced less violence in the home after joining the
organization. 38
Although the sources of women's income in the studies cited above are
mainly employment and non-land-related activities, we would expect the
observed correlations to also hold for land-related income. 39
Second, where women have traditionally had rights in land, or have
acquired land more recently, this is seen to impinge positively on several
aspects of their position. For instance, in South Asian communities which
customarily practised matrilineal or bilateral inheritance, and among
which women either continued to reside in their parental homes after
marriage, or could return to them in case of marital breakup, women
enjoyed a great deal of economic and social security, freedom of movement
and interaction outside the home, and relative equality in marital rela-
tions. 40 They also often controlled the household food stores; and, as
observed among the matrilineal Garos of northeast India, could eat before
their husbands did, if the latter were out late, 41 in contrast to the pattern in,
say, northwest India where women are typically expected to eat after their
husbands, and where patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal residence sever-
ely circumscribe women's autonomy in many ways. Also among the
bilateral Sinhalese today, Gunawardena (1989) found that spouses typi-
cally make household decisions jointly, other than fertility decisions, which
are made by women alone. Similarly, landless women who in recent years
have acquired independent rights in plots of land through struggle, report
that this has enhanced their sense of economic security and self confidence,
and improved the treatment they receive from their husbands and other
family members. 42
38
T h e emphasis on g r o u p formation in these organizations also played an i m p o r t a n t
complementary role in strengthening w o m e n ' s bargaining position (as will be elaborated in
chapter 9).
39
F o r instance, in the M w e a irrigation-resettlement scheme in Kenya, w o m e n ' s participation
in household decision-making in the scheme villages was distinctly less t h a n in the off-
scheme ones, a factor clearly linked to the scheme w o m e n ' s lesser access to land and cash. In
the off-scheme villages, w o m e n ' s own plots were sufficient for providing family subsistence
a n d also a surplus for sale, the cash from which they controlled, while free firewood could
be gathered from the local forests. In the scheme villages, by contrast, the plots allotted to
women were too small (and of p o o r soil) to produce enough food for family subsistence,
and firewood t o o had to be purchased, increasing w o m e n ' s dependence on their h u s b a n d s
for cash generated from the latter's m o r e substantial irrigated rice fields (Hanger a n d M o r i s
1973).
40
F o r elaboration on these and other aspects of gender relations in matrilineal and bilateral
societies, see chapter 3. There were of course differences in degree between these societies in
relation to the noted aspects.
41
N a k a n e (1967), and personal observation.
42
T h e Bodhgaya w o m e n cited in chapter 1 reported this graphically; as did the w o m e n of
Vitner village (in M a h a r a s h t r a , west India) when they received shares in their h u s b a n d s '
lands in 1990, as part of a movement for empowering peasant w o m e n spearheaded by the
Shetkari S a n g h a t a n a ' s Mahila Aghadi described further in chapters 9 and 10; also see G a l a
(1990) a n d Omvedt (1990).
Third, famine-related evidence for South Asia suggests that the often-
observed abandonment of women and children in poor households during
such a calamity can also be explained through the bargaining approach.
The assets that are first sold during the crisis, for instance, are typically
jewellery, household utensils, and small animals. These are usually the only
assets women own, while land, which as a productive asset is retained to the
last, is typically in men's names. 43 Women's employment opportunities,
more limited than men's even in normal times, also tend to collapse during
famine situations, while men are often in a better position to migrate out for
work. As a result, women in poor households tend to be left on the one hand
with a much more weakened fall-back position relative to men, and on the
other hand with a diminished ability to contribute to family income. While
a deterioration in the wife's fall-back position would improve the husband's
bargaining position within the household, this may provide him little
realizable advantage given the simultaneous (and severe) decline in her
ability to contribute to joint well-being. An eventual outcome may be that
the man (whose outside options have not deteriorated as badly as those of
his spouse), chooses to abandon his wife and children and strike out on his
own. This is brought out with particular starkness in an analysis of the 1943
Bengal famine (see Agarwal 1990a), but a similar pattern of famine-related
asset disposal and family breakup in some other regions and periods
suggests that this process is not atypical. 44
Fourth, women have been known to sometimes explicitly use property
and wealth to bargain for a better deal in the family, especially where they
are elderly. In a Punjab village (northwest India), Sharma and Dak (1987:
49) found that women 'had to resort to somewhat coercive techniques to
ensure their care and control which included keeping property under lock,
secret purchasing of gold and ornaments and promising favour with
valuables to those members serving [them] best'. Control over land and
property was similarly found to confer greater authority and respect to the
elderly in a three-village study in Uttar Pradesh, which also cited cases of
old women using property control to ensure care from relatives (Raj and
Prasad 1971).
43
Although retaining land makes good economic sense since it is a productive asset and
necessary for the household's economic security, this does alter men's and women's relative
economic position within the household.
44
On this point, Dasgupta (1993: 329) misinterprets my paper on drought and famine
(Agarwal 1990a) as arguing that it is only the collapse of a woman's fall-back position
relative to her husband's which leads to her being abandoned in a crisis. As I have stressed
here, a woman's fall-back position diminishes simultaneously with her potential contribu-
tion to family income, since factors such as her asset ownership, access to employment, and
access to support from kin, affect both her fall-back position and her ability to contribute
economically to the family's well-being. Hence in an extreme crisis, while the sharp decline
in the wife's fall-back position may improve the husband's bargaining situation, she may
have so little to offer that it would still be in his economic interest to leave her.
Although most of the available evidence indicates a positive association
between women's independent access to economic resources and their
situation within the family, there is also some which is inconclusive and
which suggests that when women begin to earn, this may not necessarily
translate into more control over the earnings or greater participation in
household decision-making. For instance, Standing's (1991) study of
working women in Calcutta gives a mixed picture on these counts.
However, in my view, such findings do not in themselves negate the
significance of women's independent earnings as a factor determining
women's bargaining strength. Rather, we need to examine not just the fact
of earning but also a number of related factors which are likely to be
important, such as the period over which such earnings are sustained, the
level of earnings, 45 community attitudes and norms about women's needs
and rights (i.e. the social legitimacy of women's claims) and, most impor-
tantly, the process by which an improvement in women's earnings has been
achieved. Although women's outside earnings could be one factor, among
others, which could have an impact on family and community attitudes, a
few women acting individually would tend not to have the same potential
for challenging gender-conservative biases as would many women from the
same community doing so concurrently. And the latter action would not
have the same potential for change as would the process of women acting in
groups.46 Also, since norms and attitudes do not change overnight, we are
more likely to observe improvements in intra-household gender relations in
communities which have had marked increases in women's economic
contributions over an extended period and not just in the recent past.
Of course, all this is only by way of pointers. Much more empirical work
in this direction is clearly needed.
II. Gender relations outside the household/family: the market,

the community, and the State
We have noted that women's bargaining power within the home is clearly
linked to their situation outside it. Outside the household/family, gender
interactions take place in a variety of arenas, of which three could be
especially important: the market, the community and the State. It is
suggested here that the bargaining approach can usefully be extended to
characterize gender interactions in these arenas as well.
To reiterate, the basic idea behind the bargaining approach for charac-
45
For instance, in her study of women home-based garment makers in Pakistan, Shaheed
(1988) found that the level of women's earnings made a distinct difference to the extent to
which their treatment within the home improved. Roldan (1988) in her Mexico case study
also notes the importance of women's earning levels in this regard.
46
For elaboration and examples see chapter 9.
terizing gender interaction is that these interactions simultaneously contain
elements of cooperation and conflict. Two parties (either or both of which
may be groups) cooperate in so far as cooperation leaves them better-off
than non-cooperation. But there is conflict between them with respect to
which among a set of cooperative arrangements is arrived at, each
arrangement of the set being better for both than a non-cooperative one,
but some arrangements in the set being better for each party than others.
The outcome is determined by relative bargaining power, which depends
partly on each party's fall-back position and partly on the perceived (legal,
social) legitimacy of each party's claims. Consider now how this approach
can be applied to gender relations within the market, the community, and
the State.
The market. Unlike the theoretical ambiguity that has surrounded

the characterization of gender relations within the household (e.g. are they
altruistic or dominated by self-interest?), market relations are unambigu-
ously depicted in economic analysis as guided by self-interest. It is in this
arena that bargaining takes its most explicit form and has been widely
focused on in the literature, especially in the context of the labour market
and trade unions. Given the attention that market-related bargaining has
already received, I will not discuss it in detail here. What does need mention,
however, is that (a) women's ability to bargain in the market, as in other
arenas, is critically affected by gender ideology and practices; and (b)
owning land would strengthen women's bargaining power in the market
arena as well. The latter point has been discussed earlier, but the former
needs elaboration. Consider for instance the labour market. Bargaining
may occur over wages, the duration and intensity of work, the working
conditions, and so on. But women's bargaining power in the workplace (in
comparison with that of male workers) is likely to be constrained not only
by gender gaps in skills and education but also by their domestic responsibi-
lities which reduce their job options; by employers' assumptions (which
may be quite erroneous ones) 47 regarding women's abilities, work commit-
ment, efficiency, and needs; by cultural specifications of appropriate female
behaviour (e.g. norms regarding female seclusion, or the view that public
bargaining or haggling is unfeminine and improper); by barriers to
women's entry into trade unions and the male biases within trade unions; 48
The depiction of women as only 'supplementary' earners and men as the primary
'breadwinners' is often used to justify gender differentials in recruitment and wages (see
Barrett's (1980), survey of the arguments in the context of western Europe, and Kumar
(1989) on the specific form that the family wage debate took in India in the early part of this
century).
See e.g. Hensman (1988) on the experience of women in Indian trade unions.
and so on. Many of these factors are also likely to adversely affect women's
functioning in markets for land and agricultural inputs (as will be elabor-
ated in later chapters).
In other words, gender ideology, crystallized in social assumptions,
norms and practices, affects bargaining not just within the home space but
also the public space. At the same time, social norms themselves can be and
often are contested and bargained over. For rural women, the village
community, which also often defines their workspace locationally and
socially, assumes particular importance in the construction of and contes-
tation over gender ideology, as discussed below.
The community. A community could be defined in terms of a

shared identity based on location (e.g. a village) and/or social grouping
(religious, ethnic, caste, clan, and so on). A person can be a member of
several communities simultaneously, for instance, of a caste or religious
grouping within a village (or spreading across several villages) as well as of
the larger village community containing several castes or religious
groupings.
Like gender relations within the household, those within a community
can also be characterized as relations of cooperative conflict within a
bargaining framework of analysis, although with some important differ-
ences from the intra-household context, as discussed later. Consider first
the general case of the individual within the community and then the issue
of gender. It can be argued that an individual is likely to cooperate with the
community in so far as it brings her/him greater economic, social, or
political gain than possible otherwise. Community membership can
provide individuals with economic support (j°bs, credit, other economic
help in a crisis), social support (during marriages, illnesses, deaths, etc.),
and political support (say in conflicts with other communities), which are
denied to non-members. Hence each individual may be better off and better
able to survive economically and socially as a part of the community than
outside it. Further, community members can cooperate in specific contexts
for mutual benefit, such as by jointly managing a communal resource.
What would cooperation with an individual on the part of the commun-
ity mean? It could be argued that the community would want to retain the
loyalty of its members who, in aggregate, constitute the human and
material resources of the community and its political strength. It could
therefore seek to hold its individual members by the promotion of support
networks, the formulation and enforcement of consensual rules, and so on.
At the same time, there can be at least three types of inherent conflict
between an individual and the community: (a) over the sharing of economic
resources held in common (such as common land); (b) over positions of
political power and decision-making authority; and (c) over community
norms which dictate social behaviour.
Implicit or explicit bargaining can occur between an individual and the
community over the rules governing economic resource use, political
positions, and social behaviour, and over the enforcement of those rules.
The cooperation of an individual with the community could imply her/his
(a) following the established rules; or (b) 'bargaining' to change the rules by
discussion, protest, etc. 49 Non-cooperation would mean opting out of the
community altogether. 50
A person could opt out of a local community in a variety of ways, for
different reasons, with varying implications. For instance, s/he may physi-
cally relocate permanently (e.g. migrate) for economic reasons, because of
an inability to negotiate a satisfactory deal over community resources; or
s/he may relocate for gaining greater social freedom. Even more drastic
would be opting out of a community not just locally but by changing one's
social identity - for instance, changing one's religion or caste, the latter via a
process that Srinivas (1955-56, 1965) termed 'sanskritization'. By this
process a low-caste Hindu family changes its name, customs, and overall
way of life to match those of upper-caste families. Of course a person who
opts out of a local community could assimilate into another, but this is not
always easy. In practice, therefore, opting out would not be an option
available to all, and for most it may be the option of last resort.
In some ways the nature of the inherent cooperative conflicts between an
individual and the community is not dissimilar to that within the house-
hold. There would, however, be at least two critical differences. One, since
the size of a community is larger than that of a household, the costs to the
community of an individual member not cooperating would be smaller, and
may even be insignificant. Two, the community, unlike the household,
would not necessarily be a unit of joint consumption, production or
49
Non-compliance with c o m m u n i t y rules could be seen as a form of implicit bargaining. But
sanctions for some forms of non-compliance, such as breaking rigid sexual t a b o o s , could be
severe, even involving ostracization, in effect exclusion from the community.
50
There are some interesting parallels here with H i r s c h m a n ' s (1970) formulation in his b o o k
Exit, Voice and Loyalty, where he argues that individuals have two options for expressing
dissatisfaction with an organization (a firm, a political party, a c o m m u n i t y , etc.) - exit and
voice. T h a t is, the person can stop dealing with/opt out of the organization altogether, or
give voice to his/her dissatisfaction by protesting to the authorities. However, H i r s c h m a n
notes that organizations which have a high price associated with the exit option - loss of
life-long association, defamation, deprivation of livelihood, and so on (as could h a p p e n in
relation to a community) - could repress or delay the use of the voice option as well:
'Obviously, if exit is followed by severe sanctions the very idea of exit is going to be
repressed and the threat will not be uttered for fear that the sanction will apply to the threat
as well as to the act itself (pp. 96-7).
In terms of my formulation here, voicing dissatisfaction could be seen as a form of
contestation or bargaining; and a person's effectiveness in doing so or ability to pay the
price of exit could b o t h be seen to depend on her/his fall-back position (as elaborated later
in the chapter).
investment, although some or all members may cooperate in specific
contexts, including investing in and using for production a communal
resource such as land or water. 51
How does gender impinge on this formulation? As an illustration
consider a woman belonging to a village community which is more or less
homogeneous in terms of caste. She could benefit from caste support in the
ways mentioned earlier, such as receiving loans or other economic and
social help during crises, being able to enter into labour-sharing or labour-
exchange arrangements for domestic or agricultural tasks, receiving help in
arranging the marriages of children, being allowed access to a well or a piece
of common land possessed by the caste group, and so on. At the same time,
there would be underlying conflict with community arrangements over the
sharing of communal resources, or in her being subject to caste rules about
whom she may marry or have sexual liaisons with, the degree of seclusion
she is expected to maintain (where female seclusion is emphasized), and so
on. The last would constrain her earning options and could be a particular
source of conflict in poverty contexts. 52
However, the ability of an individual woman to 'bargain' with the
community for a greater share in communal resources, or for a better deal
in various other community arrangements, or for greater personal freedom,
would be more limited than that of a man, for several reasons. One, women
in South Asia tend to be excluded from most traditional public decision-
making bodies, such as caste councils, which enforce existing rules govern-
ing the community and play a role in modifying those rules. Two, a
woman's typically weaker (than men's) intra-household bargaining power
would also impinge upon and weaken her extra-household bargaining
power, if her husband and marital family oppose her stand. Three, where
patrilocal, inter-village marriages with non-kin are the norm, married
women would not have the kin support that men can get within the village.
Four, and relatedly, the loss to the community if a woman decides not to
cooperate would be small, except where she commands significant econ-
omic or political influence by virtue of her property status or political
contacts within or outside the village.53
In general, women's ability to bargain for a better deal within the
51
There is a growing theoretical a n d empirical literature o n the question of whether a n d
under what circumstances individuals would tend t o cooperate with one a n o t h e r as a g r o u p
for economic gain: for some interesting South Asian applications see W a d e (1988) a n d
Seabright (1993). W a d e also provides a useful review of some of the theoretical literature.
52
T h e n a t u r e of these constraints would vary by a w o m a n ' s community: upper-caste or n o n -
tribal w o m e n are typically subject to greater social constraints than lower-caste or tribal
women, as are Muslim w o m e n relative to non-Muslims. These will be discussed further in
chapters 7 a n d 8.
53
In special cases, of course, even individual resistance or violation of social norms can shake
up the community: this appears to be especially so when caste rules governing sexual unions
are violated. See chapter 9 for illustrative examples.
community would be greater if they operate as a group than as individuals.
For instance, a caste group can penalize an individual woman who breaks
seclusion norms in various ways, including casting aspersions on her
character, or shunning her. Such sanctions are much more difficult to apply
if a group of women decide to transgress the rules. Similarly, it would be
much more difficult for individual women acting alone to gain control over
parts of common land, or to have a greater say in public bodies, or to
protest sexual harassment or assault, than it would be for a women's group
or for a woman supported by such a group. In other words, in the context of
gender relations within a socially homogeneous community, a woman's
bargaining power for getting a better deal from the community is likely to
stem only partly from her individual economic and political position, and
more particularly from gender-specific group cohesion within the
community. 54
The same would hold for women in a multi-caste village community, but
with one important difference. Here the bargaining power of a group of
women could depend not only on the size of their group but also on their
caste and class position within the village community. On certain counts,
such as in the sharing of communal resources, low caste or poor peasant
women's ability to negotiate would tend to be weaker than that of high
caste or rich peasant women whose caste or class as a whole commands
greater power in the village. On other counts, such as negotiating greater
social freedom, lower caste/class women may have an advantage.
Non-cooperation in the sense of opting out of the local community
altogether may not be an option for many village women; it would depend
on the woman's fall-back position defined by her ability to survive,
economically and socially, outside the local community. Among factors
which could impinge on this are the following:
—her personal property position: women with, say, landed
property would be less dependent on the community for econ-
omic survival than those without; also personal property
positions could be translated into political strengths outside the
village community, although less directly so for women than for
men, as discussed in chapter 1;
—the economic and social support provided by her
household/family;
—her skills (including education) and associated economic oppor-
tunities independent of the community; and
—material and social support from outside the community and
family, such as that from women's groups, other NGOs, and the
54
For elaboration and illustrative examples see chapter 9.
State: this could include provision of earning opportunities,
housing etc., and also (say, from women's groups) emotional
and social support.
In other words, here a woman's fall-back position could depend on her
direct rights in property, her access to extra-community economic opportu-
nities and social support, her intra-household bargaining strength, and the
political dynamics in the village.
The State. The framework of cooperative conflict and contes-

tation is also relevant in characterizing women's relationship with the State
(although again not in the same way as for intra-household relations). This
is perhaps most apparent in the relationship of gender-progressive NGOs
to the State. For instance, the demands of women's organizations (and of
many NGOs in general) are typically directed both at the State and against
it.55 The State has the power to enact laws and formulate policies and
programmes in women's favour; to allocate financial resources for reducing
gender bias in access to productive resources, employment, information,
education, and health; to provide protection from gender violence in the
family and community; to counteract the force of doxa by influencing
discourse on gender relations in specific directions through the media and
the educational institutions; and so on. All these are potential areas of
cooperation between the State and women's groups. However, the same
State can also use its resources and coercive apparatus to reinforce existing
gender-retrogressive biases within the family and community, constituting
a situation of conflict.
It could of course be asked: what would be the State's interest in
responding sympathetically to gender-progressive demands, and why
should the State cooperate with gender-progressive groups? Several inter-
linked factors impinge on this: one could be political pressure built up by
such groups, perhaps with the support of oppositional political parties,
and/or the media, with implications for voting patterns. Two, international
public opinion could matter, as could implicit or explicit pressure from
international aid agencies: for instance, White (1992) argues that inter-
national aid agencies played a significant role in pressuring the government
of Bangladesh to formulate some gender-progressive policies and pro-
grammes during the International Decade for Women, despite the counter-
weight of Islamization which the State was also promoting. She notes
(1992:13): '[A]id-inspired studies and projects aim to "bring women out",
55
Also see Daniels (1993) who makes a somewhat similar point when exploring women's
relationship with the State in the United States. However, what she sees as a 'contradictory'
relationship could, in my view, be seen as consistent with the cooperative-conflict
framework.
to redress their "invisibility"; while the purdah culture ... of Bangladesh
holds seclusion to be the highest ideal for women. That Bangladesh accepts
this intervention is indicative of its client status ...' A third factor could be
the State's recognition of the inefficacy of both market mechanisms and of
its own machinery in implementing particular programmes which are seen
as essential for development, such as programmes for literacy, health
improvement, poverty alleviation, and so on. In India, the State's attempts
since the mid-1980s to enlist the support of NGOs for this purpose (and
especially the support of women's NGOs for literacy and health pro-
grammes), are a reflection of this recognition. In other words, on several
issues the interests of the State and of gender-progressive groups could
coincide. Cooperation by individuals or groups with the State could take
the form of supporting it politically (say, via votes), providing it ideological
legitimacy in international and national forums, desisting from 'disruptive'
activities such as demonstrations, pickets and strikes, and so on.
At the same time, the State may only cooperate with NGOs over certain
types of programmes. Typically in non-socialist regimes these are pro-
grammes which are welfare-oriented and fit into a 'basic needs' approach to
development, such as programmes for the better delivery of health and
educational services or for providing income-earning opportunities to poor
men and women. The State is less likely to support programmes which call
for a shift in basic economic resources and relations, such as land
redistribution. In other words, within the framework of cooperative-
conflict there can be a deep divide in the issues over which the State may be
willing to cooperate and those over which there would be explicit conflict. A
demand for gender-equitable distribution of arable land would tend to fall
in the latter category.
Further, the State itself can be seen as an arena of cooperation and
conflict which take place in many forms and on multiple levels. For
instance, if we distinguish its role in enacting laws and formulating policies
from that of implementation, the State may cooperate in passing gender-
progressive laws and policies, but the resistance offered by the local
bureaucracy, judiciary, police, or other arms of the State apparatus in the
implementation of these measures, or in the allocation of funds, would
constitute aspects of conflict. There may also be departments or ministries
within the State apparatus which seek to pursue gender-progressive policies
and programmes within an overall gender-retrogressive State structure and
development framework. Women's Cells, Departments, or even Ministries,
set up in different South Asian countries after 1975 (which marked the
beginning of the United Nations Decade for Women), are cases in point.
Likewise, there may be gender-progressive individuals within particular
departments of the State apparatus - in every South Asian country, it is
possible to name individual bureaucrats (male and female) who have
played a critical positive role in this respect, typically, but not only, in
response to demands by women's groups. 56
On the one hand, therefore, there would be gender-related contestation
between elements of the State and non-State organizations, institutions, or
individuals; on the other hand the State itself can be seen as an arena of
gender contestation between parties with varying understandings of and
commitment to reducing (or reinforcing) gender hierarchies. These contes-
tations can be between State officials within a department, between
different tiers of the State apparatus (such as policy making and policy
implementation bodies), and/or between different regional elements of the
State structure (e.g. the bureaucracy in the Indian state of Bihar operates
differently in this regard from that of Kerala), and so on.
Such a conceptualization implies that the State is not being seen here as a
monolithic structure which is inherently, uniformly or trans-historically
'patriarchal'. 57 Rather it is a differentiated structure through which and
within which gender relations get constituted through a process of contes-
tation.58 Such a conceptualization does not deny the empirical realities of
State-functioning in South Asia as having been, in greater or lesser degree,
more gender-retrogressive than gender-progressive. But it does mean that
56
Sanyal (forthcoming) makes a similar point in his work on the relationship between the
government and N G O s in South Asia. In his meetings with a n u m b e r of bureaucrats and
state planners, he found that the barrage of criticism against them as people interested only
in furthering their own interests was not entirely justified; that a n u m b e r o f ' t h e s e planners
also cared a b o u t their countries' well-being, were intensely critical of inefficiencies within
the government, and were often very appreciative of P V O s [private/traditional voluntary
organizations] and N G O s w h o had organized the poor, m a d e d e m a n d s on the government
on their behalf, and thus, had facilitated social reform' (p.23). N G O s , likewise, while
complaining a b o u t m a n y obstructive social officials also occasionally mentioned 'good
bureaucrats' w h o helped N G O s in m a n y ways, even against the recommendations of fellow
bureaucrats.
Goetz's (1990) discussion on the functioning of field-level bureaucrats in Bangladesh is
also revealing. A m o n g other things, she finds interesting differences in the a p p r o a c h e s and
attitudes of male and female bureaucrats. In village-level credit p r o g r a m m e s , for instance,
women bureaucrats were m u c h m o r e sympathetic to the constraints faced by village
w o m e n and (because they were w o m e n and therefore excluded from most male networks)
were less susceptible t h a n their male colleagues to being coopted by the local male elite.
57
A m o n g those w h o see the State as an inherently male institution, embodying and
protecting male interests, see especially M a c K i n n o n (1989), w h o argues: 'The state is male
in the feminist sense: the law sees and treats w o m e n the way men see and treat w o m e n '
(pp. 161-2). Again: 'Over and over again, the state protects male power t h r o u g h embodying
and ensuring existing male control over w o m e n at every level - cushioning, qualifying or de
jure appearing to prohibit its excesses when necessary to its normalization. Dejure relations
stabilize de facto relations' (p. 167).
58
Here I c o m e close t o Connell's (1987: 130) conceptualization of the State in the context of
Western democracies: 'The patriarchal state can be seen, then, not as the manifestation of a
patriarchal essence, but as the center of a reverberating set of power relations and political
processes in which patriarchy is b o t h constructed a n d contested'.
the State could be and has been in some degree subject to challenge and
change in this respect.
In this process of contestation, women's bargaining strength with the
State could depend on a complex set of factors. For instance, women would
have much greater strength if they were functioning as a group, say as a
women's organization, than as individuals (as also noted in the context of
community-level bargaining). Their bargaining power would be greater,
the larger the group and the greater its ability to muster support from the
media, oppositional political parties, and gender-progressive individuals
and groups in the State apparatus. The degree to which judicial institutions
within the country can act autonomously of the ruling political party would
also impinge on the outcomes of women's interactions with the State, as
would the extent of sensitivity to gender-related concerns prevailing within
the country and internationally.
III. Interactions: the household/family, the community, and the State

So far we have noted how the household/family, the community and the
State can be characterized as three principal arenas of contestation.59
Gender relations get constituted within and by each of these. At the same
time, the State, the community, and the family are also interacting arenas,
embodying pulls and pressures which may, at specific junctures and in
different country contexts, either converge (reinforcing each other) or move
in contradictory directions (providing spaces for the building of counter-
vailing resistances). For instance, a State may take a progressive pro-
women stance, passing laws, defining policies, and promoting programmes
that favour women's interests, while communities within the country may
resist the implementation of these measures: the situation in post-Indepen-
dence India and some other parts of South Asia, at several points in time,
could be so characterized. Or the State, the community, and the family may
reinforce each other in strengthening, say, the strictures on women's social
and sexual conduct and dress, as happened especially under Zia-ul-Huq in
Pakistan. Or State policies may be congruent with the dominant interests of
the community but individual families may find that their economic
interests are in conflict with the norms set by local communities. Many pooi
rural households in Bangladesh today are cases in point: here Islamization
drives launched by the State and supported by local communities have
dictated greater female seclusion, but such strictures are now being
contested by many poor women (often with the tacit support of their
husbands) who find that these norms seriously constrain their attempts at
economic survival (see chapter 9 for details).
59
The market is a fourth, which would also interact with these three institutional arenas in
various ways, but, as noted earlier, is not our principal focus here.
Essentially, the local communities can be seen as playing an intermediate
role between the State and the individual or household, in defining and
enforcing people's obligations and rights in different areas, including
appropriate forms of social behaviour, economic activity, and sometimes
even dress. At the same time, not all members of a given community need
conform to what is specified by the community's economically and
politically influential members. To the extent that the State as a whole (or
significant elements within it) maintains a relatively gender-progressive
position in policies, legislation and implementation, it provides space to
individual women or individual households to escape from or openly
contest a community's gender-retrogressive stranglehold. It also provides
scope to women for building organized resistance against specific gender-
retrogressive practices prevailing in the community and/or household. This
is especially critical in women's struggle for a share in arable land, since
many men both in their local communities and in their households are likely
to have a considerable stake in preserving the status quo.
Among these contradictory pulls and pressures (as also emphasized in
chapter 1) for women to acquire and exercise control over land will require
simultaneous struggles in all the different arenas of household, community,
and State. It will involve contesting the inequities inherent in existing
distributions of material resources as well as in gendered ideologies and
social practices. The very scale of the struggle that will be necessary
Constitutes a formidable barrier, but it is precisely this which also gives this
struggle its unique potential to transform women's lives.
In the chapters which follow, the framework of bargaining or contestation

spelt out here will constitute a running thread. For instance, chapters
3 and 4 will help illuminate how despite the considerable bargaining power
that women of matrilineal and bilateral communities historically enjoyed in
marital relationships, their limited access to and bargaining power in
community and state decision-making bodies left them vulnerable to the
erosion of their property rights and sexual freedoms. Again the process of
reform in women's legal rights in property in the twentieth century may be
seen as one of contestation between individuals and groups with differing
ideologies and interests within and outside the State arena (chapter 5). The
framework of bargaining is similarly useful in understanding (a) the
difficulties women face in claiming, retaining, and controlling their legal
shares in land, in so far as these are traceable to the weakness of women's
fall-back positions and overall bargaining power (chapters 6 and 7); (b) the
regional variations in these difficulties (chapter 8); and (c) the ways in which
women resist and contest prevailing gender inequalities in practices affect-
ing their rights in arable land and their social freedoms (chapter 9).
Customary rights and associated practices
The natives of Ceylon are more continent with respect to women, than the
other Asiatic nations; and their women are treated with much more
attention. A Ceylonese woman almost never experiences the treatment of
a slave, but is looked upon by her husband, more after the European
manner, as a wife and a companion. (Percival 1803: 176)
[I]f she is weary of a man, she tells him to go, and he does so, or makes
terms with her. Any children they may have stay with the mother who has
to bring them up, for they hold them not to be children of any man, even if
they bear his likeness, and they do not consider them their children, nor
are they heirs to their estates . . .
(Barbosa c. 1518, on the Nayars, translated from the Portuguese by Dames
1921:42)
Prior to colonial rule, the inheritance of property, including land, was
governed by local customs in South Asia. These customs varied by region,
religion, caste, and sometimes even family, forming a complex mosaic.l But
to what extent did they give women inheritance rights in land? Did such
rights, where they existed, make for greater equality in gender relations, as
suggested by the above quotations on the bilateral Sinhalese and matrili-
neal Nayars? And were these rights structurally linked to (or conditional
upon) certain social practices? For instance, did those communities which
recognized women'srightsin land have particular preferences about whom
women should marry, where they should live after marriage, whether and
whom they could remarry on widowhood, the degree to which they could
take decisions about the use and disposal of the land, and so on? It could be
hypothesized that given the critical importance of landed property in
agrarian economies, families or communities which recognized women's
land rights would have had marked preferences on these counts, to ensure
that the land so inherited would remain within their overall purview. Close-
kin marriages, for instance, would be conducive to ensuring this, as would a
woman's post-marital residence in her natal home or village.
These questions and hypotheses will be addressed in this chapter through
1
See Cohn (1965), Mayne (1900, 1953), Derrett (1968), and Lingat (1973).
82
Customary rights and associated practices 83
a historical analysis of communities which indisputably gave women

customary rights in land. In particular, an attempt will be made to probe
whether there was any systematic association of women's land rights with
specific marriage practices and the sexual freedom granted to women.
Through this analysis I also hope to illuminate why communities and
regions in which today there is a significant disjunction between contem-
porary laws governing women's inheritance and customary rules of mar-
riage, are likely to be particularly resistant to the de facto realization of
women's legal rights. Such a disjunction could occur, for instance, in cases
where current laws framed by the modern State extend inheritance rights in
land to women who did not have those rights before, but customary rules of
marriage (such as prohibition of village endogamy and close-kin marriage)
do not allow the kin group to exercise control over the land so inherited.
The three sections below will address these issues as follows. Section I will
examine the evidence on gender and property (including land) rights in
patrilineal communities in the pre-colonial period, as well as identify the
regions and communities where matrilineal and bilateral inheritance
systems prevailed which customarily recognized women's rights in land.
Section II will focus in detail on the traditionally matrilineal and bilateral
communities, describing the form that women's land rights historically
took in each case and the conditions under which these were granted. And
in section III I will draw upon these case studies to: (1) identify the
structural links between women's land rights and other social (especially
marriage) practices; and (2) comment on the nature of gender relations
within these communities. In identifying the structural links I will also
critically examine and spell out the ways in which I differ from Goody's
(1973, 1976) propositions on the nature of these links, including his
proposition that dowry, by definition, is a form of pre-mortem inheritance.
(The appendix on 'definitions' defines the different types of post-marital
residence that will be mentioned in the discussion below.)
I. Which communities customarily recognized women's rights in

land?
There is undisputed evidence that in at least three regions of South Asia
there were significant (although localized) pockets of communities custo-
marily practising matrilineal and/or bilateral inheritance. These are:
—Northeast India, the home of three matrilineal tribal communi-
ties: the Garos, Khasis, and Lalungs;
—South India: here the Nangudi Vellalars of Tamil Nadu state
practised bilateral inheritance, and several other groups prac-
tised matrilineal inheritance, including the Nayars and Tiyyars
of Kerala, the Mappilas of north Kerala and the Lakshadweep
(earlier called Laccadive) Islands, the Bants of south Canara
(now in Karnataka state), and the Phadiyas and Chettis of
Wynad district (bordering northern Kerala and Tamil Nadu);
and
—Sri Lanka: here all the major communities practised bilateral or
matrilineal inheritance - the Sinhalese and the Jaffna Tamils
were bilateral, and the Muslim 'Moors' were matrilineal. 2
Information on the customary practices prevailing among these communi-
ties, while not extensive (the best documented are the Garos, Nayars, and
Kandyan Sinhalese), is adequate for tracing their inheritance and marriage
customs historically. However, for communities other than these, such
information is relatively scarce, especially but not only for the period prior
to the 1950s, when a range of ethnographic evidence on local norms and
practices began to emerge through village studies. These ethnographies (to
be discussed in chapter 6) suggest that in South Asian communities, other
than those mentioned above, inheritance practices were essentially patrili-
neal, and women had few and highly restricted rights in land. But might
women's rights in these patrilineal communities have been greater at some
earlier points in time, say before the advent of the British? It is not possible
to probe this question here in depth or detail, but some pointers are
attempted below.
For tracing Hindu inheritance and marriage practices in ancient times,

reference is often made to the detailed textual information provided by the
ancient legal treatises - Dharmashastras ~ and the many commentaries on
them. Although it is now widely recognized that this classical shastric
literature provided prescriptions about appropriate practice rather than
descriptions of actual practice, the shastras are a useful reference point since
they did draw upon custom in some degree and in turn shaped custom
(Lingat 1973, Derrett 1968). And especially as formalized under the
Mitakshara and Dayabhaga legal doctrines (described below) they signifi-
cantly influenced legal practice in the British period and the formulation of
contemporary Hindu law. Dated sometime between 200 BC and AD 300
(Kane 1930), the shastras are said to have been constituted from the smritis,
that which the renowned sages (especially Manu, Narada, and Yajnaval-
2
Although the nomenclature 'Moor' (given to the Sri Lankan Muslims under Portuguese
rule) is no longer commonly used in Sri Lanka and has been subsumed under the general
category 'Muslim', I have retained the term in my narrative to distinguish the group both
from other Muslims in Sri Lanka today who did not traditionally practise matriliny, and
from the matrilineal Muslims (such as the Mappilas) of southwest India whose inheritance
practices, as will be noted, were different.
Customaryrightsand associated practices 85
3
kya) 'remembered' from what was explained to them by the 'Self-existent'
one. The Manu smriti was the most orthodox, and the Yajnavalkya smriti
among the more liberal in granting women rights. Commentaries on each of
the smritis followed, some taking the form of digests and legal treatises that
gained influence in different regions of the country. The most important of
these were the Mitakshara and Dayabhaga legal doctrines, dated around
the twelfth century AD (and referred to as 'schools' of law by the British).
The Dayabhaga system, based on a digest composed by Jimutavahana (a
Bengali Brahmin), held sway mainly in Bengal and Assam, and the
Mitakshara system, based on a commentary on the Yajnavalkya smriti by
Vijnaneshvara (from south India), held sway in the rest of the country.
Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Mitakshara school
branched into four sub-schools which came to be known as the Mithila,
Bombay, Madras, and Benaras schools. These sub-schools differed in
particulars while being bounded by the general principles of the parent
doctrines, which form the basis of contemporary Hindu inheritance laws
(although now much modified). What rights were granted to women under
the Mitakshara and Dayabhaga systems?4
Without going into all the complex details of the two systems, their main
features that are of relevance here were as follows.5 The Mitakshara system
distinguished between two types of property: joint family property6 and
separate property. The former consisted principally of ancestral property
(that is, property inherited from the father, paternal grandfather or
paternal great-grandfather), plus any property that was jointly acquired or
was acquired separately but merged into the joint property.7 A community
of interests and rights was recognized in the joint family property, held
3
Others often cited are Brihaspati and Katayana. There is a considerable literature on the
origins and contents of the Dharmashastras, but see especially Kane (1930). By Kane's
assessment, the Manusmriti was composed between 200 BC and AD 200, and the smritis by
Yajnavalkya and Narada between 100 BC and AD 300.
4
For discussions on women's inheritance rights in property as enunciated in shastric texts
composed prior to the twelfth-century Mitakshara and Dayabhaga texts, see especially
Kane (1946), Vishnoi (1987), and Altekar (1956). As the discussions by these authors
indicate, although there were some notable differences in the approaches of different smriti
writers and subsequent commentators, the inheritance rights granted to women in the
earlier texts were not more than (and typically were less than) those recognized under
Mitakshara and Dayabhaga. As noted earlier, Mitakshara is a commentary on the
Yagnavalkya smriti which was among the more liberal of the smritis.
5
For these features I draw primarily on Kane (1946), supplemented by Mayne (1900, 1953),
Altekar (1956), Carroll (1991), and Mulla (1982).
6
The joint family here is a legal concept and need not coincide with joint residence or any
other aspect of a common household economy that may be implied in a sociological use of
the term.
7
On how the share obtained on partition ofjoint family property was treated, see discussion
further on.
jointly by (a maximum depth of) four generations of male members - a
man, his sons, sons' sons, and sons' sons' sons - who became coparceners
on birth. Women could not be coparceners. Devolution was by survivor-
ship: the living coparceners had an interest in the property of deceased ones,
and the individual shares could be determined only at partition; these
shares decreased in case of births and increased in case of deaths among the
members of the coparcenary. There were severe restrictions on the aliena-
tion of coparcenary property. Even the rights of the karta (the father or
other senior coparcener who served as manager of the property) to gift, sell,
or mortgage any part of the undivided ancestral property were strictly
limited to contingent circumstances, the restrictions being especially severe
for immovable property; while other coparceners could not alienate any
part of their undivided interests except with the permission of all the
coparceners. However, each coparcener had the right to demand partition
unilaterally at any time, while the remaining coparceners could stay
undivided.
Over his separate property, by contrast, a man had absolute rights of
ownership and disposal. This property included that which was self-
acquired (if acquired without detriment to the ancestral estate) and any
property inherited from persons other than his father, paternal grand-
father, or paternal great-grandfather. In addition, if he had no sons, sons'
sons, or sons' sons' sons, his share of the ancestral property obtained on
partition was also counted as his separate property. In the presence of these
male lineal descendants, however, the partitioned share was still ancestral
property, as far as he and any of these descendants were concerned, and his
rights of disposal over it stood curtailed (Kane 1946: 576, 639-40).
Under Mitakshara, from the joint family property women were only
entitled to maintenance as incoming wives (including as widows) and as
unmarried daughters; upon marriage a daughter was also entitled to
marriage expenses and associated gifts. In a man's separate property,
however, his widow could inherit a limited estate, but only in the absence of
sons, agnatic grandsons, and agnatic great-grandsons, 8 and only if she
remained chaste. A limited estate (also termed a limited interest) meant that
the woman could enjoy the property for her lifetime, but she could not
normally alienate it (such as by gift, sale, or mortgage), except in a period of
severe necessity (later termed 'legal necessity'), and (within reasonable
limits) for performing pious and religious acts, especially those seen as
Agnates are individuals of either sex who have descended through the male line and trace
descent from a common male ancestor. In other words, they are so related to the deceased
that there is no intervening female link. For instance, a daughter is an agnate but a
daughter's child is not, while a son's son and son's daughter are both agnates.
9
conferring spiritual benefit on the deceased. There appears to be no clear
agreement among scholars on the extent to which women's alienation of
property for these purposes needed the permission of the reversioners,10
but there does appear to be consensus that greater freedom was granted to
women in relation to expenditures for religious and spiritual purposes than
for worldly purposes.11 A daughter (an unmarried one got preference)
came even after the widow, and a daughter's son after the daughter.12 That
is, for a daughter to inherit her father's estate required the absence both of
the noted male heirs and of the widowed mother. And when she did inherit,
a daughter, like the widow, could receive only a limited estate, except under
the Bombay (Mayukha) sub-school of Mitakshara which allowed the
daughter an absolute estate.13 Kane (1946) and Altekar (1956) note that for
several centuries prior to this even these limited rights of the widow and
daughter were disputed by orthodox jurists.
In the early shastric texts, however, for sonless families the practice of
putrikaputra or 'appointed daughter' was recognized, interpreted either as
4
the daughter appointed as a son' or 'the son of an appointed daughter'
(Kane 1946: 647, 657-9). In either case, the idea (as several commentators
argue) was that the daughter would raise a son for her sonless father. She
and her husband were expected to reside with her parental family, her son
inheriting her father's estate and taking his name and so continuing the
latter's line.14 But this system became obsolete over time, as (according to
9
The term 'limited estate' is legally used only in relation to Hindu women. An analogous
term, derived from English law, is 'life estate' (or iife interest'). Both terms (viz., limited
estate and life estate) mean that the woman can enjoy the property only for life, but there
are differences in the restrictions on transfers. A Hindu woman's limited estate did not
allow her to alienate the property, except in the specific restricted contexts mentioned
above. A life estate meant that the woman could freely transfer the property, viz. lease out,
mortgage or sell it, although such transactions were only valid for the duration of her life.
(Personal communication, B. Sivaramayya, Professor of Law, Delhi University, 1992.)
I
° Those to whom the property ultimately reverted if the present heir died or relinquished her/
his rights to it.
II
See discussions in Kane (1946: 710), Mayne (1953: 767-70), and Altekar (1956: 264^5).
Mayne also mentions that alienation for the benefit of the estate was permitted under
Mitakshara, but there are conflicting views on how this was to be interpreted.
12
The daughter's son, unlike the daughter, received the property as an absolute estate. In the
absence of the daughter's son, the property went to the deceased man's parents and then to
his brothers and their sons.
13
See e.g. Banerjee (1984: 355), first published in the 1890s. Also see Mayne (1953: 647-8),
Kane (1946), and Roy (1911: 264, 266). In cases dealt with by the Bombay High Court in
the nineteenth century, an attempt was made to ascertain Mayukha law, and it was noted
that under that sub-school daughters were not excluded from the patrimony, and sisters
rather than paternal relatives were treated as heirs to the brothers, on the understanding
that this had long been the general rule in Bombay Presidency. Daughters and sisters
inheriting in this way were also said to get an absolute estate.
14
Hence the 'daughter appointed as a son' appears not to have meant that she inherited the
estate like a son, but that her son was equivalent to what a son's son would have been.
Kane 1946: 714) the ordinary daughter came to be recognized by analogy
(after the widow) as the heir of a sonless man. A man could also adopt a son
in the absence of one, there being a strong preference for the brother's son.
The Dayabhaga system was different from Mitakshara in some important
respects. 15 A man was deemed absolute owner of all his property (no
distinction being made between ancestral and self-acquired property) and
could dispose of it (that is sell, mortgage, or gift it) 1 6 as he wished. The son
did not acquire an automatic interest by birth in the father's ancestral
property, nor was there any rule of survivorship: each heir took a definite
and nonfluctuating share. Division of property among heirs could take
place only at the man's death, and the property went in the first instance
equally to his sons. The share of a predeceased son would devolve on the
son's sons, or failing this on the son's sons' sons. A chaste widow could
inherit in the absence of these male heirs, but only as a limited interest, with
the right to manage but not alienate the property. Daughters came only
after the widow, again unmarried daughters getting first preference and
inheriting only a limited interest. However, in contrast to Mitakshara law,
Dayabhaga recognized the widow and (after her) daughters as heirs even
when the man's ancestral estate had not been separated before his death.
Hence, unlike under Mitakshara, women inherited an interest in all
property, irrespective of whether it was ancestral or separate. 17 This also
meant that the probability of a widow or daughter inheriting some property
was somewhat greater under Dayabhaga than Mitakshara.18
15
See especially Kane (1946) and Mayne (1953).
16
Later, under the British, testamentary disposition was also expressly recognized.
17
The undivided ancestral estate being referred to here is an estate that may be held jointly,
say by a man and his brothers. Under Dayabhaga, the father and sons were not coparceners
in a joint estate (as they were under Mitakshara), but sons who inherited on the father's
death could hold their inherited property jointly as coparceners, each holding a clearly
defined share. Each such coparcener had full rights of disposal over his share, and his
interest in which, while still undivided, could pass on his death to his own heirs, male or
female.
18
It needs mention here that succession under the Mitakshara and Dayabhaga systems was
based on two different principles. Under Mitakshara it was propinquity (that is, nearness of
blood relationship to the deceased) and under Dayabhaga it was religious efficacy or
spiritual benefit conferred on the deceased. The principle of propinquity meant that among
the admitted heirs, those nearer in terms of the blood relationship would inherit before the
more distant ones. The principle of religious efficacy meant that a person conferring more
spiritual benefit on the deceased was preferred as an heir over one conferring less spiritual
benefit. Under both systems sons were deemed to occupy an overarchingly superior
position over all other heirs.
The notion of sapinda underlay both principles but was differently defined. Under
Mitakshara, sapinda was defined as a relationship established by 'shared body particles'.
Under Dayabhaga, the sapinda relationship was linked to the obligation to offer a ball of
cooked rice [pinda) to the deceased, and to the deceased's father and paternal grandfather
during the ritual feasts of the dead called sraddha.
Sapinda also governed permissible marriage partners and those subject to death
Under both systems, there was also some recognition of female property
rights in the concept of stridhan (literally meaning a woman's property),
although there were varied and changing interpretations of what stridhan
could include, how much control a woman could be allowed over it, and
how it would devolve on the woman's death. The discussions around this
are too complex and contentious to consider here in detail, and I will seek
only to outline some of the overall conclusions arrived at by a number of
scholars. 19 Broadly, it appears that in the very early shastric texts, stridhan
could consist only of movables (such as ornaments, clothes, and household
utensils) given to a woman by her parents, brothers, or relatives before or at
the time of her marriage and by her husband after marriage. Over this
property she was allowed absolute control, and it devolved on her female
heirs in the first instance. In some later texts, especially from the seventh
century AD onwards, there was a tendency to enlarge the scope of stridhan
in terms of the content and source of the gifts. This also led to considerable
controversy among the commentators on whether landed property should
be included in stridhan and what control women should be allowed over it.
In particular, allowing women full control over any land received from the
husband, for instance, would have meant that his lineage risked losing the
land if the wife sold or mortgaged it or if it was inherited by her heirs.
Similar considerations arose in the case of land inherited from a father.
Vijnaneshvara, the proponent of Mitakshara law, proposed the most
extensive additions to stridhan, including in it any property (movables and
immovables) that the woman received, whether by inheritance, purchase,
partition, or chance. He was, however, silent on the question of a woman's
power of disposal over any property included in her stridhan which was
acquired by inheritance or partition; and there was a good deal of
speculation as to what he may have intended. Altekar (1956: 226-7)
persuasively argues that Vijnaneshvara could not really have intended to
pollution. Sapinda-exogamy prohibited marriage with all near relatives by birth, which
under Mitakshara meant that the prospective bride and groom could have no common
ancestors within seven generations when tracing the relationship through their fathers and
within five generations when tracing the relationship through their mothers. Death
impurity was seen as occurring within the prescribed degrees and marriage was permitted
outside them. In addition, marriage was subject to the gotra rules of exogamy. Two persons
of the same gotra were prohibited from marrying. Under the Dayabhaga school, sapinda-
exogamy was less restrictive than under Mitakshara: two persons could marry even within
the prohibited degrees provided three gotras intervened between the bride and the common
ancestor. Gotras are exogamous patrilineal clans whose members are thought to share
patrilineal descent from an eponymous ancestor who is deemed to be a primeval seer. (For
further discussion on the above issues see especially Trautmann 1981; Kane 1946; and
Mayne 1953.)
19
For details see especially Kane (1946), Banerjee (1896, reprinted 1984), Mayne (1953),
Altekar (1956) and Tambiah (1973), all of whom examine the diversity of views on these
aspects and the shifts in these views over time.
invest the widow with the absolute right to dispose of landed property
included in her stridhan but acquired by inheritance or partition, since he
was not prepared to concede full powers of alienating such property even to
the male manager of the joint family property:
Could [Vijnaneshvara] have ever dreamt of investing women with a right, which he
was not prepared to grant even to the male manager? His silence on the point may be
simply due to the fact that he tacitly accepted the general principle that women are
limited heirs, a principle which was approved even by Brihaspati, the most well
known advocate of women's rights. (Altekar 1956: 226-7)
Mayne (1953: 728-9) arrives at a similar conclusion, but on the basis of a
different argument:
[Vijnaneshvara] did not intend... to include in stridhana the property inherited by a
woman as heir to her husband or to her son. The very rules of stridhana succession
which he lays down postulate as a condition the legal possibility of the acquirer's
male issue or her husband succeeding to her property on her death. For, in the
absence of the daughter and the daughter's children, her son and son's son are to
take it and in their default, her husband. But obviously there can be no conceivable
possibility of her male issue or her husband taking on her death the property which a
woman inherits on her husband's death only in default of male issue.
It is difficult to say how the matter was resolved in practice in the
medieval period. Later, under the British, the Privy Council rulings took
the view that a woman could hold only a limited interest in property
inherited from a male, and after her death it would pass not to her stridhan
heirs but to the heirs of the male from whom she inherited it (see Mayne
1953: 728-30). The Bombay sub-school again appears to have been an
exception: it held that property which a woman inherited from a male of the
family in which she was born (e.g. as a daughter succeeding her father), or
inherited from a female, became her stridhan and her absolute estate (Kane
1946: 783).
Under Dayabhaga the issue was resolved differently. In this system, by
definition stridhan was that over which women had full rights of disposal. It
included gifts received from her parents, relations and even non-relatives
before the nuptial fire or on the bridal procession, as well as movable gifts
received from her husband after marriage. All these she could gift, sell, or
use independently of her husband. By this definition, stridhan did not
include any property that a woman had inherited (whether from males or
females) or obtained by partition of her deceased husband's joint estate, or
gifts made by non-relatives after her marriage, or the earnings from her own
labour. 20 Effectively (if not explicitly), therefore, stridhan property allowed
under Dayabhaga was limited essentially to movables.
20
See Banerjee (1984: 307, 314), and Mayne (1953: 729-30).
The issue of how stridhan was to devolve is again highly complex and will
not be detailed here: it depended especially on who had given the gifts and
on what occasion, and differed between Dayabhaga and the different
Mitakshara sub-schools. But, in general, gifts given by a woman's parents
and relations during the marriage festivities went firstly to the female line,
namely to her daughters (unmarried daughters getting preference). Other
categories of stridhan (depending on their source and context) passed
variously to her parents, brothers, and children of both sexes.21
According to both Mitakshara and Dayabhaga, therefore, Hindu women
could inherit immovable property such as land only under highly restrictive
circumstances and (barring a few exceptions linked to the Bombay sub-
school) at best could enjoy a limited interest in it. In contrast, men enjoyed a
primary right to inherit and control immovable property; and although
under Mitakshara they too faced certain restrictions in their power of
disposal over joint family property, these restrictions related to their rights
as individuals (as vs. group rights), but not to their rights as a gender.
Women were restricted by virtue of their gender.
To what extent did actual practice conform with the above-noted prescrip-
tions of the shastras in pre-colonial India? An in-depth probing of this
question, including tracing changes over time, would constitute a vast
historical project which cannot be undertaken here. But some broad
surmises can be attempted from the more readily available (albeit fragmen-
tary and diverse) material, such as studies of inscriptions from the medieval
period, historical ethnographies, the inferences of legal scholars, and
compilations regarding customary practices by the British. Such compila-
tions are also few. Although over time the colonial State recognized the
importance of local custom in its framing and implementation of inheri-
tance and marriage laws, little was done in most regions to systematically
collect detailed information on customary practice in its many variations.22
21
F o r details on the devolution of different categories of stridhan see especially T a m b i a h
(1973), K a n e (1946), and Banerjee (1984). K a n e (1946) also notes that the inclusion of sons
as heirs along with daughters (or even in preference to daughters) in certain categories of
stridhan represented a shift from the primacy given to daughters earlier, a n d probably
related to the growing value of stridhan property which women alone could n o longer be
allowed to inherit.
22
There were a few regional exceptions. F o r instance, in Punjab, a n elaborate questionnaire
was developed for systematically collecting information on local customs (riwaj-i-am)
relating to a variety of practices: inheritance a n d adoption, the use of c o m m o n land, the
rights of proprietors, etc. The information was gathered by British revenue officers engaged
in settlement operations in various districts; a n d based o n this, C.L. Tupper (a prominent
British administrator) a n d W . H . Rattigan (a distinguished member of the Punjab bar)
prepared compilations of customary practices in different parts of Punjab. Rattigan's
Digest of Customary Law in the Punjab, first published in 1880, also incorporated judicial
rulings by the British courts, updated over the years in various editions of the Digest.
As will be elaborated in chapter 5, as and when deemed necessary, the
British drew upon the local (upper caste) elite and village elders to serve as
informants and interpreters regarding local custom, thus introducing an
elite and upper caste (often Brahminical) bias in recording and interpre-
tation and a tendency to homogenize existing diversity. Even in the rare
cases when a systematic recording of customs was attempted, as in the
Punjab, the recordings were still based on information provided by village
leaders and were not entirely free from such biases. 23 Additionally, there
appears to be a male respondent bias: for instance, in Punjab, when
enquiring about the widow's right in some contexts to seek partition of her
husband's share in his joint family estate, the British found that in some
districts informants denied the existence of this custom even when such
partitions commonly took place in practice (Rattigan 1953: 316).
Despite their limitations, however, the various sources mentioned do
provide important pointers regarding women's property rights in the pre-
colonial period. We know, for instance, that in several parts of India, and
among a number of communities, local customs relating to marriage and
property devolution, at variance with the shastras, prevailed in practice.
For a start, some communities fell outside the purview of the shastras
altogether: the texts did not address themselves to non-Hindus, and turned
a blind eye to the customs of the hill tribes and of the matrilineal
communities of southwest India. But even for patrilineal Hindus, as Lingat
(1973) argues, the law promulgated by the shastras differed from custom
both in object and by origin. The intention of the shastras was to prescribe
duties and obligations of a religious character for acquiring spiritual
benefits. Customs could either be in accord with the precepts of the shastras
or in conflict with them: 'Custom is a social phenomenon, while [the
shastric] law has a transcendent character' (Lingat 1973: 177). At the same
time, the shastras were themselves influenced by custom, although the
borrowings from custom were selective and in keeping with the smriti
writers' notions of morality. 24 The interpreters, Lingat argues, were
similarly influenced by custom, choosing some and rejecting or amending
others: 'We are confronted by works which doubtless owe much to
23
Originally, in the Punjab, records of customs are said to have been collected by the
settlement officers from each village within a district, but after 1873 the officers called
together local notables from various parts of a district to report on their customs
(Gilmartin 1981). This would also have had some homogenizing effect in the recording of
custom.
24
Lingat (1973) gives several illustrative examples. F o r instance, he notes that M a n u was
hostile to certain types of marriages, such as widow remarriage or marriage between upper-
caste men and Sudra w o m e n (Sudra being the lowest category of the four main categories
{varnas) into which H i n d u society is traditionally divided - viz. Brahmins, Kshatriyas,
Vaishyas, and Sudras). However, confronted with deeply rooted customs that would have
m a d e prohibition ineffective, he limited their acceptability to specific contexts, emphasiz-
ing their overall undesirability.
customs, but of which the least one can say is that they are compositions'
(Lingat 1973: 183). As noted, different 'schools' of jurisprudence thus
emerged, although each was based on and drew its authority from the same
totality of texts. Also, it appears that the king, as the traditional custodian
of law, could censor custom and decide whether and to what degree his
kingdom was to be governed by orthodox Hindu principles (Derrett 1968).
In practice, all this meant that customary practices and shastric prescrip-
tions would have converged in some regions and communities and diverged
in others. But even where they diverged, shastric influence was not absent:
'We must take account of the attraction which the dharmic rule has
exercised upon custom by virtue of its religious significance and the
veneration always attaching to the sacred books which supply it' (Lingat
1973: 203). The prescriptions of the shastras would have been obeyed most
closely by the higher castes, less by the lower castes, and not at all by the
tribal communities. Regionally, tension between the shastras and local
custom on marriage, divorce, and inheritance practices is argued to have
been most severe in the Deccan and the south and least in the north and east
(Derrett 1968). Yet even in the latter regions, Derrett (1968: 221) argues,
deviations from shastric rules were tolerated: '[T]he hard core of conve-
nience stood out against theory, and to this day some ancient customary
elements have succeeded in defying shastric pronouncements - even those
which were never compromised by dilution and customary material.'
In marriage practices the regional and community-wise divergences
between custom and shastric prescriptions were clearly considerable: for
instance, the prevalence of cross-cousin marriage 25 throughout south India
and parts of central India was seen by most commentators as a divergence,
although some south Indian commentators attempted to show that this
practice did not contradict the shastras.26 Similarly, divorce, and divorcee
and widow remarriage, were widely practised among the lower caste and
tribal communities in India, although the shastras typically prohibited
them. 27
In terms of women's customary rights in land, the divergence appears to
have been less sharp, although still apparent. For instance, there is some
evidence that women's rights were greater than we might expect from the
25
F o r a definition of cross-cousins, classificatory cross-cousins, a n d parallel cousins see the
appendix o n 'definitions'.
26
See discussions in T r a u t m a n n (1981) a n d Lingat (1973).
27
Under exceptional conditions, such as non-consummation of the marriage, some early
shastric texts allowed widow remarriage (Kane 1941: 611). There was also an ancient
practice - niyoga - whereby a widow could bear a male heir through an appointed male
(usually the brother-in-law) if her husband had died sonless. But this was not recognized as
remarriage in that no further cohabitation with the man was allowed (Kane 1941: 600).
According to Altekar (1956: 146-8) niyoga was fairly common up to c\300 BC, but in later
periods it came to be opposed increasingly by the orthodoxy, and went into disrepute over
time for various reasons, including a growing emphasis on the widow leading an ascetic life.
shastric prescriptions in parts of India, notably the south and west. In south
India, inscriptions (temple inscriptions in particular) found at several
different locations, dating especially from the tenth to the seventeenth
century, record donations of land and other wealth by women, mainly but
not only as widows. 28 In Andhra Pradesh, Talbot (1991: 321-3) found that
14.8 per cent of the 391 individual donations to major and minor temples
between AD 1175-1435 were by women, and 23 per cent of these gifts from
women were of land. In Tamil Nadu as well, women were important donors
to temples in the early medieval period (Mukund 1992). Although, as may
be expected, a large percentage of women donors came from royal families,
a significant percentage did not: many (50 per cent of the donors in the
Andhra Pradesh temple inscriptions studied by Talbot) belonged to the
households of peasant leaders, warrior chiefs, herders, and merchants.
Temple dancers (devadasis) also made important contributions of land and
wealth (Mukund 1992). Indeed, devadasis in parts of south India were often
endowed with considerable landed property: although much of this con-
sisted of temple land over which the dancers only had hereditary use rights
by virtue of their services to the temple, some land also appears to have been
owned by them outright, possibly purchased or obtained as a gift from a
rich patron. 29
In the inscriptions cited by Altekar (1956) which record widows gifting
land to temples in south India, some clearly imply or state that the
permission of the reversioners had to be obtained for making the gift,
suggesting that these widows only enjoyed a limited interest in the property;
but other inscriptions give no indication that such permission was needed.
For instance, a twelfth-century inscription in Mysore (now Karnataka)
records a donation to a temple by a widow along with her brother-in-law
(the next reversioner) and her caste group, suggesting that not only the
reversioner but also the caste group had to approve the transaction. Again a
thirteenth-century inscription in Madura district describes how the gift of a
garden to a temple by two childless widows was made possible only when
some reversioners gave permission, even while others objected. In contrast
are several other inscriptions from south India, dating to the twelfth,
28
See Altekar (1956) for south India as a whole; Talbot (1991) for A n d h r a Pradesh; M u k u n d
(1992) for Tamil N a d u ; and Prasad (1988) for K a r n a t a k a . Temple inscriptions record
endowments m a d e to temples, and are typically found on the stone walls of the main shrine
or on stone slabs and pillars on the temple g r o u n d s (Talbot 1991). Inscriptions are also
found on copper plates, especially those recording land grants to individuals (such as to
Brahmins), and sometimes to temples or other institutions (R.S. S h a r m a 1980).
29
Also see Srinivasan (1988), w h o describes how in Tamil N a d u , a campaign calling for a ban
of the profession (which was labelled as 'prostitution'), spearheaded under the social
reform movement by the educated Indian elite from the late nineteenth century onwards,
led to a decline b o t h in the wealth a n d prestige of the devadasis in that state; and in 1947 the
profession was legally banned there.
fifteenth, and seventeenth centuries, which record rich Brahmin widows
gifting land, and even an entire village, to the temple: these inscriptions give
no indication that the consent of the reversioners was necessary for making
the gift. Altekar suggests that these variations reflect differences in prevail-
ing customs among different castes and localities of south India. Also
according to a twelfth-century inscription in Tanjore district (Tamil Nadu),
the Chola king Rajadhiraja II decreed that a lawful wife should inherit her
husband's property including land, cattle, slaves, jewels, and other valu-
ables (Kumar 1985, and Altekar 1956). In other words, a number of south
Indian women of wealthy families in the medieval period were endowed
with landed property, whether obtained through inheritance or as gifts (and
in most cases we don't know which), and many were able to alienate it for
religious purposes.
In west India, again, there are indications of a more liberal approach to
women's property rights. For instance, in Bombay Presidency, as noted
earlier, even in formal law (under the Bombay sub-school of Mitakshara)
the rights of daughters in sonless families were not restricted to a limited
estate. And inscriptional evidence suggests this is also likely to have been
the practice: for instance, a thirteenth-century inscription refers to a woman
selling some land she had so inherited from her father (Altekar 1956:
238-9).
Of course, from the inscriptions it is not possible to say how widespread
these practices were, that is, what proportion of women possessed landed
property, nor to what extent women could use the property as they wanted.
Donations to temples constitute a special category of wealth alienation and
tell us little about women's freedom to use that wealth in other ways. The
'merit' of donations for religious purposes is usually seen to extend to other
family members - indeed the noted donations were often made for the
spiritual benefit of specific relatives (usually husbands, sons, or brothers
(Mukund 1992)). Temple donations were also not out-of-keeping with
shastric prescriptions. As noted, Mitakshara law itself allowed women to
restrictedly alienate some part of the deceased's estate for pious and
religious acts, especially where it was seen as benefiting the deceased in
spiritual terms. In other words, temple donations by women had a social
(and legal) acceptance that would not necessarily have extended to the use
of that wealth for solely personal gain. 30 That propertied women, more
frequently than men of wealthy families, donated their wealth to temples (as
found by Talbot 1991), could again mean that women were typically not
30
Even in the Punjab, under customary laws, a widow who otherwise held only a limited
interest in the husband's estate had the power to gift a small part of the estate for pious or
religious purposes that would bring spiritual benefit to her dead husband. Such gifts were
binding on the reversioners (Rattigan 1953: 790; Rustomji 1942: 254).
free to use that wealth in other ways. At the same time, the facts that women
donors in the south although not numerous were by no means a rarity or
confined to royalty, and that in many cases the permission of reversioners
does not appear to have been needed for making the donations, do suggest
that women in south India customarily had greater rights of alienation
(even if for specific purposes) in the estates they inherited or were gifted,
than the shastras were deemed to allow.
That women's property rights customarily exceeded shastric prescrip-
tions in southern and western India is also argued by Mayne (1900) and
Derrett (1968), based on the situation observed in the nineteenth century,
and is indicated by the evidence presented by Roy (1911). Mayne (1900:41)
notes, for instance, that a sister who was excluded in the Benaras and
Bengal sub-schools of Mitakshara ranked high in the order of succession in
the Bombay Presidency and comments:
[I]t seems probable that the doctrine, which prevails in other districts, that women
are incapable of inheriting, without a special text, has never been received at all in
Western India. Women inherit there, not by reason, but in defiance, of the rules
which regulate their admission elsewhere. In their case, written law has never
superseded immemorial custom.
Mayne insists that such variations cannot be seen as the operation of
different schools of law, since the basic principles of the Mitakshara sub-
schools were the same; rather they reflect variations of local customs.
Evidence from studies which touch on other regions is extremely
fragmentary. Prasad (1988), for instance, describes some medieval inscrip-
tions (from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) which record queens
granting entire villages to temples in parts of eastern India (Orissa) and
central India (Madhya Pradesh), but this was usually with the king's
consent, and grants given by royalty tell us little about the land rights of
women in the general population. 31 Again (in so far as this might reflect an
older, accepted tradition) some inferences can be drawn from late nine-
teenth-century cases of Hindu widows from wealthy backgrounds in
Bengal inheriting zamindari estates 32 from their husbands, as a limited
interest in the absence of sons, and managing these estates through male
agents while themselves remaining in purdah (Borthwick 1984). This
practice would be in keeping with the noted better recognition accorded to a
widow's claims under Dayabhaga law (prevalent in Bengal) compared to
Mitakshara law, and was therefore probably not just a late nineteenth-
century phenomenon but stemmed from an earlier period. All said, though,
31
Also see Sircar's (1983) compilation of select inscriptions for additional examples of land
grants by queens from Himachal Pradesh a n d U t t a r Pradesh.
32
Estates belonging to zamindars or landholders, w h o collected revenue on behalf of the
government.
these examples do not imply that the average woman's rights were
substantial, although the flexibility of custom allowed communities to take
account of situational factors under which women might be given certain
rights denied to them as a rule. For instance, in the Punjab (again in so far as
customs recorded in the second half of the nineteenth century are indicative
of earlier practices) a Hindu widow who could prove that she was not
getting adequate maintenance from her husband's kin could seek partition
of the husband's share in his joint family estate. Normally she could.enjoy
only a limited interest in this property, but in certain restricted circum-
stances she could alienate it. 33 The custom of a brotherless woman
inheriting her father's estate, to be then passed on to her son, with her
husband residing uxorilocally (that is with her and her parents), also
appears to have been practised among some communities in India, 34 a
practice similar to the 'appointed daughter' arrangement which, as noted,
was recognized in the early shastric texts but later became obsolete.
(However, as will be argued further in chapter 6, this was essentially an
arrangement for sonless fathers to obtain a male heir (the grandson)
through the daughter and not a recognition of the daughter's independent
right to the patrimony.) Among a number of patrilineal tribal communities
in eastern and northeastern India, again, women as daughters, wives, and
widows enjoyed only usufruct rights in land; where this land was inherited it
was usually only in terms of a limited interest.35
When we weigh this (rather sparse) evidence as a whole, it suggests that
among patrilineal Hindu communities in pre-colonial India, especially in
the south and west, a number of women, of elite backgrounds in particular,
did possess landed property. But we must be cautious against reading too
much into this. Even in the relatively more favourable contexts of south and
west India, there is little to suggest that the average Hindu woman was
commonly endowed with immovable property; while the position of elite
women in this regard appears to have been far from one of equality with
men, either in their inheritance rights or in their freedom to use the property
as they wished. As noted, temple donations, one of our strongest pieces of
evidence that women from non-royal backgrounds could possess and
alienate land, fall into a special category of religious and pious acts which
enjoyed social and legal sanction; from this we cannot infer with any
confidence that the women who made these donations were as a rule equally
free to dispose of their wealth in other ways, even if an occasional very
wealthy woman was able to do so.
As regards matrilineal or bilateral inheritance practices, to my knowl-
33
Rattigan (1953); also see the discussion in chapter 5.
34
See Altekar (1956) a n d Rattigan (1953).
35
See e.g. Archer (1984) on the customary practices of the Santal tribe in eastern India.
edge there is no solid evidence to suggest that these ever existed in north
India or in any regions far from where they were recorded in the British
period, although in the proximity of some of these regions (such as in
southwest India) such practices were probably more widespread than these
accounts indicate. For instance, on the basis of documents describing the
customs of Kerala, Gough (1973) suggests that matriliny probably
embraced much larger sections of the population in that region sometime
prior to and up to the early sixteenth century, than noted in the subsequent
periods.
Muslim women's inheritance rights in South Asia also showed a marked

divergence historically between scriptural texts and custom. But unlike the
Hindu texts the Koran gave women significant inheritance rights, including
in land, although these rights were still unequal to men's. Daughters and
widows, for instance, could inherit in the presence of sons and were entitled
to an absolute estate, although the daughter's share was half that of a son,
and a widow could only receive one-fourth of her husband's estate if
childless or one-eighth if there was a child or a son's descendants. A
widower in the same circumstances was entitled to half and one-fourth of
his wife's estate.36 Customs deviated from these textual rules, among the
Muslims, in two quite different ways. In parts of southwest India and in Sri
Lanka's Eastern province, a few Muslim communities practised matrilineal
inheritance (as detailed in section II below), under which as a rule it was
women who inherited landed property to which men had use rights. In the
rest of the subcontinent, many Muslims appear to have followed customary
practices of inheritance similar to those of the local patrilineal Hindu
communities among whom women's rights were highly restricted. For
instance, the evidence compiled by Tupper (1881) and Rattigan (1953) on
customary practices for a number of districts and communities in the
Punjab, indicates that among the Muslims (like the Hindus) in that region,
widows could only inherit the husband's ancestral landed property in the
absence of sons, and only as a life interest. Daughters typically came after
the widow, and sometimes even after the father's male collaterals, although
among a number of communities daughters received preference over the
latter; and there is a rare mention of an unmarried daughter in some regions
being allowed a usufruct share (to be managed by her brothers) till she
married. Similarly, the Khojas of northwest India, the Cutchi Memons, the
Sunni Bohras of Gujarat, the Moleslam Girasias of Broach, and the Halai
Memons of Porbander (Gujarat) are all said to have followed local
customs, like those followed by the Hindus, which were at considerable
36
For a fuller description of devolution rules under Muslim law, see chapter 5.
variance with the Shariat. 37 It is only occasionally that affluent Muslims
appear to have endowed daughters (typically in sonless households) with
landed property, either by recognizing their rights in the patrimony under
the Shariat, 38 or via gifts, or by creating a waqf (endowment) (Kozlowski
1989).39 There were also cases of talented Muslim courtesans, dancing girls,
and singers in north India being given substantial gifts by male patrons in
the form of land and houses; or of movable wealth which some invested in
this way (Kozlowski 1989; Oldenberg 1991): this wealth was often inherited
by daughters and granddaughters (Oldenberg 1991). And some Mughal
rulers gave land grants to widows or to very young girls who had no other
means of livelihood to protect them from destitution; in some cases these
grants were inheritable (Bilgrami 1988).
On the whole, therefore, it does appear accurate to infer that customarily in

much of South Asia, inheritance and control rights in land rested largely
(but not entirely) with men: women of wealthy patrilineal households in
some regions sometimes possessed and transacted in landed property,
although in most such cases the extent of this property and its sources are
unclear, and women's degree of control over it typically appears to have
been limited. There were, however, some significant although locally
confined pockets of matrilineal and bilateral inheritance in southwest and
northeast India and Sri Lanka, where women's property rights were not the
exception but the rule (see map 3.1). It is to these communities that we now
turn.
37
See e.g. Patel (1979), Sivaramayya (1973), K a u l (1990), Tyabji (1968), Derrett (1968), Roy
(1911), and Hashmi (n.d.).
38
T h e Shariat or Muslim religious law is derived from the K o r a n , the sunna (practice of the
Prophet), ijma (consensus of opinion a m o n g the learned of the c o m m u n i t y ) and qiyas
(analogical deduction) (see Tyabji 1968: 1). There are two principal schools of Islamic law
prevalent in South Asia: the Hanafi school governing Sunni Muslims and the Ithna Ashari
Shiite School governing Shia Muslims. F o r a further discussion on these schools of law see
chapter 5.
39
A waqf often provided the economic base for mosques, schools, and various Muslim
religious institutions. It also gave individuals m o r e choice than allowed by the rules of the
Shariat in selecting heirs for their property. F o r instance, if a m a n had only daughters, by
K o r a n i c dictates (noted earlier) kin other t h a n daughters took what would have been the
sons' portions. T h e Shariat also limited testamentary powers. T u r n i n g one's property into
a waqf and directing that the e n d o w m e n t ' s income be given only to d a u g h t e r s precluded the
possibility of having a part of the wealth divided up a m o n g distant kin. Also the founder of
the e n d o w m e n t could n a m e a daughter as custodian, leaving her in effective control of an
undivided estate. Of course where a m a n h a d sons a waqf cou\d also be used to completely
cut off daughters, and families sometimes did d o so. Nevertheless evidence relating to the
early nineteenth century indicates that in a significant n u m b e r of cases these e n d o w m e n t s
benefited daughters, occasionally to the exclusion of sons w h o were wastrels or incapable of
managing property (Kozlowski 1989: 128-9).
Map 3.1 Traditional forms of land inheritance
II. Women's land rights in traditionally matrilineal and bilateral

communities
What was the nature of rights in land enjoyed by women in the customarily
matrilineal and bilateral communities of South Asia? Were there certain
social practices which defined the conditions under which these rights might
prevail? What form did gender relations take within these groups?40
The case studies below outline the traditional inheritance, marriage and
livelihood patterns in the main matrilineal and bilateral communities of
South Asia. Although these communities were limited in number and
geographic spread, an examination of their customary practices is import-
ant for at least three reasons. First, they can help reveal the structural
40
My interest here is essentially to examine the gender implications of these inheritance
systems. I therefore do not plan to delve into the contentious and speculative question of
their origins.
conditions associated with women's traditional land rights, and so illumi-
nate why, in the absence of these conditions, women are likely to face
particularly strong resistance in gaining shares in landed property, despite
contemporary legal changes in their favour. As will be argued in chapter 6,
the divergence in many regions of South Asia between contemporary
inheritance laws and local practices governing marriage and residence
makes for a considerable tension, leading either to women forfeiting their
claims or to social and legal conflict. Second, these case studies provide the
basis for subsequently tracing (in chapter 4) the historical process by which
many of women's customary rights have been eroded, especially the role
played by the colonial and post-colonial State in this regard. And third,
these case studies can throw some light on the possible links between
women's rights in land and other important aspects of gender relations.
In other words, the descriptions of these communities (which may at
times seem overly detailed) provide the essential empirical base for address-
ing the analytical questions posed above, including examining the validity
of a set of propositions to be presented in section III of this chapter.
A general comment about the information sources used here to recon-
struct 'traditional' practices is relevant, although additional details are
given as each community is discussed. For most communities the earliest
systematic accounts of inheritance, marriage and livelihood systems date
around the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even for groups such
as the Sinhalese and Nayars on whom there are some descriptions that date
several centuries prior to this, most of the detailed accounts stem from the
nineteenth century onwards. And for a few groups the only available
sources are recent ethnographies undertaken since the 1950s. However,
these accounts suffice for our present purpose, although a scholar particu-
larly interested in the history of one or more of these communities would no
doubt wish to probe further.
(1) Northeast India: The Garos, Khasis, and Lalungs
The Garos. The Garos, said to be of Tibeto-Burman origin,

inhabit the Garo Hills in what are today the state of Meghalaya in India and
the Mymemsingh district of Bangladesh.41 In 1901 they numbered 0.16
41
This section draws especially from Playfair (1909), who provides the earliest systematic
account of the tribe, supplemented by Hunter (1879) and Allen et al. (1906). For
reconstructing some aspects of the traditional situation which these authors do not touch
upon at all or deal with only in passing, I have drawn on the descriptions of that earlier
period in the studies by Majumdar (1978) and Kar (1982). These authors, through their
long association with the Garos, know the people and language intimately, and have had
the advantage of talking to Garos who lived in that period. For a more detailed discussion
on traditional Garo practices, see Agarwal (1990b).
million, two-thirds of whom lived in the Garo Hills at altitudes ranging
from 1,000 to 3,000 feet in the midst of thick semi-tropical forests. The
population consisted of a number of exogamous matrilineal descent groups
practising matrilineal inheritance and matrilocal residence.
Subsisting entirely on shifting cultivation (Jhum) and gathered forest
produce, the Garos at the turn of the century lived in widely dispersed
villages, each with well-defined boundaries, located in valleys or hillside
depressions close to running water. The settlements (a'kings) consisted of
jhum and homestead land, owned and controlled communally by one
dominant clan composed of the descendants of a common ancestress. All
clan members (including the village headman, the nokma) had equal
usufructuary rights to the jhum land but none had individual proprietary
rights. The area to be cleared for jhum was identified and plots apportioned
to each household in accordance with the number of its members. However
land was plentiful and a family was free to open up more within the a king
boundaries. Homestead plots reverted to the village community if the
household shifted residence within the village or moved to another village.
In other words, use rights in land were directly tied to residence, and land
was not private property or individually transferable.
However, a system of 'preferential use privilege' enabled households by
custom, although not by right, to usually return to the same plot every time
an earlier-jhummed area was taken up for cultivation. Similarly trees
planted by individuals belonged to them. Land improvements undertaken
by a household thus created a 'realm of preferential or mutually exclusive
privilege of using a particular plot, or a plant, or a tree on the land' (Kar
1982: 236).
Although land was not individually owned, the title of the a king was
vested in one household (usually the oldest a 'king-founding household in
the settlement), and was held in custody by the aking-nokma- the husband
of the inheritress of the founding household - on behalf of his wife and her
clan. He was the recognized custodian of the land but had no authority to
gift or otherwise transfer any part of the a king on his own without the
consent of his wife and her matrilineal kin group (the mahari). All decisions
regarding any land transfer or the granting of use rights in a 'king land were
made communally by the members of the founding lineage. The mahari,
and especially its elderly male members, enjoyed considerable authority in
this regard. Lineages other than the founding lineage had use rights, but not
possessory rights to the a king land.
All property (movables and ancestral house) other than land passed from
mother to a chosen daughter, usually the youngest. Parents without
daughters could adopt one from the wife's nearest female relative, such as
her sister. Marriages within the mother's clan were forbidden. The heiress's
husband (the nokrom) was chosen from her father's clan, and was ideally
the father's sister's son, who moved in to live with his wife in her parental
house. Non-inheriting daughters too continued to live in the mother's
village after marriage, but in separate houses constructed with their family's
help. They were also allotted some jhum land for their use. Sons, likewise,
left their parents' house after marriage. F o r most men this meant moving to
a different village (since most villages contained women of mainly one clan)
and giving up the use rights iojhum land in their natal village which they
had enjoyed prior to marriage. Only the trees they had planted continued to
be theirs after marriage.
N o man could inherit property under any circumstance. The self-
acquired property of an unmarried m a n belonged to his mother and her
female descendants, and that of a married m a n to his wife and her female
descendants. In case of divorce, the husband could depart with his clothing
but little else. However, a husband had rights to use and manage his wife's
land. Hence, although none individually owned land, men (as husbands
and matrilineal kinsmen) enjoyed considerable rights in land management
and control, and jural authority was vested in men alone.
Marriages were governed strictly by the principle of clan exogamy.
Proposals always originated from the woman and her household. It is of
note that for the heiress daughter, the father took direct responsibility for
finding an appropriate groom, preferably her father's sister's son. If there
was more than one suitable suitor, the girl could indicate her preference but
could not decline all suggestions without jeopardizing her heirship. In the
absence of an actual matrilateral cross-cousin, a classiflcatory one was
selected from the father's clan, and if possible from the father's immediate
lineage and village. Non-heiress daughters, however, could choose anyone
outside their mother's clan. The bride's and groom's families were equal in
status and no dowry or brideprice was exchanged.
A particularly popular method of proposing to the groom was bride-
groom capture: the girl identified her choice to the boys of her clan, who
forcibly brought the prospective groom to her house at night and kept a
close watch to prevent his escape. It was customary for the boy to express
reluctance even if the proposal was to his liking, and to escape and be
captured thrice before accepting. If he rejected the proposal altogether, the
girl had to choose another and the process was repeated. Burling (1963: 8 3 -
4), who witnessed this in the 1950s, describes it graphically:
I was sitting in Rengsanggri one afternoon when three shy-looking youths from
another village wandered in and inquired where they might find Unon. Everybody
chuckled, and somebody replied that he might be out in the fields . . . The boys
walked out in the direction of the fields... Here the boys split up, so as to close in on
him from all sides. Unon did not realize his peril until one boy was almost next to
him. He started to flee but was caught, and after a brief struggle he recognized the
uneven odds, surrendered, and let himself be led calmly to Waramgri, where a girl
was waiting, hoping to become his bride . . . I had just witnessed one of the most
exciting events in the life of every Garo man, the bridegroom capture, which is
considered the only decent way to invite a man to become a husband.
Occasional exceptions to this general pattern of thrice-proposal twice-
refusal did occur, of course, sometimes with tragi-comic results.42
At the turn of the century, jhum was virtually the only form of cultivation
practised by the majority of Garos, with a ten- to thirty-year rotation. A
two-year agricultural cycle was maintained: a mixture of crops was grown
in the first year and rice in the second, after which a new area was cleared.
Cultivation was by simple implements such as the hoe. A wide range of
jungle products supplemented the crops grown. Family labour was supple-
mented by a variety of reciprocal labour exchange arrangements between
households. In general the Garos were self-sufficient in food and also able
to produce a surplus for sale. Trading was done at periodic markets held in
the foothills.
Women played a major role in crop production and the gathering of
forest produce. Their labour input in jhum was greater than that of the men;
and their knowledge of indigenous crop varieties was extensive.43 They
controlled the household's food surplus, and any cash they earned from the
sale of small items in the village or the weekly market was considered
exclusively theirs. They were subject to the same rules of sexual behaviour
as the men: pre-marital sex was tolerated but adultery was punishable for
both sexes.44
The Garo community at the turn of the century thus had considerable
equality in class and gender terms, although there were certain spheres of
authority (e.g. jural) which men alone enjoyed.
42
Playfair (1909) describes one such case of a boy who petitioned the District C o u r t in T u r a
town claiming compensation from the father of a girl for failing to give him his daughter in
marriage. T h e complaint was that he had run away on first c a p t u r e as was the custom. But
n o b o d y came to seek him again, and the girl married a n o t h e r m a n who was less firm on
G a r o etiquette!
43
As noted in chapter 1, some women knew of over 300 indigenous varieties of rice (Burling
1963).
44
An especially striking feature of traditional G a r o society was the finely d r a w n code of
conduct towards women, with a detailed listing of punishments for transgressions. F o r
instance, a m a n assaulting a w o m a n while she was lying d o w n or forcing her to lie down,
grasping her hand tightly or touching her breast while she was lying d o w n and unable to
defend herself, or entering her house uninvited at night, were all considered acts of violence
for which she could d e m a n d compensation. U n w a n t e d sexual attention in the form of
words, winking, whistling, hissing, caressing, suggestive letters, songs or poems, or any
other acts a w o m a n found objectionable, were also punishable by fines for the shame or
embarrassment they had caused her, if she appealed to the clan elders (Playfair 1909).
Hence what has taken the women's movement in westernized u r b a n cultures so much time
to n a m e as 'sexual harassment' was already recognized for what it was by the tribal G a r o s !
The Khasis. Like the Garos, the Khasis are a matrilineal tribe
dwelling in the hills of northeast India, occupying the Khasi-Jaintia Hills of
present-day Meghalaya. 45 Unlike the Garos, in the early part of this
century each major Khasi clan, composed of the descendants of a common
ancestress, was usually scattered across several villages. Each village thus
had segments of several clans. 46 Also unlike the Garos, the Khasis had a
complex system of local administration that extended beyond individual
clans. Settlements were formed into Khasi 'states' through the voluntary
association of groups of villages headed by hereditary or elected (usually
male) chiefs, who exercised judicial and executive authority within multi-
tiered councils. 47
The lowest order of clan segmentation was the ting, consisting of'a set of
strictly matrilineal descendants, who have a common right over the
ancestral property, are subject to a common authority and practise joint
ritual' (Nakane 1967: 120). The central core of the ting consisted of two
persons - the mother in whom the ownership of ancestral property vested,
and her brother (usually the eldest) who managed the property for her and
represented ting authority. A husband was excluded from the wife's ting
although he was part of the common household. Sons (whether or not
married) continued to be members of their mother's ting, as did the heiress
daughter. Non-heiress daughters branched off after marriage and initiated
new tings, while also continuing as members of their mother's ting. The
children of such daughters thus belonged to the new tings of their mothers.
Customarily, there were two main classes of land in the Khasi-Jaintia
Hills, Ri Kynti and Ri Raid: the former was that over which the clan
members, either jointly or separately, held absolute proprietary rights
45
This section draws especially from G u r d o n (1907) and Cantlie (1934), supplemented by
H u n t e r (1879), Allen et al. (1906), D a l t o n (1872), N a k a n e (1967), and personal conver-
sations with Khasi academics and senior Khasi government officials on my visit to the
Khasi Hills in 1989. Cantlie is a valuable source of information on traditional inheritance
laws. F o r a m o r e detailed account of the c o m m u n i t y t h a n presented here see Agarwal
(1990b).
46
In b r o a d terms the Khasis are comprised of four main tribal groups - the K h y n r i a m s ,
Pnars, Bhois, and W a r s , with the Lynngams (said to be part Khasi and part G a r o ) on the
periphery. These groups are geographically concentrated in different parts of the Khasi and
Jaintia Hills, with differing ecological conditions and cultivation practices. They have also
been subject to varying forms and degrees of outside influences. In terms of inheritance and
marriage practices the customs described here are those that were being followed by the
K h y n r i a m s and Pnars at the turn of the century and which are said to typify traditional
Khasi practices. T h e other groups a p p e a r to have assimilated non-matrilineal customs:
a m o n g the W a r s , for instance, G u r d o n (1907) found that both sons and daughters were
inheriting from the mother, although the youngest daughter was still the principal heir.
47
In Khasi 'states' with hereditary chiefs, there was provision in theory for a w o m a n to
succeed to office in the absence of specified categories of men. In practice, the chance of this
happening was small, given the long list of men who preceded her. Only in one 'state' was
the spiritual head a w o m a n - a High Priestess ( G u r d o n 1907).
which were heritable and transferable. Ri Raidland belonged to all the clans
comprising a village community. A clan's landed property could be
apportioned by it to its individual branches and by each branch to its
constituent families. Division into separate portions held by families was
more common than joint possession by the clan. The family's ancestral
property - land, the ancestral house, and movables - passed from the
mother to the youngest daughter (the heiress), who was essentially its
custodian.
Non-heiress daughters had usufructuary rights in ancestral land, a part
of the produce of which was earmarked for the maintenance of the ancestral
home. Typically, as with the Garos, a new house was built for each non-
heiress daughter when she married, and a piece of family land was given to
her on usufruct, while the heiress and unmarried siblings continued to
reside in the ancestral home. A non-heiress daughter could, if she so wished,
lease out her share of the land with the consent of the heiress and leading
male family members. Family members had the right offirstrefusal to such
leases.
However, the mother could also, in consultation with her brothers and
maternal uncles, divide ancestral property among all the daughters, usually
when they married, the largest share going to the heiress who took it as a
custodian. Sometimes, in addition to this, a separate share was given to the
heiress for discharging her special duties. The divided shares of non-heiress
daughters were entirely separate and outside the control of the heiress.
Where the family had insufficient land, only the youngest inherited.
In the absence of daughters, a girl could be adopted from the nearest
maternal descent group. Alternately, a woman's separated share of ances-
tral property, if she had no daughters and female descendants, could be held
by her son, but only as a life interest, after which it would pass back to his
mother's clan. Women's self-acquired property, however, in the absence of
daughters, could be inherited by a son, eventually going to his wife and
children.
An heiress's brother, married or otherwise, had maintenance rights in his
parental home. His earnings before marriage belonged to his parental
family. After marriage, he could, with the clan's permission, enjoy usufruc-
tuary rights to the clan land on payment of a rent. His self-acquired
property, acquired while living with his wife and children, belonged to them
and not to his maternal clan; nor was it his to dispose of if he left his
children. This property, along with his wife's inherited and self-acquired
property, personal possessions, and gifts, formed the nucleus of the
ancestral property of that branch of the clan. However, Cantlie (1934)
argues, if a man acquired property through a profession or trade outside the
place where his wife or parents lived, he could gift it to anyone he wished in
his lifetime. In any case, men had considerable control over the manage-
ment of property as brothers and maternal uncles. The formal managerial
authority over a woman's ancestral property lay with the eldest brother, but
since women played significant roles in the household's economy and in
property division, it is not unlikely that they also had a say in the actual
management of the estate.
Strict clan exogamy and preferred village endogamy governed marital
choices. Marriage within the village was possible because clusters of several
clan groups resided within a single village. In contrast to the Garos, there
was an aversion to cross-cousin marriage. Most Khasis practised matrilo-
cal post-marital residence. The husband of the heiress moved in with her in
her ancestral home, while the heiress' sisters set up separate residences with
their husbands in the vicinity. But, some groups (such as the Pnars)
practised duolocality - the husband maintaining a visiting relationship and
working in the wife's fields while continuing to live in and eat at his mother's
house. This was clearly more feasible with in-village marriages (the
common pattern) than with inter-village marriages.48
Women and men enjoyed considerable sexual freedom before marriage,
but post-marital sexual norms were stricter for women than men. Adultery
by a woman was subject to a heavy fine, could lead to divorce, and could
deprive an heiress of her rights to ancestral property. Men's adulterous
affairs were tolerated; at worst they could lead to divorce (Nakane 1967).
Although divorce was common among the Khasis Tor any sufficient
cause and often without any assignable reason except mutual dislike or
want of issue' (Hunter 1879: 217), it was more frequent among heiresses
who also usually initiated it. Non-heiress daughters were usually more
dependent on their husbands since they could expect only limited help from
their maternal ting, and their marriages were more stable. Their stronger
fall-back position clearly made heiresses less tolerant of the husbands'
authority or shortcomings.
The Khasis traditionally practised both settled (including irrigated) and
shifting agriculture, but they were not self-sufficient in foodgrains and
imported rice from outside, even at the turn of the century. However, their
jhum cultivation was on more or less privatized land, unlike the communal
character of land held and cultivated undery/mra by the Garos. Unfortuna-
tely there is little information on the exact gender division of labour in
settled agriculture among the Khasis, but women's role in jhum cultivation
is likely to have been important as was the case under jhum elsewhere.
Jungle products (gathered by women) and fishing supplemented cultiva-
tion. Trading was common and women were the primary traders.
48
Nakane (1967: 123) suggests that duolocal residence may well have been the pattern at
some point in time, even among groups no longer practising it.
The Lalungs. On this third matrilineal group, the Lalungs, there is

little historical information. An understanding of their customary prac-
tices, therefore, has to be gleaned from a 1970s ethnography by Syam-
chaudhuri and Das (1973). This means of course that departures from older
traditions cannot be identified precisely. Located in the hills and plains of
Assam state, traditionally the Lalungs appear to have been primarilyy/jwra
cultivators in the hills, although today they mainly practise settled agricul-
ture. Women played a significant role in agricultural production. Inheri-
tance was matrilineal and property passed from mother to whichever
daughter the mother chose to reside with. This was usually but not always
the youngest. The heiress had no right to alienate ancestral land without the
approval of her mother and the borjela - the eldest male in the family,
usually the mother's eldest brother. Cultivation was managed by the
woman's husband, who resided matrilocally. However, he had no right of
disposal over the land or its produce, nor any claim to his wife's property.
Also, it was the woman and not her husband who was the recognized head
of the household. Non-heiress daughters had usufructuary shares in the
land, as did sons as long as they resided in the mother's home. Traditionally
cross-cousin marriages are said to have been accepted, although today they
are prohibited (attributable to the influence of local Hindu communities
among whom such marriages are forbidden). 4 9 Village endogamy was
preferred. Sexual freedom before marriage was tolerated if the liaison was
conducted discreetly, but it was not socially approved. Marriage was by
choice between the individuals concerned, although the initiative was
usually taken by the girl.
In comparing these three tribal matrilineal communities, there are some

noteworthy differences as well as similarities. The Garos were the most
egalitarian in terms of land access; all clan members (irrespective of rank or
sex) had equal use rights to land but land was not individually heritable.
A m o n g the Khasis, land access was much more privatized and unequal -
families held heritable and transferable rights to the land under their
occupancy and use. This also meant that when the family had insufficient
land, non-heiress daughters and sons did not get any usufructuary shares.
Hence unlike the Garos, the Khasis had in-built tendencies in their
inheritance structure towards intra-family and inter-family economic
inequality. Although the Khasis too had certain categories of land, such as
undivided clan land and village community land, on which rights of
possession were linked to use and were not heritable or transferable, these
lands constituted a part and not the whole of the community's land. A m o n g
the Lalungs, again, land access appears to have been much more privatized
49
Personal communication, D.N. Majumdar, Professor of Anthropology, Guwahati, 1989.
than among the Garos, and more so than is usually characteristic of jhum
cultivation, although in the absence of historical data it is difficult to assess
how widespread privatization had been traditionally. What was common
to all three communities was that women's inheritance of land did not give
them rights of free disposal or sale.
Four additional features of these groups merit emphasis at this point.
One, there was a clear link between land rights and post-marital residence
for both women and men. Two, especially among the Garos, group
ownership of land was linked with individual use rights based on residence.
This could be seen as an interesting alternative institutional arrangement to
individual ownership and use, and one which needs more consideration in
discussions on land reform today (see chapter 10 for elaboration). Three,
customary rules vested women with significant rights in land but formal
managerial control over the land was vested in men, although in practice
women in these tribal matrilineal communities appear to have played a
larger role in land management than they seem to have done in some of the
matrilineal communities of southwest India (discussed below). Four, jural
authority - the power to make rules and enforce them - was typically vested
solely in men, a feature we shall find repeated in the other case studies of
matrilineal communities in South Asia. These last two features have
particular implications for our assessment of gender relations under
matriliny (as discussed in section III of this chapter).
Let us now consider matriliny and bilaterality in south India. Unlike the
relatively isolated northeastern communities described above, many of the
matrilineal communities in the south (mostly concentrated in and around
Kerala) have been widely written about. The Nayars, in particular, have
fascinated travellers and scholars for several centuries. Also unlike the
northeastern tribes, most of the matrilineal communities in south India
were an integral part of the Hindu caste system, and operated within an
entrenched class hierarchy, as discussed below.
(2) South India: The Nayars, Tiyyars, Bants, Mappilas, Nangudi

Vellalars, and others
The Nayars of central Kerala. In the pre-colonial period, the

Nayars of central Kerala were a matrilineal community living alongside a
number of patrilineal groups. 50 They were divided into several subcastes
As outlined in Gough (1961 a: 305), central Kerala includes what in British times was south
Malabar district and Cochin state, north Kerala includes the northern part of Malabar and
the southern part of south Canara district, and south Kerala covers Travancore. There is
considerable ethnographic documentation on the traditional customs and practices of the
Nayars of south Malabar and Cochin, but relatively little on the Nayars of north Kerala
according to the specialized functions they performed, the important
subcastes being those of district chiefs, village heads, retainers to the royal
lineage or to the Nambudiri Brahmins, and the palanquin bearers to the
royal lineage. All these subcastes, according to Gough (1952), provided
soldiers to the Raja's army in war, and the account here relates largely to
their inheritance and marriage practices. 51
The system of landholding in the region was complex, involving a
hierarchical and varied categorization of land rights. Landlord families
(calling themselves janmis) held almost all the land in the village, some of
which they retained to be cultivated by serfs, while the rest was given out to
high caste tenants on hereditary tenure, who in turn sublet to (typically)
lower caste tenants, often leading to several layers of subletting. 52 Who the
landlords were, differed between villages: in some villages the land was held
by a Nambudiri patrilineal joint family, in others by a branch of a royal
lineage, in yet others by a large temple or by the lineage of a feudal chief of
royal rank or by the matrilineage of a hereditary Nayar village headman
originally appointed by the king, and so on. Some Nayars were thus village
and even less on those of south Kerala. North Kerala Nayars will be discussed later in the
chapter. On south Kerala, existing information suggests that the inheritance and marriage
patterns in central and south Travancore were different from those of north Travancore.
The practices in north Travancore were quite similar to those of central Kerala and will not
be discussed separately. Also, the paucity of information on traditional practices in most
other parts of Travancore does not permit an adequate reconstruction of such practices in
that region. (Fuller's (1976) reconstruction of traditional practices is also based largely on
material relating to central Kerala, although his fieldwork, undertaken in the early 1970s,
was in central Travancore.)
For my narrative on the central Kerala Nayars, I will draw especially on Gough (1961 a),
Mencher (1965, and personal conversations), Buchanan (1807), Iyer (1912), Thurston and
Rangachari (1909) and Logan (1887, reprinted 1951). Some of the discussion in Fuller
(1976) is also useful. The picture presented here relates to the dominant pattern, some
deviations from which no doubt existed in practice.
51
In addition there were a number of lower subcastes of washermen, potmakers, funeral
chiefs, etc. about whom not much appears to have been written.
52
Basically, the landlord family enjoyed significant rights and privileges in the land, including
the right to a fixed share of the produce, but not including the right to sell the land itself,
except with the consent of the king or of a chief, and then only to selected caste groups; nor
could tenants, village servants, or serfs be evicted without such consent. In this sense the
rights held were not those of'ownership' as understood in the modern western usage of the
term (Gough 1961a: 314; Logan 1951: 602-8). Hence, as Logan (1951: 602-3) argues,
although land transfers of hereditary property appear to have taken place in the pre-British
period, what was transferred was not the land itself but certain rights and privileges, and
certain types of authority over the people located on the land. The British mistakenly
assumed that the landlords held full property rights in the land itself, and recognized them
as the sole owners (also see, Baden-Powell 1892: 166, on this). It needs mention here that the
terms 'landlord' and 'tenant' are functional translations which do not adequately convey
the meanings of the original terms, over which there is considerable debate; on this, and for
additional details about the land tenure system in Malabar, see e.g., Baden-Powell (1892),
Logan (1951), and Varghese (1970).
landlords but most were non-cultivating tenants holding long-term heredi-
tary rights in land. Although there was variation in pattern across central
Kerala, typically the Nayar estates (consisting of gardens and paddy lands)
were sublet to Tiyyars or cultivated by Cheruman or Pulaya serfs. More
prosperous Nayar lineages also sometimes leased out land to less prosper-
ous Nayars, who in turn further leased it out.
The Nayar matrilineal joint families, termed taravads, were comprised of
the matrilineal descendants of a common ancestress, and usually contained
a set of sisters and brothers, their mother (if alive) and the sisters' children
and sisters' daughters' children. They normally shared a common residence
(the taravad house) and enjoyed property collectively.53 Some taravads
were constituted of more than one homestead.
A pre-puberty rite - the tali-tying ceremony - ritually married the Nayar
girl to a suitable man of the same or higher caste, the man having no
necessary further role in her life.54 Among the royalty or other aristocratic
lineages and district chiefs, the tali was usually tied by a Nambudiri
Brahmin. Subsequently, a woman could enter into sexual unions or
sambandhams with one or more men belonging to her own or higher
subcaste or caste. Among Nayars who were military retainers, the majority
of such unions were between persons of the same caste. Bilateral cross-
cousin liaisons were freely permitted and those with matrilateral cross-
cousins preferred. These unions did not imply co-residence - the man
continued to live in his natal home, visiting his wife at night and leaving at
dawn. The children belonged to their mother's taravad.
A woman could have more than one liaison ongoing, and the man she
was with for the night would leave his arms outside the door to indicate his
presence to the others. Women were usually free to reject particular men,
and the relationships could be informally terminated by either party: \ .. if
she is weary of a man, she tells him to go, and he does so, or makes terms
with her' (Barbosa 1921: 42). Indeed the Nayar marriage system repre-
sented a degree of sexual freedom rarely granted to non-tribal Hindu
women in India. It was this feature that most fascinated observers, some of
whom expressed shock, others approval (including the sixteenth-century
Portuguese traveller, Duarte Barbosa): The Nayre women of good birth
are very independent and dispose of themselves as they please with
53
The word taravad is also used to mean a matrilineal clan, consisting of all those who trace
matrilineal descent from a c o m m o n ancestress. M o r e commonly, and as used here, it refers
to the matrilineal joint family whose members held property in c o m m o n and usually shared
a c o m m o n residence; the house they lived in was termed a taravad as well (Gough 1961a).
54
Barbosa (1921:41) writing in 1518 describes a "tali as 'a small jewel, which would contain a
half ducat of gold, long like a ribbon with a hole through the middle which comes out on the
other side, strung on a thread of white silk\
Bramenes, and Nayres ...' (Barbosa 1921: 40). Both female and male
education were emphasized, and some Nayar women became famous as
poets in the eighteenth century (Iyer 1938).
Ancestral property was inherited through the female line, in accordance
with what was termed the Marumakkatayam system of matrilineal inheri-
tance. All taravad members had equal claims to maintenance from the joint
property, but no individual member could ask for a share by partition,
which could only be brought about with the consent of all adult members.
Management of taravad land was in the hands of the seniormost male, the
karanavan, while many of the younger men were away serving in the armies
of the kings or chieftans.
The self-acquired property of the karanavan passed to the taravad on his
death, and that of the female members passed to their children and
descendants, solely in the female line. Occasionally, a new taravad branch
(tavazhi) was formed. 55 For instance, if the membership of a taravad grew
too large, a new branch was established as a separate property-owning
group, through the partitioning of the ancestral property of the parent
taravad, if all the adult members agreed. Or segments of the family, settled
in outlying taravad lands, might over time separate from the parent group
and form an independent branch. Independent land gifts to Nayar women
by sambandham partners could also constitute the property bases of such
branches. 56
Typically Nayars did not themselves cultivate the land. And even in the
less-prosperous households women's role in cultivation was minimal.
Occasionally some may have assisted in supervisory capacities (Thurston
and Rangachari 1909). The karanavan usually allocated a share of the
estate's paddy crop and other consumption items to the seniormost woman
of the taravad who kept the keys to the storehouses; where there was more
than one homestead, separate allocations were made to each homestead.
Gough (1961a) notes that among retainer Nayars, effective daily manage-
ment of the taravad's activities was divided between the karanavan and the
oldest woman: 'the former carried out all formal transactions outside the
group, controlled the estate in toto, and disciplined men and boys. The
latter organized feminine tasks and held more informal authority over
women and small children' (Gough 1961a: 341-2). Where the karanavan
55
For discussions on the various circumstances under which this could happen, see especially
Moore (1983) and Mencher (1965).
56
See e.g. Mencher (1965: 169) and Moore (1983). It is not apparent how common this might
have been. Buchanan (1807: 411), for instance, observed when discussing south Malabar
that the gifts bestowed on women by their sambandham partners were 'never of such value,
as to give room for supposing that the women bestow their favours from mercenary
motives'.
was the son or a younger brother of the taravad's seniormost woman, she
had some say in estate management as well (e.g. counselling the karanavan
in his transactions with outsiders), but this was less likely where he was her
older brother or uncle. There also appear to have been rare cases of women
managing the taravad estate and even enjoying some degree of political
power (see e.g. Moore 1983), but typically it is the karanavan who appears
to have commanded paramount authority and held basic responsibility for
the upkeep of the taravad and for its public dealings. He oversaw various
transactions with the Tiyyar sub-tenants and serfs, dealt with market
functions, represented the taravad in the subcaste assembly and in interac-
tions with higher authorities in the kingdom, managed the taravad's ritual
affairs, and was legally responsible for the junior members of the taravad.51
Parallel to the Nayar system of matrilineal kinship was that of the
patrilineal Nambudiri Brahmins who also lived in large joint families
{Mams) similar to the taravads but comprised of the patrilineal descendants
of a common ancestor. They were typically landlords, and in the villages
where they were dominant their principal tenants were usually Nayar
lineages holding hereditary tenurial rights.
Among the Nambudiris, the eldest brother alone could marry and only
within his caste; the younger ones established sambandham unions with
women of high-ranking matrilineal castes, especially the Nayars, thus
limiting Nambudiri numbers and keeping the joint estates intact. This
meant, however, that the majority of Nambudiri women remained unmar-
ried and were kept under strict seclusion to prevent illegitimate unions.
Some nevertheless dared to defy these strictures and seek out lovers (see
chapter 9 for details).
The Nayars of north Kerala. Nayars in north Kerala, as in central

Kerala, followed matrilineal inheritance practices, but there were some
important differences between the two regions in marriage and residence
57
In her doctoral dissertation, Arunima (1992) has argued that in the pre-colonial period the
powers of the karanavan were much more limited and women enjoyed considerably more
authority in taravad affairs, than is usually recognized in the literature. She argues that the
legal authority held by the karanavan over taravad members, as described by Gough
(1961a) and others, was essentially vested in him by the British. Gough (1961a: 340),
however, has argued that '[t]he karanavan's day-to-day authority over his juniors was
conferred upon him by his feudal lord, backed by the judicial authority of the king'. It is
also not clear whether the authority which Arunima argues women enjoyed in the pre-
colonial period was authority over the domestic affairs of the household (which Gough
(1961a) and others also speak about), or authority also in estate management and public
affairs. To establish that in the pre-colonial period Nayar women wielded authority in these
public domains as a common occurrence, and not just as an exceptional case (as was noted
above), much more supportive evidence (than Arunima provides) would be needed.
customs.58 Although the chiefs and village headmen controlled consider-
able land in the north as well, many commoner property-owning Nayars of
north Kerala were independently small landlords in their own right.
However, there was less subletting of land in this region, compared with
central Kerala. Some families sublet a part of their land to Tiyyars, but
many managed their own fields, employing Irava or other lower caste
labourers.
Marriages with matrilateral cross-cousins were preferred although those
with patrilateral cross-cousins were also allowed. The marriage of two
sisters to two brothers, however, was forbidden. At one time pre-puberty
tali-tying is believed to have been practised, and among the aristocratic
families the tali-tier was an elderly Nambudiri Brahmin who had no rights
of cohabitation. Plural marriages were forbidden for women. Marriages
were expected to last (although divorce and remarriage were allowed) and
the spouses had much greater rights and obligations toward one another
than among Nayars in central Kerala. Adultery by the woman was
punishable and could lead to divorce, although discreet extra-marital
relationships between male and female cross-cousins were sometimes
tolerated. Polygamy was permitted for men and was noted to have been
common among the elite.
Residence was ideally avunculocal, with women joining their husbands
in the latter's matrilineal estates for the duration of the marriage. Cases of
matrilocality were rare and usually limited to younger and poorer men.
There were occasional cases of duolocal marriages where the spouses lived
in close proximity in the same village. But in most cases the rugged, densely
forested and inaccessible terrain, the associated geographic scattering of
houses and villages, and the fact that men often cultivated their own estates,
made a visiting relationship impractical. Sons normally moved back to
their own matrilineal homes at puberty, and daughters moved to their
husbands' taravad on marriage.
In large estates, the karanavan allotted separate gardens and rice fields to
married men for usufruct in undivided taravad land, and men lived in
separate houses with their wives and children on the men's matrilineal
estates. Sometimes a man could lease in land from his wife's taravad with
the consent of his own and his wife's karanavan. The karanavan had
considerable freedom to build a house and develop new gardens on his
wife's taravad estate, which would go to his wife's matrilineal descendants.
Occasionally men gifted landed property to their wives and the latter's
matrilineal descendants: chiefs and kings, in particular, were known to gift
The description below is based especially on Gough (1961a), Fuller (1976), Buchanan
(1807), and personal conversations with Joan Mencher.
large domains, although this was contrary to accepted practice. Such gifts
led to the formation of branch property groups, tavazhis.
Even after marriage, women were often partly maintained by their
maternal taravads, and received a share of the harvest as their right.
Moreover, the ancestral jewellery which they took with them on marriage
remained part of the joint property of their maternal taravads, and could be
recalled if needed. A married woman could visit her ancestral home for
extended periods of several weeks at a time, while a divorced or widowed
woman had a right of permanent residence there; indeed she had no option
but to return there since on divorce or widowhood she ceased to have any
claims whatsoever in her husband's taravad. However her claims in her
maternal taravad (as noted) were strong; and older women, when they
returned, could take over the management of household affairs. Widow
remarriage was freely allowed, although it was more likely if the woman
was young. In such cases the children from the first marriage remained in
the mother's taravad which maintained them.
In short, among Nayars of both central and north Kerala, land was
traditionally held in joint family estates and was not individually inheri-
table. Inheritance was through the female line, but most women had little
control over the management of property, although they were equal
participants with men in any major joint family decisions such as those
involving the partitioning of any part of taravad land. Among the central
Kerala Nayars, women continued to reside in their natal homes after
marriage. In north Kerala, although women moved to their husbands'
homes on marriage, and occasionally husbands had use rights in the land of
their wives' taravads, such land remained within the overall control of her
natal family, increasing in value through any improvements brought about
by temporary usufruct arrangements. And it was in their maternal taravads
that women had rights of inheritance and maintenance outside marriage.
The Tiyyars of north Kerala. The Tiyyars of north Kerala and

parts of Travancore had matrilineal systems very similar to those of the
north Kerala Nayars, although the Tiyyars in central Kerala had been
largely patrilineal for some time.59 From early sixteenth-century accounts
of local customs, Gough (1973) argues that sometime prior to and up to
that period the Tiyyars of north as well as central Kerala must have been
matrilineal, practising duolocal residence like the Nayars, whose serfs they
were at that time. At some point in the sixteenth century, she argues, the
central Kerala Tiyyars adopted virilocal residence and tended towards
59
The description in this section is based largely on Gough (1961a) and Thurston and
Rangachari(1909).
patrilineal inheritance patterns. However, in parts of Travancore and in
north Kerala, matrilineal systems persisted, with landed property being
held in joint family units. Among the north Kerala Tiyyars Gough suggests,
on the basis of later writings, that over time the pattern of residence became
avunculocal (from duolocal), with wives joining their husbands in the
latter's matrilineal estates. Sons returned to their matrilineal kinsmen at
puberty or marriage. Divorced or widowed women also returned to live in
their matrilineal homes. Divorce could be initiated by either spouse and
involved little formality.
Traditionally the Tiyyars of north Kerala practised the pre-puberty tali-
tying ceremony, but the tali was tied by a woman, usually in the role of a
potential mother-in-law: for instance, she could be the girl's father's sister,
or the mother of the man she was already engaged to. Marriages between
matrilateral cross-cousins were preferred. Bridewealth was given by the
groom's family to the bride's karanavan, while the bride's party provided a
dowry in jewellery and cooking vessels. Gough (1961a) argues that the
bridewealth was probably to compensate the bride's family for the loss of
her labour, since women did regular outdoor work: they grew vegetables,
milked cows, and transplanted, weeded, and harvested rice. Among the
north Kerala Nayars, by contrast, neither bridewealth nor dowry was
exchanged, the jewellery given to them on marriage (as noted) was
considered part of their maternal taravad's property, and women of landed
households usually did little outdoor work.
The Tiyyars ranked below the Nayars in caste and traditionally also in
economic status, serving as sharecropping tenants on the gardens and rice
fields of the Nayars and Brahmins. In Gough's (1961a) judgement,
customarily these sharecropping rights must have been hereditary.
The Bants of south Canara. Unlike the Nayars, relatively little has
been written on the matrilineal Bants of south Canara (now in Karnataka
state).60 Thurston and Rangachari (1909: 149) describe them as a largely
Independent and influential landed gentry'. They were the most significant
agricultural community in south Canara. Ancestral property was inherited
in the female line, in accordance with the Aliyasantana system of matrilineal
inheritance. Their residence patterns were similar to those of the Nayars
and Tiyyars of north Kerala. Women were expected to join their husbands
in the latter's matrilineal homes after marriage. In practice, however, in
households where younger men were away in military service, married
women often remained in their natal homes. Agricultural cultivation,
mainly rice, was critically dependent on female labour. Thurston and
60
The few existing accounts include Thurston and Rangachari (1909) and Claus (1975).
Rangachari (1909: 150) note: There is, in fact, not a single thing about
agriculture which the South Canara man knows, and which the South
Canara woman does not know'. Indeed in peasant households transplant-
ing, weeding, and harvesting were done mainly by women, as was post-
harvest rice processing and care of cattle. Women of wealthy households
sometimes managed the large estates 'as efficiently as men' (Thurston and
Rangachari 1909: 150). Women resident avunculocally were still obliged to
contribute agricultural labour to their natal homes when needed. Cross-
cousin marriages of either category were favoured. Widowed or divorced
women returned to their maternal homes with their children and had no
further rights to maintenance in their marital homes, as we noted was also
the case among the north Kerala Nayars and Tiyyars. Younger widows
usually remarried, but divorcee remarriage was rare.
Other non-Muslim matrilineal groups in the region: the Phadiyas

and Chettis of Wynad district. The regions around northern Kerala and the
southern tip of present-day Karnataka contained a number of matrilineal
groups with customs similar to those of the dominant matrilineal groups in
their proximity. According to Gough (1973), the pattern of matrilineal
inheritance and duolocal residence was probably widespread in this area
several hundred years ago, especially before cash cropping and timber
procurement from the forests enabled men to make money outside the joint
estates and to set up separate households.
The Phadiyas and Chettis of Wynad district, located in northern Kerala
and bordering Tamil Nadu, would be among such groups. From the brief
description provided by Furer-Haimendorf (1952), the Phadiyas were
organized around matrilineal joint families termed tarwars, similar to the
Nayar taravads. The oldest woman of the joint family headed the house-
hold and managed its domestic affairs; she was succeeded by the woman
next to her in age, usually the oldest daughter. The karnar, or oldest man in
the tarwar, managed the estate. Tarwar property usually consisted of paddy
and dry land, gardens, the ancestral house, cattle, ritual objects, and
sometimes cash. As among the Nayars, no part of the tarwar estate could be
transferred without the unanimous consent of all adult tarwar members.
However, a man could gift his self-acquired property either to his sons or to
his own tarwar. A man received the brideprice for his daughters but that for
his sons' wives was paid by their maternal uncle. Post-marital residence was
avunculocal, but women returned with their children to their maternal
homes on widowhood or divorce. A woman would thus grow up in her
father's tarwar, move to her husband's tarwar on marriage, and return to
her own (that is her maternal) tarwar on widowhood or, sometimes, in old
age. Women also enjoyed considerable pre-marital sexual freedom.
The inheritance and residence customs of the Wynad Chettis were very
similar to those of the Phadiyas. Rice land and cattle formed the most
important part of their tarwar property. A member of the tarwar who
wanted to separate could be given a share of tarwar cattle and unhusked rice
for his family's maintenance till the next harvest but no share of the tarwar
land. Cattle could also be sold by the karnar for tarwar expenses. Marriage
with cross-cousins was allowed and post-marital residence was avunculo-
cal, with the woman joining her husband in his matrilineal estate; she
returned to her own tarwar on widowhood or divorce.
Thus far we have focused on matrilineal inheritance among the non-

Muslims of south India. However, located in this region are also pockets of
matrilineal Muslims: the Mappilas of north Kerala and the Lakshadweep
Islands.
The Mappilas of north Kerala and the Lakshadweep Islands. The

Mappilas of north Kerala are Sunni Muslims, believed to have originated
partly from Arab traders who landed in Kerala sometime in the eighth
century AD and partly from indigenous converts to Islam (mainly from
among the Tiyyars). Gough (1973) notes that although the traders were
present in central Kerala in the eighth century, it was probably not until the
late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries that large-scale conversions
took place, and by the mid fourteenth century Mappilas were widespread in
south and north Malabar. She observes that sometime afterwards, those
located in south Malabar must have become patrilineal (although she
provides no specific reason for such a shift), while those who had earlier
migrated to the north remained matrilineal.
The economic status of the Mappilas of north Kerala ranged from large
property-owning Muslim aristocrats to those who owned no land at all.
Among the rich households, Tiyyar labourers attached by hereditary right
to the taravad helped in cultivation. Some Mappilas were also prosperous
traders. Property-owning Mappilas, whether of commoner or aristocratic
descent, had lineage groupings similar to those of the Nayars. They were
predominantly matrilocal: the husband moved to his wife's ancestral home
and contributed to her and their children's livelihood. Among poorer
families even the karanavan resided matrilocally, but in rich households
men who succeeded to the headship of the taravad returned to their
matrilineal ancestral homes to live in or near their kinswomen and to
manage their estates.
In choosing marriage partners, cross-cousins (especially matrilateral
cross-cousins) were favoured. Women did not veil themselves before male
paternal parallel cousins, but did do so in the presence of older male cross-
cousins except their husbands. Divorce was possible for both parties but
rare in practice.
The Mappilas of the Lakshadweep Islands appear to have had a dual
origin. The earliest settlers are thought to have been Nayars, Tiyyars, and
Mukkuvans from central Kerala, with matrilineal descent and duolocal
residence. Subsequently, probably around the fourteenth century, accord-
ing to Gough (1973), there was an influx of Mappilas from north Kerala.
The customs of the Island Mappilas were close to those of north Malabar,
except that the Islanders practised mainly duolocal residence with the
husband maintaining a visiting relationship.61 This was probably facili-
tated by the greater physical proximity of households there than was found
in north Kerala. Property (the most important form of which was coconut
trees) was inherited through the female line, but use rights to it could be
obtained by individual male or female members of the taravad; it reverted to
the taravad on their deaths. Today, as will be discussed in chapter 6, the
growing influence of Islam has created a mixed form of property devolu-
tion: some is inherited in accordance with matrilineal rules and some in
accordance with the Shariat, that governed by the former still being the
dominant form of property held.
All the communities described above practised both matrilineal descent

and matrilineal inheritance. However, there was at least one agrarian
community of south India which practised matrilineal descent but bilateral
inheritance (that is ancestral property passed to and through both sons and
daughters): the Nangudi Vellalars of Tamil Nadu.
The Nangudi Vellalars of Tamil Nadu. This was a small agricul-

tural community, localized in some of the villages of Tinnevelly district
(Tamil Nadu), practising matrilineal descent and bilateral inheritance.62
As described by Dumont( 1957:14-15), in the 1950s about half the property
(including land) was held by women and transferred from mother to
daughter, and about half was held by men and passed from father to son.
Women had exclusive inheritance rights to houses. The daughter received
her inheritance at the time of marriage through a dowry, which was strictly
the woman's property. Marriage between patrilateral cross-cousins was
preferred, and involved no exchange of ceremonial gifts. Residence was
matrilocal, in a separate house provided by the wife's parents to the newly
married couple. In a few cases (among the chiefs), when their own daughter
61
See Kutty (1972), a n d D u b e a n d Kutty (1969).
62
F o r details, see D u m o n t (1957), T a m b i a h (1973), and Thurston a n d Rangachari (1909).
married and thereby inherited the mother's property, the couple moved out
to live in the house of the man's parents, whom he replaced in his natal
home on their death.
The above pattern of inheritance has a few features in common with the
Thesawalami customs of Sri Lanka's Jaffna Tamils (described below), and
lends some support to Mayne's (1900) suggestion that in the past the
Thesawalami may have been practised by some Tamil groups of south
India, from whence the Jaffna Tamils are said to have originally migrated.
The Nangudi Vellalars were closer to the Sri Lankan than the south
Indian matrilineal pattern in another respect: property was held and
managed by nucleated households and not as joint estates, as was the case in
greater or lesser degree among the south Indian matrilineal communities
discussed above. In communities holding joint family estates, as we have
seen, the partition or alienation of land was circumscribed and subject to
some form of family or communal consent. Also, as noted, there was a
structural divergence between the transfer of property (which was through
women) and its effective control (which was largely through men). Within a
more nucleated setting, women were in a better position to exercise effective
control over their inherited shares. This was also the case among the
bilateral and matrilineal communities of Sri Lanka, to which we now turn.
(3) Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese, Hindu Tamils, and matrilineal Muslims
Agro-climatically, the island of Sri Lanka is divided into two distinct zones
- the Wet and the Dry - which have different land use and settlement
patterns (see map 3.2 for provincial divisions and the Dry/Wet Zone
demarcations within Sri Lanka). About 70 per cent of the population is
today concentrated in the Wet Zone, which accounts for some 30 per cent of
the land area and has an average annual rainfall three times that of the Dry
Zone. The economics of the Dry Zone settlements is crucially dependent on
water availability which has dictated their size, location, and cropping
patterns. Yalman (1967) describes four types of agricultural settlements
which characterized the Dry Zone: those found in the northern plains with
elaborate tank irrigation systems; those located in the mountainous
districts of the Central Province using rain-fed streams for terraced paddy
cultivation; those found in the more backward parts of the eastern districts
practising rain-fed paddy cultivation; and those spread in the dry jungles
where people subsisted entirely on rain-fed swidden cultivation (termed
chena) and hunting-gathering. Ethnic and religious clustering super-
imposed on ecological variations tended to produce some notable regional
patterns of inheritance, marriage, residence, land use, and the gender
Colombo
Dry Zone
0 40 kms.
1 1 1 1 1 Wet Zone
Source of zonal
division: Yalman (1967)
Map 3.2 Sri Lanka: provincial divisions

division of agricultural labour. But despite these variations (which will be
apparent in the descriptions below), one of the striking features about Sri
Lanka is that women customarily had significant rights in landed property
among the major communities of all regions and religious persuasions: the
Buddhist Sinhalese, the Hindu Tamils, and the Muslim Moors. Consider
each in turn.63
The Sinhalese.6* Under the traditional Sinhala laws of inheritance

(and also the contemporary Kandyan law), an important distinction
attached to whether a woman married in binna or in diga. In a binna
marriage, the husband came to live uxorilocally with his wife and in-laws
and, jointly with his wife, managed the land she inherited. Their children
had rights and obligations in their mother's household and took her
ancestral name. Under diga, the woman moved out to live virilocally with
her husband, and the children took their father's name. A binna-mdLvnzd
daughter had the same rights of inheritance in the ancestral estate (praveni)
of her father as her brothers and unmarried sisters. A d/gtf-married
daughter, however, had to forfeit her share in her father's praveni,
sometimes but not always receiving a dowry instead. Most writers note that
a dowry in movables, cash, and occasionally land was given among the
wealthy, especially the nobility, but rarely among the middle and poorer
peasants. Dowry was clearly not a daughter's right in the way inheritance
was, and could not be demanded if the family chose to give her none.
Moreover, even a &/««tf-married daughter had to forfeit her rights if her
marriage broke up and she subsequently married diga, although her
children by her binna marriage retained their rights to their maternal
grandfather's estate. Binna marriage usually implied residence with the
woman's parents, but in some instances the couple could live separately on
the woman's land. It is noteworthy that the patrimonial inheritance of sons
was not conditional on the type of marriage they contracted. For a woman,
only if she was an only child could she inherit irrespective of the kind of
marriage she contracted.
A d/gtf-married daughter who subsequently returned to her parents'
home could re-establish her rights to the patrimony in the following
circumstances (Hayley 1923: 389-90): (a) if she returned during her father's
lifetime and was allowed to settle on his estate in binna, either with the
husband with whom she had previously departed in diga, or with a new
03
For a detailed discussion on inheritance and marriage practices in Sri Lanka, see Agarwal
(1990c).
64
The description below is based especially on Knox (1681), Hayley (1923), Obeyesekere
(1967), Yalman (1967), and Tambiah (1965, 1966).
husband; or (b) if she returned after her father's death and the other heirs
expressly consented that her marriage (either to her former diga husband or
to a new man) could now be considered a binna marriage.
Also in case of widowhood, divorce, or destitution, diga-mdnned
daughters who were in need could return to their parents' house. At a very
minimum this provided them rights to maintenance: 'to have lodging or
support and clothing from their parents' estate...' (Sawers 1826, quoted in
Obeyesekere 1967: 42). There is some debate, however, whether such
daughters had claims to parental property beyond maintenance if they
chose not to remarry in binna. Hayley (1923) argues that they had none. But
other evidence suggests that women could re-establish their inheritance
claims to the father's estate by keeping in close touch with the parental
home and rendering the parents assistance. Tambiah (1965) argues that the
distinction between binna and diga became critical, in terms of the
daughter's claim to her father's praveni, mainly in cases where a diga
marriage involved her moving out of the village. This was presumably
because village exogamy perforce reduced her contact with her parental
home. Obeyesekere (1967), for instance, emphasizes that the concept of
rendering assistance to the father was an important determining factor in
how these rules were situationally translated, as evidenced by the following
statements:
If the father left a son and a daughter, minors by one wife, and a son and a deega
married daughter by another wife, if that deega married daughter came back and
attended and assisted her father during his last illness, and if the father had therefore
on his deathbed expressed his will, that his deega daughter should have a share of his
lands, notwithstanding her being settled in deega, in that case the deega daughter
will be entitled, by virtue of such nuncupative will, to participate equally with her
uterine brother and their parental half-brother and half-sister in the father's estate.
(Armour 1860, quoted in Obeyesekere 1967: 50)
Some of the chiefs are of the opinion that the daughter previously married in binna
may preserve for herself and her children her own and their claim in her parents'
estate, by visiting him frequently and administering to his comfort, especially being
present, nursing and rendering him assistance in his last illness. (Sawers 1826,
quoted in Obeyesekere 1967: 49)
Essentially, as Obeyesekere (1967) notes, the fundamental rules of

Sinhalese intestate inheritance embodied two basic principles: (a) equality
of division among all children; and (b) the ultimate reversion of property to
its source. He argues that the apparent contradiction in these two princi-
ples, the first emphasizing the bilateral character of Sinhalese inheritance
and the second emphasizing its 'unilinearity', was resolved by a distinction
between temporary and permanent rights to the praveni. Sons and binna-
married daughters and their children who also carried the grandfather's
name were meant to enjoy a permanent right, and diga-married daughters
whose children bore another family's patrilineal name, a temporary right.
Thus, Obeyesekere (1967: 42) notes:
[WJhile all members of the family [were] a man's immediate heirs, the rights of some
heirs [were] restricted in a manner that [would] ensure the continuity of the ancestral
line, and the convergence of property among a body of agnatic kinsmen.
In practice, the rights enjoyed by a daughter and her children in her
father's estate were defined on the basis of multiple, interconnected criteria:
her degree of contact with her parents and the assistance she gave to them,
post-marital residence in terms of not only uxorilocality or virilocality but
particularly village endogamy, and the taking of the maternal grandfather's
name by the children. Here post-marital residence with or near the parents
was clearly a significant enabling factor in rendering assistance to them in
their old age even though, in itself, as Obeyesekere emphasizes, it would not
have been sufficient in the case of an uncaring child.
In a deceased woman's estate, if she was married in diga, all children from
such a marriage had equal rights no matter what their marital status
(including diga-mavntd daughters). But if the deceased woman was mar-
ried in binna on her father's property, it appears that her diga-married
daughters from such a marriage were excluded from a share in her ancestral
estate (Hayley 1923: 467). During her lifetime a woman had full rights to
manage or alienate her separate property, whether inherited from her
parents or received as dowry.
There was no concept of a community of property after marriage (viz.
property held in common by the spouses) in either diga or binna alliances.
Typically, a widow had no permanent rights to the deceased husband's
ancestral estate, nor could she dispose of it to outsiders (except in
Sabaragamuva Province, as discussed later). According to Obeyesekere
(1967), historical sources disagree on whether, on a man's death, his sons
and binna-married daughters took over his praveni at once or only after the
death or diga marriage of the widow. The likelihood was that these issues
were judged according to their context by the villagers and the traditional
courts.
In a man's acquired property both male and female children shared
equally, subject to the widow's life interest. 65 A widow had a right to
maintenance from her deceased husband's ancestral estate if his acquired
property was insufficient to provide adequate support, whether she was
married to him in diga or binna. This right was not affected even if she had
65
Widows and mothers could in some instances also inherit acquired property absolutely.
means of her own. In contrast a binna widower could not inherit his wife's
immovable property; and a diga widower had no interest in the wife's
praveni, but did have a life interest in his wife's acquired property
(Goonesekere 1980).
There was also a noteworthy local variation of the traditional Sinhalese
law. In Sabaragamuva Province, Obeyesekere (1967) notes that widows
had much greater rights of inheritance than in other Kandyan areas. For
instance, a woman married in diga succeeded to the whole of the husband's
estate if he died intestate and without issue, even if his brothers and other
kin were alive. Her share fell to half if the man had children by a former
marriage, since they inherited the other half. The same arrangement applied
if she and the deceased had children. The widow had full alienation rights
over the portion allotted to her, but lost this right if she contracted a
subsequent diga marriage. She could, however, dispose of her share if she
wished, prior to such a marriage. Obeyesekere argues that these differences
between Sabaragamuva and Kandyan law were not due to the influence of
R o m a n - D u t c h law on the former under colonial rule, but to the greater
strength of marriage ties, the overall rarity of divorce and desertion, and the
strong ideology of wifely devotion, chastity, and fidelity prevailing in
Sabaragamuva as well as in the Maritime Provinces. 6 6 This was in contrast
to the much looser marriage ties prevailing in the K a n d y a n areas.
Cross-cousin marriages of both types were preferred among Sinhalese
everywhere, although their actual incidence varied across regions and
classes. The practice was more rigidly adhered to among the aristocracy
than among the commoners (Pieris 1956). In the K a n d y a n Highlands,
except among the wealthy or aristocratic households, or where the families
of the bride and groom were relative strangers to each other, wedding
ceremonies were usually dispensed with altogether (Yalman 1967). 'In early
times, the conducting of a daughter by a man of equal caste with the consent
of her relations constituted a marriage .. ,' 6 7 This also made it difficult to
distinguish between legitimate' and 'illegitimate' children in the sense of
those born within or out of wedlock. In fact all children were accepted as
fully legitimate (with rights in the estates of both parents), except those born
of specific types of unions. For instance, a child born of a union between a
high caste woman and a low caste man, or of a union contracted contrary to
the wishes of parents, was considered semi-legitimate and had restricted
60
The Maritime Provinces (also called the 'Low Country1) were constituted of Ceylon's
Southern and Western Provinces that were occupied successively by the Portuguese, the
Dutch, and the British from the early sixteenth century to the mid twentieth century. The
Kandyan Provinces, which came to be known as the 'Up Country', consisted largely of
contemporary Central, North Central, Uva and Sabaragamuva provinces (see Obeysekere
1967: 1).
67
The Kandyan Law Commission, appointed in 1927, quoted in Yalman (1967: 160).
rights of inheritance; while the child of an incestuous union was considered
illegitimate and had no rights of inheritance (Hayley 1923: 200-1). Extra-
marital relations were tolerated for both sexes, as long as they did not
involve a high caste woman with a low caste man: They do attempt to catch
the culprits, but if the man is a friend or a good relation, nothing more will
be said. Otherwise, he may escape with a beating. Of course, if low-caste
men were to be caught at such adventures they would be very severely
handled' (Yalman 1967: 188).
The Kandyans, men and women, commonly married and divorced
several times during a lifetime: T o r if they disagree and mislike one the
other, they part without disgrace' (Knox 1681: 93). Divorce involved no
formalities:
no payments to be returned, no authorities to be consulted. A couple who cannot get
along may simply separate; their property is separate in any case, though property
acquired during the marriage ought to be divided. Young children normally go with
the mother; older children may live with either parent or other relations. (Yalman
1967: 187)
Although monogamy was the usual pattern, polyandrous unions were
not uncommon among the Sinhalese, especially in the Dry Zone. 68 The
commonest form was fraternal polyandry (with one woman being married
to two or more brothers), although there were also cases of such partner-
ships between step-brothers, cross-cousins, distantly related men and, in
rare cases, even unrelated men. Polyandry usually did not involve simulta-
neous marriage to several men; more commonly the woman took a second
husband after a year or two of monogamous marriage, either as a deliberate
decision by the couple or to legitimize the wife's extra-marital relationship
(Tambiah 1966). Various economic explanations have been extended for
such polyandrous unions: to enable land consolidation among brothers
with very small parcels of land (Knox 1681, Tambiah 1966); to provide
extra labour where fields were dispersed or where both shifting and settled
cultivation was undertaken (Tambiah 1966); to limit the number of heirs
and so prevent the subdivision of estates via inheritance (Pieris 1956), and
so on. Be that as it may, what is especially interesting is that the woman was
an active party in the decision leading to such a union, which was not
necessarily the case among South Asian patrilineal groups practising
fraternal polyandry. 69
Women's contribution to agricultural cultivation among the Sinhalese
68
See e.g. levers (1899), K n o x (1681), Leach (1955), Pieris (1956) and T a m b i a h (1966).
69
A m o n g such groups are the Paharis of J a u n s a r Bawar in northwest India (Berreman 1962),
and the Tibetan C h u m i k s (Schuler 1987) and N y i m b a (Levine 1988) of Nepal.
varied by the type of agriculture practised and the affluence of the
household. 70 In chena their labour was indispensable and widowed and
divorced women sometimes cultivated their own chena independently,
drawing upon male relatives for the initial clearing of land. In settled paddy
cultivation women's role was limited to certain tasks, especially weeding
and harvesting. Given the importance of chena in the Dry Zone, women's
contributions to agriculture among the Sinhalese located there are likely to
have been greater than among those settled in the Wet Zone.
The Hindu Tamils. As among the Sinhalese, Tamil women in Sri

Lanka, unlike most of their Tamil counterparts in India, had strong
inheritance rights in land. However there were some notable differences
among the Tamil groups settled in different parts of Sri Lanka, both in
terms of customary practices and the codified laws of marriage and
inheritance. The discussion below will focus on two important Hindu Tamil
communities: the Jaffna Tamils, and those settled in the Eastern
Province. 71
The traditional law of inheritance (and marriage) of the Jaffna Tamils -

the Thesawalami - differed from the Indian shastric systems in significant
ways (as will be apparent below). The Thesawalami was first compiled into a
code of civil law under Dutch administration in 1706-07 by twelve leading
Jaffna Tamil citizens chosen for their knowledge of the law. The Code came
into full legal force after the British passed Ordinance No.5 of 1869. Prior to
Dutch codification, the Thesawalami is said to have undergone some
modifications under the Portuguese. However, the text of the code provided
some information on inheritance patterns prior to Portuguese rule, in
addition to describing Jaffna customs prevalent when the Code was first
compiled (Banks 1957). Under the pre-Portuguese system three categories
of property were recognized: 72 chidenam, the hereditary property brought
as dowry by the wife; mudisam, the hereditary property brought by the
husband; and thediathetam, or property acquired during the course of the
marriage. This last included any income in cash or kind from the chidenam
or mudisam. Hence grain produced from either chidenam or mudisam land
was part of thediathetam; similarly income from the sale of animals (but not
the animals themselves) fell into this category. Any capital investment on
70
See Brow (1978), G u n a w a r d e n a (1989), Yalman (1967).
71
For an interesting account of the history of Dravidian settlements in Ceylon and the
beginnings of the K i n g d o m of Jaffna, see Indrapala (1965).
72
The description below of the pre-Portuguese system draws especially on Banks (1957) and
T a m b i a h (n.d.).
land, however, became part of the category of property on which it was

made, the chidenam or the mudisam.
For ancestral property the guiding principle was for inheritance to
strictly follow gender lines. A man's mudisam property was inherited on his
death by his sons, and a woman's chidenam property went to her daughters
as dowry on marriage. Thus the man's property always remained with the
male heirs and the woman's with the female heirs, but the thediathetam went
to children of both sexes equally, after the death of both parents. Prior to its
distribution, however, the size of the thediathetam was subject to deduction
for any decrease in the chidenam and mudisam that had occurred during the
lifetime of the parents. If this value was insufficient to make up the loss, the
heirs of the chidenam or mudisam, as the case may be, had to bear the loss.
The remaining thediathetam was first divided into two halves, one half
going to girls, the other to boys. Each half was then divided equally among
the members of each sex. Acquired property could not be used as dowry
prior to the deaths of the parents. In the absence of children of one sex,
those of the other inherited all three categories of property.
The property of a childless woman passed after her death in the first
instance to her sisters, and in their absence to their undowered female
descendants (daughters and granddaughters). If the latter were already
dowered, the heirs were the deceased woman's brothers and their male
descendants. Under these special circumstances, property could move from
one sex to another. In the absence of siblings, the property went to the
woman's parents, if alive; if the parents too were dead, it went to the
parents' siblings and their descendents.
A widow with young children retained both her husband's estate and her
own, with which she dowered her daughters, the sons inheriting their dues
on her death. If she remarried, of the children from her first marriage,
daughters received dowries from her chidenam, sons their natural father's
mudisam, and both sons and daughters shared the thediathetam. Of children
from her second marriage, likewise, daughters were dowered from her
chidenam, while the sons received their own father's patrimony. A widower
dowered his daughters from his wife's chidenam, his sons received his
mudisam, and all siblings shared the thediathetam. Daughters by different
mothers but a common father derived the major part of their dowries from
their own mothers, while sons by different mothers inherited their main
portions from their common father. This provided for a scrupulous division
of property along gender lines and also between half and full siblings.
Typically a man could not inherit any part of his parents' estate pre-
mortem (unless they were incapable of managing it themselves), and all that
he earned prior to his marriage went into the common estate.
What a woman received as dowry was written into a doty ola (dowry
deed) in her name. As the Code cynically put it, 'a well drawn up and
executed doty old was necessary since 'it is by . . . means [of the dowry] that
most of the girls obtain husbands, as it is not for the girls but for the
property that most of the men marry' (quoted in Tambiah n.d.: 172). The
right to dowry property, once created, could not be lost, but the dowry
claim could lapse and revert to the common estate if the woman did not take
possession of it within a prescribed period. In case the parents prospered
after the daughter's marriage, she could 'induce' them to subsequently add
to her dowry, although she could not demand this as a right. However, if the
dowry land turned out to be a bad deed and was later lost to the daughter
through a lawsuit, the parents or (after them) their sons had to make good
the loss.
Of course not all sections of the population could give a dowry. The
practice was virtually absent among the poor and untouchable castes.
However among the Vellalas, the principal agricultural community of the
Jaffna Tamils, dowry was customary and usually consisted of three parts:
land, cash, and jewels. Land was mandatory, while cash and jewels were
optional. Dowry land was an assortment of garden land, paddy land, a
home compound usually with a house, and rocky, uncultivated land.
Garden land, in turn, could be of various types: gardens of palmyra palm,
coconut palm, vegetables, and fruits. These were to some extent intercon-
vertible, depending on soil type. Receiving garden land was important since
paddy cultivation (partly rain-fed, partly irrigated) was characterized by
low yields and Jaffna was a rice importing region at least after the mid
eighteenth century (Banks 1957).
On marriage the husband acquired operating control over his wife's
dowry land, but could not alienate it without her consent. He could,
however, dower his unmarried daughters with their mother's chidenam if
she died. The dowry property or any rent or profit from it was not liable for
a husband's debts. But a woman's rights of disposal over her dowry and
over her share of the thediathetam were restricted. While still living with her
husband she could not lease, mortgage, sell, or donate her dowry property
or her part of the thediathetam without her husband's consent. Only if
maritally separated could she independently operate her property (dowry
as well as her half of the acquired wealth) without her husband's consent or
control. And as a widow she could sell her property without her children's
consent. By contrast, the husband, even while living with his wife, could
lease out, mortgage, or sell without her consent not only his ancestral
property and his share of the thediathetam, but even her share of the
thediathetham. In the latter case, his wife could bring legal action for
compensation only after a marital separation. The husband could also gift
up to one-tenth of his ancestral property without the consent of his wife and
73
heirs. In terms of property control, therefore, although separated/
divorced or widowed women could manage their own estates, a married
woman's legal position was constructed as subordinate to that of her
husband. Some aspects of this legal disability continue even today (for
details see chapter 5).
Marriages among the Jaffna Tamils were usually within the village and
between persons related to one another, with a strong preference for cross-
cousins (both patrilateral and matrilateral). Marriages were arranged,
absolute pre-marital chastity was expected from girls and preferred for
boys, and post-marital fidelity was obligatory for both partners. Although
divorce was permitted, the chances of remarriage were small, especially for
women. Similarly widow remarriage was permitted but was more likely if
the woman was young and childless.
Post-marital residence varied between uxorilocal and virilocal during the
couple's lifetime. The location was dictated by property ownership. Usually
at the beginning of their married life the couple went to live in the house the
wife had received as dowry and cultivated her land. Subsequently, when the
husband inherited land from his father they shifted there, by which time
much of the wife's property would have passed to her daughters as
chidenam. During his lifetime, therefore, a man could expect to move
residence thrice - once to his father's mudisam estate when his sisters
married, then to his wife's chidenam estate when he himself married, and
then again to his own mudisam when his daughters married and inherited
the chidenam, while he inherited his patrimony. A woman only moved
twice, once when she married and then when her daughters married.
The Tamils of Batticaloa region in the Eastern Province, among whom the
Mukkuvar community (land-owning and high-ranking in caste terms) was
the most dominant, had strong similarities to as well as some differences
from the Jaffna Tamils. According to McGilvray (1973, 1982), one of the
few scholars who has studied the community, the Mukkuvars of Sri Lanka
probably originated in Kerala and in turn 'encouraged, perhaps even
enforced, the structural replication of their matrilineal clan system in all the
73
It is not clear from the accounts of either Tambiah (n.d) or Banks (1957) whether the
husband's ability to lease, mortgage, or sell his ancestral or acquired property was also
restricted to a maximum of one-tenth of it. Both authors only mention the one-tenth
restriction in relation to donations. Banks does not discuss other forms of disposal, while
Tambiah (n.d.: 121,194) does so without mentioning any such restriction. In my view, there
is no apparent reason why this restriction should have applied only to donations, since the
principle that the heirs should not be deprived of a share in the property would apply
equally to other forms of alienation. But be that as it may, the man's freedom of disposal
was still greater that his wife's. And after the Jaffna Matrimonial Rights and Inheritance
Ordinance of 1911 (to be discussed in chapter 5) was passed by the British, the man's rights
of disposal extended explicitly to the whole of his property.
74
lower castes' (1982: 87). In some ways, however, their inheritance and
marriage practices also resemble those of the Nangudi Vellalars, in that
inheritance (although matrilineal) was via dowries, and post-marital resi-
dence was matrilocal. Unlike the Nangudi Vellalars, though, virtually all
wealth was pledged and transferred to the daughters as dowries, the eldest
one getting the largest share. Land and other immovables were deeded
either solely to the daughters or jointly to the daughters and sons-in-law.
In other words, among the Hindu Tamils in all regions of Sri Lanka,
women's inheritance claims received strong recognition, as did the claims of
Muslim women, as discussed below.
The matrilineal Muslims. Like Kerala and the Lakshadweep

Islands in India, Sri Lanka has a pocket of traditionally matrilineal
Muslims. Most belong to the Sunni sect and are today governed by the
Hanafi school of Islamic law (as will be described in chapter 5). The
majority trace their descent to Arab traders who came to Sri Lanka around
the eighth century AD, although it is believed that some Arabs resided in Sri
Lanka even in pre-Islamic times; and there has also been some Muslim
immigration from the west coast of India (Mohan 1985: 5). Historically
concentrated especially in the Eastern Province, and termed 'Moors' under
Portuguese rule, they assimilated the customs of the local Tamil popula-
tion.75 Many adopted Tamil as their language and began to practise
matrilineal inheritance and succession. According to McGilvray (1973), the
Muslim population in the region 4is largely the product of marriages with
and conversions from the Hindu castes. They consequently share the
kinship patterns, matrilineal clan organization, matrilocal marriage
systems and many other customary practices of the Hindu Tamils ...' The
two communities maintain a strict residential separation today, but show
considerable similarity in their social practices, including passing on landed
property to daughters via dowry and tying the tali as a part of the marriage
ceremony.76
Yalman (1967) described the Moors as a community subsisting on a mix
of swidden and settled paddy cultivation, and practising matrilineal descent
and inheritance and matrilocal residence. Property was transferred to
74
In India, Mukkuvar villages stretch along the coast of Kerala from Malabar down to the
tip of Kanyakumari district, now in Tamil Nadu state (Ram 1991). Their systems of
inheritance, residence etc. would thus have been subject to quite differing influences over
time in different parts. In Kanayakumari district, Mukkuvar fisherfolk, as observed today,
are not matrilineal (Ram 1991).
75
The Malays in Sri Lanka, who also follow Islam, have a different history and are not termed
Moors.
76
Indeed McGilvray (1973) provides a single description of the practices of marriage,
inheritance, and residence for both the Tamils and the Moors in his area of fieldwork.
daughters through dowries consisting of cash, land, cattle, etc. Typically
the eldest received the largest dowry and her husband was expected to
render the most help in finding suitable husbands for her sisters. Sons
moved out to live in their wives' natal homes on marriage, but retained
usufructuary rights in their own natal homes to any undivided property
(including land) left over after their sisters had been dowered. (This
sometimes included property that had been promised as dowry to a
daughter but had not yet been divided and transferred to her on marriage.)
The children belonged to their mother's family.
The girl's family had no control over the cash she was given in dowry (the
cash was not returned on divorce: Goonesekere 1980), but it could exercise
control over the immovable property - land, houses, and trees. The resident
son-in-law managed his wife's fields, but needed her consent to sell any part
of the land and, in the case of undivided property, also the consent of his in-
laws. Women's managerial control over their land was thus much more
limited among the Moors than the Kandyans. Women's role in cultivation
was also more restricted, both in chena and in settled paddy cultivation.
In overview then, traditionally among all major communities in Sri Lanka,

irrespective of religious or ethnic differences, both sexes had inheritance
rights in land, even though the forms of devolution differed. This strikingly
highlights the strength of cultural commonalities over religious differences.
For instance, in terms of their rights in landed property, Sri Lankan Hindu
women of the Jaffna Tamil community had much more in common with
Buddhist Sinhalese women and with women of the matrilineal Moor
community, than they did with Hindu women in northwest India. Also, in
contrast to the matrilineal communities of India, Sri Lankan women
inherited land as individuals rather than as members of a joint family and,
especially among the Sinhalese, could exercise a considerable degree of
control over its management.
(4) Some cross-regional comparisons

In very broad terms, the above descriptions suggest three types of matrili-
neal and bilateral communities embodying three different patterns of land
rights customarily enjoyed by South Asian women. One category is of
communities among which land was a clan's communal property and could
not be inherited either by individuals or by joint family units. Both women
and unmarried men had usufruct rights in this clan land, as individuals or as
members of nuclear families. Responsibility for managing the land vested
with the husband, but a woman's labour was critical and she could control
the produce. The Garos are the only ones that fall in this category.
A second category is of communities where land, although inherited in

the female line, was held as joint family property, and women had no
individual rights of alienation. Responsibility for the overall management
of land again rested principally with men, typically brothers or maternal
uncles. However, in decisions relating to the partition or transfers of landed
property, women's concurrence was necessary. This category of communi-
ties would include the Khasis of northeast India, and the Nayars, Tiyyars,
Mappilas, Phadiyas, and Chettis of southwest India.
A third category is of communities where both women and men had
inheritance rights in land, which could be held individually. Women
inherited either via dowries (as among the Nangudi Vellalars, Jaffna
Tamils, and matrilineal Moors) or post-mortem (as among the Sinhalese).
Women's control over the inheritance varied from considerable among the
Kandyan Sinhalese, to restricted among the matrilineal Moors.
Many of these traditional patterns have changed under colonial and
post-colonial rule. In the next chapter, the nature of these changes and the
factors underlying them will be examined for three of the communities
described here - the Garos, Nayars, and Sinhalese - one from each of the
categories identified above.
But let us now consider, in the light of these case studies, two questions
posed at the beginning of this chapter. One, what structural conditions were
linked to women's rights in land? Two, what can we deduce about gender
relations and women's 'status' in these societies?
III. Women's land rights, structural conditionalities, and gender

relations
Let us first examine what structural conditions or norms were linked
historically to women's land rights, in terms of post-marital residence,
choice of marital partner, and sexual freedom. Below I specify some
hypotheses on the likely nature of these links, and use the case study
material presented above to examine the validity of my hypotheses. My
differences with Goody's (1973, 1976) propositions on these links are also
discussed in this connection.
(1) Women's land rights and associated practices

Since land is the most important form of property in agrarian economies,
we would expect families and communities which recognize women's
inheritance rights in landed property to try and ensure that the land is not
lost to persons outside the kin group. The granting of such rights could thus
be subject to conditions, or at least to marked preferences, regarding whom
women marry and where they live after marriage. For instance, if daughters
were to marry close relatives such as cross-cousins, rather than unrelated
persons, the land would remain within the overall control of the extended
kin group. Again if a married daughter were to reside within the village, and
especially in the natal home, the parental family would be in a better
position to exercise control over any landed property she inherits from it,
than if she went to live in a distant village. Women themselves would also be
in a better position to use and manage such land if they lived within the
village.
The idea that there could be links between women's property rights and
marriage practices is not new. Goody (1973, 1976)77 presents several
hypotheses in this regard. He proposes, for instance, that in societies
practising 'diverging devolution' (that is where property is transmitted to
both daughters and sons), there would be a strong tendency to control
women's marriages. In particular, he hypothesizes that such societies would
have a greater incidence of close-kin marriages and of uxorilocal, ambilo-
cal, or neolocal post-marital residence, and a greater stress on pre-marital
virginity (to prevent early attachment to an unsuitable suitor). However,
Goody's formulation, while seemingly consistent with mine, is problematic
on at least four counts.78
First, for reasons that are not apparent, Goody takes no explicit account
of societies practising matrilineal inheritance. For a comprehensive analy-
sis, the hypotheses need to be tested for all those societies (both matrilineal
and bilateral) which traditionally recognized women's rights in property,
since in both sorts of societies, families would have an interest in preventing
the dispersion of property inherited by women outside the kin group.79
Second, Goody includes in his definition of property both movables and
immovables, and aggregates societies which only give women dowries in
movables with those which give them inheritance rights in land (either
through dowry or post-mortem). The distinction is critical in the present
discussion, since although we might expect societies which give women
landed property to favour close-kin and in-village marriages in order to
keep control over the land, it is not apparent why societies which only give
77
Some parts of G o o d y ' s (1990) discussion are also relevant here and will be referred to from
time to time. However, much of the discussion below is focused on his earlier writings
which spell out in detail his propositions a n d analysis on these issues, and from which he
does not radically depart in his recent work.
78
This is not meant to be a comprehensive critique of G o o d y ' s formulation, which has been
criticized also from other angles (see e.g. Whitehead 1977). But the points discussed below
have a specific bearing o n my own analysis.
79
In his (1976) three-fold classification of societies into those where diverging devolution is
present, absent, or where n o individual property rights or rule of transmission exist,
matrilineally inheriting groups presumably get subsumed under the second a n d third
categories.
women a dowry in movables would also need to favour such marriages.
Cash, jewellery, clothes, utensils, and possibly small animals (the tra-
ditional constituents of movable dowries in South Asia) are not easy for
relatives to control, nor do such items usually have the economic, political,
and symbolic significance that ancestral land possesses that could motivate
attempts at such control. 80 (Of course, communities may still prefer in-
village and close-kin marriages for reasons apart from property control, as
will be elaborated later.)
At a more general level, the issue of dowry vs. inheritance is important
and has also been the subject of recent debate among Indian women
scholars (as will be discussed in chapter 10); hence the problems with
Goody's definition of dowry deserve some discussion here. Goody (1973: 1,
1976: 6) sees dowry as 'a type of pre-mortem inheritance', 'a process
whereby parental property is distributed to a daughter at her marriage ...
rather than at the holders' death', and as technically the woman's property
and in her control. He sees the difference between female inheritance and
dowry as essentially 'one of timing and flexibility' (Goody 1973: 17), and (as
noted) does not distinguish between dowry in movables and dowry in
immovables. 81 The alternate view, presented by a number of authors on the
basis of field research among north Indian Hindu communities, is that
dowry typically cannot be equated with inheritance in this way. 82
Neither view is accurate as a generalization for South Asia. Each reflects
a regional perspective, Goody and Tambiah a south Indian/Sri Lankan
one, the others a north Indian one. For certain communities in southern
South Asia, dowry was customarily a form of pre-mortem inheritance, as
among the Nangudi Vellalars of Tamil Nadu and the Jaffna Tamils and
matrilineal Moors of Sri Lanka. These communities, as noted, used dowry
to transmit to the daughter her share in the mother's estate. The dowry was
explicitly recognized as an inheritance share in ancestral property, and
included both movables and land. However, for South Asian communities
other than these, dowry was and is clearly not equivalent to inheritance for
several reasons.
80
Yalman's (1967: 291) comment from his ethnography on the matrilineal Muslims of Sri
Lanka is pertinent here:
[They] are quite aware of the great distinction between the transfer of cash dowry to the
son-in-law and the transfer of rights of management over landed property to the daughter.
They realize full well that once cash has been given, little further control can be exercised
over it. With immovable property, however - land and houses and trees - it is clear that the
mother of the girl (the original holder) and the father of the girl (the original manager) give
up only a minimum of their rights when, in the marriage majlis (meeting) they agree to
transfer these to the name of their daughter, and to allow the son-in-law to manage them.
8
* Tambiah (1973) concurs with this view, although in a recent article he presents a modified
and somewhat weaker version of it (see Tambiah 1989).
82
See especially U. Sharma (1980, 1984) and Madan (1975, 1989).
To begin with, whether or not dowry is given, and how much is given, has
always depended on the discretion of parents or brothers. Even customar-
ily, daughters could not demand dowry as a right in the way that sons could
demand their inheritance shares (and this would be even less possible today
since the practice of dowry is illegal in most parts of South Asia). 83 As seen
from an examination of ethnographic evidence on dowry in India
(especially Miller's 1981 review), customarily dowry was not a universal
practice even among propertied groups, nor was its incidence uniform
across the country. It was typical among the propertied in north India, but
less common in the south, and virtually non-existent in the northeast where
brideprice or no-payment was the norm. In the south there was also much
greater equality in the marriage expenditures of the bride's and groom's
families, as well as a greater incidence of marriages with no payments or
token payments. In any case, dowry for women is linked to whether or not
they marry, while inheritance for men is not.
Further, except in the (matrilineal and bilateral) communities noted, the
content of dowry has almost always been in the form of movables, while
inheritance by men includes immovables, if the family has any. 84 Moreover
even movable dowry is usually not entirely a woman's own or in her
control, although here again there is regional variation. In south India,
dowry has tended to be more commonly in the woman's control, 85 as it has
among some of the Tibeto-Burman communities in northern Nepal: the
Kham Magars, for instance, draw up dowry deeds in the daughter's name
(Molnar 1981). However, in most parts of northern India a portion of the
woman's dowry is customarily taken away by the parents-in-law, 86 who
may then use it themselves or give it as dowry to their own daughters (the
groom's sisters). In fact, dowry in cash and goods may even be handed over
by the bride's father directly to the groom and his family, becoming a part
of their joint estate. 87 A woman's jewellery more typically remains with her,
but again (especially in north India) it is usually not hers to dispose of as she
83
Both the giving and taking of dowry have been illegal since 1961 in India and since 1980 in
Bangladesh, although in practice the prohibition is widely disregarded in both countries.
84
Within patrilineal communities the exceptions to this (that is, cases of daughters getting
immovables in dowry) are few and largely confined to south India (for examples see chapter
6).
85
But even here this is n o t guaranteed. R a m (1991: 196) in her study of the M u k k u v a r s in
K a n y a k u m a r i district (Tamil N a d u ) found that in 42 per cent of her sample households the
bride's in-laws h a d appropriated some part of the girl's dowry (especially jewellery). In 16
per cent of the households it was used to finance marriages in the h u s b a n d ' s family.
86
See e.g. Hooja (1969), K h a r e (1972), M a c D o r m a n (1987), M a d a n (1989), Miller (1981),
M i n t u r n a n d Hitchcock (1966), a n d Sharma (1984), for examples from India. Bennett
(1979) notes that this is also observed a m o n g the Brahmins and Chetris of Nepal, although
usually not a m o n g other Nepalese communities.
87
Vatuk (1975) found this a m o n g the G a u r Brahmins in U t t a r Pradesh.
wishes and it can be drawn upon by the family during times of economic
need. What remains may be gifted by her to her daughter or daughter-in-
law. In other words, Goody's assumption that dowry usually goes to the
bride herself and serves to establish some form of conjugal fund which
'ensures her support in widowhood ... and eventually goes to provide for
her sons and daughters' (Goody 1976: 6) is not a valid generalization, and is
contradicted especially by the north Indian evidence. In fact the part of
dowry that passes to the girl's in-laws cannot really be seen as a form of
'devolution' since it does not get transmitted vertically as inheritance to the
couple's children, but rather takes the form of a 'circulating fund' that
moves from the bride's family to the groom's family, within the endoga-
mous group. 88
In rare cases, both dowry and female inheritance in land have been
practised by the same community and even family, as we noted was
customary among most classes of Kandyan Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. Here
daughters marrying diga could receive a dowry (sometimes even in immov-
ables) but forfeited their rights to inherit from the father's estate, while
those marrying binna could inherit patrimonial property, including land,
on the same basis as their brothers and unmarried sisters. But a diga
married daughter, by subsequently returning to her parental home and
converting her marriage to binna, or contracting a subsequent binna
marriage, or keeping in close touch with and rendering assistance to her
parents, could reclaim her rights to a share in ancestral property, indicating
that the dowry she had received was not regarded by the community as
equivalent to inheritance. Nor was there any necessary equivalence between
the value of dowry received by a diga married daughter and the inheritance
shares of other children (Obeyesekere 1967, Yalman 1967, Tambiah 1973).
Related to this last point is the absence of any clear rules concerning what
share of the family wealth should be given as dowry, unlike the usually clear
specification of rules governing inheritance in the family estate. There was a
suggestion in some early shastric literature that if the father died leaving
behind unmarried daughters, brothers should set aside for each sister's
marriage an amount equal to one-fourth share, but the language was vague
and open to varying interpretations. Altekar (1956) persuasively argues
that the interpretation probably intended was that the marriage expendi-
ture for each sister should be equal to one-fourth the share of a brother, but
that this specification was meant to ensure an adequate provision for the
sister's marriage and was not to be taken literally. In any case, marriage
expenses cover many things, of which dowry could be but one. The
empirical evidence on South Asia for recent decades suggests that the
amount of dowry given to daughters among patrilineal groups has no
88
I am grateful to Patricia Uberoi for calling my attention to this last point.
obvious relation to the shares of sons in ancestral property on partition,
and depends on a range of factors such as the economic situation of the
bride's family, the affluence and qualifications of the bridegroom, the social
status of his family, the physical attractiveness of the bride, the marriage
alliances contracted by the bride's sisters (a high status marriage facilitated
by a large dowry for the eldest daughter can help younger ones contract
prestigious marriages for much smaller amounts), and so on.89 Unfortuna-
tely there is a dearth of studies which quantitatively compare the values of
dowries with inheritance shares, but Schuler's calculations for the Chumik
in Nepal are revealing: she found (1987: 103) that for families with children
of both sexes, the value of daughters' dowries on average came to 10 per
cent of the family's assets, while the sons' inheritance shares came to 90 per
cent. Goody does not deal with the relative values of dowry and inheritance,
or with the rules governing either, but clearly these issues have a bearing on
the nature of rights embodied in the two forms of transfers and on their
economic importance, and so impinge on the more general issue of gender
equality that centrally concerns us here.
All said, therefore, except among a few communities such as the Nangudi
Vellalars, the matrilineal Moors and the Jaffna Tamils, inheritance and
dowry cannot be equated in legal or economic terms; and movables (except
possibly some heirlooms) that are transferred through either practice
cannot be equated in economic or symbolic terms with the transfer of
landed property. Communities which give daughters dowries in movables
but exclude them from inheritance therefore need to be distinguished from
those which recognize the daughter's inheritance rights, especially in land, a
distinction which, as noted, Goody does not make in his 1973 and 1976
writings, and continues to downplay in his recent 1990 work.90
Third, in Goody's formulation the relationships between property
transmission and marriage practices are set out as unidirectional, causal
ones. Diverging devolution, he argues, will tend to lead to close-kin
marriages, endogamy (marriage within the same kindred, clan, community,
or caste), monogamy, and the prohibition of pre-marital sex (Goody 1976:
chapters 2-3). However, in his empirical work, Goody does not examine
89
See especially, M a d a n (1989), Pocock (1972), and U. Sharma (1980).
90
F o r instance, G o o d y (1990: 287-8) recognizes that there are regional variations across
South Asia in women's access to land, but still maintains that societies which give dowry
and those which allow women to inherit land are part of the same overall pattern:
[W]hile t h r o u g h o u t South Asia women are endowed with property, in Sri L a n k a this claim
extends to landed property, representing the fuller working out of the 'bilateral 1 division of
wealth, that is, the diverging devolution which maintains the status of females as well as
males in a hierarchical society.
Also see chapter 6 on my differences with G o o d y on what can be inferred from the ancient
practice of putrikaputra ('appointed' daughter) mentioned earlier in this chapter.
other factors which could also influence his dependent variables. For
instance, religious and cultural ideologies are known to play a significant
role in determining marriage partner preferences: most north Indian
Hindus taboo close-kin (cross-cousin, uncle-niece, etc.) marriages, a rule
which is not broken among such communities even in choosing an
uxorilocal son-in-law for brotherless daughters who may inherit the
parental estate. Similarly many communities prefer and practise close-kin
marriages, even when they do not endow women with land or other
property: as we will see in chapter 8, close-kin marriage preference is
geographically much more widespread than is female inheritance in land. 91
This is not to argue that we would expect no correlation between women's
land rights and close-kin marriages. In fact (as I and some others have
argued) such marriages would be an important way of keeping landed
property within the kin group. Hence we would expect to find a positive
correlation between the two variables. But this tells us little about the
possible direction of the link. It may well be that close-kin marriage is the
independent variable and the traditional recognition of female inheritance
in land the dependent one, in that communities which (for one reason or
another) practise close-kin marriages would be more open to endowing
daughters with property than those which don't.
Fourth, I see no necessary reason to expect societies that transmit land to
women to insist on pre-marital virginity, as Goody suggests is likely to be
the case. For instance, if a daughter's rights in land were strictly conditional
on her residence in the natal home, and she would lose her rights if she
resided elsewhere, the family would not need to additionally restrict her
sexually, merely to keep control over the land. I believe the reasons for
particular sexual mores in South Asia need to be sought elsewhere, say in
notions of caste purity, than in property concerns/?er se.
My analysis departs from Goody's formulation especially in four ways:
First, I focus specifically on societies which as a rule (and not just
exceptionally) recognized women's inheritance rights in land (whatever the
transmission mechanism - dowry or post-mortem inheritance). Second, in
this group of societies I include matrilineal ones, since they would be just as
concerned as bilateral ones with preventing the loss of family land. The
Garos are included in this discussion even though arable land was not
customarily inheritable among them, because (a) other immovable
property such as the ancestral house was inherited by Garo women; and (b)
over time, land too became inheritable (as will be discussed in chapter 4).
Third, I hypothesize that women's rights in land are likely to be correlated
91
In theory Goody (1976) recognizes that close-kin marriage could serve different functions
of which property considerations may be but one. However, this is not built into his
statistical analysis.
with marriages located near the natal home and with close kin, but this need
not imply any simple causality. Fourth, I hypothesize that there need be no
necessary relationship between recognizing women's rights in land and
exercising control over women's extra-marital relationships.
Let us consider these hypotheses in the light of the case studies to see what
they reveal about the relationship between female inheritance rights in land
and the following three factors: post-marital residence, choice of marriage
partner, and sexual control over women. The major characteristics of the
matrilineal and bilateral communities discussed above are summarized in
table 3.1.
Post-marital residence. It is noteworthy that wherever women in

South Asia have customarily had rights in landed property, it has been
associated with their typically residing, and often having to reside, within
the natal village and often in the natal home. Among the Garos, Khasis,
and Lalungs, the three main matrilineal tribes of northeast India, all
daughters - the heiress who inherited ancestral property, as well as the
others who had usufructuary land rights - were expected to reside near the
maternal home after marriage, the heiress living in the ancestral home itself.
And recent trends towards virilocality and neolocality among these com-
munities are associated with an erosion of women's land rights. For
instance, among the Garos and Khasis, as land scarcity has increased and
non-heiress daughters are no longer allotted usufructuary plots, so also the
rules of matrilocality are no longer binding, nor are they easily enforceable
as the men seek to move out in search of other sources of livelihood.
Again among those communities of southwest India which customarily
practised matrilineal or bilateral inheritance, in most cases women conti-
nued to reside in their matrilineal joint family estate throughout their lives,
including after marriage: the Nayars of central Kerala and the Mappilas of
the Lakshadweep Islands practised duolocal residence, while the Mappilas
of north Kerala and the Nangudi Vellalars of Tamil Nadu mainly practised
matrilocality. Indeed, Tambiah (1973: 109) argues that among the Nangudi
Vellalars it is matrilocal residence which 'allows the concept of female
property to include strong rights in land'. He further proposes (1973: 109):
[T]he most general Indian pattern of dowry in movable wealth and of an intricate
pattern of affinal prestations, etc. is associated with and occurs in conjunction with
the norm of patrilocality (or avunculocality). In contrast, the definition that a
woman's dowry right includes inheritance of land (and other patrimonial immov-
able wealth) which she shares equally with her brother can only occur in conjunction
with matrilocality or duolocality ... or ambilocality ... as the main form of
residence.
Table 3.1: Some character is tic features of matrilineal and bilateral communi-
ties in South Asia
Pre-
Cross- marital
Post-marital cousin sex by Adultery
Community Location" Inheritance residence marriage women by women
India
Garos Meghalaya matrilineal matrilocal preferred accepted punished
Khasis Meghalaya matrilineal matrilocal aversion to accepted punished
and duolocal
Lalungs Assam matrilineal matrilocal aversion accepted n.i.
today, tradi-
tionally
accepted
Nayars C.Kerala matrilineal duolocal * * *
N.Kerala matrilineal avunculocal preferred n.i. punished
and duolocal
Tiyyars N.Kerala matrilineal avunculocal preferred n.i. n.i.
and duolocal
Bants Karnataka matrilineal avunculocal preferred n.i. n.i.
Mappilas N.Kerala matrilineal matrilocal preferred n.i. n.i.
Lakshadweep
Islands matrilineal duolocal preferred n.i. n.i.
Phadiyas N. Kerala matrilineal avunculocal accepted accepted n.i.
Chettis N. Kerala matrilineal avunculocal accepted n.i. n.i.
Nangudi
Vellalars T.Nadu bilateral matrilocal preferred n.i. n.i.
Sri Lanka
Sinhalese All regions bilateral uxorilocal preferred tolerated tolerated
and virilocal
Tamils Jaffna bilateral uxorilocal preferred forbidden forbidden
to ambilocal
Eastern
Province
(Mukkuvars) matrilineal matrilocal n.i. n.i. n.i.
Moors Eastern
Province matrilineal matrilocal preferred n.i. n.i.
Table 3.1: (cont.)

Divorced
Divorce women's Widow
Community Location" by women remarriage remarriage
India
Garos Meghalaya accepted accepted accepted
Khasis Meghalaya common common common
Lalungs Assam n.i. n.i. n.i.
Nayars C.Kerala * * *
N.Kerala accepted accepted accepted
Tiyyars N.Kerala accepted n.i. n.i.
Bants Karnataka rare rare accepted
Mappilas N.Kerala rare n.i. accepted
Lakshadweep
Islands rare n.i. accepted
Phadiyas N. Kerala rare n.i. n.i.
Chettis N. Kerala accepted n.i. n.i.
Nangudi
Vellalars T.Nadu n.i. n.i. n.i.
Sri Lanka
Sinhalese All regions common common common
Tamils Jaffna accepted rare rare
Eastern
Province
(Mukkuvars) n.i n.i. n.i.
Moors Eastern
Province accepted rare accepted
7
State/provinces given here relate to present administrative units.
* Not strictly applicable; n.i. = no information
These propositions appear valid, although the observation on avunculoca-

lity needs some qualification. For instance, among some of the groups we
have examined (such as the Bants of south Canara, and the Nayars,
Tiyyars, Phadiyas, and Chettis of north Kerala), matrilineal inheritance in
land was also found to coexist with avunculocal residence, that is, women
typically moved to their husband's matrilineal estates after marriage.
However, in these groups a woman's rights in land took a specific form:
neither she nor her children had inheritance rights in her husband's
matrilineal estate; her property rights (and those of her children) continued
to be linked to her own matrilineal estate, managed and controlled by the
seniormost male in her matrilineal household. She was away from that
home for the duration of her marriage on the termination of which (due to
widowhood or divorce) she would return to her maternal home, while the
children could return even earlier. In other words, a woman did not lose her
rights in her matrilineal estate by moving elsewhere on marriage, but the
land remained under her maternal family's control during her period of
absence. Occasional cases of matrilocality or duolocality were also found
among these communities.
The close correlation between female inheritance in land and norms of
post-marital residence observed in India stands out even more strikingly in
the Sri Lankan context. As noted, among the Sinhalese, a £/>ma-married
daughter, that is one continuing to reside in her natal home after marriage
with her husband joining her there, had an equal right to her father's estate
as her brothers and unmarried sisters, but one residing virilocally (marrying
diga) forfeited her inheritance. However, she could re-establish her claims if
she subsequently remarried binna and assisted her father in his old age, just
as a binna-mdLmed daughter could lose her claims by subsequently remarry-
ing diga.
Among the Jaffna Tamils and the matrilineal Moors (as among the
Nangudi Vellalar in India), daughters received land in dowry not as a
privilege but as a right (as distinct from the occasional gifting of land to
daughters in dowry by wealthy parents in south India). Among the Moors,
residence was matrilocal, while among the Jaffna Tamils it was customarily
uxorilocal to start with, and then ambilocal: where the plots of the two
spouses were located in different villages, they would decide on residence
location according to the ease of management of both properties. As noted,
however, in general there was a very high incidence of marriages within the
village.
All this broadly supports Tambiah's (1973: 121-2) hypothesis (again
with a qualifier on the issue of avunculocal residence) that:
wherever there are strong patrilocal or avunculocal groupings (whether the descent
system is patrilineal, or matrilineal, or bilineal), there women's property, where it
prevails, will be in movables only; where there are matrilocal-uxorilocal groupings,
women will be invested with land, not necessarily to the exclusion of males (as
among the Nangudi Vellalar). Where there are bilateral ambilocal local groupings
and a free mixture of virilocal and uxorilocal residence, there both men and women
can plausibly be endowed with equal property rights in both movables and
immovables.
It may be recalled that even in predominantly patrilocal groupings, if

Hindu women inherited as residual heirs (that is in the absence of sons),
uxorilocal residence was a pre-condition.
Choice of marriage partner. Among most communities in India
and Sri Lanka where a daughter's land rights were customarily recognized,
marriages with close kin, especially (one or both categories of) cross-
cousins, were preferred and promoted. The only exceptions to this among
our case studies are the Khasis who strongly disapproved of such mar-
riages, and the Lalungs who are averse to them today but are said to have
practised cross-cousin marriages earlier.
Of course the underlying basis of close-kin, including cross-cousin,
marriage preference (or its absence) are multiple and complex. Although
some of the considerable anthropological literature on the subject links a
preference for close-kin marriage to the desire to keep property within the
family, other studies give alternative or additional reasons, such as the
ideology of descent prevailing in the community, the attempts by a social
group to create and perpetuate certain types of solidarity ties and alliances,
the desire to ensure purity of caste or status, or to ensure stable marriages
between those with similar backgrounds, and so on. 92 The south Indian
Hindu pattern is often characterized as one where families seek to consoli-
date kinship ties by close-kin marriages, and the north Indian pattern as one
where families seek to extend their network of social ties over wider
geographic spaces through marriage alliances with non-kin (for elabo-
ration see chapter 8).
Whatever the functional or other origins of close-kin marriage prefer-
ences, such marriages do have the effect of containing the dispersal of
property outside the extended kin network: for instance, as Banks (1957:
260) notes, cross-cousin marriages, among other things, enable 'the recom-
bination of the properties of a man and his sister through their children'.
We would thus expect communities which allow close-kin marriages to be
less resistant to recognizing women's rights in land than communities which
don't allow such marriages.
Sexual control over women. The link between sexual control over
women and their inheritance of landed property appears to be somewhat
tenuous. On the one hand we have patrilineal Hindu communities in South
Asia which customarily recognized women's inheritance rights only in
highly restricted circumstances, but which placed a strong emphasis on pre-
marital virginity and post-marital chastity. And in the restricted contexts
92
For a useful review of some of the theoretical debates on the subject see Fox (1967). Also see
Yalman (1962, 1967) on cross-cousin marriages in the context of south India and Sri
Lanka, TambiarTs (1965) critique of Yalman, Banks (1957) on the Jaffna Tamils, and
Trautmann (1981). Tambiah (1965), Leach (1961), and Banks (1957), like Goody (1976),
place emphasis on property considerations underlying marriage preferences. But unlike
Goody, they confine themselves to communities which do not forbid cross-cousin
marriages on other grounds.
and forms in which they recognized women's property rights (e.g. a limited
estate for widows without sons), a variety of constraints were placed on the
woman. For instance, widows were generally prohibited from remarrying,
and if unchaste had to forfeit their rights in the property.
On the other hand, these and other sorts of limits on women's sexual
choices, which could be prescribed in order to keep property intact, were
not a necessary feature of communities where women could customarily
inherit land. In fact groups which recognized women's land rights custo-
marily (and not just in exceptional circumstances) exercised quite differing
degrees of sexual control over women, as revealed in their varying emphasis
on pre-marital virginity and chastity and tolerance of divorce and remar-
riage. Pre-marital sex was accepted among the matrilineal tribes of north-
east India (as it was among most tribal groups in India) and strongly
disapproved of among the Jaffna Tamils (virginity being fully expected).
Norms regarding extra-marital sexual relations likewise differed, disappro-
val being stronger among some groups than others. However, divorce and
divorcee remarriage were relatively easy among most groups, although
some such as the Jaffna Tamils and the matrilineal Moors allowed it in
principle but rarely practised it. All the communities permitted widow
remarriage.
On the whole, therefore, the degree of emphasis on female chastity was
highly variable across communities and appears to have had less to do with
female inheritance practices than with notions of morality and/or purity of
caste or race. The caste-purity issue is especially important in South Asia,
where even communities which tolerated women's extra-marital liaisons
with same-caste or higher-caste men forbade them with lower-caste men.
Here it appears pertinent to also consider Engels' (1972) argument that
ensuring the legitimacy of heirs would necessitate an emphasis on female
chastity and monogamy, although (as noted in chapter 1) Engels was
speaking of propertied households and not of propertied women. The case
of the Kandyan Sinhalese indicates that these links are not a given, but
depend on how a society views the institution of marriage and what system
of property devolution it follows. Among the Kandyan Sinhalese, whose
marriage arrangements (as noted) were usually completely informal and
the wedding ceremony was often dispensed with altogether, it was generally
difficult to distinguish between wives and lovers and between 'legitimate'
and Illegitimate' children (Yalman 1967: 160). Illegitimacy was related not
to children born out of wedlock, but to children born from unions
considered inappropriate, such as those that violated caste or incest taboos.
Since male and female properties were separate, the children inherited
separately from the mother and the father; and 'whether the parents were
'married' or not [was] normally . . . immaterial for inheritance claims'
(Yalman 1967:172). The formal association of legitimacy with wedlock was
a legal imposition on the community through British legislation in 1859,
which made marriage registration compulsory and recognized only the
children born from registered marriages as legitimate. In the early years
when few marriages were registered this led to the absurd situation
commented on by the British Governor, ten years after the law was passed:
It is probably within the mark to assume that 2/3 of the existing unions are illegal
and that 4/5 of the rising generation born within the last 8 or 9 years are illegitimate.
(Cited in Risseeuw 1988: 37)
In overview then, among the communities which customarily recognized
women's rights in landed property, families sought to keep the land within
the purview of the extended kin either by strict rules against land alienation
by individuals, or, where such alienation was possible (as among the
bilateral communities), by other means: these included post-marital resi-
dence in the village which often took the form of uxorilocality or matriloca-
lity, and close-kin marriages, but did not usually include a rigid sexual
control over women. In fact, proximity of the post-marital residence to the
natal home appears to have been virtually a necessary condition for
recognizing a daughter's share in landed property.
Let us now turn to the second question posed earlier: what can we say from
our case studies about the nature of gender relations among matrilineal and
bilateral communities?
(2) Land rights and gender relations

To assess gender relations in the communities described is not easy. Most
historical records and more recent accounts of matrilineal or bilateral
communities (like accounts of patrilineal ones) give little space to the
question of gender relations or to women's own perceptions of their
situations. Matriliny, in particular, has been described primarily in struc-
tural terms rather than in terms of people's (especially women's) everyday
experience of it. Also, there is much more information on some groups,
such as the Nayars, Khasis, Garos, and Sinhalese, than on others.
Nevertheless, some broad inferences can be drawn which, although not
definitive, are certainly indicative.93
The picture we get is a mixed one. On the positive side, most historical
accounts remark on the considerable independence of women in several of
these communities, especially the central Kerala Nayars and Sinhalese (as
93
To supplement historical accounts I have also drawn on some recent ethnographies, where
the descriptions do not appear to represent a recent change.
indicated, for example, by the opening quotations in this chapter), and on
the relative equality in marital relations among them. Descriptions of Garo
and Khasi women also suggest this. Indeed, in all the communities studied,
a daughter's rights in land, and the fact that she either remained in her natal
home after marriage or had inviolable rights to return to it if she so chose,
provided her with a strong fall-back position within marriage. Women
could choose their husbands (although heiresses faced some constraints)
and initiate divorce. Where uxorilocality or matrilocality was the norm, as
it was in many of these groups, marital breakdown led to the husband
departing, sometimes (as among the Garos) with only the clothes on his
back. A binna-married Sinhalese woman wanting to terminate her marriage
merely had to place the husband's personal belongings on the doorstep
(Tilakaratne 1986). According to jocular folklore a binna husband was
advised to always keep a walking stick, an umbrella, and an oil lamp handy
in case he was evicted by his wife when he was unwell, in the rain, or in the
middle of the night! (Yalman 1967). (In contrast, in patrilineal, patrilocal
contexts, it was women (especially if they violated sexual norms) who faced
the very real risk of being evicted and being left with little means of
support.)
That the husband's authority was likely to vary inversely to the material
and other support a woman could get from her natal home is especially
apparent in the Khasi case: here (as noted) marital instability was much
higher among heiresses, who usually initiated the divorce, than among non-
heiress daughters, who were more dependent on husbands for their material
well-being.
Everyday marital relations also reflected the limited authority of a man
married to a Khasi heiress. Nakane (1967:125) found, for instance, that the
last person to be introduced to visitors was usually the husband:
When we visited the Khasi household of a youngest daughter [the heiress], if a man
(obviously the husband) came first to greet us, he always said 'please wait, my wife
(or mother-in-law) is coming.' And it was the wife who entertained us, offering tea
or pan and discussing matters with us, while her husband remained silent in the
corner of the room, or in the next room. If her uncle or brother was there, he would
be the person who talked to us ... In such a case, we were seldom introduced to the
husband.94
This is in marked contrast to the situation in upper-caste patrilineal rural
households in northwest India where it is the woman who may be seen
standing silently near the door in the adjacent room while the husband
receives visitors.
94
My own observations were similar in a field visit to some Khasi villages in 1989: the women
offered us pan and betelnut inside the hut while the husbands (where present) left the hut
and sat outside.
N a k a n e also notes that a G a r o woman rarely waited up for her husband

if he was late for supper, but ate her meal and kept his share aside, once
again in contrast to observed behaviour in the patrilineal northwest where
the wife often eats last. To some extent, of course, the relative equality in
marital relations that N a k a n e describes (and which I also observed) among
the Khasis and Garos, would be a general feature of tribal communities, but
the contrast between the heiress and non-heiress daughters among the
Khasis, suggests that the specific property rights enjoyed by the youngest
daughter provided her additional bargaining power within marriage.
Of course even where the husband did not play an authoritative role male
authority could prevail: for instance, among groups with joint family
estates, the kinsman who managed the estate wielded considerable auth-
ority, as the karanavan did among the central Kerala Nayars and the
wealthier north Kerala Mappilas. But among groups where women and
men held property individually, as in Sri Lanka, there was more equal
sharing of household authority and decision-making between the genders.
Gunawardena (1989), for instance, found in her fieldwork among the
Kandyan Sinhalese in Kande village that neither dominance nor authority
was vested solely with the husband. In fact, both spouses were reckoned as
household heads. There was equal participation in decision-making on
most matters, while fertility decisions were made solely by the women. In
her interviews in which both husband and wife were present, she found that
"rather than absolute agreement with the ideas expressed by their husbands,
most women tended to challenge, interject, qualify, add to and contradict
statements made by their husbands, and clarify an issue by saying: "wait,
that's not exactly the way it was. N o w don't mislead her (directed to the
husband). Let me explain (to the anthropologist)'" (p. 114, insertions as in
the original).
Also, among many of the communities where women contributed to the
household economy through agricultural work and trading (as among the
Sinhalese and the tribal matrilineal groups of northeast India), they
typically controlled the crop surplus and their own cash earnings.
In all the groups, women had considerable freedom of movement and of
public interaction. On the Sinhalese in K a n d e village, Gunawardena (1989:
306) comments: T have observed women who simply announce to their
husbands their plans for a journey be it far or near and simply leave
(without waiting for assent, acknowledgement or permission). Men do
likewise.' Again, among the matrilineal (Muslim) Moors: 'Women move
freely about the village without veils covering their faces. It is not
uncommon to witness men and women disputing or conversing in public
places . . . Interaction between men and women is frequent and casual and
often sexual comments are exchanged publicly' (Munck 1985: 8, 108). This
is in striking contrast to women's situation among most patrilineal Muslims
of the subcontinent. Similarly, Nayar women 'could move freely about the
village, [and] travel alone on pilgrimages ...' (Gough 1961a: 356). British
anthropologist, C.F. Fuller, found that Nayar village women were never
embarrassed to answer his questions directly, or to take active part in his
conversations with the family (personal communication, 1992).
This freedom of movement and public interaction would also have made
for greater awareness of public affairs among women. I found in my 1989
field visit (along with a Khasi woman sociologist) to some rural Khasi
households near Shillong that many village women were well aware of the
intricacies of local politics. On one occasion, forgetting our presence, two of
the women we were visiting had a long and involved argument about the
suitability or otherwise of particular candidates in the forthcoming local
elections! This awareness probably took other forms in earlier times.
Norms of sexual behaviour outside marriage, however, varied considera-
bly, ranging from relatively gender egalitarian (as among the matrilineal
tribes of northeast India, 95 and among the Sinhalese), to restricted for
women (as among the Jaffna Tamils). But in comparison with the Hindu
and Muslim women of patrilineal groups, especially those shackled by
seclusion practices in northern South Asia, women among all matrilineal
and bilateral groups enjoyed greater sexual freedom: social interaction
between the sexes was relatively free, divorce and widow remarriage was
permitted among all, and even among the stricter groups punishments for
extra-marital affairs did not take the extreme and violent forms that they
could take among some patrilineal groups, especially those of the north-
western frontier regions of the subcontinent (see chapters 6 and 7 for
details).
Women's status in these contexts also affected attitudes towards girl
children, who were specially desired among matrilineal groups. For
instance, recently, when recording life histories of older Nayar women,
anthropologist Joan Mencher found that many of them mentioned how in
the past (even forty to fifty years ago) Nayar mothers got angry with
daughters who bore male children: 'They wanted girl babies to increase the
number in the house', 96 in marked contrast to the strong preference for
male children found in patrilineal communities across much of South Asia.
Relationships between women of the taravad also appear to have been
supportive and close. Among Khasi households too, on my field visit I was
95
The G a r o s (as noted) customarily had a well-defined code of behaviour towards women
under which any form of sexual harassment of women was subject to punishment.
96
Personal communication, Joan Mencher, 1992.
struck by the closeness and strong support networks that appeared to exist
among married sisters.
However, the features which favoured women in these communities were
counterbalanced by other, less favourable, ones. One, property rights did
not alter the overall gender division of labour: domestic work and childcare
were still a woman's responsibilities. Two, the range of sexual mores found
among these communities indicates that rights in land did not guarantee
women the same sexual freedom as men. Three, formal managerial
authority over land in a number of matrilineal communities lay mainly with
men (as husbands, brothers, and maternal uncles). In practice, this would
have worked in various ways, depending on the role women played in the
household's economy, the form (individual or joint) in which property was
held, and the size of the estates involved. Where women's role in production
and market activities was important (as among the tribal groups of
northeast India), or where women held individual property rights (as
among the bilateral groups in Sri Lanka), they also exercised a degree of
control over the land and its management. Even among the Khasis who
held property in joint family estates, although the brother or maternal uncle
was an important authority figure in estate management, it is mainly
women (who were also involved in farming and trading) who appear to
have decided (albeit in close consultation with maternal uncles and
brothers) how ancestral property would be divided among daughters, or
what part of it could be leased out. The shallow generational depth of most
Khasi households would also have facilitated this process. However, where
women played little role in farm production, and property was held in large
joint family estates collectively owned by several generations of a woman's
matrilineal descendants, as among the Nayars of central Kerala and the
wealthy Mappilas of north Kerala, men's managerial control over property
and their overall authority appears to have been especially strong. Here, as
noted, it was the karanavan who managed the estate and was the representa-
tive authority in the taravacTs public dealings. Among the central Kerala
Nayars, for instance, although older women exercised control over
domestic affairs, and wielded moral authority and influence over younger
women, sons, and younger brothers, this was not the same as the overall
authority and managerial control over property exercised by the karana-
van. And although some individual Nayar women may have played
important managerial roles by virtue of circumstance, age or personality,
the system did not provide for this as a rule. (This also highlights an
important difference between matrilineal and patrilineal inheritance
systems: in the former there is often a gender divergence between property
ownership and its control, while in the latter there is none: men (as a gender)
both own and control the property.)
Four, most importantly, customary institutions with jural power (such as
the tribal and caste councils) were monopolized by men, not only in all the
matrilineal communities, but also in the bilateral ones in Sri Lanka. In the
latter, although land rights were defined on an individual and not joint
family basis, and women could exercise greater control over land manage-
ment, jural power and authority in public decision-making bodies still
rested with men as a gender (even if not with all men as individuals). As
noted, women as a gender were typically excluded from such bodies.
Among matrilineally inheriting communities, this meant that despite men's
restricted access to property ownership, their rights (as a gender) of control
over that property on the one hand, and their access to public bodies on the
other (with links between the two domains), often enabled them to
consolidate social prestige and political power. The Nayar karanavans of
wealthy taravads and the Khasi chiefs commanded considerable local
influence in ways that the women heiresses of these communities appear not
to have done as a rule. Also, among all groups, men's control of the public
decision-making domain gave them critical influence over the modification
of legal and social rules when external conditions began to change in
significant ways, especially under British colonial rule.
In short, although their rights in landed property clearly conferred
important benefits on women, their virtual exclusion from property
management (in some groups) and from jural and overall public authority
(in all groups) circumscribed the power they could derive from those rights.
This suggests that we cannot predict the full advantages of women having
land rights for gender relations merely by examining women's position
within customarily matrilineal or bilateral communities. For women to
derive fuller benefits from land ownership they would need to enjoy
managerial control over it as well. Moreover, women's exercise of effective
control over property is likely to be interlinked in a two-way process with
their entry into public decision-making bodies (as will be elaborated in
chapter 10).
Our analysis of the detailed case studies of matrilineal and bilateral

communities thus yields at least two notable insights. First, there was a
significant link between women's property rights in land and certain
marriage customs which reduced the risk of the land passing to non-kin.
And today, where there is an absence of congruence between these two
factors, granting women possession of land is likely to be strongly resisted.
Traditionally, localized communities played a significant role in the evolu-
tion and enforcement of both inheritance and marriage customs. Hence it
would have been possible to ensure congruence between the two sets of
practices. However, contemporary laws, as framed by the modern State,
recognize the inheritance rights of females as individuals among most
communities, including traditionally patrilineal, patrilocal ones. The
enforcement of these laws is also in the domain of the State. But marriage
customs are still under the purview of the local community and, on the
relevant counts, have remained largely unchanged. In other words, today
the interface is between individual property rights granted under contem-
porary law by a State which is relatively autonomous of localized kin
networks, and the customs of marriage and residence which are still locally
governed in considerable degree by those networks.
Our observations would suggest that this contemporary recognition of
female inheritance in land, where it was not recognized earlier, is likely to
produce much greater conflict and opposition among communities which
forbid both close-kin marriage and village endogamy, than among those
which allow both. As will be shown in chapter 8, most south Indian
communities permit both practices, but most north Indian ones forbid
marriages with close relatives and insist on village exogamy - conditions
under which any land inherited by a daughter could be lost to her natal
family. This lays the ground for considerably greater opposition in north
India than in south India to giving women the property rights promised to
them by contemporary law.
Second, given the noted limitations of being vested with ownership rights
in landed property while being excluded from managerial and jural
authority, the arenas of contestation over land rights for women extend, as
noted in chapter 2, much beyond the courtyards of the household to
encompass the complex institutions of community and State - the arenas
where legal, social, and political rules are made and unmade. The next two
chapters illustrate this further.
Erosion and disinheritance: traditionally
matrilineal and bilateral communities
Apart from being a 'more wanted fellow', the [Nayar] husband now also
feels that it is 'in keeping with his dignity' that he be the one to run things
for his wife, and his children... Today the wife is expected to be faithful, to
look after her 'husband's needs' and to listen to him, though she can
oppose his decisions if she feels they are not in the best interest of her
tavari. (Mencher 1962: 241)
Matrilineal and bilateral systems of land inheritance advantaged women in

many respects, especially in granting them economic and social security,
and considerable autonomy and equality in marital relations. These
systems, however, did not remain fixed over time. Interventions by the
colonial and post-colonial States, particularly in the legal and economic
spheres, and the complex processes of social and cultural change which
these set in motion, eroded customary practices. The large joint family
estates came to be partitioned; formerly egalitarian tribal societies grew
economically differentiated; there was an increasing penetration of market
forces; there were notable shifts in the techniques of production, the social
division of labour, and land relations; sexual mores altered; and patriarchal
ideologies spread in influence. Women, in particular, were profoundly
affected by these changes. At the same time, their customary exclusion from
major authority in public bodies meant that they were unlikely to be the
ones directing the change, and were seldom in a position to effectively
protect their interests.
This chapter will examine these gender effects by looking at the historical
processes of change in three of the main matrilineal and bilateral communi-
ties in South Asia for which adequate information is also available: the
Garos of northeast India, the Nayars of southwest India, and the Sinhalese
of Sri Lanka. Although in terms of their populations the Garos and Nayars
constitute but tiny dots in the largely patrilineal landscape of India, their
experiences, as well as those of the Sinhalese, are illuminating in many
important respects. In particular they show that the ways in which the
changes affected women were not always the unintended consequences of
State policies, but that many of those policies embodied and promoted a
view of gender relations that was deeply steeped in patriarchal mores.
153
The Garo case study also demonstrates the limitations of Ester Boserup's
(1970) influential argument that it is population growth and the resultant
land scarcity which primarily explains shifts from swidden to settled
cultivation, the associated decline in women's role in agriculture, and
women's loss of land rights in Asia and Africa. Especially in South Asia, the
role of the State is seen to have been primary in determining the nature and
direction of change.
An examination of the three communities mentioned also helps us to
focus on the three regions in South Asia where matriliny or bilaterality has
traditionally prevailed. The experiences of change in matrilineal and
bilateral communities other than these were not identical, but the direction
of the shifts, and the types of factors that led to them, appear to have been
similar.
I. India
(1) The Garos

The Garos in India today reside in what is now the state of Meghalaya,
which has five administrative divisions (districts): East and West Garo
Hills, East and West Khasi Hills, and the Jaintia Hills.1 These are
administered by a three-tiered system - the state government, District
Councils (one for each of thefivedistricts), and what remains of traditional
tribal institutions - each tier creating pulls and pressures in different
directions. In 1981, the state's population was 1,336,000, representing an
almost four-fold increase since 1901. Thirty-eight per cent of it was located
in the Garo Hills and 62 per cent in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills; 85.0 per cent was
rural, 80.5 per cent tribal, and 50 per cent Christian (GOI 1986b).
At the turn of the century, the Garo Hills were covered with thick forests
swarming with wildlife, and were said to have the richest soils in the region.
Garo society, as described in the previous chapter, was characterized by
economic self-sufficiency and considerable class and gender equality. Jhum
cultivation yielded enough for subsistence. Land was communally held, but
women inherited all other property. Overall they occupied a position of
considerable economic and social strength: they had independent usufruc-
tuary rights to communal land, enjoyed the security of matrilocal residence,
played a primary role in agricultural production, controlled cash and
agricultural surplus, and enjoyed a considerable degree of sexual freedom.
Jural authority, however, was held by men.
1
The discussion below is confined to the Garos in India. For information on changes in
traditional practices among the Garos in Bangladesh, see Khaleque (1983, 1984). The
directions of these changes were similar to those noted for the Indian Garos.
Erosion and disinheritance 155
The establishment of British control over the G a r o Hills in the second

half of the nineteenth century led to substantial changes in the economic
and social fabric of the community, which were carried further by post-
Independence policies. M a n y of these changes adversely affected the
community in general and women in particular. 2
Shifts from j h u m to wet rice cultivation. The most significant

change, which in turn triggered others, was the shift away from almost
exclusively jhum cultivation towards wet rice settled agriculture. The
importance of fruit and nut orchards also grew. The adoption of wet rice
farming was induced by a combination of factors which made it difficult to
survive on jhum alone: (a) the shrinkage of area available forjhum as a result
of State policies; (b) a growing population impinging on this shrinking land
base; and (c) the direct encouragement of wet rice cultivation by the State.
Although the G a r o s must have known of wet rice techniques since at least
the eighteenth century (and possibly earlier) through their contact with the
plains people via markets situated in the foothills, virtually none were
practising settled agriculture even by the early twentieth century (Playfair
1909).
However, beginning in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the
colonial State's land control and land use policies began to make significant
inroads into jhum land. The British created large tracts of forest reserves
from land belonging to different a kings (settlements), and declared the
remaining forest areas as unclassed State forests. 3 With the G a r o Hills
Regulation Act of 1882, they also acquired the power to regulate the use of
forest resources by instituting a system of licences, fees, royalties, and so on.
The land of some a kings was declared as khas (i.e. land not under private
ownership and subject to the government's right of disposal), and that of
2
The changes have been traced primarily from village studies by Burling (1963) and Nakane
(1967) in the early 1950s, Majumdar (1978) in the 1950s and mid-1960s, and Kar (1982) in
the mid-1970s. This has been supplemented by less detailed village surveys undertaken by
the Anthropological Survey of India, the Agro-Economic Research Center (Jorhat) and
the Census of India Village Monograph Series 1961, as well as by my field trip to
Meghalaya in 1989, during which I visited a number of Garo villages, spoke to local
government officials, and had a useful discussion with D.N.Majumdar, who has known the
Garos intimately since the 1950s: during 1953-62, when he did his initial survey in the area,
Prof Majumdar (who is married to a Garo) was so well accepted by the community that his
opinion was even sought in settling inheritance disputes.
3
Unclassed State forests are those for which specific rules and regulations regarding the use
rights of people have not yet been specified, but over which the State retains the option of
defining such rights and of converting these forests into Reserved forests if deemed
necessary. In Reserved forests the use rights of local dwellers are clearly defined and highly
restricted. Through their takeover of the forests, the British deprived the local population
of its control over this valuable resource, and also of most of its customary rights in forests,
and established their own claims to undertake unrestricted timber extraction.
some others was forcibly divided and gifted to selected beneficiaries (Kar
1982: 238), although the colonizers refrained from settling non-tribals in
the area, which protected the Garos from significant encroachments by
outsiders.
From the 1940s onwards the area under arecanut orchards also began to
expand, further reducing that available for jhum (Kar 1982: 146). But in the
early 1950s these were still tendencies. Burling (1963: 28) described the
situation thus: c[L]and has been left fallow for ever shorter periods, and
presumably it is becoming less capable of controlled cultivation. This may
result in a crisis in the future but the crisis is not yet there.' However, after
1947 with post-Independence policies the shrinkage of jhum land gathered
momentum. A Garo Hills (Autonomous) District Council was set up in
1952, with powers to legislate on matters relating to land use and land
revenue, inheritance, marriage and divorce, the management of unclassed
State forests, the regulation of jhum, and village and town administration.
Retaining the basic features of forest administration inherited from the
British, the District Council reserved the right to give permits to selected
individuals for exploiting forest resources, and allowed Garo a'king
members free access to forest produce only for domestic use. The Council
itself undertook large-scale tree felling for revenue purposes. Majumdar
(1978: 117) notes: 'Practically anarchy prevailed in the forests managed by
the District Council, resulting in indiscriminate felling of trees without any
serious effort at regeneration of forests'. This in turn contributed to
environmental degradation. Although various parts of the forests were
placed under plantation/regeneration/afforestation schemes, actual re-
planting was limited and mainly commercial species were grown to which
a'king members had no access. In addition, the Jhum Regulation Act of
1954 (which is still in force) restricted shifting cultivation near water sources
and catchments, in areas identified as containing valuable timber, and in
village or community forests. In 1963 the District Council's land reforms
branch also declared several categories of land as khas, including a good
deal of land used for jhum. Added to this was the state government's large-
scale land acquisition for setting up its administrative infrastructure.
As a result of these policies, a growing population (increasing from
160,000 in 1901 to 307,000 in 1961) was forced to survive on shrinking tracts
of jhum land, leading to ever-shortening jhum cycles and declining land
productivity, to which soil erosion and the drying up of many perennial
streams also contributed. By the 1960s a crisis of subsistence was develop-
ing. A 1963-64 study in Banshidua village showed that the average annual
per capita income of households depending solely on jhum was Rs. 168.2,
which was below the officially defined all-India poverty line of Rs.180 at
1960-61 prices. Wet rice settled agriculture was clearly more rewarding: in
some villages, it yielded four times more income per capita than jhum. In
addition, it was being directly promoted by the administration. Under its
jhum control scheme, the state government developed land for permanent
cultivation, especially by employing local Garos to make terraces. Also the
District Council passed laws providing that if local villagers did not take
advantage of suitable land, others (even non-Garos) could convert it into
paddy fields (Burling 1963: 305).
The result was that substantial shifts to wet rice took place in the first
decade and a half after Independence. By the mid-1960s many Garos had
almost entirely switched to wet rice cultivation, practising jhum on the
margin (as in Wajadagiri village in Majumdar's study); others were
practising jhum along with wet rice cultivation (on flat lands or terraces)
and orchards (GOI 1967a; Saha and Barkataky 1968). However, the shifts
were constrained by shortages of flat lands and irrigation water, the drying
up of perennial streams in some areas, and the need for additional labour to
construct and maintain hill terraces, which not all households could
provide. In several areas, even the terraces created by the state government
were abandoned after initial use (Saikia and Borah 1979). Hence not all
who wished to do so could shift to wet rice and orchards, and many
continued practising only jhum. In 1981, an estimated 35.1 per cent of the
total population (half of it female) in the Garo Hills was dependent on jhum
as the only form of cultivation, which, as noted, was insufficient for survival
and needed supplementing by income from other sources, such as trading in
forest products, working as agricultural wage labour, or seeking non-
agricultural incomes. 4
Increasing economic inequalities. Variations in the extent of shift

out of jhum into diversified production led to two forms of economic
differentiation in the Garo Hills: inter-village, and inter-household within
villages. Inter-village variations stemmed essentially from differential
availability of irrigable flat land for settled rice cultivation. In some villages,
such as Wajadagiri, virtually all households were able to shift to wet rice
while practising some jhum alongside. Such villages remained relatively
self-sufficient in food production. 5 Other villages, such as Machakolgiri,
remained entirely dependent on jhum cultivation and became increasingly
4
In Agalgri (a settlement cluster of three villages), Sana's (1976) study in the late 1960s found
that 40 per cent of the settlement income came from non-agricultural sources, 57 per cent
from jhum, and only 3 per cent from other sources, in contrast to Banshidua, where 44 per
cent of village income came from settled farming and horticulture.
5
Rinsibara village studied by Nakane (1967) in the early 1950s, and Resubakrapara studied
under the Census of India 1961 village survey project (GOI 1967a), were very similar to
Wajadagiri in this respect, in that in these too almost all families had adopted wet rice along
with jh urn.
impoverished as a result. In both these categories of villages, intra-village
economic differentiation between households remained low. A third cate-
gory of villages was that where only some households, with State encoura-
gement and support, opened up wet fields or orchards, while others
continued to depend on jhum alone. Here economic inequalities between
households practising settled rice cultivation and those subsisting only on
jhum were noticeable (Nakane 1967; Kar 1982: 197).
Families that opened up wet rice plots beyond their capacity to cultivate
with family labor alone, either sharecropped out some land or employed
wage labour. Wage labour, which was just beginning to appear among the
Garos in the 1950s (Burling 1963), was common by the mid-1960s and
widespread by the 1970s (Saikia and Borah 1979, Lahiri 1979). In 1981,
there were over 20,000 agricultural labourers in the east and west Garo Hills
combined; of these, about 38 per cent were women dependent primarily on
agricultural wages for a livelihood (GOI1986b). For many others this was a
secondary source of income. Inter-village labour migration became
common, reciprocal labour arrangements declined, and indebtedness to
moneylenders increased (Kar 1982; GOI 1967a).
Changes in the gender division of labour. Wet rice cultivation also

led to significant changes in the gender division of labour. Where practised
as in the plains, it required substantial changes in agricultural techniques
and practices, the timing of operations, and labour organization. Land
preparation for wet rice needs more care than for jhum rice since ploughing
and levelling are often necessary, requiring new skills and draft animals.
Irrigation ditches and dikes have to be built around fields located near an
assured water supply (e.g. perennial streams); the crop usually has to be
transplanted (and not merely sown with the dibble stick method as in jhum);
its harvesting requires a sickle; and threshing has to be done with cattle. The
timings of planting and harvesting raise peak labour needs and require
much more coordination among family labour, while reducing the need for
labour cooperation between villagers (which is essential in jhum, especially
for clearing forests). In themselves these changes need not reduce women's
contribution to production, but they have tended to do so since the new
skills are taught mainly to men.
Women's role, which was primary in jhum, has thus been made secondary
under permanent cultivation with the plough. In operations other than
transplanting (which uses mainly female labour), women have been
reduced to being 'helpers' to men. This includes harvesting, an operation in
which, under jhum, men were women's 'helpers'.
The decline in jhum and forests has also reduced women's access to the
cash they earned from selling produce gathered from the uncleared jungle
and jhum land. The proceeds from such small trading had belonged
exclusively to the women. Now men control the crop and the cash generated
from wet rice.
Privatization of communal land. The spread of wet rice cultivation

and orchards, coupled with direct measures by the District Council and
state government, eroded the communal pattern of Garo land ownership
and led to its increasing privatization in individual hands. The District
Council's power to regroup existing villages into larger ones for so-called
stability, and for implementing development schemes, disrupted the com-
munal basis of land ownership, and contributed to privatization. But more
significantly, wet paddy settled agriculture involves cultivating the same
field year after year. Customarily, as with the traditional recognition of
individual rights over planted trees, the continuous use of a plot (along with
frequent cash and credit transactions relating to cash crops) bestowed a
public sanction on the concerned household's possession of the land.
Similarly, over time, the establishment of orchards gave the household
rights not only over the trees but effectively also over the land on which they
grew. This could cover substantial tracts: for instance, in Darengri village,
40 per cent of a 'king land was brought under private possession by eleven
out of the fifty-three households through arecanut gardening (Kar 1982).
This customary privilege acquired legality when the British, and after
Independence the state government, began to grant pattas (titles) to
individuals, and so accelerated the shift to settled cultivation and privatiza-
tion. This policy continues today. Initially only temporary pattas are
granted, under which land can be inherited in the usual way but not sold,
nor can trees on it be cut; and such lands can be acquired by the government
without compensation for road building. However, after some years a patta
can be made permanent, giving the owner the right of free disposal.
The pattas are typically granted in male names. In Wajadagiri, Majum-
dar (1978) found that out of twenty-three households, fourteen got pattas.
Of these, eleven were granted to men, one to a widow, and two to unmarried
daughters. Although there are no published records of the aggregate
number of pattas granted by the District Council or the gender of the
grantees, my discussions with District Council officials in 1989 indicate that
a bias in favour of males is the common pattern. With increasing land
scarcity, the development of a cash economy, and the growing tendency of
parents to gift land to sons, the absence of patta ownership in women's
names is likely to be a significant factor in the long-term erosion of women's
land rights in the community.
Erosion of matrilineal inheritance practices. With privatization,

land has become part of family property - indeed, over time, it has replaced
heirlooms as the most important form of property. In the 1950s, when wet
rice cultivation was still a recent innovation in the Garo Hills, Burling
found that parents with a modest holding usually gave the bulk or even the
whole of the land to the heiress-daughter to prevent land fragmentation.
Those with extensive holdings sometimes gave small plots to non-heiress
daughters and even to sons, although for most part, this practice was
restrained: 'Garos from wet rice areas expressed to me the sentiment that it
was much better to keep the land together because if it split up, everyone
would become poor' (Burling 1963: 308). Other children were advised to
open up new land elsewhere or to work hard and purchase some.
Majumdar's observations in the 1960s and Kar's in the 1970s indicate
that till then the basic features of matrilineal descent and inheritance had
not changed substantially and lands held under annual patta in the name of
the household head are for all practical purposes kept within the orbit of
[the] traditional descent pattern' (Kar 1982: 249). However, there are
clearly pulls in the opposite direction now, with parents increasingly
favouring land transfers to sons. The extent to which this is occurring
appears to be linked to the following factors: (a) the relative prosperity and
overall economic self-sufficiency of the village; (b) the degree of economic
differentiation between households within the villages; and (c) the extent of
decrease in women's field labour participation associated with the degree of
shift away from jhum. The erosion of matrilineal inheritance and uxorilocal
post-marital residence have been least in villages which are still relatively
self-sufficient, have low inter-household economic differentiation, and
where the decline in women's labour contribution has been limited.
In Wajadagiri, for instance, village self-sufficiency continues to be high,
economic differentiation between households is low, and most villagers
practise both settled wet rice cultivation and jhum. Here the families have
been able to maintain and indeed strengthen traditional ties of marriage,
kinship, and inheritance. Men marrying heiresses have a particular stake in
ensuring inheritance along traditional lines, and residents of Wajadagiri
have no difficulty in finding sons-in-law from other villages. The village
elders said to Majumdar (1978: 130-1) that if sons inherited, 'the property
would pass to another mahari. This is not desirable. If we give land to our
sons, our daughters who are the actual owners of land will have to move
away.' Again, in Resubakrapara (where too all households practised a
combination ofjhum and wet rice) women alone inherited land among the
landowning households (GOI 1967a). Nakane likewise noted that in
Rinsibara village, despite the adoption of wet rice, the change in social
organization was very limited, and attributed this to the low economic
differentiation among its households.
In my view, there are two additional factors of significance, shared by all
three villages mentioned: their relative economic prosperity (which makes
them attractive to in-marrying families) and the fact that jhum cultivation
coexists with wet paddy, which means that the role of women in cultivation
continues to be visibly significant, leaving less justification for by-passing
women's traditional rights. That low intra-village economic differentiation
alone cannot sustain traditional forms of marriage and inheritance is also
indicated by the case of Matchakolgiri, where the entire village economy is
dependent only on jhum and has become increasingly impoverished. Such
villages are unable to attract sons-in-law easily to maintain matrilocal/
uxorilocal marriage patterns, and both men and women have to look
outside to non-agricultural sources of income.
Villages such as Joshipara and Darengri provide a notable contrast to
Wajadagiri. In Joshipara, inter-household differentials are high. Some
families remain dependent solely on jhum while others have shifted
exclusively to settled rice. Among the latter, parents want to bequeath some
private land to sons, since sons become familiar with wet rice cultivation
techniques by working with their fathers in the fields, while the nokrom son-
in-law (heiress' husband) may come from among the jhum cultivators of
another village and be unacquainted with wet rice cultivation. Also in such
households, women's labour input has declined, both because they no
longer practise jhum and because there is a greater possibility of getting
hired labour to replace family labour among wealthy households in villages
with higher economic differentiation. Some fathers, therefore, say: T h e
daughters, being women, cannot do anything except rely on their husbands.
To let them succeed to the land is a great risk' (Nakane 1967: 89). They thus
try and find ways of letting a son rather than the heiress-daughter succeed to
their private land. In Darengri village again, although the traditional
system of female inheritance persists, some parents would prefer to give
shares to sons as well, and some of the village women are apprehensive that
one day the boys will demand an equal share of property (Saikia and Borah
1979). Bose (1980) likewise records several cases where mothers have gifted
land to sons who settled in the mother's village after marriage.
The weakening of traditional Garo political institutions has accentuated
the tendency of households to by-pass traditional rules governing land
access and use. The nokma and mahari, who formerly had virtually total
control over village affairs, have seen a steady decline in their authority.
Several factors have contributed to this erosion: the decline in the commu-
nal basis of land ownership, the limiting of the nokma's role with the lapsing
of many social and religious rituals due to conversions to Christianity, and
especially the installing by the British of a new hierarchy of officials
responsible for settling local disputes and collecting house-tax from the
nokmas on behalf of all a king households. Post-Independence administra-
tive changes have furthered this process.
Emergence ofintra-family inequalities. With the shrinkage of jhum

land and expansion of wet rice cultivation, unmarried sons and daughters
have less access to independent plots and their dependence on parents has
grown. Even in the 1950s, Burling found that while sons and daughters
could still open up some dry land in addition to the family's wet land, it was
no longer possible for them to be virtually independent. Parents now do not
always take responsibility for settling their non-heiress daughters after
marriage, and these daughters are often forced to seek other sources of
livelihood. In Rinsibara village, out of twenty households, seven did not
possess wet paddy fields, all seven being non-heiress households (Nakane
1967). This economic imbalance between daughters is another facet of
growing economic inequalities in the villages.
Propertyless sons married to non-inheriting wives are somewhat less
badly off than non-heiress daughters. First, the family's demand on the
labour of sons has grown. Second, unmarried sons, who traditionally
forfeited their claims to their independent jhum plots after marriage, now
try and gain access to some land by bringing it under wet rice or planting
orchards and thus establishing customary possession over it, which they try
and retain after marriage. This is facilitated by the District Council's
granting of pattas to men and the increasing possibility of in-village
marriages as the villages have become more multi-clan (as discussed below).
Changes in marriage patterns. The principles of clan exogamy are

still strictly maintained in choosing marriage partners, but the pattern of
post-marital residence has changed. In the late 1950s and even mid-1970s, it
was still predominantly matrilocal, with most husbands and wives belong-
ing to different villages and most men moving to their wives' villages
(Nakane 1967; Burling 1963; Majumdar 1978). Although cases of in-village
marriage were not unknown earlier, now the growing multi-clan nature of
villages has increased the prospects of finding a spouse from another clan
within the village itself.6
The tendency to retain sons with the family has also increased. The desire
to do so was expressed by several women I spoke to in the villages near Tura
town in the Garo Hills. Bose (1980: 111) records cases of families who 'are
trying to imitate the custom of keeping sons in the family like the patrilineal
people in the plains. They arrange to marry their sons to girls who are
willing to live in the house of the husband's family.' Goswami and
6
Majumdar (1978) found that in the 1960s, 16 per cent of the male marriages in Wajadagiri
and 22 per cent in Matchakolgiri were within the village. Nakane (1967) found that in
Rombagiri, apart from the oldest dominant clan, wives belonged to seven different clans
and husbands originated from eight different clans. In Emangiri, for forty-one out of fifty-
seven couples, both spouses were from within the village, in thirteen the husbands were
from outside, and in three the wives were from outside.
4
Majumdar (1965: 28) likewise quote fathers as lamenting: My sons are
bright students, but not so my daughters. My educated sons for whom I
have suffered so much in defraying the expenses of their education will earn
bread for others.'
Sons are also more reluctant to leave well-to-do households and self-
sufficient villages (such as Wajadagiri) because of the paucity of jhum land
elsewhere, and may seek to in-marry or bring their wives to the village. This
has other effects. Reduced marriage-migration of sons increases the
possibility of their gaining possession of village land over time. Further, as
Kar (1982: 250) notes, the settlement of sons' wives and females of migrant
households brings about 'a vertical proliferation of owning and inheriting
rights of those alien females. When land becomes scarce these alien females
act as potential sources of descent lines in respect of land possession'. In
Darengri village, in thirty-four out of fifty-three households, the principal
females were from other maharis. All households, however, had alienated
a king land as gardens, without the prior permission of the nokma (Kar
1982:250; see also Nakane 1967). There is still the customary preference for
the heiress daughter to marry her father's sister's son, but the practice is
stronger in economically stable villages such as Wajadagiri (which are able
to attract desired sons-in-law) than in poorer and less stable ones such as
Matchakolgiri: 80 per cent of heiress marriages in Wajadagiri, but only 44
per cent in Matchakolgiri, were between actual cross-cousins (Majumdar
1978).
Other features of customary marriage practices are also changing. For
instance, while the marriage proposal is still initiated by women, it is usually
through an exchange of letters, especially among the Christian Garos. The
practice of bridegroom capture-escape-recapture has been replaced by the
girl proposing (often more than once) and the boy initially refusing before
accepting. Nakane provides a poignant sample of some typical letters in
such an exchange, which are reproduced in appendix 4.1.
Male marital violence was rare in the 1950s. Matrilocal marriages and the
presence of the wife's matrikin in the villages were clearly a protection.
Nakane's (1967: 76) observations on some aspects of marital relationships
in that period are revealing:
If the husband is not at home when a meal is ready, she eats with her children
without waiting for him, leaving his share wrapped in banana leaves. If the wife is
engaged in feeding her baby when the husband asks her to bring some firewood to
burn in the fireplace she simply says 'I cannot, I am engaged'. Or, if the time is
unreasonable, she may say 'I am tired now, I am going to sleep' ... So far as my
observation goes, neither the authority of the husband nor the subordination of the
wife are ever exercised to extremes.
Whether this observation would still hold today - almost three decades
after Nakane's visit - needs exploring.
Conversion to Christianity and changing sexual mores. The conver-

sion of large numbers of Garos to Christianity by Christian missions has
clearly affected traditional practices and attitudes in many ways. In 1881,
7.6 per cent of Garos were Christian, in 1901, 30.8 per cent, and in 1971,
over 50 per cent. The spread of Christianity, while associated with the
advance of education for both sexes, had also led to a decline of customary
communal and ritual practices, eroding the nokma's ritual role and overall
importance. Women's sexual freedom has likewise declined.
Attitudes to pre-marital sex among the non-Christian Garos were still
liberal in the 1950s. Burling (1963: 73) notes that a typical response in
Rengsanggri village was: 'After all they are young, so what can we do?' He
found that 'no one was greatly surprised when a girl became pregnant, even
though no one really approved either', and further that:
Neither [premarital intercourse nor adultery] is fully condoned. The societal ideal of
desirable behaviour is certainly to confine sexual relations within the limits of
marriage, and a girl who has been pregnant is markedly less desirable as a wife than
one who has not. Virginity itself, however, is not prized, and most people have had
some sexual experience before marriage. (Burling 1963: 74)
But conversions to Christianity, Christian influence on the unconverted, as

well as exposure to the Hinduized culture of the plains are likely to have
affected this. Again, while divorce continues to be common among those
who have not converted, the Christian Garos are governed by the Indian
Divorce Act of 1869, under which divorce involves court proceedings and is
therefore difficult to obtain except by the wealthy. Separations are thus
common, but remarriage is difficult. Adultery, while tolerated among the
non-Christian Garos, is not accepted by the Christians.
To sum up, over the past century, traditional Garo society has been
subjected to a wide-ranging set of policies and influences, leading to
substantial economic, social, political, and ideological shifts. Today it
exhibits a considerable erosion of the communal basis of land holding,
cultivation and control, and a slow but sure undermining of the basis of
matrilineal inheritance and matrilocal residence. There have been (a)
substantial shifts away from jhum to settled wet rice cultivation, usually
also involving a shift from hoe to plough; (b) an overall decline in female
labour input, associated with the decline in jhum and the advent of new
paddy cultivation practices and techniques managed largely by men, who
provide the greater part of the wet rice labour and control the crop and cash
so generated; (c) the privatization of land and, alongside it, increasing
economic differentiation and landlessness, although in varying degree
across villages; (d) the emergence of land as individually inheritable
property; (e) the growing tendency for parents to retain sons after marriage
to help with the new form of cultivation, and for sons to bring wives to live
with them (thus promoting virilocality); (f) an emergent tendency for
parents to pass land to sons, especially via gifts; and (g) the enforcement of
more restrictive sexual mores. These changes are presented in summary
form in table 4.1 and in diagram 4.1.
Similar changes have affected the Khasis and Lalungs, although there are
differences in the extent and causes of shifts in these communities (as
detailed in Agarwal 1990b). In general, the histories of the northeastern
matrilineal tribes strikingly illustrate how the shift from land as a commu-
nal resource to land under individual possession has been associated not
only with the well-recognized process of class differentiation, but with the
equally critical (and little recognized) process of gender differentiation
among the peasantry.
Our discussion of the Garos demonstrates two especially important general
points. First, there are close interlinks between ecology, economy, techno-
logy, the social, and the political. Economic changes and the erosion of
institutions on one front can set off reactions on other fronts, including in
social and family relations, leading to differential gender effects. State
interventions in the name of development have seldom taken this into
account. Second, not all the noted changes were inevitable. The role of the
State in directing change, often listed as only one element among many, was
critical, and the common emphasis on population growth as the primary
factor inducing change appears to have been misplaced. For instance, in
1970 Ester Boserup advanced the thesis that population growth and
associated land scarcity leads communities to shift from swidden-hoe
cultivation to settled plough farming, and that this, in turn, reduces female
labour participation in agriculture or, as she put it, causes shifts from
'female farming systems' to 'male farming systems'; it also causes women to
lose their rights in land:
Female farming systems seem most often to disappear when farming systems with
ploughing of permanent fields are introduced in lieu of shifting agriculture. In a
typical case, this change is the result of increasing population density which makes it
impossible to continue with a system necessitating long fallow periods ... And the
advent of the plough usually entails a radical shift in sex roles in agriculture ...
(Boserup 1970: 32-3)
Further,
a sort of de facto private property in land may emerge in regions where land is
gradually becoming scarce, through population increase or the expansion of the
cultivation of cash crops. This scarcity of land may result in the loss of women's
rights to land. (Boserup 1970: 58)
Decreasing
Hoe to plough
POPULATION GROWTH land/person
ratios and failing
jhum productivity WET RICE
(settled) Decline in female
labour input in
cultivation and
STATE POLICY collection
Restrictions on tribal
access to forests Male control over tech-
nology, new technical
Restrictions on jhum skills & knowledge, and
crop produce
Encouraging shifts to
wet rice Tendency to
patrilocality
Granting titles to individ-

uals PRIVATISATION OF LAND Class differentiation in
often in male names land access
Customary privilege: Orchards & tree GENDER DIFFERENTIA-

land use right plantations TION IN LAND ACCESS
Christianity & Exposure Decline in sexual

to plains' culture freedom
direct effect
indirect effect
Diagram 4.1 Garos in transition: causes and effects

Table 4.1: Changes among the Garos of northeast India: a summary
Aspect Customary practices Contemporary practices
Form of cultivation swidden {jhum) wet rice and jhum

Technology hoe plough for wet rice;
hoe {or jhum
Gender division of jhum: F>M wet rice: M>F (for cash)
labour fish: M>F jhum: F>M (for food)
hunt: M only, limited
collect: W and C only
orchard: M ) F
Land rights all clan members equal Increasingly privatized,
(including nokma class differentiated,
household, and whether male biased
men, women or older
children)
Land management husband and wife wet rice: sons, husband
jhum: husband and wife
Control of produce wife mainly husband
Inheritance of usually youngest usually youngest
property daughter: land not daughter, but tendency
inheritable to gift land to sons
Post-marital matrilocal matrilocal, but
residence tendency toward
virilocality
Choice of marriage women's initiative women's initiative
partner
Women's sexual considerable limited
freedom
Jural authority male male
Religion traditional/animistic mainly Christianity
F = Females; M = Males; C = Children; W = Women
The Garo case shows that many of these shifts and the erosion of
women's rights in land were not inevitable. First, land scarcity was created
not just by population increases but by specific State policies of land
appropriation and regulation. And the shift to settled plough agriculture
was a result partly of land scarcity and partly of direct State pressure to
ensure such shifts. Second, the reduction of women's labour contribution to
cultivation with the shift to wetricecannot be disassociated from the male
bias shown by State agencies in the transfer of skills and technology related
to settled farming. Third, this decline in women's contribution to the
household economy eroded the social legitimacy of women's traditional
claims to land. Male bias in the distribution of land titles by the District
Council further dispossessed women. Fourth, it was the emergent inter-
village economic inequalities, rather than settled agriculture or land
scarcity per se, which was significant in eroding the system of matrilocal
residence. That this and other features of the traditional livelihood system
were not antithetical to village prosperity and change in technology, is clear
from the several examples noted of villages that have, by virtue of
fortuitous circumstances, achieved growth with equity. Altogether, if State
interventions relating to technological transfer and land ownership and use
had been premised on more gender- and class-egalitarian assumptions, a
different social and economic structure could have emerged. Heavily
influenced by a development model in which only productivity increases
have centrality and individual private property is seen as a necessary and
positive aspect of change, State policies to date have been eroding precisely
those communal and social institutions which they should have streng-
thened. For instance, while the limits of jhum would have been reached
sooner or later with an increase in Garo population, the shift to settled
agriculture could have been encouraged through a more egalitarian organi-
zational structure such as cooperatives (at least in ownership if not in
production) in a context where land was not traditionally private property
and reciprocal labour exchange was the norm. Women's rights could also
have been explicitly protected. Today it is difficult to say whether the better
features of the traditional social and political institutions that remain can
still be preserved. But the traditional organizational structure followed by
the Garos of communal land ownership and individual or family-based
farming, with a clear recognition of women'srightsin land, can still serve as
a model of an alternative institutional arrangement for land ownership and
use, when promoting women's land rights today (as will be discussed in
chapter 10).
Let us now consider the Nayars.
(2) The Nayars of central Kerala

Like the Garos, the Nayars of central Kerala today present a very different
picture from the traditional one described in chapter 3.7 The customary
7
In 1981 the population of Kerala was 25.4 million, of which 20 per cent are estimated to be
Nayars (assuming the percentage to be the same as reported in Government of Kerala
1969): exact figures are not available since data by caste were not comprehensively collected
in the Indian censuses after 1931. There was selected census coverage by caste in 1941 and
none after that.
systems of marriage, residence, land holding, and inheritance have under-

gone dramatic changes during and since the British period.8 Today all the
traditional large taravads have been partitioned (on an individual basis),
both sons and daughters inherit property, the tali-rite has disappeared, the
flexible sambandham union has given way to a more stable monogamous
marriage, and visiting husbands are becoming a rarity. Pre-marital virgi-
nity and fidelity in marriage are emphasized, and divorce and widow
remarriage are uncommon. Nambudiri men no longer take Nayar women
as lovers on a visiting basis, but marry within their own caste. Post-marital
residence too has tended towards neolocality. There have been changes in
these directions in all parts of Kerala, although their extent and the speed
with which they have occurred vary regionally.
Underlying these changes are a complex set of interacting factors, the
most important of which could broadly be divided into four categories: the
demobilization of the Nayar armies in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries; changes in the local economy; land and marriage
legislation passed by the British; and shifts in the ideological and social
climate. These affected both marriage and inheritance practices.
Although my focus here will be primarily on changes in these practices as
they existed in central Kerala, for comparative purposes I will also draw
upon some of Fuller's (1976) analysis for central Travancore and Jeffrey's
(1976) for Travancore as a whole.
Changes in marriage practices. The British disbanded the Nayar

armies after their annexation of Malabar in 1792, and those of Cochin and
Travancore were disbanded by the Raja soon after. Although scholars
differ in the weight they attach to this factor in what was to follow, there is
general agreement that it created, at the very least, 'a crack in the fabric of
the system' which was to widen over time (Fuller 1976: 125). To begin with,
the return home of the younger Nayar men on a permanent basis led to a
strengthening of sambandham bonds and a tendency towards monoga-
mous, more permanent unions. The ceremonial and social importance of
sambandham increased, while that of the tali-rite declined; the latter
practice eventually disappeared around the turn of this century in central
Travancore, and somewhat later in Cochin and south Malabar. Strong
ideological and social pressures also induced changes in marriage practices.
British Victorian notions of morality and how a proper family should be
constituted clearly influenced their growing condemnation of Nayar prac-
tices. But particularly, elite Nayar men, educated in the colleges of Madras
The story of these changes, as presented here, has been constructed by drawing particularly
on Gough (1952, 1961 a), Mencher (1962, 1965, and personal conversations), Fuller (1976),
Jeffrey (1976, 1993), and Government of Madras (GOM 1891).
and some in England, and steeped in a mixture of Tamil-Brahmanical and
western ideas, were embarrassed by the polyandrous unions of their
mothers, and especially susceptible to the 'barrage of European criticism of
their sexual morality' (Gough 1952: 83). The 1891 Report of the Malabar
Marriage Commission (a Commission set up by the Madras government to
examine the case for legislating a marriage law among matrilineal Hindus)
was a good indicator of their views. The Commission severely indicted the
traditional sambandham relationships as 'based on a doctrine that there is
no merit in female virtue, and no sin in unchastity', of which 'the very
defenders of the system are heartily ashamed' (Government of Madras
(GOM) 1891: 36). It concluded that Marumakkatayam law did not
'recognize the institution of marriage' (GOM 1891: 26). Nambudiri-Nayar
sambandhams were strongly condemned as exploitative of Nayar women
and unfair to Nambudiri women: 'An institution which by debauching the
women of one class [the Nayars], condemns the women of another [the
Nambudiris] to life-long and enforced celibacy, is not one which justice
need hesitate to condemn' (GOM 1891: 9). The matrilineal joint family
system too came under heavy attack as '[making] home-life (in the best
sense of the word) impossible' (GOM 1891: 36).
Prior to bringing out the Report, the Commission had solicited opinions
from a wide range of men considered 'fairly representative of the more
intelligent section of the community' (GOM 1891: 35): officials, the
educated classes, representatives of influential taravads, members of the
Bar in the district, royalty, and important Nambudiris (GOM 1891: 1).
Opinions ranged from those which severely condemned the existing
marriage practices to those which saw no need for change or opposed
legalization on the ground that it would undermine the matrilineal system
and ruin the taravads, as most men would give their earnings to their wives
and children.9 The Commission itself recognized that 'the proposed
legalization is not at present desired by the majority', but took an elitist
view that 'the uninstructed majority will rapidly follow the lead of the
enlightened classes' (GOM 1891: 34). The views of those supporting
legislation thus prevailed. Women's opinions, however, were not even
solicited. Although it was recognized that the views of 'respectable Nayar
ladies' could provide insights, it was not considered 'practicable to do
anything in furtherance of this object', on the grounds that Nayar women in
north Malabar were 'conservative' and lived in seclusion, while Nayar
women in south Malabar, though 'allowed greater freedom', could not
express themselves without the mediation of karanavans or husbands
For a detailed and interesting discussion on the divergence of views expressed, see Arunima
(1992).
10
(GOM 1891: 2). Hence a Report which formed the basis of a critical
enactment was signed and sealed without having taken account of the
experiences and understandings of those whom the proposed legislative
change most centrally affected. Indeed the casualness with which the
Commission dismissed the need to solicit women's opinions, their exclusion
from the list of those considered 'representatives' of the community, clearly
indicate Nayar women's lack of bargaining power in the public sphere.
In 1896 the Malabar Marriage Act was passed, followed by the first
Travancore Nair Act of 1913, and the Cochin Nair Regulation 13 of 1920,
all of which recognized the sambandham union as legal marriage. 11 These
Acts also gave a Nayar male the right to pass half his self-acquired property
to his wife and children, if he died intestate. 12 Earlier such property would
have become part of the collective property of his matrilineal joint family
estate. A number of other Acts followed, which increasingly expanded the
rights of individuals not only over their acquired property but also to seek
division of joint family property. 13
Changes in property status: taravad partitioning. From the nine-

teenth century onwards, taravad property came to be divided with increas-
ing frequency (where earlier it was an occasional occurrence). Initially these
partitions were between matrilineal branches - tavazhis (or tavaris) - with
each such segment continuing to operate as a joint-property unit, but over
time the segments became 'shallower and narrower'. From the 1930s
onwards, the partitions were more on an individual basis. Joan Mencher
(personal communication, 1992) comments: 'In 1958 I travelled far and
wide looking for traditional, large, unpartitioned taravads. The only ones I
found were in the court. What could be found, though, were tavaris of much
lesser depth.'
A number of factors led to a growing demand for taravad partitioning.
Younger Nayar men released from army duties had ambitions of becoming
karanavans at an early age, and this was only possible with partition. Also,
from the late nineteenth century onwards, expanding income-earning
1
° Despite the absence of any attempt to solicit their views, some women did send in petitions:
just prior to its dissolution the Commission received four, signed by 245 women supporting
legislation and 387 women opposing it (GOM 1891: 2).
1
• The Malabar Marriage Act, hqwever, did not apply to the Nayar-Nambudiri sambandham,
on the ground that the personal law of the Nambudiris made it impossible for them to
contract valid marriages outside their caste. The Nayar-Nambudiri union was subse-
quently made legal through the Madras Marumakkathayam Act of 1933 (see Puthenkalam
1977: 79).
12
However, under the Malabar Marriage Act of 1896, this possibility was only available to
those who voluntarily registered their marriages. In fact, between 1896 and 1903 only 83
marriages were registered (Fuller 1976: 133^4).
13
For details of other Acts, see especially Jeffrey (1993: 43-4) and Puthenkalam (1977).
opportunities in several regions created new possibilities for property

acquisition. Especially in central Kerala, a growing number of Nayar men
found government employment or became professionals: lawyers, doctors,
teachers, etc. 14 Many bought houses and land which they bequeathed to
wives and children. The strengthening of sambandham unions also accen-
tuated the tendency to bequeath property in this way. Earlier such property
had been at the owner's disposal during his lifetime but had typically
reverted to his taravad after his death. However, in the late nineteenth
century such bequests still took place within an overall matrilineal struc-
ture, with the men founding tavazhis headed by their wives. The property
became part of a new matrilineal segment rather than individually owned
and disposable. Nevertheless, the bequeathing of his self-acquired property
by a man to his wife and children became a source of growing contention
with his matrilineal relatives.
In addition, karanavans were increasingly accused by junior taravad
members of mismanaging or misappropriating the joint-family property by
their 'recklessness, extravagance, and neglect of duty', and of favouring
their own tavazhis. Court cases against them multiplied (Puthenkalam
1977: 143). In Travancore between 1887-1906, junior members filed 4,365
court cases for the cancellation of property alienation made by karanavans,
142 for their removal from office, and 67 against their executing deeds
attaching taravad property to pay off their personal debts. In the same
period, petitions pending in Travancore courts included 1,161 for taravad
partition, 1,367 against gifts made by karanavans to their children, and 871
asking for allotment of maintenance to junior members (Puthenkalam
1977: 148-9). There were similar disputes in Malabar; a number of the
petitioners were women. 15
The types of pressures which led to the splitting of taravads varied
regionally, affected especially by differences in agrarian structures and the
social composition of the local populations. In the mid nineteenth century
the agrarian structure of Kerala showed considerable regional variation
(Varghese 1970: 37-50). In Malabar virtually all land was owned by a
relatively small number of very wealthy landlords, most of them Brahmins,
Rajas, or high-ranking Nayars. In Travancore, by comparison, 80 per cent
of cultivated land and all uncultivated land in the 1850s was held by the
State. Cochin came in-between: here about 60 per cent of the cultivated land
14
In 1941, Nayar men constituted 11 per cent of the total male population in Cochin but
represented 40 per cent of gazetted and 24 per cent of non-gazetted government officers,
and 21 per cent of the professionals (Fuller 1976: 131).
15
See e.g. Arunima (1992: 123-4, 152): in one case cited by her, a woman who demanded her
share of the taravad property (while living away from the taravad with her sambandham
partner) had to forfeit her share because the court accepted the karanavans argument that
her relationship with her lover was one of'promiscuous intercourse1 (Arunima 1992: 152).
was owned by landlords, and the rest, along with the uncultivated land, was
held by the State. Soon after their annexation of M a l a b a r in 1792, the
British recognized the landlords as the sole owners of landed properties in
Malabar, leaving the tenants highly vulnerable to eviction. 1 6 By contrast,
in Travancore, the government conferred full ownership rights on all
tenants in 1865 (Fuller 1976: 19-20). Both the Malabar and the Travancore
proclamations placed land at the disposal of the owner and allowed the
entry of land into the market; but, as Fuller persuasively argues, the
implications of this were quite different in central Kerala compared with
Travancore, due to the noted differences in their pre-existing agrarian
structures, and the nature of economic and ideological shifts that took place
in the nineteenth century. In Travancore the 1865 proclamation accen-
tuated the tendency toward the break-up of taravads and the sale of land.
The N a y a r community was experiencing an economic decline, and this
made partitioning attractive for many Nayars; the prevailing belief that it
was their matrilineal joint family structure that accounted for their poor
economic performance added weight to this. 1 7 On the demand side, there
were ready buyers for any land sold, especially among the Syrian Christians
(Jeffrey 1976). As a result, a good deal of theoretically impartible and
inalienable land was sold or mortgaged, particularly by the smaller and less
wealthy families. 18 These practices subsequently acquired legal legitimacy
with the passing of laws permitting partition, especially the second Travan-
core N a y a r Act of 1925 which allowed almost unrestricted partitioning.
16
As noted in chapter 3, traditionally the landlords had enjoyed significant rights and
privileges in the land they controlled, but were not full owners in the modern western sense
of the word, and could not readily evict the tenants. Such eviction was made possible with
the British recognition of the landlords as sole owners. A series of Mappila outbreaks
during and after the 1830s are attributed to (among other factors) a marked rise in the
eviction of Mappila tenants by Hindu landlords in the first half of the nineteenth century
(Radhakrishnan 1989).
17
During the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a rapid development of cash
cropping and plantations, with Travancore's exports doubling in value. The Syrian
Christians, who were already in control of a large proportion of the trade in the region at
that time, and had know-how, experience, and access to finance, gained significantly as a
result. This prosperity stood in stark contrast to the stagnation of the rice economy on
which the Nayars primarily depended. There was widespread Nayar propaganda attribut-
ing the Nayars' economic failure to their matrilineal joint-family system and the Syrian
success to their patrilineal nuclear-family system. While the functional connection between
the Syrian family system and their economic success appears debatable, what is important,
as Fuller (1976) points out, is that many Nayar leaders themselves believed this to be so.
This provided additional fodder to the noted growing attacks on the Nayar joint-family
system on other grounds.
18
Whatever may have been the nature and extent of land transfers in the pre-British period
(some writers maintain that land was commonly sold: e.g. Arunima 1992, while others
express doubts about this: e.g. Joan Mencher, personal communication, 1993), certainly
during the British period various enactments and the prevailing economic climate led to
large-scale land sales.
Many Nayar leaders carried out an intensive campaign in the early part of
the twentieth century in support of this legislation. Withinfiveyears of the
1925 Act, some 32,903 taravads are said to have been partitioned (Fuller
1976: 135).
Similar Acts were put into the statute books of Malabar and Cochin in
1933 and 1938 respectively; the former allowed legal partitioning of the
taravad into matrilineal segments and the latter allowed partitioning on an
individual basis. Here too there was a break-up of taravads, although not
on as extensive a scale as in Travancore. In all regions, the smaller,
relatively poorer and lower-ranking taravads were the first to split on an
individual basis soon after the 1930s Acts, while the very wealthy and
prestigious ones remained unpartitioned till the 1950s, especially in Mala-
bar. By 1960, however, all the large taravads in Malabar too either had been
partitioned or there were cases for partition pending in court.
Although the demand for legal reform which led to statutory enactments
in the early twentieth century allowing taravad partitioning came from the
Nayar community itself, it clearly had the endorsement of the British, who
felt it was in keeping with a man's 'natural' instincts and affections to leave
his self-acquired property to his wife and children rather than have it revert
to his natal taravad on his death. In addition, the enactments made a man
legally responsible for maintaining his wife and minor children. Hence
although a woman could now own a house and land independently of her
taravad and her husband, she was legally treated as a dependent. Under the
traditional sambandham union(s) of the central Kerala Nayars, a woman
had enjoyed relative sexual and economic independence vis-a-vis her
husband(s), which gave her a significant advantage in marital relations,
even though the karanavan's authority had been dominant in estate
management and in public dealings. Also women were not in the same
position as their husbands and brothers to take advantage of the pro-
fessional employment opportunities and associated possibilities of
accumulating self-acquired wealth that were then opening up; most Nayar
women appear not to have received professional education,19 and social
prejudice against women taking up public employment is also likely to have
been a deterrent. This gender disparity in access to earned wealth would
have negatively affected women's bargaining power within the home.
Post-Independence changes. Post-Independence legislation relat-

ing to joint estates sustained the trend toward property partitioning. Land
reform legislation had additional effects.20 The most widely debated was
19
See e.g. A r u n i m a (1992: 125, 156).
20
F o r a detailed review of such legislation see R a d h a k r i s h n a n (1989). F o r the gender
implications of some pieces of legislation see S a r a d a m o n i (1983).
the Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill of 1957 (eventually passed in somewhat
modified form as the Kerala Agrarian Relations Act (KARA), 1960)
introduced by the Communist Party then in power in the state. This
provided (among other things) for fixity of tenure and the purchase of
ownership rights by the tenant who directly managed the land; it also set a
ceiling of fifteen acres of double-cropped paddy land or its equivalent per
family of five members, plus an acre each for every additional member
subject to an overall ceiling of twenty-five acres. The ceiling-surplus land
was to be distributed among the landless and landpoor. The Bill (on which
public opinion was elicited) was widely opposed by the large landowners,
including the Nayars, whose interests as essentially non-cultivating land-
owners, with holdings well above the ceiling, were seriously threatened. 21
The Bill also placed Nayar women at a particular disadvantage: while the
men could have shifted to self-cultivation/management, Nayar women
(most of whom had never directly worked on or managed a farm) had
limited options. A number of women heads of households submitted
written opinions on the Bill, pointing out that their only source of income
was from land leased out to tenants. But such concerns did not carry weight
in the discussions on the Bill (Saradamoni 1983). KARA, 1960, underwent
several amendments until the passing of the Kerala Land Reforms Act,
1963 (which is currently in force, although again after many amend-
ments). 22 The actual implementation of the laws also had a chequered
history. But it is noteworthy that in three Palghat villages studied by
Saradamoni (1983) in 1977-78, over a fourth of those who lost land
following various land reform enactments were widows (p. 137).
The way in which the ceiling laws were implemented had an additional
adverse effect on women's ownership of land. Surplus land above the ceiling
was assessed on the combined property of husband and wife, and in many
instances it was the wife's land that was forfeited. Petitions by women
arguing that it is their husbands who should forfeit land above the ceiling
where the latter also have non-land sources of income, came to no avail
(Saradamoni 1983).
In terms of inheritance, the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 made special
provisions for those governed by the Marumakkatayam laws. The Act
sought to eliminate prevailing differences both in the devolution rules of
customarily matrilineal Hindus across Kerala, and in different types of
landed property - self-acquired, separated, and joint family property. For
purposes of devolution, a person's share in joint family property (viz.
taravad or tavazhi property) was deemed to be that which would have fallen
21
F o r a discussion on the opposition the Bill generated, see R a d h a k r i s h n a n (1989).
22
For details on various amendments see, Radhakrishnan (1989) and Raj and Tharakan
(1983).
to her/him if immediately before her/his death the property had been
partitioned per capita among all the members holding an interest in the
taravad or tavazhi. Hence under the Act, if a Nayar male died intestate, all
his property (including that self-acquired, separated, and his share in joint
property decided as above) would devolve very similarly to that of other
Hindu males (as will be described in chapter 5). Where earlier statutes had
favoured the lineal descendants of predeceased daughters and given few or
no rights to descendants of predeceased sons, there was now a shift to a
system which placed the children of predeceased sons and daughters on a
par, and recognized some additional descendants of the sons alone. For a
Nayar woman dying intestate, all her property in the first instance would
devolve on her children, mother, and children of predeceased children (and
not, as in some earlier statutes, to children of predeceased daughters
only).23 This enactment thus reduced the previously recognized shares of
females in both parents' property. It also conferred testamentary rights for
all property on both men and women. With the further passing of the
Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act of 1976, the 'corporate-
ness' of families was no longer legally recognized: all surviving matrilineal
joint family estates were deemed as partitioned on a per capita basis. Many
families sought to preserve their joint property nature by setting up trusts,
but the earlier legal validity of the matrilineal joint estate was gone (Jeffrey
1993: 46).
Where have all these changes left Nayar inheritance and marriage prac-
tices? Presently, as noted earlier, the Nayars constitute about 20 per cent of
Kerala's population. However, there is little ethnographic information on
their situation after the early 1970s. Fuller's ethnography relates to data
collected from Ramankara village in central Travancore in 1971-72, while
those of Gough, Mencher, and Unni relate to Cochin and south Malabar in
central Kerala and go back to the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, the
directions of change noted by these studies are clearly indicative, even if
they do not allow us to assess the extent of the change.
The post-Independence inheritance practices described by Gough, Unni,
and Fuller, for their respective study areas, differ from one another in some
degree, but all three present significant bilateral features. In her Cochin
village, Gough (1952) found that around 1950, ancestral land and large
joint-family houses were still inherited matrilineally, but small houses,
cash, and much of the garden land passed from the father to all children. In
south Malabar, also in the 1950s, Unni (1956) noted that property which
descended through the mother continued to be inherited matrilineally,
23
For details about other categories of heirs see chapter 5.
whereas any property given by the father was divided equally among his
sons and daughters. And Fuller (1976) found that in central Travancore in
the 1970s, 'family land' and 'individual land' devolved differently. The
family land was that inherited from any matrilineal relative and was held by
the woman on behalf of all matrilineal descendants as well as herself. This
could not be alienated without the consent of her adult matrilineal
descendants, and it devolved equally among all descendants (usually
daughters and daughters' children). Individual land was any land not
inherited from a matrilineal relative. As a rule, this was divided equally
among all children, and was freely alienable. However if a woman passed
on individual land, inherited say from her father, to her daughter, for the
latter this became family land which could then only go to matrilineal
relatives. Recent research in central Travancore by two doctoral students
indicates that although women's property rights are still recognized,
women usually inherit a house but are less likely to get agricultural land.
Dowry too is becoming common among the Nayars, although unlike in
north India the items given are typically registered in the woman's name. 2 4
In Nayar marriage practices also, regional differences, although still
noticeable on some counts, have been narrowing on others. In south
Malabar, Mencher (1962: 241) found an increasing tendency toward cross-
cousin marriages (which could be seen as reunifying property divided by
inheritance); and 34 per cent of marriages in the villages studied by Kala
(1982: 311) in 1975-77, were between cross-cousins. But in Cochin, both
Gough (1961a: 366) and Nakane (1962: 25) noted a decrease in such
marriages; and in Ramankara village in central Travancore, Fuller (1976:
83) argues, the Nayars never had a cross-cousin marriage system. Also the
visiting husband custom has been declining everywhere. It had survived to a
limited degree in south Malabar into the 1950s (Unni 1956) and even up to
the 1970s (Kala 1982). But in Ramankara, in 1971, Fuller observed no
cases, possibly because even traditionally the practice was not common
there. For Kerala as a whole, only 16.5 per cent of the 745 families
Puthenkalam (1977: 162) interviewed in 1961 had cases of visiting hus-
bands, and these, he comments, were men 'of the old generation. One can
predict they will be the last of their class.'
Even where it had survived into the 1960s and after, the visiting husband
system had undergone changes. The man was no longer just a visitor for the
night, but spent longer periods (sometimes several days) in his wife's
household, taking an interest in his children's upbringing, and at times even
managing his wife's estate (Unni 1956, Mencher 1962). The majority of
24
Personal communication in 1992 by Caroline and Filippo Osella, doctoral students in
anthropology at the London School of Economics. Their fieldwork in 1991 was on the
Izhavas, but they had these observations to make about the Nayars.
Nayars now marry only once, but divorce rates were still relatively high in
the 1950s: in Unni's (1958:128) study, 20 per cent of the Nayar women over
the age of forty-five had divorced their first husbands to marry other men.
These were mostly women from wealthy families. There were also cases of
extra-marital affairs by women whose husbands were away in distant
towns. The women suffered no social stigma as a result, as long as they did
not violate subcaste rules in their choice of lovers.
Tendencies towards nuclear households and neolocal residence have
grown, again in varying degree in different regions. In Fuller's central
Travancore village, 90 per cent of the households were nuclear or variants
on the nuclear type. In Gough's Cochin village, a majority were nuclear in
1964, but in south Malabar, Unni and Mencher found such households to
be in a minority. The shift toward neolocality is likely to reduce the support
women can get from their matrilineal kin. The nuclearization of house-
holds, however, need not in itself have this effect. In the villages Mencher
studied in 1959, many nuclear family units continued to live close to one
another after a taravad split. Here, she notes (1962: 243):
[T]he daughter may frequently be seen coming from or going to the mother's house
for advice, to exchange food cooked in one or the other of the houses, or to leave the
baby girl to be cared for by the grandmother or the mother's younger sisters. Indeed,
the women and children constantly visit one another. One does not get a sense of
great distance between the two households.
Mencher also observed that the majority of families in the village main-
tained close ties with their matrilineal kin. During recent visits to central
Kerala, she found this still to be the case (personal communication, 1992).
Thus the breakdown of the Nayar taravad inio smaller family units has not
meant a shift towards the patrilineal, virilocal pattern found in other parts
of India. There is an increase in the authority men exercise in their wives'
homes, but women's close contact with their matrikin clearly strengthens
their fall-back position, which helps to limit the extent of male marital
dominance. Of course, this could change as the observed tendency toward
city-based male employment requires a growing number of women to move
to more distant locations.
The effects on women of the changes in inheritance practices are mixed.
On the one hand, it can be argued that women have gained in that they now
have individual rights in landed property over which legally they have
absolute control, while earlier control over management was essentially in
male hands through the karanavan. However, class differentiation and
poverty among the Nayars have increased with the break-up of taravads,
and many Nayar women whose economic needs would previously have
been taken care of by the joint-family estate are today landless and poor.
Yet women in Kerala by several indicators were still better-off in 1991 than
their counterparts (in class terms) elsewhere in the country: Kerala at
present is India's only state with a female-favourable sex ratio (104 females
for every 100 males) and a female literacy rate of 86 per cent (for females
above seven years of age) compared with the all-India average of 39 per
cent. Hence today:
Rain seeps through many a taravad mansion,
but the women in white, barefoot, walk
literate on the metalled road.25
(3) Matriliny and development

There has been a popularly held view in the social sciences that economic
development and modernization would inevitably lead to a decline in
matriliny. 26 However, in our study of the Garos we saw that the erosion of
matriliny was by no means inevitable: in particular the technological and
population determinism characterizing Ester Boserup's arguments did not
hold. A significant role was played in this regard by State intervention in
terms of land acquisition, development policy, legislation, and the gender
ideology underpinning these interventions. Interventions based on a differ-
ent set of assumptions and on an agenda for strengthening the communal
and matrilineal character of the community could have had very different
results, even with modernization.
Fuller makes a similar point in relation to Nayar matriliny, also arguing
that the decline was not an inevitable result of modernization. In particular,
he takes issue with Gough's (1961b) contention that the 'root cause' of
modern change in matrilineal kinship systems, including in that of the
Nayars, is incorporation of the societies into a unitary, capitalist market
economy, the entry of land into the market being especially crucial. He
notes that land had become freely marketable in Malabar soon after British
annexation of Malabar in 1792, but this had led to no significant break-up
of the taravads, while in Travancore the conferring of ownership rights on
tenants in 1865 led to a splintering of joint estates on a massive scale. He
argues (1976: 146), 'if the entry of land into the market was determinant,
why did taravads in Malabar persist as joint-property holders for so much
longer than those in Travancore, when land entered the market in Malabar
seventy years before it did in Travancore?' In his view the critical factors
were: on whom the land rights were conferred; the prevailing economic and
social conditions in Travancore which made Syrian Christians so much
25
From the author's unpublished poem entitled 'Kerala'.
26
See G o u g h ' s (1961b) and Fuller's (1976) discussion on this.
more prosperous than the Nayars; and the view current among European
scholars and accepted by the Nayars that both matriliny and joint families
were obstacles to economic progress. He thus concludes (1976: 147): 'no
single determinant, such as increasingly complete incorporation into the
capitalist economy, can be regarded as the cause of the process. On the one
hand, unique factors like disbandment of the armies played a crucial role;
on the other, economic development was not identical in all regions and, in
any case, by itself it did not invariably bring about alterations in the family
and kinship system.'
Unlike the situation described for the Garos, however, it is difficult to say
to what extent the overall decline in Nayar matriliny could have been
stemmed if State interventions had taken other forms. But women's
traditional rights in land could certainly have been given better recognition
in the State's post-Independence land reform programmes, which showed
the same insensitivity to women's needs in Kerala, as elsewhere in the
country.
II. Sri Lanka
The Sinhalese
The Garo and Nayar case studies provided an idea of the historical
processes of change among matrilineal communities in two quite different
regions of India. In Sri Lanka, I will focus on the Sinhalese. The changes in
marriage and inheritance practices here are less dramatic than those noted
for the Garos and Nayars. Unlike those two communities, the Sinhalese are
not a small pocket of matriliny amidst a larger culture of patriliny. Rather
they constitute the dominant community in an area where the minorities
too are mostly bilateral or matrilineal. (In 1981 there were 11 million
Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, constituting 74 per cent of the country's popula-
tion.) However, among them too, colonial and post-colonial interventions
in marriage and inheritance laws played a significant role in the changes
that occurred.
Sri Lanka was brought under colonial rule much before India, and parts
of it were ruled by a series of colonial powers. For instance, the Maritime
Provinces along the coast were governed first by the Portuguese (1505-
1658), then by the Dutch (1658-1796), and finally by the British (1796-
1948). Neither the Portuguese nor the Dutch, however, could break
Sinhalese resistance in the kingdom of Kandy, which remained indepen-
dent till its annexation by the British in 1815. The British alone gradually
established political and administrative control over the whole island. The
discussion here relates basically to the British period and after: it was then
that legal and administrative changes were most systematically effected.
Changes under the British. British interventions in relation to land
took a number of forms: direct appropriation of land by the State;
encouraging appropriation by Europeans and the local elite for establish-
ing plantations; changes in inheritance laws; and changes in laws governing
marriage and divorce. As will be seen below, these interventions were linked
by one central concern: the desire to establish control over land for the
extraction of maximum economic benefit for the colonial powers (although
in relation to marriage, British responses were also guided by their unease
with the liberal sexual mores among the Sinhalese).
From the 1840s onwards, through a series of Ordinances, the British
established control over large tracts of land. In addition a good deal of the
Crown land was sold to European capitalists for setting up coffee, tea, and
rubber plantations. As a result, villages in the Kandyan areas were
gradually circumscribed by large tea estates, and those in many parts of the
Western, Southern and Sabaragamuva Provinces by rubber plantations
(Obeyesekere 1967: 100). Plantations necessitated the clearing of forests
and also reduced the availability of irrigation water and organic manure for
the local population: all this adversely affected the local ecology and the
stability and productivity of village farming (Sarkar and Tambiah 1957: xi).
In non-plantation areas, a Mudaliyar (a Sinhalese revenue-cum-police
officer) was appointed with considerable powers to reallocate village land
between Crown land and the private land of the villagers. A Grain Tax was
instituted, and villagers who defaulted, or who in the officer's judgement
would be unable to pay, were forced to sell their land. Where unpartitioned
land was held jointly and cultivated on a rotational basis (the tattumaru
system),27 if one partner defaulted the entire plot had to be forfeited. Also
Ordinance No. 10 of 1863 made it possible for shareholders to force the
partition of an estate held in common, and to gain possession of the whole if
other owners were unable to afford the cost of partition proceedings and/or
if the portions each owned were too small for cultivation. Land so acquired
could also be sold. Through the emerging land market, rich Ceylonese
landowners and European capitalists were able to acquire large tracts,
increasing the tendency towards land inequalities (Risseeuw 1988; Obeye-
sekere 1967). Between 1878-88, infiveprovinces (Western, Central, South-
ern, Eastern, and Sabaragamuva), one in every twenty-six acres was sold in
this way (Obeyesekere 1967: 122).
With the increasing appropriation of land by the British colonial State,
individual Europeans, and the new Ceylonese elite, and with the growing
partitioning and sale of land hitherto held jointly, land scarcity and
Tattumaru lis a system of rotation of plots in an undivided tract of paddy land so that access
to the whole stretch is made available to all shareholders during a fixed period of time1
(Obeyesekere 1967: 35).
landlessness grew apace. In 1937, an analysis of seven districts showed that
45 per cent of the population was landless, and another 21 per cent had less
than one acre per person (Sarkar, quoted in Risseeuw 1988: 79). 28 British
administrators, probably concerned less with the problem of landlessness
than with the ways in which growing land fragmentation could constrain
the development of capitalist agriculture, suggested as one solution the
introduction of primogeniture, which would effectively exclude younger
sons and all daughters from rights in land. The scheme was eventually
shelved because of enforcement difficulties and the recognition that exclud-
ing other children, especially younger sons, would be unacceptable in a
system where all children traditionally had inheritance rights (Risseeuw
1988).
However, as land scarcity grew women increasingly lost land: between
1901 and 1921, the number of Sinhalese women paddy landowners fell to
half, while the number of women wage earners and other labourers
increased dramatically (see table 4.2). Land disputes grew alongside,
including disputes over the division of family land. Many of the petitioners
were women. But their petitions seldom received the attention they
deserved. For instance, in a 1910 diary notation, a British officer (quoted in
Risseeuw 1988: 82-3) made the following observation on an undivided land
case:
One of them made me regret that one cannot enquire into every petition personally.
In this particular case the petitioner appeared prima facie to have no case at all and I
had already told her so. She petitioned again and I put it down for circuit. It was
only after minute enquiries on the spot that I found that she was really losing her
land in a most unjust and unfortunate manner.
Women also lost land as a result of changes in marriage and divorce laws:
these led to shifts in post-marital residence towards virilocality, which
adversely affected women's access to inherited land. As Risseeuw (1988)
argues, British enactments regarding marriage were guided on the one hand
by notions of morality and the assumed superiority of their own marriage
practices, and on the other hand by colonial material interests in the
devolution of landed property via inheritance.
Traditional Sinhalese customs of polyandry, polygamy, easy divorce,
several marriages in a lifetime, and a liberal definition of legitimate heirs,
conflicted with the British notion of marriage as a monogamous, lifelong
union sanctioned by the Church and the State, with clear lines separating
legitimate and illegitimate children. Hayley (1923:174) comments on this as
follows:
28
A 1955 survey of six Kandyan villages in Pata Dumbara by Sarkar and Tambiah (1957)
revealed a similar story.
Table 4.2: Women in selected occupations: Sri Lanka 1901-21
1901 1911 1921

Community census census census
Wage earners 1
Lowland Sinhalese 171,358 174,355 280,199
Kandyan Sinhalese 99,189 65,808 181,507
Tamils2 199,881 38,745 59,869
Indian Tamils — 176,728 193,326
Total3 490,814 478,055 745,925
Paddy landowners
Tamils 7,910 1,600 2,824
Indian Tamils — 41 37
Total3 47,553 39,106 23,349
Tea labourers
Tamils 124,391 311 3,549
Indian Tamils — 148,419 144,440
Total3 135,392 166,256 160,596
General labourers
Tamils 5,984 3,432 10,619
Indian Tamils — 3,124 2,209
Total3 14,397 23,989 36,142
Notes: l The 1901 category includes all women wage earners, while the 1911 and 1921
categories include women wage earners in selected occupations.
2
Tamils in the 1901 census included members of the resident community as well as
migrants; Indian Tamils in the later census reports are the immigrant South Indians.
3
Totals include European, Burgher, Malay, and Moor communities as well.
Source: Grossholtz (1984: 116); based on data from the Census of Ceylon for the years
cited.
[T]here was . . . prior to recent legislation on the subject, a remarkable vagueness of

ideas with regard to the inception, maintenance, and dissolution of matrimonial
alliances.
Legislation was enacted to set this right. In 1859, polygamy and polyandry
were made penal offences, and unregistered marriages were made punish-
able by a fine. Also divorce - unilateral or by mutual consent - was
restricted, the only recognized grounds for it being adultery and desertion;
and from being a private affair, it now needed a court decree.
The failure to register a marriage or to obtain a divorce in court (as

happened frequently when the law was first passed) created a category of
illegitimate children who were not legally entitled to a share in the parents'
estate. In case of two marriages, one registered and the other not, heirs from
the former could deny rights to those from the latter, as indeed was found to
be happening in the 1960s (Obeyesekere 1967: 141).
Also, given the customary ease of divorce, it had been simple for either
partner to move out of a diga marriage to a subsequent binna one, or vice
versa. The Ordinance took away this flexibility. This meant that a daughter
first married in diga had considerably reduced chances of subsequently
contracting a binna marriage which would enable her to re-establish a claim
on the parental estate. In addition, the opening up of new avenues for non-
agricultural incomes primarily for men further reduced the attractiveness of
a binna marriage for them, in so far as access to the wife's land was one of
the important inducements for less endowed men to contract such
marriages.
Statistics from the early part of this century are noted to show a clear
decline in the proportion of binna marriages, and from 1962 onwards the
distinction between binna and diga was no longer maintained when
recording the figures (Risseeuw 1988). Polyandry also declined, although it
did not entirely vanish, and its ideological acceptability suffered: such
unions came increasingly to be viewed as an embarrassment by younger,
educated, and westernized males (Tambiah 1966), a reaction not dissimilar
to that of many educated Nayars in Kerala during this period.
Some of the changes in marriage laws were supported by the local male
elite, who saw in it a chance to reduce their responsibility towards married
daughters:
That in numerous instances parents are reduced to poverty solely in consequence of
their married daughter, and her issue, being thrown upon them for support and
maintenance,... is a clear result of the existing law regulating the marriage contract
among them; and there is nothing whatever to prevent the husbands of married
daughters discarding their wives at any moment they choose and betaking
themselves to other women in their stead. (Petition by the Chiefs of Kandy to the
British in 1855, quoted in Risseeuw 1988: 33)
The decline in the incidence of binna marriages and the expressed reluctance
to support ;%tf-returned daughters, at least by sections of the elite, would
also have had negative consequences for women's land access.
Moreover, some major legal changes specifically affected the Sinhalese in
the Maritime Provinces, who constituted a significant proportion of the
Sinhalese population. Customarily, the Sinhalese, irrespective of their
location on the island, were governed by a uniform set of laws. Colonial
legal intervention, especially under the British, led to the emergence of a
significant legal differentiation between the Sinhalese resident in the

Kandyan Provinces and those resident elsewhere, notably those in the
Maritime Provinces.
The British established control over the Maritime Provinces in 1796 but
(as noted) only annexed the Kandyan Provinces in 1815. After their
conquest of the Maritime Provinces, they proclaimed that the Sinhalese had
the right to keep their own laws and customs. However, they failed to
ascertain the content of the Sinhala laws prevailing in the Maritime
Provinces and wrongly supposed that the people there were governed by the
Roman-Dutch law since Dutch times. Although the Dutch did introduce
Roman-Dutch law in Ceylon, Obeyesekere (1967) argues that it probably
applied only to Dutch residents of Ceylon and to converted Sinhalese
Protestants, while the majority of citizens were governed by their tra-
ditional laws. Between 1803 and 1833 the Roman-Dutch law was sporadi-
cally applied to the Sinhalese, but by the Charter of 1833 the British
repealed their right to be governed by their own laws and fully imposed the
Roman-Dutch law on the Sinhalese of the Maritime Provinces. By 1860 this
had become the General Law of the country, applicable to the Maritime
Provinces and to all inhabitants 'except in those instances in which such an
inhabitant is by privilege under the sanction of another form of law'
(Thomson 1866, quoted in Obeyesekere 1967: 131). In effect, therefore, all
Sinhalese, other than those identified as Kandyan (who were to be governed
by traditional Sinhala law), now came under the purview of the Roman-
Dutch law. 'In the process', Goonesekere (n.d.: 15) observes, 'the Kandyan
and the Low Country Sinhalese, a people sharing what may be described as
"ethnic homogeneity, a common historical tradition, and experience of
successful political unity, though subsequently divided into separate politi-
cal units", acquired different types of personal law.'
The British also brought the Sabaragamuva laws into line with laws in
other Kandyan areas. As a result, a diga widow's right to the husband's
estate in Sabaragamuva was repealed, and the people there were subjected
to the rules of Kandyan law under which the widow had neither temporary
nor permanent rights in the praveni.
The introduction of the Roman-Dutch law for the non-Kandyan Sinha-
lese made three critical changes in relation to their marriage and inheritance
practices (Obeyesekere 1967). It established a community of property at
marriage, strictly bilateral rules of inheritance, and relatively inflexible
divorce procedures.
All property owned at the time of marriage or acquired during marriage
by whatever means by either spouse became merged into a common pool as
their 'community of property'. To keep one's pre-marital property separ-
ate, an ante-nuptial contract to this effect was needed (Goonesekere 1980).
On the death of either spouse, the surviving one received half the property
and the children received the remaining half. In theory the concept of a
community of property could be advantageous to women, in that men were
likely to acquire more property after marriage than their wives. But the
disability lay in the husband's absolute rights of disposal over this property,
without the consent or approval of the wife and even in the face of her direct
opposition. The wife had no power to appear in court or enter into any
contract without the husband's consent, and was liable to his debts, while
he was not liable to hers. She could dispose of her property without his
consent only by a last will.
Under the strict bilateral rules of inheritance, men and women could
share equally in either parent's estate, irrespective of the kind of marriage
they contracted or where they resided. This initially benefited women who
earlier had to forfeit their inheritance rights under diga marriage. But since
this also meant that property could now be alienated even to those who
were not recognized members of the village, in the long term this laid the
basis for overall family resistance to any land inheritance by women
(Obeyesekere 1967: 35).
In 1876, the British, through an ordinance, abolished the community of
property. Later, under the Married Women's Property Ordinance No. 18 of
1923, non-Kandyan Sinhalese women regained many of the rights they had
lost under Roman-Dutch law. A married woman could now hold property
and enter into contracts in the same way as could an unmarried woman,
bring or be brought to court action without the husband being cited as a
plaintiff or defendant, and freely dispose of all her movable and immovable
property held before marriage as well as that acquired during marriage. At
the same time, she had to maintain her husband if she had sufficient
property and he did not.
These improvements were enacted only after considerable debate. The
debate preceding the 1923 Ordinance is especially interesting in what it
reveals about prevailing attitudes toward women. Some of the objections to
the Ordinance raised by male legislators in the Legislative Council included
the following (quoted in Risseeuw 1988: 62):
Our girls have not reached a stage of civilization where they can benefit by the
extended rights which the Bill seeks to give them.
[I]t will open the door to misconduct on the part of our wives. In every family there
are occasions where there is unpleasantness between a husband and a wife, and at
such times an unscrupulous neighbour or near relative might induce the wife to
leave the protection of her husband, and all her property will be at the mercy of the
person who takes her away ... [O]wing to the prohibition against alienation by a
married woman, many a married woman has been saved.
29
Some male legislatures, however, did support the Ordinance, arguing:
99% of the Sinhalese women are level-headed, and will always be guided by their
husbands rather than be led astray by the first adventurer who comes along.
[A]fter all, surely a woman can do what she likes with her property, what right has
anybody to talk of sex disability in the 20th century?
It is notable, though, that even these men who spoke out in women's favour
made inferences on behalf of women, rather than soliciting women's own
views on the matter.
Ultimately, several factors contributed to the passing of the 1876 and the
1923 Ordinances: 30 the British administration's unfamiliarity with and
unsympathetic approach to the concept of a community of property (which
did not exist under English common law); the demands being raised by
women in Britain at that time for greater equality in men's and women's
rights and the passing of more progressive legislation there; 31 and, in the
case of the 1923 Ordinance, the support it received from fathers - after 1876
even the dowry given by a woman's father had become the absolute
property of the husband and a source of conflict between the father-in-law
and the son-in-law. More generally, of course, legal changes instituted by
the British need to be viewed in the light of their overall economic self
interest, although the form this took was not static over time.
Risseeuw (1987, 1988) usefully sums up the underlying thrust of British
intervention in the areas of land policy, inheritance, and marriage as
follows:
The overall land policy of the British entailed alienation of land on a large scale from
its original (multiple) owners in order to facilitate the economic exploitation of land
in the form of plantations ... This policy necessitated the simplification of the
Sinhalese laws of inheritance. In the traditional system no secret will was recognized
and it was customary for a parent to speak his/her will on the death bed, based to a
large extent on the amount of care received from the children. This system obviously
kept matters pending over far too long a period when viewed in an economic
perspective. The new economic system required unambiguous (individual) owners
of land, capable of swift decisions concerning its exploitation. (1988: 29)
When seen in the light of this land policy, it becomes clear that a form of enduring
monogamy, preferably limiting economic power to one of the spouses and reducing
the responsibility networks from a large extended family to a smaller unit, is a
necessary prerequisite for a successful transition to the private initiative and
ownership envisaged by the British. (1987: 15)
2g
The citations below are b o t h taken from Risseeuw (1988: 64-5).
30
See discussion in G o o n e s e k e r a (1980), Obeyesekere (1967), and Risseeuw (1988).
31
See e.g. H o l c o m b e (1983: 148-234) on the debate leading to the Married W o m e n ' s
Property Act of 1882 in England.
In such a development 'diffuse' marriage patterns and forms of bilateral inheritance

form an obstacle, which was more successfully approached by modifying the
position of the weakest link in the system. This was, as in the traditional system, the
position of the women. (1988: 29-30)
Changes after Independence. W h a t then is the situation among the

Sinhalese today? Only a few ethnographies give an idea of actual inheri-
tance by gender. They indicate that women do inherit land as daughters,
sometimes even when married in diga, but (a) they usually inherit less land
than their brothers; and (b) the chances of inheritance are greater for diga-
married daughters if they remain in the natal village than if they leave it.
Interestingly, these broad conclusions hold not only for the K a n d y a n
Sinhalese but also for the Low Country Sinhalese. Consider first the
Kandyan Sinhalese.
Two studies give information on actual inheritance by daughters among
the Kandyan Sinhalese: Sarkar and Tambiah's (1957) and Tambiah's
(1965). Sarkar and Tambiah (1957) examined how paddy land and
highland devolved between men and their first sisters in six Kandyan
villages located in the Central Province and surveyed in 1955 (see table 4.3).
They found that while children of both sexes inherited land, the bias was
distinctly in favour of sons. In landed families, 68 per cent of the male
respondents and 56 per cent of their first sisters received some paddy land,
and a much larger percentage of both men and women received some
highland. Men received much more land than women on average, gender
differentials being especially marked in paddy land (on average males
received 0.375 acres and their first sisters 0.068 acres). Between pairs of
brothers and sisters, the sisters received about one-third of the average area
(of paddy as well as highland) given to brothers. Between themselves, all
brothers received equal shares as did all sisters.
Tambiah's (1965) survey of R a m b u k k o l u w a village (also in the Central
Province) in the 1950s revealed that Wmztf-married sisters were more likely
to receive the same shares as their brothers, and diga-married sisters to
inherit less. Of the forty married women in the village, twenty-two had been
born in the village. Of these, eleven married binna, eleven diga.32 All but two
of these twenty-two who continued to reside in the village after marriage
inherited land. Of the eighteen who came from outside (that is who
contracted inter-village diga marriages), thirteen had some property rights
in their natal village. Tambiah's evidence thus suggests that as long as a
woman remained in her natal village after marriage, even if she did not
reside in her parents' home, she usually retained rights to land in practice. It
32
Diga marriage involves shifting to the husband's home, but does not always involve leaving
the village.
Table 4.3: Ownership of paddy land and highland by gender among the
Kandyan Sinhalese
Paddy land Highland
First First
Male sisters of Male sisters of
Type of parental respondents respondents 1 respondents respondents 1
household No. % No. % No. % No. %
Landless households 94 — 86 — 42 — 46 —
Landed households,
but children yet
to receive land 26 32.1 23 44.2 39 29.3 30 32.6
Landed households,
land received by
children 55 67.9 29 55.8 94 70.7 62 67.4
(Average acres
inherited) (0.375) (0.068) (0.721) (0.395)
Pairs of sisters and brothers either or both of whom inherited:

Paddy Land Highland
No. of sibling pairs 49 87

Male ownership (average acres) 0.625 1.450
'Female ownership (average acres) 0.221 0.562
Note: 1 land inherited or received as dowry.

Source: Sarkar and Tambiah (1957: 58-9).
is women contracting diga marriages outside the village who typically risked
forfeiting their rights, and even then not always. Tambiah notes that of the
women who inherited land, half received shares equal to their brothers and
half received lesser amounts. The latter were probably those contracting
outside-village marriages.
Several additional studies, while giving no indication of actual land
inheritance by gender, do give information on post-marital residence and
the extent of in-village and outside-village marriages for Kandyan women,
from which the likelihood of these women inheriting land can be inferred.
Table 4.4 gives information on post-marital residence of married women
relating to two Kandyan villages. In Yalman's 1954-55 study of Terutenne
village, half the women stayed in the village after marriage and half moved
out, while in Rambukkoluwa village studied by Tambiah (1965), of all the
women who married during 1890-1958, about 66 per cent remained in their
natal village and 34 per cent moved out. In contrast, of the men who
Table 4.4: Post-marital residence among the Kandyan Sinhalese
Terutenne 1 Rambukkoluwa
(1954-55) (1890-1954)
Post-marital residence women men women men
of married persons
from village No. % No. % No. % No. %
Both spouses from village "| 15 36.6 15 67.3

86 52A 93 921
Resident in village after '
marriage (spouse from
outside village) J 12 29.3 31 32.7
Left village after
marriage 78 47.6 8 7.9 14 34.2 — —
Total 164 100.0 101 100.0 41 100.0 46 100.0
Note: 1 Based on study of eighty-nine full sibling groups at least one of whom is married.
Sources: For Terutenne, Yalman (1967: 41-2); For Rambukkoluwa, Tambiah (1965: 145).
married, 92 per cent in Terutenne and 100 per cent in Rambukkoluwa

stayed on in their natal village after marriage. In addition, Ryan (1953:153)
found in his study of a Kandyan Highland village that only eleven out of
seventy-four marriages (or 15 per cent) were binna marriages. (He does not
indicate what percentage of the diga marriages were intra-village.)
The higher incidence of women contracting diga marriages and leaving
the village relative to men indicates that women's chances of inheriting were
and are considerably lower than for men, to the extent that residence rules
still dictate inheritance patterns.
Among the Low Country Sinhalese, the marked preference for diga
marriages historically produced a tendency towards predominantly male
inheritance. Tracing inheritance patterns backward for several generations
in Madagama, Obeyesekere (1967) found that up to the beginning of the
twentieth century, women were almost entirely excluded from inheriting
landed property, residence almost always being virilocal. From the first
decade of the twentieth century, for the first time even diga-married women
began to inherit intestate. He attributes this to the diffusion of new legal
ideas and the acceptance over time by villagers of the Roman-Dutch law,
which although it had been in force since 1833 had not immediately affected
traditional practice. Now, however, bilateral inheritance and intestate
succession increasingly became the rule.
As a result, at the time of his village study in 1961, Obeyesekere found
that men resident in the village were constantly fearful that their diga
married sisters, on the instigation of their husbands, would sell the ancestral
land to non-kin, especially after the deaths of their parents. This fear was
not entirely misplaced. In several cases, sisters had in fact sold their shares
to non-kin, against the wishes of their brothers who wanted to buy the land
but for less than that offered by other buyers. Out-resident males living
virilocally in the rural areas or neolocally in cities also often induced their
wives to sell their shares. This led to a growing conflict between women's
brothers and their husbands (who could be cross-cousins), and in some
cases even to the severance of familial ties between siblings (Obeyesekere
1967: 259-60).
Of course disputes could also occur in cases of uxorilocal marriage, not
dissimilarly to those described in the next two chapters in relation to
patrilineal communities. Selvadurai (1976) quotes two such instances
where the brother did not give the sister her right to the ancestral land or to
its produce. In one case (also mentioned in chapter 1), after an extended
dispute lasting over twelve years, the woman received half her rightful
share, but in the process she spent more than the market value of the land
that she and her husband had fought for. In the second case, the father had
left only a small part of the rightful share to the woman and she received but
a portion of the bequest. Selvadurai observes that people fought over rights
to ancestral land through court cases, violence, and even sorcery, because
such land was valuable not only economically but also symbolically:
continuity of land ownership stood for continuity of kinship and these
together defined citizenship rights in the village.
Mayne (1977), who surveyed a village near Colombo in 1977, provides
some idea of women's actual land ownership in the more recent past among
the Low Country Sinhalese. Here the women owned only 23 per cent of the
village paddy land (as residents or absentee landlords), 14 per cent of the
highland (again as in- or out-residents), and 14 per cent of the rubber land
(only as residents). If land was available, even virilocally married daughters
were given some at marriage or were promised it at the death of the parent.
In other words, women didinherit land, but not on an equal basis with men.
A study by Weerasinghe (1985), who surveyed female-headed households
(FHHs) in 1984-85 in two villages near Colombo, also bears this out.
Weerasinghe's survey included women who were widowed, deserted or
single, or had migrant or incapacitated husbands, or were married polyga-
mously. Of her total sample of 202 FHHs in the two villages together, 25 per
cent had some land (highland and paddy land), but half had less than an
acre each and many had rights in unpartitioned plots.
Obeyesekere (1967) has argued that the relative incidence of binna and
diga marriage in a region is linked to ecology and reflects the attempts by
communities and families to match available land resources with available
family labour. Hence families with a scarcity of land and an abundance of
adult males tend to expel their men in binna marriages, and those with
enough land but a scarcity of family men seek to attract sons-in-law in binna
marriages for daughters, and to keep their male members via diga marriages
for sons. However, implicit in and critical to Obeyesekere's schema is the
assumption that it is male labour alone which is of importance in agricul-
tural cultivation. In fact he goes so far as to say 'if there is a "family"
without steady male help to cultivate it, // may mean indigence or starvation,
given the traditional economic importance of rice' (Obeyesekere 1967: 60,
emphasis mine). In other words, he ignores the importance of female labour
in cultivation.
As a generalization for the Sinhalese peasantry as a whole, and as a
historical explanation, this is problematic on at least two counts. First,
traditionally, chena or swidden cultivation was of considerable importance
in the Dry Zone and provided the staple food, while settled paddy (a more
high-risk crop in the area) was being cultivated alongside it as a supplemen-
tary crop. In chena, female labour was critical: Yalman (1967: 107) notes
that 'women do assist in the harvest, and they are felt to be indispensable on
chena'. In settled paddy cultivation, there was more dependence on male
labour, but here again women's input in weeding, harvesting, and the
processing and storing of paddy, has always been significant.33 Even in
Obeyesekere's study village, which is located in the Maritime Province of
Mattara and where settled paddy cultivation dominates, female labour is
likely to have been of some importance, as borne out by other studies of the
Low Country.34 Obeyesekere himself does not touch on female labour
input at all. In any case, he presents his thesis as a general historical
explanation for the relative incidence ofbinna and diga marriage, irrespec-
tive of the region and period. Recognizing the significance of women's
labour contribution, however, would weaken the logic of his schema.
Second, his explanation does not take account of the traditional instability
of Sinhala marriages, and the shifts between binna and diga marriages
during a person's lifetime. It appears doubtful that people would have been
able to keep to a neat economic-ecological rationale in all marriages. This is
not to argue that the prevailing land/person ratio has no bearing on
marriage preferences - clearly one would expect people to prefer marrying
into villages where cultivable land is more plentiful and into families with
more land, but it does not provide an adequate explanation.
III. In conclusion
One of the striking features of the three case studies presented above is the
vulnerability of women's customary rights in land, even in matrilineal and
33
See Schrijvers (1988), Fellenberg (1965), and Ryan et a/. (1955).
34
See especially Abeyewardena (1986), Weerasinghe (1985), M o o r e and Wickramasinghe
(1980), and E S C A P (1983).
bilateral communities, to exogenous forces over which women could

exercise little direct control. These forces included, in particular, changes in
laws and the growing scarcity of land as a direct or indirect result of State
policies in both the colonial and the post-colonial periods. Women's lack of
jural authority in traditional public forums such as caste and clan councils
was replicated in the modern State's judicial and executive structures. Even
ideological discussions around issues such as the appropriateness of
polyandrous unions among the Nayars and the Sinhalese were carried out
mainly in elite male forums and women's opinions were not solicited. This
leaves open the question: how did women themselves feel about the shifts?
Unfortunately, the ethnographies mostly do not include women's voices,
although the court petitions to protect their land shares filed by women in
Sri Lanka at the turn of the century, and by women in Kerala in the colonial
period as well as during the 1950s' land reform programme, indicate their
resistance to the erosion of their rights. The effectiveness of such resistance
was nevertheless limited by the facts that (a) women acted as individuals
and (b) they were appealing to a legal and administrative machinery which
excluded their direct participation in the process of decision-making. A
somewhat different picture is provided in chapter 5, where the exertion of
political pressure by women in groups, as in the context of the Hindu Code
Bill, was critical in pushing forward gender-progressive legal reform. It
enabled women's voices to be heard and their perspectives to be noted. At
the same time, now as then, women's limited participation in the institu-
tions where laws and policies are formulated and implemented means that
they still largely remain takers and not makers of many decisions that
deeply affect their lives.
Appendix 4.1 A marriage proposal among the Christian Garos 35
(A variation on the traditional custom)36
A girl sends a letter to the boy whom she likes, requesting marriage. The
first letter usually accompanies one written by her father.
Rombagiri. 1st Dec. 1955

Dear nephew, Repraksogijil Sangma,
I am writing a few lines to you, enclosing my daughter's letter to you, with

an idea of knowing your intention in your reply. If you could marry my
daughter, Ganjak, I would be very happy. I don't mean to say that my
daughter is a wonderful girl, but I hope that you would kindly help your
maternal uncle and consider my request. For a man it is necessary to take a
partner in this world and to have a happy married life. If you receive this
letter, kindly reply to us, as I am anxious to hear from you.
With best wishes, I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Your uncle, Gimbilpa Sangma
See Nakane (1967: 71-2). Nakane writes: kI tried to find whether any couple might have
kept some original letters after their marriage, but I unfortunately failed to find any. But I
happened to know a man from a neighbouring village of Rombagiri, whom the people
regard as a good writer as well as a narrator of old Garo stories. He willingly agreed to
produce for me a set of typical letters of the Garo courtship. These are the letters I present
here. The Christians of Rombagiri highly appreciated them, saying they were exactly the
same style as theirs, but rather more beautiful than the letters which they used to write. The
English translation was done by one of the Garo intellectuals at Tura.'
It may be recalled (from chapter 3) that traditionally a popular way for a girl to propose to a
boy was to have him captured by other village boys; and the prospective groom had to
express reluctance by escaping and being recaptured twice more before accepting the
proposal.
194
Rombagiri. 1st Dec. 1955
Dear friend, Repraksogijil Sangma,
I am writing a few lines to you today, and I hope you will pay attention to
my words. As my father has written to you, I request you to take me as your
wife. I am ready to serve you. I don't claim to be clever and beautiful, but
one must have a partner in this world. God created man and woman to live
together. So we too must have a partner to live in this world. I hope that you
will choose me as your partner.
Please let me know if you have any other plan in your future in your reply.
With best compliments, I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Your friend, Ganjak Marak
Reply:
Chokagiri. 5th Dec. 1955.
Dear friend, Ganjak Marak,

I have received your letter and I like to let you know that I have no idea of
choosing a wife for myself yet. Therefore, I would like to advise you to try
someone else instead of me. I am intending to go for further study and
afterwards I have to support my own parents. Kindly excuse my inability to
take you as my wife.
With best wishes,
Sincerely yours,
Repraksogijil Sangma
Rombagiri. 10th Dec. 1955
I have received your letter, dated 5th, inst. I am sad, you have not shown
any intention to have me as your wife. I request you once more to consider
this matter. I understood that there is no other man better than you who
could be my husband, from my father's words. You are so capable in
managing affairs and working in the field. I am a helpless girl, without your
protection, it is very difficult to carry on my life. I shall obey all your orders.
This is my duty. I have no property. I am poor. Although I am in such a
position, if you consider taking me as your wife, I shall be very grateful. But
it you do not consider this matter and do not take me, I shall be in great
sorrow. I shall be nowhere.
Expecting your kind reply, with best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Ganjak
Reply:
Chokagiri. 15th Dec. 1955
Dear friend, Ganjak,
I have received your letter, dated 10th, inst. I have read all what you have
written. But I am in difficulty to take you as my wife, because I have no
property or education. Your family is big. I don't know how to work. If you
have me, you will lose all your property. There will be many difficulties
under such circumstances for both of us. Please don't write any more, give
up your writing to me and try to have another better boy. It will be useful for
you.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Rombagiri. 20th Dec. 1955
I have received your letter and I feel so sad about it. What you have
written shows your indifference to me. I have already chosen you as my
partner. It is impossible to think of another man. Though we are poor, if
you come to my house, you would feel very much at home with my father,
your maternal uncle, and my mother and uncles and brothers will be very
kind to you. I shall do my best to serve you. Please think over it once again!
In the night when stars are shining in the sky, sorrow fills my heart,
thinking of you. I dream of happy days when you come to my home and we
work in the jhum field together. But I know you have no mind to take me.
Oh! when we will be united! Please do make a fresh decision to make me
your wife, rather than to continue to work for your parents. I have lots to
tell you, but please let me stop here.
Your lost friend,
Ganjak
Reply:
Chokagiri. 28th Dec. 1955
Dear friend, Ganjak,
Just a few words to tell you that I was extremely glad to receive these three
letters which you have written to me. I can now realise all the facts. So I have
decided to marry you. I shall come to your house on 2nd January 1956. But
please let me know whether your uncles, brothers and elders are really
agreeable to our marriage or not. I was very pleased with the way you wrote
to me. Please let me know when you desire to have our marriage ceremony.
In the moonlit night I think of you very much. Please keep to your
statements. I believe you are the only one with whom I can share my heart. I
am closing here with best wishes and sweet expectation.
Yours lovingly,
Contemporary laws: contestation and content
[Thousands of sensitive Hindu women . . . for the first time in their lives
left the precious sanctuary of their sheltering homes [during India's
freedom struggle]. They came to the battle field and stood beside their
brothers and faced jail and lathi charges and often enough, humiliation
worse than death. If today ... [they] who fought for the independence of
India are to be denied their just rights, then our hard-earned freedom is no
more than a handful of dust.
(Padmaja Naidu (Congress legislator), Parliamentary debates over the Hindu
Code Bill in 1951)1
May God save us from . . . having an army of unmarried women.

(M.A. Ayyangar (Congress Legislator) predicting the result of daughters
getting property during the Parliamentary debates on the Hindu Code Bill in
1951)2
The formulation of contemporary inheritance laws on landed property has

involved a complex process of interaction between the (colonial and post-
colonial) State and different segments of the population, the interplay of
varying ideologies and interests, and the conflicting pulls of scriptural rules
and local custom. Around the early part of this century, these interactions
increasingly took the form of explicit contestation, especially over women's
property rights, revealed most prominently (but not only) in the pre- and
post-Independence debates surrounding the Hindu Code Bill in India.
Large numbers of Indian women participated in an organized campaign to
expand women's rights, including property rights. Many Indian men
supported the cause; the majority adamantly opposed it. In their responses,
British functionaries of the colonial State, although primarily concerned
with the regime's economic and political interests, were also influenced by
the notions of family, morality, and proper gender relations prevailing in
England, with mixed effects on women's position.
Today, laws governing the inheritance of landed property form a collage
across the legal map of South Asia. They vary by religion and region, both
1
Parliamentary Debates, 20 September 1951 (see GOI 1951b: 2930). Lathi charge: police-
men armed with wooden batons charge a crowd to break up a demonstration.
2
Parliamentary Debates, 7 February 1951 (see GOI 1951a: 2530).
198
Contemporary laws 199
within countries and between countries across the subcontinent. In part

these variations originate in the colonial State's characterization of inheri-
tance and marriage laws as 'personal laws' applicable to members of
particular communities; this characterization has endured in post-Indepen-
dence codifications that have attempted to accommodate differences in
religions and local cultural traditions, while also seeking to establish a
degree of uniformity. And partly (in India) the variations stem from
different rules in relation to the inheritance of agricultural land, in various
tenurial enactments passed by provincial (state) legislatures, which in 1935
were given legislative powers over such land.
The discussion below will focus first on the process of contestation by
which contemporary laws were formulated, and then outline the existing
laws and identify persisting gender inequalities therein, especially in
relation to women's rights in land. Inheritance laws in India (for non-
Muslims), Sri Lanka, and Nepal will be considered separately by country.
The laws governing Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India will be
discussed jointly, both because of their common historical evolution under
colonialism, and because the majority of Muslims in the three countries are
governed by the same school of law, the Hanafi school. At the same time,
significant legal differences between the three countries will also be
highlighted.
I. India
(1) The formulation of contemporary Hindu law
Late eighteenth to early twentieth century. Before British rule,

local customs, influenced in varying degree by the shastras and the ancient
commentaries, formed the basis of Hindu law (as outlined in chapter 3).
Shastric influence was strongest among the upper castes, especially the
Brahmins, and appears to have been greater in the northern and eastern
parts of India than elsewhere (Carroll 1989; Derrett 1968). Most disputes
were settled locally by village or caste councils serving as local tribunals
(Galanter 1989). Under the British, the adaptability associated with
customary systems declined. In 1765 the East India Company established
control over eastern India (Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa); and soon after, in
1772, Governer-General Warren Hastings directed that the scriptural texts
of the Hindus and Muslims would be the basis of legal governance: the
K o r a n would apply to the Muslims and the shastras to the Hindus (Derrett
1968: 288-9). To implement this, for the Hindus the British drew partly on
Brahmin pandits to help interpret and administer Hindu law, and partly on
a diverse collection of juridical texts, including translations of the shastras
and the ancient digests and commentaries, and a variety of new legal texts
(some written by the pandits) forming what Derrett terms 'modern shastric
literature'. 3 Judicial decisions also set precedents which guided subsequent
judgements. By the mid nineteenth century, the texts had replaced the
pandits as repositories of authoritative Hindu law (Carroll 1989).
Over time, the British also came to recognize that traditionally there had
been no fixed Hindu law applicable uniformly to all Hindus; quite the
contrary. 4 Customs, often at variance with the shastric rules, prevailed in
most parts. To take cognizance of this, regulations were passed giving
precedence to custom over the shastras. But custom, being unwritten, was
usually difficult to establish in court. To prevail over written law, custom
had to be 'proved to be immemorial or ancient, uniform, invariable,
continuous, certain, notorious, reasonable (or not unreasonable), peace-
able, obligatory and . . . not . . . immoral nor opposed to an express
enactment... or to public policy' (Kane 1950: 44).5 Little appears to have
been done to collect authentic records of local customs on a systematic
basis, although there were some detailed records available for selected parts
of the country, especially the Punjab. In that region, for instance, the works
of Rattigan (1953, first published in 1880) and Baden-Powell (1896) show
that there were a variety of local customs in vogue which differed from
village to village and caste to caste, 'sometimes quite opposed to the later
Hindu ideals' (Baden-Powell 1896: 102). Typically, the source of British
information on customs was the testimony of village elders or members of
local elites who served as spokespersons and often also as interpreters of
local custom for the colonizers, 'but when these elders [were] once called
upon to give their evidence, [the customs] necessarily [lost] their old position
...' (Maine 1889: 72). The very process of collecting, recording, and
juridically interpreting customs changed their character, fixing what had
been flexible (Cohn 1965). It also privileged some customs over others.
The patchwork information on customs, the strict proof required to
establish customs, and their very diversity meant that in practice the judges
were forced 'more often than not, to fall back on the precepts of the smritis
under the influence of their pandits, or rather to the interpretation of these
precepts which had been established locally' (Lingat 1973: 137). Also, as
Carroll (1989) points out, the majority of judges in the court, both British
and Indian, shared a Brahminical view of Indian society, derived by the
3
Derrett (1968) describes this process, detailing the ways in which the British served as
patrons of the shastras.
4
Among the writers who had pointed this out most forcefully was Nelson (1877, 1886).
5
Carroll (1989) argues that while strong evidence was needed to prove custom which
differed from orthodox Hindu law, such evidence was not insisted upon if the custom
coincided with that law. This would have strengthened the shift of legal practice in the
direction of orthodox Hinduism.
British from the legal texts they had studied and by the Indians from their
own typically upper-caste origins. This emphasis on the shastric view on the
one hand, and on selected incorporation of custom on the other, is argued
to have privileged the shastric and elite interpretation of law, introducing
thereby a Brahmanical and elite bias in the settlement of legal disputes. 6
And once a line of decisions had been established, the court was reluctant to
depart from it. A body of case law or 'judge law' was thus constituted. From
the nineteenth century onwards, a series of legislative acts were also passed.
Essentially what emerged was a cross-breed of classical Hindu law,
customary law, and statutory law, broadly termed as Anglo-Hindu law.
The law enforcement apparatus also underwent a major change with the
establishment of western institutions and procedures, including lower
courts, District Courts, High Courts, and a system of appeals ultimately
leading to the Privy Council in London. Initially, untrained Company
officials served as judicial officers, but after 1790 English judges with legal
training were brought in (Parashar 1992). Also initially the British held all
the important judicial positions, although over time Indian men too
became significant practitioners in the system.
These new legal institutions eroded local ones operating on a caste,
religious and regional basis. Moreover, as Cohn (1965: 109) notes:
Every time new regulations, interpretations, or legislative enactments came into
force, the structure of social relations for the bulk of the population was affected,
usually in ways not anticipated by the lawmakers. Landed property became a
commodity, new groups - urban-based landlords, bankers, merchants, money-
lenders - who previously had had minor roles in the rural society, came to
prominence.
What were the effects of these changes on women's property rights? To
begin with, shifts away from custom in favour of the shastric versions of
law, both prior to and during British rule, would have had some negative
effect on women's rights in landed property at two levels: (a) regionally,
notably in the south and west, where custom favoured women in several
respects, and (b) within some communities, principally the lower castes and
tribes. For instance, under shastric law a Hindu widow had to forfeit any
interest in her husband's estate in case of unchastity, and widow remarriage
was prohibited. But among the lower castes and tribes widow remarriage
was widely practised, and this did not always necessitate forfeiting the
husband's estate. 7 The application of shastric rules would have led to the
disinheritance of widows in such communities. Judicial decisions following
6
See Derrett (1968), Lingat (1973), Carroll (1989).
7
See Carroll (1989) for some evidence, albeit limited, that among some lower castes, in a
number of circumstances, custom did not entail forfeiture on remarriage.
the Hindu Widow's Marriage Act of 1856 graphically bring this out. Under
this Act, Hindu widows were allowed to remarry, but they thereby lost their
limited interest in the husband's estate. The Act was necessary to legally
enable upper-caste Hindu women to remarry. However, Carroll's (1989)
examination of High Court cases shows that all High Courts, except the one
at Allahabad, interpreted the Act as applicable to all castes, and directed
forfeiture on remarriage even for those lower castes for whom the Subordi-
nate Judge (that is the judge in a lower court) had established that custom
permitted the widow to remarry and to retain the deceased husband's
property after remarriage. Such women lost out in High Court judgements
(except those of Allahabad).8 It is not possible to say how widespread this
effect was, since there is inadequate information on the extent of such
customs or on how many such communities were involved in litigation. But,
as Carroll (1989: 17) argues:
[T]he result was undoubtedly the displacement of Customary Law as regards
remarriage and the establishment in its stead of Brahmanical values which held
widow marriage in disrepute and insisted on some penalty (in this case forfeiture of
inheritance rights) being imposed for a breach of the preferred norm of the chaste,
prayerful widow.
After 1880, by a Privy Council ruling, chastity ceased to be a condition for

the widow to maintain her life interest in the husband's estate. Ironically,
this also meant that a remarried Hindu widow was now in a worse legal
position than one 'who lived in "notorious unchastity" but wisely did not
permit her paramour to make her an honest (and property-less) woman'
(Carroll 1989: 26).
British endorsement of widow remarriage took a different turn in the
Punjab, where they sought to protect local customs in order to stabilize
their own political interests in the region.9 Here leviratic unions were
customary among landowning castes, most notably the Jats.10 Through
such a union (locally called karewa), the husband's kin retained control
over the land in which the widow (in the absence of male lineal descendants)
8
The Allahabad High Court took the position that the Act did not apply to castes
customarily allowing widow remarriage, and that forfeiture could not be enjoined in the
absence of proof that such forfeiture was needed by custom.
9
For fuller elaboration, see section II of the chapter.
10
This form of marriage was formalized by a simple ritual, such as the prospective husband
placing glass bangles on the widow's wrist before a public gathering, sometimes accompa-
nied with the distribution of sweets. It was considered a valid but inferior form of marriage,
and did not involve a religious ceremony, which Hindu women could not customarily
undergo twice. Although typically karewa was with the husband's younger brother,
remarriage with some other male relative of the deceased, such as a cousin, was not
unknown. Today such unions continue to be practised in northwest India (see Dreze 1990,
and chapter 8).
11
had a limited interest. Otherwise there was a clear risk that such land
would be lost to the family. Customarily (as noted in chapter 3) the widow
could ask for the partition of her husband's share from the joint family
estate if she could prove that she was not getting adequate maintenance
from her husband's family.12 Although she was meant to have only a
limited interest in such an estate, the property could in fact be alienated by
her (e.g. mortgaged or sold) if she could prove the 'legal necessity' of doing
so. This meant proving that the income from the estate was insufficient for
such purposes as her own maintenance, a daughter's marriage, paying land
revenue to the State, or repaying a 'just' debt (Rattigan 1953, Rustomji
1942).13
In the early twentieth century, a number of widows sought to use this
proviso to seek partition and the freedom to alienate their land if necessary,
but their appeals to the British administration were usually received with
little sympathy. The Punjab Land Administration Manual of 1908 noted that
to contain women's fast-growing claims to partition, it was necessary to
ensure 'a firm anchoring of the widow in remarriage'. This could be 'the
only satisfactory arrangement against which she had no appeal' (cited in
Chowdhry 1989: 316). Chowdhry argues that in the interests of consolidat-
ing their political position in a region that was of economic and strategic
interest to them, the British felt it necessary to protect the local peasantry's
hold over land and so minimize the danger of social disequilibrium; they
feared that allowing widows to have their way would weaken this hold and
antagonize the landowning groups.
Petitions by widows against forced levirate also became common at the
turn of the century, indicating their resistance to the custom. However, it
was not easy for women to establish that such a union had not taken place,
since even cohabitation with the brother-in-law was recognized as karewa,
1
* Among certain communities, such as the Sikh Jats, the widow did not have to forfeit her
limited interest in her first husband's estate if the karewa form of remarriage was to the
husband's brother, but such a forfeiture was necessary if she remarried some other relative
of the deceased. In such communities, either way, the husband's brothers kept control of
the estate (Rattigan 1953: 480).
12
There were slight differences between different districts of the Punjab in the conditions
under which they allowed partition by the widow. Most districts recognized the Hindu
widow's right to ask for partition if she was sonless but not if she had sons (Rattigan 1953:
311-17). Some groups denied allowing partition, but actually practised it. For instance, in
Rawalpindi district, when Rattigan enquired about the prevalence of the custom, the
answers received were at variance with actual practice. He noted: 'the examples of such
partitions are so numerous that there can be no doubt that the right to claim partition is
well established by custom' (Rattigan 1953: 316).
13
A 'just debt' was defined as a debt that was not 'immoral, illegal or opposed to public
policy' or 'contracted as an act of reckless extravagance or of wanton waste or with the
intention of destroying the interests of the reversioners' (Rustomji 1942: 331).
and it was only the widow's word against that of the husband's kin. The
district officers of the British administration were instructed to have
'nothing to do' with such petitions. Thus 'the customary law of... [Punjab],
backed by the full force of the colonial administrators, safeguarded the
landed property from a woman's possession' (Chowdhry 1989: 319).14
A related issue was the restriction of women's inheritance rights to only a
limited estate. Sarkar's (1991) compilation of some of the cases dealt with
by the Privy Council and High Courts during the latter half of the
nineteenth century gives us an idea of official leanings on this count,
although the cases discussed are too few for generalization and relate
largely to women of wealthy families. The courts' decisions present a mixed
picture: the rights of daughters and widows appear to have been upheld
only with respect to the deceased's acquired property, not the joint estates;
and typically, in that period, the women were entitled to only a limited
interest. *5 But in the early part of the twentieth century some rulings began
to recognize widows and daughters as absolute owners of any immovable
property that had been willed to them by husbands or fathers. At that time,
some jurists had also begun to argue that restricting the widow's estate to a
limited interest was not demanded by the shastras, but had only been
emphasized by a few of the later commentaries which British judicial
decisions had helped entrench (Sarkar 1991). A more detailed study of cases
would be needed to establish whether the rulings varied regionally and at
different levels of legal decision-making, including the District Courts.
In the nineteenth century, a number of factors, but especially the social
reform movements led by several prominent Indians, and pressure for
appropriate legal intervention, resulted in the British passing several pieces
of legislation that impinged on women's status, including the abolition of
sati in 1829, the legalization of widow remarriage in 1856, and the
prohibition of infanticide in 1870.16 Criminal and commercial law too was
codified by the British in the latter half of the nineteenth century. However,
most aspects of laws governing inheritance and marriage among Hindus
were left untouched.
14
The attitudes of some British male administrators towards women's property rights in
India were not independent of their disapproval towards British women's steady acqui-
sition of property in England in that period: 'Now, whereas, a man has through the force of
tradition and social custom, a tendency to spend his money for the benefit of the woman,
the woman has no traditional tendency to spend her money for the benefit of the man. The
consequence is that, in enjoying the benefits of little comforts and luxuries, woman in
England is steadily increasing her advantage over the man and the effect of this process on
the relative male and female mortality can hardly be negligible'! (views of Col Forster,
Director of Public Health, Punjab, quoted in Chowdhry 1989: 319).
15
The cases reviewed by Chaudhary (1961) relating to this period also indicate this.
16
For a broad overview of the nineteenth-century social reform movements in India and also
of changes in women's rights in Sri Lanka during this period, see Jayawardena (1986).
The early part of the twentieth century saw both an increasing assertion
by women (including peasant women) within patrilineal communities of
their limited legal rights in property, and growing efforts by women
(especially the urban educated) to expand those rights, most notably
through the codification of Hindu personal law. This demand was sub-
jected to intense contestation, as outlined below.
Early to mid twentieth century. By the early twentieth century,

several factors led to an intensification of pressure for changes in women's
legal status. 17 Among them was the founding of several women's organiza-
tions, most notably the Women's Indian Association (WIA) in 1917, the All
India Women's Conference (AIWC) in 1927,18 and the National Council of
Women in India (NCWI) in 1925. Of these the AIWC was the most
prominent during this period. By the mid-1930s, the AIWC and WIA
jointly had over 10,000 members. These women's organizations worked for
social reform legislation, opened schools for girls, and demanded women's
suffrage. After a successful effort to get the Child Marriage Restraint Act of
1929 passed, they focused more directly on women's rights to divorce and to
inherit and control property. 19 Forbes (1981: 71) notes:
Throughout the 1930s the women's organizations formed committees on legal
status, undertook studies of the laws, talked with lawyers, published pamphlets on
women's position, and encouraged various pieces of legislation to enhance women's
status. At first these demands were presented as part of the organizations' general
17
The story below, of the role played by women's organizations and progressive male
reformers in pushing forward legal reform for the benefit of women during this period, has
been constructed from a range of sources: Constituent Assembly Debates (GOI 1949),
Parliamentary Debates (GOI 1951a-b), The Rau Committee Reports (GOI 1941, 1947),
Basu and Ray (1990), Everett (1979), Forbes (1981) and Mies (1980), supplemented by
accounts by some of the women who participated in the struggle for reform, including
Chattopadhyay(1983).
18
British women, notably Margaret Cousins, Agatha Harrison and Eleanor Rathbone,
played an important role in the establishment of WIA and AIWC, and continued to
support Indian women's efforts at legal and social reform throughout this period
(Ramusack 1981; Cousins 1947).
19
Apart from national women's organizations, such as the AIWC and the NCWI, local ones
also emerged during this period, often despite considerable male opposition. For instance,
in the first two decades of the twentieth century, as demand for social reform grew in Kerala
(discussed in relation to the Nayars in chapter 4), some Nambudiri women formed
organizations demanding the right of every woman within the community to marry, to
inherit a share of the property and to education. These women were ridiculed by some of
the conservative men of the community. One argued:
[T]he development of women's organizations and newspapers is a meaningless farce ... the
doctrine that 'women must speak about their interests themselves' will be shown up to be
nonsense ... if women stake their claims separately from men and wish to achieve them by
contesting against men, then men will need to protect their interests from women by
forming 'men's organizations'. (Arunima 1992: 295)
efforts to uplift women, but by 1934, the AIWC passed a resolution demanding a
Hindu Code that would remove women's disabilities in marriage and inheritance.
Also, among the Indian lawyers elected to the government's Central
Legislative Assembly after its establishment as a legislative body in 1935
was a group of liberals concerned with social and legal reform. These
reformers sought to introduce a number of bills, including bills supporting
Hindu women's right to divorce and Hindu widows' right to a share in their
husbands' property. These bills encountered strong opposition from the
orthodox Indian members of the Assembly and were defeated a number of
times. The liberals had to seek the support of the colonial government to by-
pass this opposition, and The Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act of
1937 was a compromise. 20 It gave the Hindu widow, who had previously
been excluded from inheritance by the son, agnatic grandson and agnatic
great-grandson of her husband, a right to intestate succession equal to a
son's share in separate property among those governed by Mitakshara, and
in all property among those governed by Dayabhaga. It also gave her the
same interest as her deceased husband in the undivided Mitakshara
coparcenary, with the same right to claim partition as a male coparcener,
but she could hold this share only as a limited interest. 21 Three categories of
widows were recognized: the intestate's widow, the widow of a predeceased
son, and the widow of a predeceased son of a predeceased son. However,
the widow's share (as noted) was only a limited estate which she could enjoy
during her lifetime, after which it went to her deceased husband's heirs; it
was subject to forfeiture on remarriage; and it explicitly excluded agricul-
tural land. (After the 1935 Government of India Act, agricultural land, as
noted, came under the jurisdiction of the provincial legislatures.)22 Also
daughters were excluded from the purview of the Act.
20
For details of the Act see Kane (1946).
21
As explained in chapter 3, under the traditional Mitakshara system ancestral property was
held jointly by four generations of male lineal descendants in the male line of descent who
became coparceners on birth. Any coparcener could unilaterally sue for partition. Women,
however, could not be coparceners. Under the Dayabhaga system a man was absolute
owner of all his property (ancestral or self-acquired) with full rights of disposal, and
division could take place only on his death. Under both systems a widow could not inherit
any property in the presence of sons, sons' sons, and sons' sons' sons. In their absence she
got a limited estate in her husband's separate property under Mitakshara and in all of her
husband's property (including his share in joint family property) under Dayabhaga. A
daughter came after the widow under both systems and also got only a limited estate, again
only in the father's separate property under Mitakshara and in all his property under
Dayabhaga.
22
A few states subsequently (some prior to, others soon after Independence) passed laws
extending the H i n d u W o m e n ' s Rights t o Property Act 1937 to include agricultural land.
These included Bihar, Hyderabad, Orissa, the United Provinces, a n d Bombay. However,
the efficacy of this extension was undercut by a clause that such legislation would not affect
any rule of succession prescribed for tenants' rights in agricultural land by any special law
then in force.
Somewhat earlier, the states of Mysore and Baroda passed their own
legislation enhancing Hindu women's inheritance rights, especially by
giving them absolute rights to stridhan.22 V.V. Joshi, a leading sanskritist
and member of the Baroda Committee for Hindu law reform, also wrote an
influential pamphlet arguing for comprehensive legislation on women's
property rights. It is noteworthy that these early reforms came from south
and west India where women's property rights (among patrilineal groups)
had traditionally been stronger than elsewhere.
These developments formed the backdrop to the intense contestation
which continued into the 1950s over the codification of Hindu law.24 In the
earliest stages of this campaign, the noted women's organizations focused
mainly on child marriage and its negative effects on women's physical well-
being and education; they called for raising the age of consent.25 Subse-
quently, the demands were broadened to include wider reform of marriage
laws as well as improvements in women's property rights, although there
was no demand yet for equal property rights. Till this point Hindu law
reform was being sought on the grounds that it would enable women to
make a larger contribution to society as well as relieve women's sufferings -
consistent with what I termed the efficiency and welfare arguments in
chapter 1. However, soon afterwards the calls for inheritance and marriage
reforms were made explicitly on grounds of gender equality.26
As afirststep towards codification the women called for the setting up of
a government commission that would examine women's position in
personal law and suggest measures to remove existing gender disabilities.
Towards this end, they sought to mobilize public opinion by publishing
articles in English language periodicals, meeting with politicians, attending
Legislative Assembly sessions when bills concerning women's status in
Hindu law were introduced, and presenting resolutions to government
officials. Interestingly, in a set of resolutions presented in 1940 by the
Women's Subcommittee to the National Planning Committee (a group
appointed by the Congress Party to think about directions for post-
Independence economic and social development), one member, Kapila
Khandwalla, wrote a dissenting note from a communist perspective,
23
See The Mysore H i n d u Law W o m e n ' s Rights Act, 1933 (Mysore Act 10 of 1933). A similar
Act was passed in Baroda state in 1937 (Everett 1979: 146).
24
Although in the 1940s the women's organizations also called for a Uniform Civil Code for
all religious communities, much of the discussion in fact focused on the H i n d u Code. F o r a
detailed discussion on the issue of the Uniform Civil Code, see Parashar (1992).
25
A n earlier effort to prevent the consummation of marriage before the age of twelve,
through the Age of Consent Act of 1891, h a d h a d little impact.
26
In this shift, the noted legal reforms in Mysore and Baroda and V.V. Joshi's 1933 pamphlet
advocating gender-progressive reform, are believed to have been especially influential (see
Basu and Ray 1990, and Everett 1979, who also give more details about the positions taken
by women's organizations a n d male lawyers).
opposing property law reform on the grounds that private property should
be abolished altogether in India (Khandwalla 1947: 238-9). This type of
argument, as noted in chapter 1, was echoed by some left-wing women's
groups in the 1980s.
In 1941 the government set up the Rau (Hindu Law) Committee, a move
that the women's organizations supported even while they protested the
absence of women on the Committee. The Committee in the first instance
was appointed to suggest how the Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act
of 1937 should be amended especially in order to clarify the nature of rights
conferred by it upon the widow and to remove any injustice done by it to the
daughter. Noting the Act's many technical defects and ambiguities which
could lead to varying interpretations of women's rights, the Committee felt
that any attempt at piecemeal amendment would raise 'all the controversies
latent in the Act' (GOI 1941: 23). Instead it strongly recommended that a
complete code of Hindu law be prepared, beginning with the law of
inheritance and followed by the law of marriage and other aspects of Hindu
law. The code as envisaged by the Committee would be one 'which ...
recognize[d] that men and women are equal in status with appropriate
obligations as well as rights' (GOI 1941: 24).
The timing of the Committee's appointment appears to have been
unfortunate. Soon afterward the Congress Party intensified its civil disobe-
dience movement and boycotted the Legislatures, and large numbers of
Congress members were jailed. To support a Committee appointed by the
British government implied cooperating with the colonizers. This presented
women with a difficult choice between a struggle for their gender-specific
rights and the call of nationalism, and posed a special dilemma for women
who were members of both Congress and the AIWC. At the same time,
AIWC members had learnt that not many among the nationalists were their
allies when it came to codifying the Hindu law, since giving women legal
rights in property and divorce posed a serious threat to male authority.
Some women argued: Today our men are clamouring for political rights at
the hands of an alien government. Have they conceded [to] their wives, their
own sisters, their daughters, "flesh of their flesh, blood of their blood",
social equality and economic justice?' (Forbes 1981: 74). Many women
went on to support the Committee.
In January 1944 the government reconstituted the Rau Committee, this
time for preparing a Hindu Code. AIWC carried out a countrywide
campaign in favour of codification and submitted a draft memorandum to
the Committee. In August of the same year, the Committee came out with a
Draft Code. Its main provisions were (GOI 1947): abolition of the
Mitakshara right by birth and principle of survivorship; equal property
shares for the sons and widow of the deceased, and half the sons' shares for
Table 5.1: Summary of oral and written opinions on the Draft Hindu Code
received by the Second Rau Committee, 1945
Draft Absolute
Hindu estate
Code for widows Monogamy Divorce1
No. % No. % No. % No. %
Total For 224 37 49 31 75 43 108 36

Against 375 63 107 69 99 57 195 64
Women 2 For 32 71 10 59 21 68
Against 13 29 7 41 10 32
Men 3 For 192 35 39 28 54 38
Against 362 65 100 72 89 62
Notes: l On this clause the data from most regions were not disaggregated by sex.
2
Includes both individual women and women's organizations.
3
Includes both individual men and organizations other than women's organizations.
Source: Report of the Hindu Law Committee (see GOI 1947: compiled from pp. 82-181).
the daughters in all intestate inheritance; an absolute estate for the widow
(as opposed to a limited interest); introduction of monogamy as a rule; and
legalization of divorce under certain circumstances. Succession to agricul-
tural land was, however, excluded from the scope of the Draft Code on the
gf ound that this issue fell within the purview of the provinces.
There were 'black flag' demonstrations opposing the Code infivecities.
Reactions from women were mixed: the AIWC supported the Draft Code,
while advocating equal inheritance for sons and daughters. The NCWI and
several other women's groups, especially from Bombay and Calcutta, as
well as many individual women (including a number of Advocates) also
supported the Code; but women in orthodox associations such as the All
India Hindu Women's Conference opposed it. Among men, although some
supported the Code, the majority (including prominent lawyers and
pandits) argued against it on grounds such as: abolishing the Mitakshara
would adversely affect commercial enterprise; the divorce provisions would
undermine the family; women were incapable of managing property and
were likely to be duped by male relatives if given an absolute estate; married
daughters already received a share as dowry, and unmarried daughters only
needed maintenance and provision for their marriage expenses; and so on.
Only a small percentage of those whose views were recorded by the Second
Rau Committee were women or women's organizations, but the gender
divergence in those views was marked (see table 5.1): 71 per cent of the
women (or women's organizations) and only 37 per cent of the men (or
organizations other than women's organizations) supported the Bill.
Support did not mean agreement with all the provisions in the Draft Code,
and on specific clauses the gender gap was equally glaring.
Despite the strong opposition the Rau Committee submitted a revised
draft of the Hindu Code Bill (HCB) which was introduced in the Legislative
Assembly in April 1947. India became independent four months later. In
April 1948, a further revised Hindu Code Bill was introduced in the new
Parliament and was again the subject of intense debate. While the AIWC
continued to campaign actively for the Bill, its constituency was largely
confined to the literate, urban population, as it had been before Indepen-
dence. This reduced the effectiveness of its campaign and left the Bill
vulnerable to the opposition labelling it as an elite demand. One Congress
legislator from West Bengal, who was especially vociferous in his oppo-
sition, characterized those supporting the Bill as 'a few ultra-modern
persons who are vocal, but have no real support in the country', and implied
that only women of 'the lavender, lipstick and vanity bag variety' were
interested in the Bill.27 He argued: '[If the daughter inherits] ultimately the
family will break up' and queried: 'Are you going to enact a code which will
facilitate the breaking up of our households?' (GOI 1949: 1011). In
September 1951, of the legislators who spoke on the Bill ten supported it
and nineteen opposed it (Everett 1979: 172). Most top Congress leaders of
independent India were against the Bill, including the Home Minister,
Vallabhbhai Patel, and India's first President, Rajendra Prasad. Dr Prasad
threatened to withhold his signature on the Bill - an action that could have
resulted in a constitutional crisis.
In the face of such opposition, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru,
although committed to the Bill, shelved it in 1951. The Law Minister and
framer of India's constitution, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, resigned in protest.
However, after 1951, riding on the strength of a Congress electoral victory,
Nehru was finally able to win passage for the important aspects of the
Hindu Code Bill in four separate Acts. 28 Of these, the Hindu Succession
Act of 1956 forms the basis of Hindu succession laws today.
Everett (1979: 166-7, 181) provides some interesting insights into the
contrasting images of the ideal Hindu woman that the supporters and
opponents of the Bill appeared to hold:
From the [1940s and 1950s] debates [on the Hindu Code Bill] two different images of
ideal Hindu women emerged. The opponents' image resembled the view of women
presented in the Manusmriti: she needed the protection of men during all the periods
27
See statements by Pandit Lakshmi K a n t a M a i t r a in the Constituent Assembly of India
(Legislative) Debates on the H i n d u Code, 1 M a r c h 1949 ( G O I 1949: 996-7).
28
These were T h e Hindu Marriage Act 1955; T h e H i n d u Succession Act 1956; T h e Hindu
Minority a n d G u a r d i a n s h i p Act 1956: a n d T h e H i n d u Adoptions a n d Maintenance Act
1956.
of her life (thus never capable of independently looking after property), and in this
position of dependence she was worshipped as a goddess. The proponents' image of
the ideal Hindu woman was a competent, autonomous human being interacting
with others on the basis of equal rights and individual freedom. This image stemmed
from Western liberal thought, however imperfectly it had been achieved in practice
in the West.
The HCB opponents believed that the interests of men and women were better
served when women occupied a dependent position and men and women played
different social roles. The HCB supporters believed that everyone's interests were
better served when men and women were independent and enjoyed equal rights ...
The HCB supporters operated within the equal rights perspective which had
emerged as the dominant women's movement ideology since the 1930s.
Women's organizations also mobilized to win constitutional guarantees
in the area of personal law. In 1945 while the Rau Committee's draft Hindu
Code was being discussed around the country, a new Constitution was
being drafted by the Constituent Assembly. Hansa Mehta, in her Presiden-
tial address to the AIWC in December 1945, formulated a 'Charter of
Indian Women's Rights' advocating that equality between the sexes should
be the basis of citizenship in India (Mehta 1981). This was again an area of
intense contestation, since there were possible contradictions between the
proposed constitutional clause promising freedom of religious practice and
propagation (which could be read to include religiously sanctioned inegali-
tarian property and marriage laws), and the aim of social reform towards
gender (and caste) equality. The matter was finally resolved by an explicit
government statement that freedom of religion did not preclude social
reform. 29
However, in the 1950s the struggle for gender equality in property laws
was by no means over, and that for ensuring women's de facto property
rights had not even begun.
Hindu personal law today. Today the property rights of Hindus are
governed by the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 (applicable to all states other
than Jammu and Kashmir 30 and covering about 86 per cent of the Indian
population). 31 In the Act, 'Hindus' were defined as including Sikhs, Jains,
and Buddhists. However, the Act has special provisions for Hindu matrili-
neal communities customarily governed by the Marumakkatayam and
Aliyasantana systems, as well as for the Nambudiri Brahmins. (Tribal
29
T h e Indian constitution's guarantee of no discrimination on the basis of sex has, in fact,
been used to challenge continued gender-related inequalities in property laws: a case in
point is that of M a r y Roy, discussed later.
30
In this state, the J a m m u and K a s h m i r H i n d u Succession Act, 1956 (Act N o . 38 of 1956)
applies, which (with some modifications) contains most of the provisions of the H i n d u
Succession Act of 1956.
31
F o r details of the Act see especially Mulla (1982).
communities of the northeastern States of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur,

Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland are not covered by the Act and they
continue to be ruled by their local customs, which are still in large part
uncodified.)32 The Act sought to unify the Mitakshara and the Dayabhaga
systems, and purported to lay down a law of succession whereby sons and
daughters would enjoy equal inheritance rights, as would brothers and
sisters. In fact, significant gender inequalities remain.
Under the Act, in the case of a Hindu male dying intestate, all his separate
or self-acquired property, in the first instance, devolves equally upon his
sons, daughters, widow, and mother. In addition (and simultaneously with
the mentioned four categories of heirs), if there is a predeceased son, his
children and widow get the share he would have received if alive; the
children of a predeceased daughter get her share likewise; and the children
and widow of a predeceased son of a predeceased son similarly inherit a
share as representatives of the deceased in question. All these are the
primary or Class I heirs under the Act. 33 In the absence of Class I heirs, the
property devolves on Class II heirs and in their absence first on agnates and
then on cognates. 34 For joint family property, if the deceased male was
earlier governed by the Dayabhaga system the same rules of succession as
relate to other types of property apply to this as well.
However, for those previously governed by Mitakshara law, the concept
of Mitakshara coparcenary property devolving by survivorship continues
to be recognized, with some qualifications: in the case of an intestate male
who has an interest in Mitakshara coparcenary at the time of his death and
who leaves behind Class I female heirs, or male relatives specified in Class I
as claiming through Class I female heirs, his interest devolves not according
to the Mitakshara principle of survivorship but according to the 1956 Act,
and his share in the joint property and hence the shares of his heirs are
ascertained under the assumption of a 'notional' partition (that is, as if the
32
See G O I (1983b). The Planning Commission W o r k i n g G r o u p , set up to examine the legal
systems of the northeast, recommended even in 1983 that on family, inheritance, and land
laws 'there should be as little interference . . . as possible' ( G O I 1983b: 23). A l t h o u g h this is
an advantage for women a m o n g the matrilineal communities of Meghalaya and Assam,
a m o n g patrilineal tribes of the region the traditional laws tend to be gender-inegalitarian.
33
Class I heirs are those who have the first right to the property of the deceased. Other
'classes' of heirs follow.
34
A n agnate (as noted in chapter 3) is a person related to a deceased t h r o u g h male links alone:
for instance, a son's son or son's daughter are agnates. A cognate, in the legal literature, is
defined as a person related to the deceased ' t h r o u g h one or m o r e female links' (Fyzee 1974:
403, in the context of Islamic law) or 'not wholly t h r o u g h males' (The H i n d u Succession
Act, Mulla 1982: 913). Hence a daughter's son or daughter's d a u g h t e r are cognates. In
other words, in the legal literature, agnates and cognates are treated as mutually exclusive.
In the anthropological literature, however, the category cognates includes agnates (see e.g.
Fox 1967: 49; and Fortes 1969: 267). In the context of our discussion in this chapter the
legal definition is applicable.
partition had taken place just prior to his death). If the deceased does not
leave behind Class I female heirs or claimants through such female heirs,
the devolution is according to the Mitakshara rules. Either way this does
not affect the direct interest in the coparcenary held by male members by
virtue of birth; it affects only the interest they may hold in the share of the
deceased.
In the case of a Hindu woman dying intestate, if she has children or
grandchildren from predeceased children, all her property in the first
instance devolves equally upon her sons, daughters, children of prede-
ceased children, and husband. If she has no living children and no
grandchildren from predeceased children, the property devolution differs
according to the source of acquisition: that inherited from her parents goes
to her father's heirs; that inherited from her husband or father-in-law (as a
widow of a predeceased son) goes to the husband's heirs; and that acquired
in ways other than these passes to her husband, and failing him to his heirs.
Under the Act, all female heirs have absolute ownership and full
testamentary rights over all property, not just a limited interest in it. The
Act also gives unrestricted testamentary rights to males in their separate or
self-acquired property, as well as in their share of the joint family property;
but in relation to ancestral agricultural land there are restrictions on the
testamentary rights of males in some states, by virtue of custom, as in
Punjab. 35
For Hindus customarily governed by the Marumakkatayam and Aliya-
santana systems, under the special provisions of the Act the devolution of
property is specified as follows. If a man dies intestate, his property
(including all separate or self-acquired property as well as any share he may
hold in joint family property) 36 devolves on the Class I heirs and Class II
heirs in the same way as for other Hindus. In the absence of heirs in these
two categories, the property goes to both agnates and cognates without
distinction or preference between them. If a woman dies intestate, all her
property (again including separate or self-acquired property, as well as any
share in joint family property) devolves in the first instance equally on her
sons and daughters (including children of any predeceased sons or
daughters) and mother. If the intestate leaves no children or children of
predeceased children, her mother takes all the property, except that
35
In Punjab, the customary law has been upheld, under which a male cannot will away his
share of ancestral agricultural land (see ' K a u r Singh Gajjan Singh v. Jaggar Singh K e h a r
Singh 1 , A I R (1961), Punjab 489). Also see the decision in 'Joginder Singh v. K e h a r Singh'
( A I R 1965, Punjab 407).
36
As noted in chapter 4, a person's share in unpartitioned property was deemed to be that
which that person would get if the property were partitioned just before his/her death on a
per capita basis a m o n g all family members holding an interest in the joint property.
inherited from her husband or father-in-law, which goes to her husband's
heirs. If there are no children or grandchildren but the intestate's husband is
alive, the property goes to the intestate's father and husband. In the absence
of children, grandchildren, and husband, all the intestate's property, other
than that inherited from her husband and father-in-law (which devolves on
the husband's heirs), will gofirstto her mother's heirs, and in their absence
to her father's heirs and lastly to the heirs of her husband. Again both men
and women have full testamentary powers over all their property.
Since the passing of the Act, some states have enacted legislation
affecting joint family property. For instance, the Kerala Joint Hindu
Family System (Abolition) Act of 1976 deemed all family members with an
interest in the Hindu undivided family estate as holding their shares
separately as full owners from then onwards. This Act (as noted in chapter
4) struck afinalblow to the remnants of matrilineal joint estates, but it also
eliminated any advantages that sons enjoyed over daughters in joint family
property among patrilineal Hindus in Kerala. More recently, Andhra
Pradesh in 1986 and Tamil Nadu in 1989 have amended the Hindu
Succession Act to recognize unmarried daughters (that is, daughters still
unmarried when the Act was passed) as coparceners by birth in their own
right, giving them claims equal to those of sons in joint family property,
including the right to a share by survivorship.37
However, in most states the 1956 Hindu Succession Act, as originally
enacted, continues to be in force. And for customarily patrilineal Hindus
the Act has reduced but not eliminated pre-existing gender inequalities.
Several major sources of inequality persist:
(1) Since the concept of the Mitakshara joint family succession continues
to be recognized (except, as noted, in a few states such as Kerala,
Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu), some of the basic gender inequali-
ties inherent in relation to unpartitioned coparcenary property remain,
such as those below:
—Since only males can be coparceners in the joint family
property, sons have an indefeasible right in such property,
but daughters don't. In addition, sons have a right to
succeed to the deceased father's share of the coparcenary if
the father dies intestate. Daughters have only the latter
right, that is the right to succeed to the father's share of the
coparcenary.
—A coparcener can renounce his rights in the coparcenary
property. In such cases his sons would continue to maintain
their independent rights to the coparcenary, but daughters
37
For Andhra Pradesh, see Sivaramayya (1988); and for Tamil Nadu see The Hindu
Succession (Tamil Nadu Amendment) Act 1989 (Act No. 1 of 1989).
and other Class I female heirs would lose the possibility of
benefiting from such property. Similarly, after partition, the
father can make a gift of his share in the coparcenary
property to his sons, thereby defeating the rights of female
heirs.
—A man can convert his separate or self-acquired property to
coparcenary property, in which case daughters, who would
have enjoyed equal shares with sons in such separate and
self-acquired property, lose out.
—Unlike sons, married daughters (even if facing marital
harassment) have no residence rights in the ancestral home.
And while daughters who are unmarried, separated,
divorced, deserted, or widowed do have residence rights,
they cannot demand partition if the males do not choose to
partition.
(2) The children of a predeceased daughter of a predeceased daughter do
not figure among the Class I heirs, while the children of a predeceased
son of a predeceased son do.
(3) The right to will away property is not restricted: a man has full
testamentary power over all his property, including his interest in the
coparcenary. In principle the provision is gender-neutral, but in
practice it can be and often is used to disinherit females.
(4) Although the Act covers owned agricultural land, certain other types of
interests in agricultural land, such as those stemming from 'tenancy
rights', are exempted. Section 4 (2) of the Act provides that:
... nothing contained in this Act shall be deemed to affect the provisions of any
law for the time being in force providing for the prevention of fragmentation of
agricultural holdings or for the fixation of ceilings or for the devolution of
tenancy rights in respect of such holdings.
The gender implications of this exemption are crucial to the present
discussion, as elaborated below.
(2) Anomalies resulting from existing land legislation

Two factors in particular have led to a disjunction between women's
general legal rights in property and their rights in agricultural land. First,
legislative powers are divided between the Union and Provincial (now
termed state) legislatures under the principle of Federalism; and on
agricultural land-related enactments the state governments have had, and
continue to have, considerable legislative powers: thus legislation affecting
women's rights in certain categories of agricultural land varies by state,
reflecting regional differences in social attitudes and legal approaches.
Second, land reform policies have been based both on the principle of
redistributive justice and on arguments regarding efficiency (land to the
tiller, fixation of ceilings, prevention of fragmentation, etc.); but on neither
count are gender inequalities taken into account.
The Government of India Act 1935, mentioned earlier, vested all
legislative powers in relation to agricultural land exclusively in the provin-
cial (state) legislatures. Thenceforth women's inheritance rights were to be
determined by personal law on all matters of property other than those
relating to agricultural land, their rights in which would depend on the
land-related laws prevailing in the province in which the land was located.
Hence, for instance, The Hindu Women's Right to Property Act 1937 (as
noted) did not apply to agricultural land. And although a few provinces
(mentioned earlier) subsequently extended the Act to cover agricultural
land, the extensions left unaffected any rule of succession that related to a
tenant's rights in agricultural land by any special law then in force.
Since Independence, state legislatures have continued to enjoy the power
to enact land laws, but subject to some restrictions. Under the Constitution
of India adopted in November 1949, if the state legislature wants to modify
any laws which have been included in the 'concurrent list' of laws under the
Constitution, and which have already been enacted by Parliament, the
modifications need the assent of the President of India. The Hindu
Succession Act (HSA) of 1956 is one such piece of legislation. Hence if
states want to pass laws modifying the Hindu succession rules for owned
agricultural land, this will need the President's consent. However, state
legislatures can continue to enact laws relating to tenancy rights, ceiling
laws, etc. (which, as noted, were excluded from the purview of the HSA),
without needing such assent. What this has meant is that women's legal
rights in agricultural land still show a vast disparity by region, especially in
relation to (a) devolution rules for land deemed to be under 'tenancy'; and
(b) rules regarding the fixation of ceilings and the forfeiture of surplus land
above the ceiling limit, as discussed below.
Devolution ofagricultural land under 'tenancy'. The Hindu Succes-

sion Act of 1956 specifically exempted tenancy rights in agricultural land
from the scope of the Act. As a result, there is today a major disjunction in
several states between state land enactments affecting the devolution of
certain categories of agricultural land and the personal laws affecting the
devolution of all other property, on at least two counts. First, in a number
of states the succession rules relating to land held under tenancy have a
different order of devolution than the personal laws specify. For example,
in the tenancy laws of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and
Kashmir, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh (all located in northwest India), the
rules of devolution specified show a strong preference for succession among
agnates, with a priority in favour of agnatic males.38 In all these states the
tenancy devolves in the first instance on male lineal descendants in the male
line of descent. In the first four states the widow comes next, and in her
absence the widowed mother. Daughters and sisters are totally excluded as
heirs. In Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, daughters are recognized but come very
low in the order of heirs. Moreover, in all these states, a woman (in any
capacity) gets only a limited estate in the land, after which it goes not to her
heirs but to the heirs of the last male landowner. She also loses the land if she
remarries or abandons it (that is, fails to cultivate it for a specified period,
usually a year or two).
States where the tenancy laws explicitly mention that the devolution of
tenancy land will be according to personal law are very few: they include
Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, where the personal law applies for all
communities, and parts of Andhra Pradesh, where for Hindus the Hindu
Succession Act applies.39 In practice, however, even in Rajasthan
daughters have been recognized as heirs only in some judgements, while in
others male heirs alone have received recognition.40 In addition, there are
states which do not mention the order of devolution at all in their tenancy
laws, such as Maharashtra and Karnataka. 41 In this last category of states,
we could presume that the personal laws automatically apply.
Second, although most states in their land reform laws dealing with
owned land do not mention the order of devolution at all,42 some states
38
See e.g. T h e Punjab Tenancy Act 1887 (Act N o . 16 of 1887) applicable also to H a r y a n a in
identical form and under the same title; T h e Himachal Pradesh Tenancy and L a n d Reform
Act 1972 (Act N o . 8 of 1974); T h e J a m m u and K a s h m i r Tenancy Act 1980 (Act N o . 2 of
1980); the Delhi Land Reforms Act of 1954 (Act N o . 8 of 1954); a n d the U t t a r Pradesh
Z a m i n d a r i Abolition and L a n d Reforms Act 1950 ( U . P . Act N o . 1 of 1951).
39
See T h e Rajasthan Tenancy Act 1955 (Act N o . 3 of 1955), the A n d h r a Pradesh (Telangana
Area) Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act 1950 (Act N o . 21 of 1950), a n d the M a d h y a
Pradesh L a n d Revenue Code, 1959, as amended in 1961. Prior to the a m e n d m e n t , the
M a d h y a Pradesh L a n d Revenue C o d e specified an order of devolution wherein the Class I
heirs (for b o t h owned a n d tenancy land) were as follows: son; widow (or widower);
predeceased son's son and widow; son and widow of predeceased son's predeceased son;
and widow of predeceased son's predeceased son's predeceased son. Since the 1961
a m e n d m e n t , however, devolution is according to personal law for the lands of b o t h tenure
holders a n d occupancy tenants.
40
See the cases cited in the c o m m e n t a r y to Section 40 in the Rajasthan Tenancy Act 1955 (Act
N o . 3 of 1955).
41
See T h e B o m b a y Tenancy a n d Agricultural Lands (Vidarbha Region) Act, 1958 (Bombay
A c t N o . X C I X o f 1958); a n d T h e K a r n a t a k a Land Reforms Act 1961 (Act N o . 10 of 1962).
42
This includes: T h e A n d h r a Pradesh L a n d Reforms (Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings) Act
1972; T h e Bihar L a n d Reforms (Fixation of Ceiling Area a n d Acquisition of Surplus L a n d )
Act 1961 (Bihar Act N o . 12 of 1962); T h e Bihar L a n d Reforms Act 1950 (Bihar Act N o . 30
of 1950); the Saurashtra L a n d Reforms Act 1951; T h e Punjab L a n d Reforms Act 1972
(Punjab Act N o . 10 of 1973); T h e K a r n a t a k a Land Reforms Act 1961 (Act N o . 10 of 1962);
The M a d h y a Pradesh Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings Act 1960 ( N o . 20 of 1960); T h e
define 'tenants' in very broad terms so that the category tends to include all
interests arising out of agricultural land, as is the case in Uttar Pradesh and
Delhi. For instance, under the Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and
Land Reforms Act 1950, the devolution rules mentioned above, which
favour male lineal descendants, apply to various categories of cultivators:
the bhumidhar, sirdar and asami.43 Over time, according to the Statement of
Objects and Reasons in the Act, 'it is expected that the vast majority of
cultivators will become bhumidhars'. Bhumidhars, however, are persons
liable to pay land revenue to the government and not rent. Counting them
as tenants and exempting them from the provisions of the Hindu Succession
Act means that most agricultural land in Uttar Pradesh, a state which
contains one-sixth of the country's population, is legally inheritable
principally by males. In the Delhi Land Reforms Act, 1954 (Act No.8 of
1954), likewise, the specified order of devolution (which, as noted, favours
male agnates) applies to both bhumidhars and asamis.
Fixation of ceilings and assessment of surplus land. Gender inequa-

lities also arise from land reform enactments relating to the fixation of
ceilings. (This part of the discussion is equally relevant for non-Hindu
communities in India.) The enactments are characterized by certain general
features as follows: A ceiling is fixed in relation to a family unit consisting of
up to five members. Additional land is, however, allowed to families of over
five members, subject to a specified maximum. In addition, in most states
adult sons get special consideration (as elaborated shortly). Also, usually
where the husband counts as a unit the wife cannot count as an independent
Maharashtra Agricultural Lands (Ceiling on Holdings) Act 1961 (Act No. 27 of 1961); The
Orissa Land Reforms Act 1960 (Orissa Act No. 16 of 1960); The Tamil Nadu Land
Reforms (Fixation of Ceiling on Land) Act 1961 (Act No. 58 of 1961); The Uttar Pradesh
(Imposition of Ceiling on Land Holdings) Act 1960 (Uttar Pradesh Act No. 1 of 1961); The
West Bengal Land Reforms Act 1955 (West Bengal Act No. 10 of 1956). The Madhya
Pradesh Land Revenue Code 1959, however, appears to be an exception: as noted, it
explicitly mentions the order of devolution, which, after the 1961 amendment, is according
to personal law for both owned land and land under tenancy.
43
Neither the Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act 1950 (termed
below as UP (ZALR) Act) nor earlier acts such as the Uttar Pradesh Revenue Act 1901 and
the Uttar Pradesh Tenancy Act 1939 give a clear definition oibhumidhar. What is indicated,
however, is that the bhumidhar is a tenure holder or full proprietor with permanent
heritable and (in most cases) transferable rights to the land, and who is liable to payment of
land revenue to the government. This last point is clearly stated (see S.242 of the UP
(ZALR) Act) and this is what is of most relevance to the present discussion. Sirdar is a
landlord or under-proprietor or a permanent tenure holder who possesses sir and who has
hereditable rights to the land. Sir is a name given to village lands cultivated by hereditary
proprietors or village zamindars themselves. An asami is a tenant, and includes non-
occupancy tenants of land with no stable rights (UP (ZALR) Act). For further details and
definitions see the original Acts; also see Srivastava (1976), Sivaramayya (1973), and GOI
(1976).
unit even where she owns land in her own right. In these enactments, gender
inequalities and anomalies arise on at least three counts: one, in the
definition of 'family'; two, in the additional allotments for adult sons but
not adult daughters; and three, in not allowing the wife to be counted as an
independent unit where the husband is counted as one.
The definition of 'family' varies widely across states. For instance, in
Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, and Andhra Pradesh, the family is
defined as the cultivator and his/her spouse, minor sons, and unmarried
minor daughters.44 In Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh it
includes the cultivator, his/her spouse and minor children; in Tamil Nadu it
includes the cultivator, his/her spouse, minor sons, unmarried daughters,
and orphaned minor grandsons and unmarried granddaughters in the male
line. In Kerala it includes the cultivator, his/her spouse and unmarried
minor children. Moreover, in virtually all the states, adult sons (as noted)
receive special consideration. For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi,
Punjab, and Haryana the parental household can hold additional land on
account of each adult son, subject to a specified maximum.45 In Bihar,
Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu,
each adult son counts as a separate unit and is entitled to hold a specified
extent of land in his own right. Only in Kerala do both the unmarried adult
son and unmarried adult daughter count as separate units.
In these enactments, therefore, with the exception of Tamil Nadu and
Kerala, unmarried adult daughters receive no recognition at all in the states
mentioned: they do not count either as part of the family unit or as separate
units; and in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, and Andhra Pradesh,
married minor daughters also receive no recognition. Underlying the
ceiling specifications is clearly the assumption that those who are recog-
nized either as part of the family unit or separately (as with adult sons) will
be maintained by the land allowed within the ceiling regulations. Under
these enactments we thus have an extraordinary situation where most states
do not give any consideration, when fixing ceilings, for the maintenance
needs of unmarried adult daughters and married minor daughters, while
giving consideration to all sons, whatever their age or marital status. And,
as noted, in most states adult sons receive special recognition in that their
parents, or they themselves, get additional land, while adult daughters
receive no such recognition.
Although in a state such as Uttar Pradesh, it is the tenure holder who is
allowed additional land on account of adult sons rather than the sons
44
I a m using the term 'cultivator' here in a general sense. T h e actual term used differs by state:
for instance, in U t t a r Pradesh the term used is 'tenure holder'.
45
In H a r y a n a , the allotment for the adult son is m a d e to the parents if the son is living with the
parents, but he counts as a separate unit if living separately.
themselves, given the land devolution rules prevailing there, any such land
will ultimately pass to the sons. Even if we were to assume that married
daughters would be taken into account in their marital homes, the land
ceiling rules along with the devolution rules in the state leave the unmarried
adult daughters out in the cold, as they do daughters whose marriages
break down. The situation in Delhi, Punjab, and Haryana is analogous.
In 1971, following the 1970 Conference of Chief Ministers on Land
Reforms, a Central Land Reforms Committee was constituted under the
chairmanship of the Union Agricultural Minister. It recommended, among
other things, that the definition of the family should be made uniform
across the states and include a man and his wife and minor children, with
additional land being allowed for extra members in excess of five, up to a
maximum of twice the ceiling limit for the family. A high-powered
Committee set up to review these recommendations disagreed with them
and suggested that the family should be defined to include a man and his
wife and three children, including any major sons. However, the Chief
Ministers' Conference, held in July 1972, drawing its guidelines from the
recommendations of both the above Committees, laid down (among other
things) that a family should be defined as including a man, his wife, and
minor children, and additional land should be granted for members in
excess of five, up to a maximum of twice the ceiling limit set for a family of
five members. Further, each major son should be treated as a separate unit.
In other words, the guidelines incorporated gender-inequitable rules; 46 and
the situation, as it stands today, continues to be one where there is no
uniformity across states on these counts and most states continue to have
gender-discriminatory ceiling laws. 47
Over the years, some of these ceiling Acts have been challenged (unsuc-
cessfully) in court, one of the grounds for challenging them being that they
discriminated against women and were therefore unconstitutional. 48 How-
ever, the First Amendment to the Constitution of India, enacted in 1951,
had introduced a device to protect the validity of all Land Reform
legislation. Under Article 31b it provided that none of the Acts mentioned
in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution would be deemed to be void on
the ground that they infringed on the fundamental rights granted by the
Constitution of India. 49 All the noted ceiling laws are included in the Ninth
46
F o r details of the recommendations m a d e by the two Committees mentioned and the
guidelines specified subsequently, see G o v e r n m e n t of India (1976).
47
It is noteworthy that Bangladesh t o o , in its ceiling laws for agricultural land, counts as a
separate family an adult married son who had an independent means of livelihood prior to
20 F e b r u a r y 1972 (Siddiqui 1981: 74). Adult daughters get no such consideration.
48
Article 14 of the Constitution of India promises equality before the law, and Article 15
prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, etc. Both constitute part of fundamental rights
(see G O I 1990c).
49
See G O I (1990c) for a list of the Acts included in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution.
Schedule. This provision provides a basis for dismissing pleas challenging

the ceiling laws on various grounds, including grounds of gender discrimi-
nation.50 The Andhra Pradesh Land Reforms (Ceiling on Agricultural
Holdings) Act 1973, in fact, explicitly mentions in its Explanation to
Section 4 (3): The constitutionality of discriminating against unmarried
[major] daughters cannot be questioned as the Act is now included in the
Ninth Schedule to the Constitution'.
The judgement that was delivered when The Uttar Pradesh Zamindari
Abolition and Land Reforms Act 1950 was challenged in the Supreme
Court in 1980 is also noteworthy for its comments on the gender aspects of
the Act.51 Among the grounds for the challenge were that it discriminated
against major unmarried daughters by not providing extra land to their
father as it did for adult sons; and that it discriminated against wives in the
fixation of ceilings, by regarding the husband as the tenure holder even
when the wife was the owner. Justice Krishna Iyer (although reputed to be
an advocate of women's rights) rejected the pleas in his judgement. He
argued: 'no submission to destroy this measure can be permitted using sex
discrimination as a means to sabotage what is socially desirable' (p.729).
While admitting that the advantage granted to major sons and not to
daughters was sex-discriminatory, he nevertheless justified the rule on the
ground that in effective terms the entire land goes to the father as the tenure
holder (and not to the son) 'for feeding this extra mouth' (p.729).
Presumably adult daughters didn't need to be fed!
Moreover, the Act's exclusion of women as tenure holders where their
husbands are also tenure holders was explained away in the judgement as 'a
legislative device for simplifying procedural dealings', and the judgement
argued that: 'When all is said and done, married women in our villages do
need their husbands' services and speak through them in public places
(SCC 1980: 730). Underlying these justifications was clearly a prioritizing
of class interests at the cost of gender interests: 'large land holders [cannot]
be allowed to outwit socially imperative land distribution by putting female
discrimination as a mask' (SCC 1980: 730). Ironically, the land reform
programme of the government was not successful even in significantly
redistributing land between households.52
Another source of gender inequity has emerged in the assessment of
ceiling surplus land. In most states, the holdings of both spouses (if the wife
too has land in her name) are aggregated in assessing 'family' land, and
50
F o r citations of some cases challenging the Ceiling Acts see: T h e H a r y a n a Ceiling on L a n d
Holdings Act 1972; T h e Punjab Land Reforms Act 1972; T h e A n d h r a Pradesh Land
Reforms (Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings) Act 1972; and G O I (1976).
51
See ' A m b i k a Prasad Mishra v. the State of U P and O t h e r s ' in Supreme C o u r t Cases (SCC)
719(1980).
52
T h e literature o n this issue is vast, b u t see especially F r a n k e l (1978), Joshi (1974), a n d
D a s g u p t a (1977).
there is considerable arbitrariness in deciding whose portion of this land
will be declared surplus and forfeited. Typically the husband alone is
consulted in this matter. This has been known to lead to the wife's land
being forfeited without her having a say in the matter, causing her to lose
her primary or only source of economic independence. Given that so few
women in any case have land in their own names, this practice compounds
existing gender inequalities in land rights. In Kerala (as noted in chapter 4)
when ceiling surplus land was being assessed, many women asked that they
be allowed to retain their property where their husbands had independent
regular sources of income. But the demand went unheeded (Saradamoni
1983). Cases in which the wife has been able to establish her claim are rare.
For instance, in a 1986 court case in Orissa, the government Revenue
Officer, in assessing ceiling surplus land, aggregated the land of both
spouses as 'family land', including land separately registered in the wife's
name and inherited from her father. But he gave notice only to the husband
as the 'person interested'. The two men settled the matter between them,
and the wife's land was declared surplus. The wife appealed the order to the
High Court, asking that her separate land be excluded from the ceiling
surplus, on the ground that since the land concerned was her separate
property she was the 'person interested' to whom prior notice should have
been given. This, she argued, would have given her a chance to ask the
Revenue Officer to let her retain her land and instead declare some part of
her husband's land as surplus. Her appeal was accepted by the Court under
the constitutional principle of'natural justice'. 53
Over the years there have also been explicit attempts by some states to
amend the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 in such a way as to legally exclude
daughters from inheriting agricultural land. For instance, in 1969, in a bill
which came before the Punjab Legislative Assembly, it was argued that
daughters should not have a legal share in agricultural land (as allowed
under the Hindu Succession Act) because it would cause fragmentation and
because they got a dowry anyway. This was strongly opposed by women in
the state. Tara Ali Baig, then President of AIWC, pointed out that
fragmentation took place even when sons inherited, and that dowry had
been legally prohibited since 1961 (Mies 1980). The bill was not passed.
Other (unsuccessful) attempts in this direction have been made subse-
quently. For instance, around 1979 the Haryana legislature sought to
amend the Hindu Succession Act 1956 so as to deprive daughters of rights
in agricultural property, but the President of India refused his assent to the
proposed amendment. 54
53
See 'Kunjalata Purohit v. Tahsildar, Sambalpur a n d Others' ( A I R 1986a), Orissa 115.
54
Personal communication from Prof Sivaramayya, 1992.
Moreover the special consideration given to major sons in fixing land
ceilings under the land reform enactments is being replicated in land
resettlement schemes. For instance, in Gujarat state, farming families
displaced by the Narmada Valley dam project have been promised (at the
resettlement site) two hectares for each adult son, in addition to the two
hectares for the family unit as a whole, but nothing for adult daughters.
This is not only gender-discriminatory but also implicitly biased against
families with no adult sons. As some of the displaced tribals at the dam site
asked me: 'What about those of us who have only adult daughters? Don't
we have to feed them?' This project, the largest river valley project in South
Asia, has become a focus of national and international controversy and
agitation, especially around the issue of resettlement. The terms of resettle-
ment established here are likely to set a precedent for future projects
involving displacement, making it even more imperative to correct the
gender bias in this scheme. 55
In general, there is a strong case for re-examining the existing land-
related laws across the country to ensure gender equality in rights to this
critical economic resource. For a start this would mean at least two types of
changes: (a) eliminating the existing gender inequalities in the land ceiling
laws; and (b) bringing devolution rules relating to agricultural land
(whether under tenancy or otherwise) in line with those governing other
forms of property, that is in line with the personal laws. Although this
would not take care of all the existing gender inequalities in personal laws, it
would at least reduce some of the anomalies which exist in relation to
agricultural land.
(3) Laws governing Christians and Parsis in India

The 1956 Hindu Succession Act covered Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains under
the definition of'Hindu' but excluded Indian Christians, Parsis, Jews, and
other minority communities. The laws pertaining to Christians and Parsis
in India are briefly outlined below.
The Christians. The laws for Christians (who constituted 2.4 per
cent of India's population in 1981) vary according to domicile for all
movable property and by location of property in the case of immovables.
For instance, Christians from Goa are governed by the Portuguese Civil
Code; those from Cochin and Travancore (Kerala) until recently by the
Cochin Christian Succession Act 1921, and The Travancore Christian
The otherwise insightful 'Morse Report' (Morse and Berger 1992), in its review of the
project, also failed to take this into account.
Succession Act 1916, respectively; those in Punjab by the customary laws of

Punjab (see Sivaramayya 1978); the Christian tribal populations of north-
east India also by their customary laws; and the rest by the Indian
Succession Act (ISA) of 1925. Both the Cochin and the Travancore Acts
contained significant gender inequalities. Under the Travancore Act, for
example, a widow or mother inherits only a life interest in land and other
immovable property, which too must be forfeited on remarriage; and a
daughter gets 'stridhan' which isfixedat one-fourth the value of the son's
share or Rs. 5000/-, whichever is less. Under the ISA of 1925 (Section 33),
however, if a man dies intestate leaving lineal descendants, his widow gets
one-third of his estate, while sons and daughters get equal shares in the rest.
If there are no lineal descendants, but there are other kindred who are
eligible to inherit, the widow gets half the estate; and in the absence of both
lineal descendants and kindred, she gets the whole property.56 There are no
restrictions on testation.
In 1949 the former princely states of Travancore and Cochin merged to
form what is termed as the Part-B state of Travancore-Cochin within the
Indian Union; and in 1951 certain Acts prevailing in the rest of India
became applicable to Part-B states. For Travancore-Cochin this meant that
the ISA Act should thenceforth have applied. However, a court judgement
in 1956 upheld the authority of the pre-existing Travancore-Cochin
succession laws for Christians (viz. the Cochin Act 1921 and the Travan-
core Act 1916).5 7 It was only in 1983, more than two and half decades later,
that the Travancore Act 1916 was challenged in the Supreme Court by
Mary Roy, a Syrian Christian from Travancore and daughter of wealthy
parents, on the ground that it violated the Constitutional guarantee of
equal rights for both sexes.58 As a result of this petition, in 1986 the
Supreme Court (although it did not address the specific issue of gender
inequality) held that after the inclusion of Travancore and Cochin in the
Indian Union, the relevant law governing Christians in those regions was
the ISA 1925. By this judgement, therefore, the Travancore Christian
Succession Act of 1916 stood superseded by the ISA 1925, with retrospec-
tive effect from 1951.59
One effect of this judgement has been that daughters and sons can now
share equally in their father's property. The judgement was met with
56
In 1926 Section 3 3 - A was added to the Act giving a widow additional rights if the intestate
left n o lineal descendants. However, this section does n o t apply to Indian Christians a n d
several other categories of persons otherwise governed by the ISA.
57
See ' K u r i a n Augusty v. Devassy Aley' in A I R (1957), Travancore-Cochin 1; also see,
Sivaramayya (1978).
58
F o r details of this case see ' M r s M a r y R o y v. the State of Kerala a n d others' in A I R
(1986b), S C C 1011.
59
As a result of this judgement the Cochin Act of 1921 also now stands superseded by the ISA
1925.
immediate protest from the Kerala Christian community on a number of
grounds, some long-familiar: for instance, they argued that it would cause
land fragmentation and would 'open up a floodgate of litigation and
destroy the traditional harmony and goodwill that exists in Christian
families'.60 In addition, there was concern that the retrospective effect
would invalidate bona fide land and money transactions, nullify the Land
Ceiling Act under which land had been distributed to the landless, and
encourage thousands of Kerala nuns to claim their shares of ancestral
property. Most of these fears appear to be unfounded; in any case, only
intestate property will be affected. After Mary Roy a few other Syrian
Christian women have filed cases.61 Meanwhile the protest against the
Supreme Court ruling has been supported by the Synod of Christian
Churches, which conducted a 'pulpit campaign' and arranged legal counsel
to help draft wills to disinherit female heirs (Gandhi and Shah 1991:247).62
The Parsis. The Parsis are today governed by the twice-amended

provisions of the Indian Succession Act (ISA) of 1925. Before 1991 the ISA,
as amended specifically for Parsis in 1939, was applicable, under which the
property of male and female intestates devolved according to separate rules
(Paruck 1977). In the deceased man's property (other than agricultural
land), the widow and each son got double the share of each daughter. If the
man left behind parents in addition to a widow and children, his father
received a share equal to half that of his son, and his mother half that of his
daughter. In agricultural land, the devolution was in accordance with the
Parsi rules of succession applicable prior to the 1939 enactment. Here the
widow and daughter respectively got one-half and one-fourth of what the
son got, and the parents of the deceased got no land. In a deceased woman's
property, the husband, son, and daughter got equal shares. Hence
daughters shared equally with sons in the mother's property but unequally
in the father's property. There were no restrictions on testation by either the
man or woman.
With the passing of the Indian Succession (Amendment) Act 1991 (Act
No. 51 of 1991) the difference in the succession of male and female property
60
P.J. Kurien, cited in G a n d h i and Shah (1991: 247).
61
F o r instance, Aley C h a c k o , an eighty-four-year-old Syrian Christian w o m a n was turned
out of her ancestral h o m e by her son, who seized the seventy cents of land she had been
given as dowry by her parents. Like M a r y Roy, Aley C h a c k o and her five daughters have
petitioned the Supreme C o u r t of India (Manushi 1987)
62
In some cases, wills have also been forged retrospectively. A r u n d h a t t i Roy, M a r y R o y ' s
daughter, recounted the following example to me. Aleykutty T h o m m e n filed a case for her
share in her family's property after her brother refused to part with it. He forged a will
which was rejected by the court. In 1991 she fenced offa part of her brother's rubber estate,
built a shelter there, and claimed she was tapping the rubber, which (I was told) protects her
from eviction under the occupancy laws of the state. She is now said to be m a k i n g a
significant profit from the land.
among Parsis has been removed. Now devolution of intestate property of a

Parsi male or female is as follows. If the intestate leaves behind a widow/
widower and children, these heirs get equal shares. Where there are no lineal
descendants and no widow/widower of lineal descendants, the widow/
widower of the deceased gets half the property. And if there are no lineal
descendants, but there is a widow/widower of a lineal descendent, the latter
gets one-third and the widow/widower of the deceased gets one-third, the
remainder going to other relatives.
All Indians (except in the context mentioned below) can opt out of their
personal succession laws if they have a civil marriage under the Special
Marriage Act of 1954, or have been married under the Special Marriage Act
of 1872, or if their marriage is registered under the Special Marriage Act of
1954, even if it was contracted in another way. For such persons, the Indian
Succession Act of 1925 applies,63 under which (as noted) the widow of an
intestate male with lineal descendants gets afixedshare of one-third in his
property and his children of both sexes inherit equally in the rest.64 The
exception is that after an enactment in 1976, two Hindus (or two Buddhists,
Sikhs, or Jains) marrying under the Special Marriage Act of 1954 will be
governed by the Hindu Succession Act 1956, and not by the Indian
Succession Act.65 In practice, very few persons opt for a civil marriage
which would bring them under the purview of this Act (GOI 1974: 114).
In overview, therefore, today non-Muslim women of most communities in

India (excluding some of the southern states) have fewer legal rights to
property in general, and to agricultural land in particular, than do men. In
this context, on the one hand there have been some significant cases, such as
that of Mary Roy, which by drawing upon constitutional guarantees of sex
equality to challenge persisting gender inequalities in inheritance laws have
opened up yet another chapter in the contestation over women's legal rights
in land that began almost a century ago. This was important even though
(as noted) the judgement on the case evaded the issue. On the other hand,
the placing of land reform legislation beyond challenge on constitutional
grounds (through its inclusion in the Ninth Schedule) has taken away a
major potential means of changing gender-unequal land-related laws still
prevailing in many states.
63
A Hindu male marrying under the Special Marriage Act is automatically severed from the
joint family estate.
64
As noted, Section 3 3 - A of the Act, inserted in 1926, gives some additional advantages to
widows, but it does not apply to several categories of persons, including Indian Christians
as well as Hindus, Buddhists a n d Jains whose property would be governed by the ISA.
65
See Marriage Laws (Amendment) Act 1976 (Act N o . 68 of 1976).
II. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Muslims in India

Let us now consider the history of legal change that affected Muslims in
Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India.66
(1) From custom to the Shariat

As among the Hindus, property inheritance among Muslims in undivided
India (that is, including Pakistan and Bangladesh) showed a considerable
gap between scriptural dictates and actual practice. These dictates gave
Muslim women significant inheritance rights in landed property, although
unequal to men's. But custom usually directed practice. Among many
Muslim communities, which (as noted in chapter 3) followed customs
similar to those prevalent among Hindus in their region of residence, this
meant that (a) a daughter was either totally excluded from the inheritance
of any landed property, or came very low in the order of heirs; a widow
likewise came low in the order of heirs; and (b) both widow and daughter if
they inherited took only a limited interest, rather than an absolute interest
as would have been their due under Islamic law. Among the Mappilas of
Kerala and the Lakshadweep Islands, however, customary practice meant
matrilineal inheritance. In between were Muslim communities among
whom affluent families sometimes gave daughters a share of the patrimony
under the Shariat, or occasionally (especially if sonless) created an endow-
ment (waqf) for them, both of which resulted in a number of Muslim
women from such families controlling property, including land.
The impact of British-Indian court rulings on this situation was mixed,
partly because the British application of Shariat rules was not consistent
across regions and communities, and partly because (as noted above)
custom itself disfavoured women in some regions and favoured them in
others, so that a shift to the Shariat (and away from custom) had mixed
regional implications. On the positive side, among patrilineal groups, in
instances where the Islamic law was strictly applied it strengthened Muslim
women's access to property in two ways: (a) in recognizing their inheritance
shares as dictated by the Shariat where custom disinheriting women would
have ruled otherwise; and (b) in enforcing the woman's right to mehr - the
sum of money or property normally promised to the bride by the bride-
66
I will not be discussing laws governing non-Muslim minorities in Bangladesh and Pakistan,
since they constitute very small sections of these countries' populations. It may be
mentioned, however, that laws concerning such minorities have typically undergone little
reform since the colonial period, and include considerable gender inequalities. For
instance, Hindu women in Bangladesh are governed by the traditional Dayabhaga rules of
Hindu law under which widows and unmarried daughters still have only a limited interest
in inherited property (Ahmed 1978).
groom as part of the marriage contract, but not necessarily paid at the time
of marriage. 67 Customarily, many Muslims treated mehr as a symbolic
amount which they did not actually expect to have to pay in full; hence,
especially among the wealthy, large sums were often pledged for prestige
reasons (Ellickson 1972a; Kozlowski 1989). British court rulings, however,
tended to support the claims of widows, granting them control over their
husbands' property until mehr was paid. Where large amounts had been
pledged, this effectively gave such women lifetime control over much or all
of the deceased husband's property. Once such rulings became known,
many widows filed suits to claim their mehr. The decisions were frequently
in their favour (Kozlowski 1989).
On the negative side, however, was the overriding importance given by
the British to local customs in their dealings with certain communities and
regions which practised patrilineal inheritance. In the Punjab, for instance,
custom (rather than Islamic law) was made the 'first rule of decision'
(Rattigan 1953: 42) in British court rulings in the late nineteenth century,
and daughters were widely excluded from inheritance of land. As Gilmartin
convincingly argues, court decisions relating to the Punjabis stemmed from
two assumptions: (a) a theoretical one, enunciated by Tupper (1881) that
the stability of 'tribal' Punjabi kinship rested on the exclusion of women
from any share in their father's land over which only male agnates were
presumed to have claims (this came to be called the 'agnatic theory'); and
(b) a political one, that it was critical to maintain the Punjabi kinship
structure to ensure the stability of British rule in that region. The Punjab
Alienation of Land Act of 1900 directly identified British political interests
with the protection of 'tribal' customs. Passed to stem the large-scale
transfer of land from increasingly indebted peasants to moneylenders in the
late nineteenth century, which, it was feared, would cause rural instability,
the Act identified some groups, such as the Jats, as 'agricultural tribes'
whose landed interests had to be protected against others, especially
moneylenders (Barrier 1966). The Act thus defined the dominant social
categories with which the British had in large part identified their rule.
Women's interests were subordinate to these political considerations. 68
The 'agnatic' theory expounded by Tupper was based on his compilation
67
The payment of mehr may be deferred in part or in full till the marriage dissolves or till the
h u s b a n d ' s death, although in theory it is payable on d e m a n d at any time (unless a
particular m o d e and timing of payment is specified in the marriage contract). Essentially it
is meant to serve as an economic security to the wife in case of divorce or desertion by the
husband, giving her something to fall back on. In practice not all marriage contracts specify
an a m o u n t , or an economically a d e q u a t e a m o u n t ; nor d o most women d e m a n d payment,
or receive it if they d o . (See discussions in Qureshi 1992, Patel 1979, and chapter 6.)
68
As noted earlier, similar political considerations probably underlay British support for
forced leviratic unions for peasant (especially Jat) widows in the Punjab.
of extensive empirical information indicating the widespread disinheritance

of daughters among Punjabi communities (Hindus and Muslims). 69 But, as
Gilmartin (1981: 156) argues, 'a description of popular practice' was
translated into 'a normative formula supporting the "tribal" system of
kinship, underlying the British administration'; and this increasingly
became the judicial presumption in court decisions, even in the absence of
positive evidence of custom to this effect.
In practice, not all daughters among Muslims in Punjab were customar-
ily disinherited, although it must be recognized that most undoubtedly
were, since the conditions under which they could inherit were highly
restricted, being typically confined to sonless families. For instance (as we
also noted in chapter 3), both Tupper's (1881) and Rattigan's (1953)
compilations of customs indicate that among Muslim communities in the
Punjab daughters did not inherit in the presence of sons, and, among most
groups, not even in the presence of a widow, but a number of groups
(including some Muslim Jats) did give preference to daughters over male
collaterals. Such inheritance was usually in the form of a life interest, and a
daughter was more likely to receive it if married to a near collateral, since
the property would then remain within the family.70 However, under the
agnatic principle of succession formulated by the British, it was assumed
that a daughter could never inherit; that she was excluded as a rule by the
man's male collaterals, and in their absence the estate would pass to the
tribe or the village community (Rattigan 1953: 350; Gilmartin 1981: 155).
Although not all British officials or judges accepted the assumptions
implicit in the 'agantic theory', 71 most appear to have done so; as a result,
'in relation to the rights of women . . . [there] was the increasing tendency of
the courts to seek uniform "tribal" standards of customary succession in
their decisions' (Gilmartin 1981: 157).
69
As noted in chapter 3, in the nineteenth century, British settlement officers collected
extensive information on customs in Punjab, which Tupper largely drew upon.
70
Gilmartin (1981: 164), drawing upon evidence of a high incidence of cousin marriages
among Muslims in parts of Punjab (60 per cent in Attock district in 1921), suggests that
'social foundations may already have existed in the Punjab for an interpretation of
inheritance far different from the "agnatic theory" of customary law propounded in the
late nineteenth century by the British courts'. In my view, this may be overstating the case:
close-kin marriages can at best be seen as a facilitating factor in women's inheritance rights,
in that communities/families practising kin marriages would be more open (or less
resistant) to endowing daughters with property shares; but (as will be elaborated in chapter
8), close-kin marriages are also favoured by many communities in South Asia which are
known not to endow women with shares in landed property. In the examples Rattigan
(1953) cites, close-kin marriages did not enable daughters to inherit in the presence of sons,
but only made such inheritance more likely in the absence of sons.
71
See e.g. Rattigan (1953: 350-1), for comments by some judges who disagreed with a strict
presumption that daughters could not inherit in the presence of male collaterals. Also see
Gilmartin (1981).
The British legal interpretation of Punjabi kinship and inheritance
practices (an interpretation which also had its supporters among the local
population) came to be challenged increasingly in the 1920s and 1930s by
Muslim reformers, who sought to establish the Shariat as the basis of
Muslim personal law. Although political considerations clearly underlay
such attempts at reform, in which women's legal status was in large part
only of symbolic importance, this had the potential for a positive fall-out
for women, given the recognition accorded to female inheritance rights in
the Shariat.72 There was a major move in this direction when a Muslim
member of the Punjab legislature had a bill introduced in the Federal
Legislative Assembly of India calling for the supersession of custom by the
Shariat as the basis of personal law for all Muslims in undivided India
(Parashar 1992).73 The bill, which was taken up for consideration in 1937,
generated substantial controversy.74 In particular, there was strong oppo-
sition from the landowning classes of the Punjab on the ground that the bill
would ruin agriculturists. However, unlike the Hindu Code Bill, whose
clauses went directly against orthodox Hindu opinion, a bill to enforce the
Shariat - the holy law of Islam - could not be opposed openly by the
orthodoxy. Indeed such a bill could be used as a symbolic means of
politically affirming Muslim identity and solidarity. A number of scholars
suggest that it was such considerations, rather than gender equality, which
principally motivated the Muslim League under Mr M. A. Jinnah to get the
Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937, passed.75 Under
the Act, prevailing customs or usage were abrogated in favour of Muslim
personal law (the Shariat), but the Act explicitly excluded from its purview
agricultural land, the devolution of which would continue to be governed
by local customs. The Act was valid for all Muslims of undivided India,
except those in Jammu and Kashmir. While ostensibly meant to extend
women's property rights, effectively the Act hardly served that purpose,
since agricultural land, which constituted the bulk of property held by the
Muslim community, was excluded. The Act therefore served the political
purpose of affirming Muslim identity, without antagonizing the powerful
Punjabi landlords.76
72
Only a few Punjabi reformers were explicitly concerned with women's rights: Gilmartin
(1981: 168) mentions two by n a m e , including a w o m a n : Baji Rashida Latif.
73
Just prior to this, the N o r t h West Frontier Province ( N W F P ) had enacted the N o r t h West
Frontier Province Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1935, establishing the
Shariat as the basis of inheritance rules ( a m o n g other things) and superseding customs
prevailing in the province. O n this Act also see footnote 76.
74
F o r a flavour of the debate in the Assembly, see Jafar et al., eds. (1977: chapter 6).
75
See e.g., G i l m a r t i n (1981), Jalal (1991), a n d Lateef (1990).
76
A s n o t e d earlier, legislation relating to agricultural land h a d been m a d e a provincial subject
in 1935. In this context, it is interesting to n o t e t h a t the N o r t h West F r o n t i e r Province
M u s l i m Personal L a w (Shariat) A p p l i c a t i o n Act of 1935 (which established t h a t in this
The passage of the 1937 Shariat Act differed from that of the Hindu Code
Bill (HCB) in at least two important respects: one, the shift here was toward
and not away from the scriptures, and therefore the Act encountered less
widespread opposition than did the HCB. Two, although the reform was
supported by urban-educated Muslim women and some Muslim women's
groups,77 they do not appear to have played the kind of active mobilizing
and lobbying role that was played by the AIWC and other predominantly
Hindu women's organizations for the codification of Hindu law.78 The
situation changed somewhat after Pakistan was formed, with Pakistani
women's organizations playing a more active role in campaigning for
women's rights, including the reform of Muslim personal law (as discussed
later in this section).
Legal reform affecting Muslim women in the subcontinent took different
regional directions after India's Independence in 1947 and the country's
partition which led to the formation of Pakistan (constituted of a predomi-
nantly Muslim population located in two geographically separated parts,
East and West Pakistan: East Pakistan later became Bangladesh). An early
step taken by the Pakistani State was the passing of the West Punjab
Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1948, which included
agricultural land in its purview. For Muslim women in West Punjab, this
removed one of the main gender disabilities embodied in the 1937 Shariat
Act. (The basic gender inequalities embedded in Islamic inheritance laws
(e.g. a daughter's share is half that of a son) could not, of course, be touched
as long as the Shariat was the basis of law.) This Act (like the 1937 Act)
encountered considerable resistance from the landlord-dominated West
Punjab Provincial Assembly. Its delaying tactics caused several hundred
province the Shariat would be followed in matters concerning inheritance, etc., two years
prior to the 1937 Shariat Act), did include agricultural land within its purview (Mulla 1972:
14). There appears to have been little written about the imperatives behind the N W F P Act,
and whether its enactment involved any significant controversy. The issue of affirming
Muslim identity, rather than any notable concern with women's position, was probably the
main motive behind the Act, since in terms of women's status the NWFP, by all
ethnographic accounts, was and continues to be perhaps the most gender-inegalitarian
region in the subcontinent. From these accounts (see chapters 6 and 7 for details), even in
the late 1970s the province was characterized by severe purdah restrictions on women,
extreme control over female sexuality with any transgressions leading to violence, and little
adherence in practice to the law promising property rights to women.
77
For instance, the Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e-Islam (the All-India Muslim Ladies' Conference)
included women's rights to property as one of its demands and its Punjab wing supported
the Shariat Bill in 1937(Jalal 1991;Minault 1981). The issue ofwomen's (including Muslim
women's) property rights had also come up indirectly in the 1920s during women's struggle
for enfranchisement. As both Hindu and Muslim women pointed out, linking the franchise
with property and income qualifications made for a significant gender gap in electoral
representation, since few women owned property in their own names (Everett 1979).
78
T h e concerns of Muslim women's groups during the early part of this century centred
primarily o n w o m e n ' s education (Minault 1981; M u m t a z a n d Shaheed 1987; Lateef 1990).
urban-educated women to demonstrate outside the assembly chambers.

When the law was finally passed, loopholes remained, allowing families
considerable personal discretion in its application (Jalal 1991). Two years
later, in 1950, the province of Sind also brought agricultural land within the
purview of the Shariat by amending the 1937 Shariat Act for that province.
But it took another twelve years before the West Pakistan Muslim Personal
Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1962 extended the Shariat as the basis of
personal law to the whole of West Pakistan, except the Tribal Areas' in the
NWFP.79 This Act abrogated custom as the basis of law and legally entitled
Muslim women to inherit agricultural property as full owners (and not just
as a life interest), as prescribed by the Shariat. Women leaders and women's
organizations, especially the All Pakistan Women's Association, played a
significant role in pushing for these changes by agitating for reform in
family law and against the gender inequalities of customary laws.80
These changes did not affect the Muslims of East Pakistan (Bangladesh
since 1971), who continued to be governed by the 1937 Shariat Act. But
here women have not been legally disadvantaged by the absence of
subsequent amendments, since even prior to this enactment customs at
variance with Islamic law were not required to be enforced in (undivided)
Bengal: here the Shariat therefore applied also to agricultural land.81
In India too, the 1937 Shariat Act has continued to be applicable even
after Independence. Although this is not a disability for Muslim women in
some states, it is in others. For instance, in Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh, the Act was amended in 1949 to include agricultural land; in 1963,
Kerala did the same.82 In Assam, Maharashtra, and Gujarat, as in Bengal
(noted above), there was no strong presumption in favour of custom even
before the Act was passed; hence here the Shariat rules could be applied to
agricultural land as well.83 But in several states of northwest India, such as
Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, the Act has not
79
The N W F P of Pakistan is administratively divided into T r i b a l Areas' and 'Settled Areas'
(see Ahmed 1980: 9-10). In the Tribal Areas: (a) n o criminal or civil procedure codes of
Pakistan apply; (b) they are not subject to taxes or rents of any kind; (c) they are federally
administered but are attached to the Provincial Government of the N W F P for administra-
tive purposes because of geographic and historical reasons; a n d (d) n o political parties are
allowed, and the voting right is reserved for selected groups.
80
See e.g., Patel (1979), M u m t a z a n d Shaheed (1987), and Rashid (1987).
81
In Bengal, Agra a n d Assam, the 1887 Bengal, Agra a n d Assam Civil Courts Act XII of
1887, along with the Bengal and Assam Laws Act, 1905, established that Islamic law would
prevail on all questions relating to succession, inheritance, marriage, a n d religious
institutions, except in so far as such law h a d been altered or abolished through legislative
enactment (Mulla 1972: 9). Also see Tyabji (1968: 18) a n d Patel (1979: 5). Personal
communications from several Bangladeshi legal experts on laws affecting women, includ-
ing Salma Sobhan a n d Rabia Buyian, confirm this reading.
82
See The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application ( M a d r a s A m e n d m e n t ) Act 1949, a n d
the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application (Kerala A m e n d m e n t ) Act 1963.
83
See Tyabji (1968: 18) for Assam a n d Bengal, a n d Mulla (1972: 11) for M a h a r a s h t r a a n d
Gujarat (earlier in Bombay state).
been amended to include agricultural land, and customs prevailing prior to
the Act (along with land reform laws) still govern the succession of such
land, as they also do in Jammu and Kashmir (which was not covered by the
Act). Under these customs male lineal descendants in the male line are
typically the first order heirs in the inheritance of agricultural land. In these
states, therefore, severe gender inequalities continue to characterize succes-
sion among Muslims in relation to the most important form of property in
the countryside.
While the primacy given to custom in northwest India has worked to the
detriment of Muslim women there, so that a shift to the Shariat in relation
to the succession of agricultural land would be a positive step, such a shift
has had the contrary effect for Indian Muslim women belonging to
matrilineal communities, namely the Mappilas of north Kerala and the
Lakshadweep Islands. The shift has been gradual. British enactments in the
early part of the twentieth century only brought some categories of
Mappila property under Islamic law, leaving other categories of property
untouched. For instance, in relation to undivided joint family estates, the
Mappilas continued to be governed by the Marumakkatayam laws (similar
to those governing the Nayars and other matrilineal communities of
southwest India), under which women had primary inheritance rights in
ancestral property, including land. But for property that was individual in
nature, they were subject to the Shariat. Subsequent enactments in the
1960s, however, extended the jurisdiction of the Shariat to all property held
by the Mappilas. The Mappilla Marumakkathayam (Amendment) Act,
Kerala Act No. 32 of 1963, substituted the word 'Muslim' for Mappila
(Derrett 1968: 528; also see 525-30). Under this Act, the share of any
member of the Mappila taravad would devolve according to the Shariat
rather than the matrilineal law. These amendments subordinated Mappila
women's rights, even in ancestral property, to those of men.
(2) Devolution under Islamic law

Consider now the rules of succession under Islamic law (which were only
touched upon in chapter 3). Today a vast majority of Muslims in India
(where they constituted 11.4 per cent of the population in 1981) as well as
those in Pakistan and Bangladesh belong to the Sunni sect, governed by the
Hanafi School of Sunni law, while a small percentage are Shiites, governed
by the Ithna Ashari School of Shia law. The inheritance rules under both
systems are quite complex, and since they have been excellently spelt out in
legal texts I will not detail them here. 84 But the broad aspects of the Hanafi
See, e.g. Fyzee (1974), Mulla (1972), and Tyabji (1968). For a clear exposition, accessible to
a general reader, also see Carroll (1983, 1985).
school, some of its differences from Shia law, and the variation in its
application across the subcontinent, are outlined below.
Broadly, heirs are divided into three major categories: agnatic heirs who
are almost all male, Koranic heirs who are mostly female, and 'distant
kindred' who include all blood relations who are neither agnatic heirs nor
Koranic heirs. The 'distant kindred' tend to be either women or connected
to the deceased through a female link: e.g. daughter's children, son's
daughter's children, daughters of male agnatic collaterals, children of
female agnatic collaterals, paternal and maternal aunts and their children,
maternal uncles and their children, and so on. These relatives are 'distant'
not necessarily in terms of their blood relationship with the deceased, but in
terms of the likelihood of their ever coming into a share of the inheritance.
The three categories of heirs - agantic heirs, Koranic heirs, and distant
kindred - together comprise the blood relations of the deceased and one
relation by marriage, namely the husband or the wife. In terms of shares
allotted, the implicit rule is : 'Keep the bulk of the property for the [male]
Agnatic Heirs... the persons whose rights were always recognized by tribal
[pre-Islamic] law, and respect the Koranic provisions by giving specific
shares to the persons mentioned in the Koran' (Fyzee 1974: 399),
In specific terms, the shares of particular heirs under the Hanafi school
are as follows: a daughter who is an only child receives a half share of the
deceased parent's estate as a Koranic portion and is excluded by no other
heir. If there are two or more daughters and no sons, they jointly get a two-
thirds share which is divided equally among them. The presence of a son
who is an agnatic heir, however, converts a daughter's right from that of a
Koranic heir to an agnatic co-sharer, which means she gets half of what the
son gets. Sons and daughters are excluded by no other heirs. Similarly a
husband and wife, as Koranic heirs, are excluded by none: the husband
receives a one-fourth share of his deceased wife's property if there is a child
or a son's descendants, and a half share if there are no such heirs. A widow
likewise receives either one-eighth or one-fourth of the husband's estate,
depending on whether or not there is a child or son's descendants. If there is
more than one widow, their collective share is one-eighth (or one-fourth),
shared equally among them. Full sisters and consanguine sisters also share
as Koranic heirs but can get excluded by male agnatic descendants and
ascendants, as can uterine sisters under specific circumstances.85 The
mother gets a basic Koranic share of one-sixth, as does the father.
The Shia law of succession is noted to differ from the Sunni law,
especially in the following respect:86 no relative of the deceased male is
85
Full sisters are daughters from the same set of parents. Consanguine relationships result
when a m a n has children from two or more wives; uterine relationships result when a
w o m a n has children from t w o o r more husbands (see Carroll 1983: 632).
86
See Tyabji (1968) a n d Carroll (1985).
excluded merely on grounds of his/her sex or because s/he is related to the
deceased through a female link. Cognates and agnates are placed on an
equal footing. Hence males and females who are linked to the deceased in
equal blood or degree inherit together, although female shares continue to
be half those of males. For instance, if the deceased leaves a son's son's son
and a daughter's daughter, under the Hanafi school the former as a male
agnatic heir excludes the latter. Under the Shia system the daughter's
daughter has precedence, being deemed a higher 'class' of descendent (that
is, closer by blood to the deceased). Tyabji (1968: 897) clarifies the
underlying differences between the two systems as follows:
[T]he Hanafis take the Quranic alterations of the Pre-Islamic customs literally, and
the Shiites take them as illustrations of underlying principles. The former let the
substratum of the customary law stand unaltered except to the extent to which it is
definitely altered by express provisions of the Quran. The Shiites take each instance
mentioned in the Quran as speaking not only for itself but as indicating the possible
principles.
The Shia system thus has more positive implications for women's
inheritance.
In general, though, under all schools of Islamic law Muslim women have
inheritance rights in immovable property, although unequal to those of
men. These rights also have some degree of protection from testation.
Among the Hanafi Sunnis, for instance, an estate (in full or in part) cannot
be willed to an heir without the consent of all the heirs, but a maximum of a
third of the estate can be willed to a stranger without the consent of the
heirs. Under Shia law, bequest to heirs or non-heirs of up to a third of the
property is permitted without the consent of other heirs.
There are, however, some differences between India, Pakistan, and
Bangladesh in the application of Hanafi law, the main ones being the
following (see especially, Carroll 1983). First, Indian Muslims, without
renouncing Islam or converting to another religion, can opt out of the
intestate succession rules mandatory under their personal law, by either
marrying under or registering the marriage under the Special Marriage Act
of 1954, in which case (as noted) the Indian Succession Act of 1925 applies
to the couple and to their children born thereafter. This option is not
available to Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims.
Second, under classical Hanafi law no non-Muslim could be an heir to a
deceased Muslim. If a Muslim converted to another religion, s/he could not
inherit from Muslim relatives. If a non-Muslim converted to Islam, his/her
non-Muslim relatives who did not convert were denied a share in his/her
estate. However, in India and Bangladesh, with the application of the Caste
Disabilities Removal Act of 1850, an apostate from Islam, or a convert to
Islam, retains the rights of succession s/he enjoyed under the law applicable
to him/her prior to the apostasy or conversion. The Act, however, does not
protect the rights of such persons' relatives (including immediate kin).
Hence a convert from Islam retains her/his rights of succession to her/his
Muslim relatives, but whether or not these relatives can succeed to the
convert's property (and if they do, to what share of it) would depend on the
personal law applicable to her/him at the time of her/his death. Similarly, a
convert to Islam retains her/his pre-existing rights of succession to his non-
Muslim relatives; but the non-Muslim relatives of such a convert would not
have any rights of succession to the convert's property, which would
descend on her/his death according to Muslim law. In Pakistan, however,
the 1850 statute relating to Caste Disabilities Removal was amended in
1963 so as to make it inapplicable to the property of a Muslim. Apostates
from any other religion are not affected by a change of religion, but an
apostate from Islam is disinherited in Pakistan. 87
Third, under traditional Sunni Law a predeceased son's children are
excluded by a surviving son. And a predeceased daughter's children are
excluded by any blood relative who is a male agnate or a Koranic heir. This
is still applicable in India. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, however, with the
passing of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961, the children of a
predeceased child (of either sex) are guaranteed the share of their grand-
father's estate that their parent would have received if alive at the time of the
grandfather's death. This particularly helps a predeceased daughter's
children, who under traditional Sunni law seldom get a share in the
maternal grandparents' estate, while the children of a predeceased son are
often heirs, since in the absence of a surviving son, the son's son is the
highest male agnate, and in the absence of a surviving son or two (or more)
surviving daughters, the son's daughter is a Koranic heir. The 1961
Ordinance allows a predeceased daughter's children (in Pakistan and
Bangladesh) to be admitted as heirs on the same terms as the predeceased
son's children; they are not disqualified merely because their link with the
deceased is through a female. If the predeceased child leaves more than one
child, those of the same sex share equally, and a female gets half the share of
a male.
Fourth, in India, as noted earlier, both Sunni and Shia laws are
inapplicable to the inheritance of certain categories of agricultural land in
many of the states of northwest India, in which customary laws continue to
prevail in this respect. Also the gender biases inherent in the ceiling laws of
most states, which were discussed in detail in the subsection on Hindus,
apply equally to Muslims in India. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, as noted
On the issue of inheritance rules governing apostates in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh,
see Carroll (1983).
earlier, agricultural land is today legally treated like any other property in
matters of succession.
Let us now turn to Sri Lanka where, unlike in India, Pakistan, and
Bangladesh, customary practices endowed women of all the major commu-
nities with significant rights in landed property. Here the shifts from custom
to contemporary law were less dramatic and the process less contentious,
since women's inheritance rights in landed property were never at issue,
although their extent, and the degree of control women could exercise over
the property, were. A significant part of this process, as it related to the
Sinhalese, was described in chapter 4. Below I will focus on contemporary
laws.
III. Sri Lanka

Today, the legal systems operating in Sri Lanka, like those in India, reflect
cross-community differences.88 There are four separate systems in relation
to property and inheritance rights: (a) the Kandyan law, applicable as a
personal law to the Kandyan Sinhalese (identified as the descendants of
those domiciled in Kandy at the time the Kandyan Provinces were annexed
by the British in 1815); (b) the Thesawalamai or Tamil customary law,
applicable to Tamils with a permanent home in the Jaffna province; (c) the
Muslim law which, unlike the other customary systems, is a religious law
and applicable to all adherents of Islam by birth or conversion, and (d) the
General Law, which is an amalgam of Roman-Dutch and English law and
applies to all those who do not fall within the purview of any of the above,
including non-Kandyan Sinhalese, who constitute the bulk of the Sinhalese
population.
The recorded versions of Sri Lanka's legal systems are of relatively recent
origin. The legal customs of the Jaffna Tamils were compiled under Dutch
colonial rule in the early eighteenth century, and those of the Kandyan
Sinhalese by the British in the early nineteenth century. The absence in Sri
Lanka of ancient legal treatises such as the Hindu shastras did mean that
the mistake made by the British during the early part of their rule in India,
of assuming the universal applicability of scriptural texts, was not repeated
in Sri Lanka. Custom received a greater due, not just in stated intent but in
fact. However, biases in the recording and application of custom surfaced
here as well. Both the Dutch and the British sought to establish unambi-
guous and clear rules. The Dutch did so 'as heirs to a Roman law tradition
of clearly spelled out and codified legal rules', and the British, despite their
familiarity with an uncodified common law, did so 'in an effort to ensure
88
For a discussion on these legal systems as they affect women, also see Goonesekere (1980).
objectivity and impartiality in the administration of justice' (Goonesekere
n.d.: 3). As in India, this approach eroded the flexibility that local custom
allowed. Roman-Dutch law became the road to introduce this clarity
wherever convenient. It influenced what was recorded and how 'gaps' in
customary law were filled. Roman-Dutch law was used where 'an institu-
tion [was] unknown to native custom, or custom was silent, or the
customary rule was hostile to the prejudices of the rulers' (Derrett 1968:
284).
The British inherited the Dutch compilations of Tamil and Muslim
customary law and gave them official recognition through legislation.
However, their attempts to compile Sinhalese customs were partial: those
of the Kanydan Provinces were recorded but not those of the Maritime
Provinces. Moreover, there was a gradual confining of recorded customary
laws to selected categories of persons: the Sinhalese in the Kandyan
Provinces and the Tamils in Jaffna thus came to be governed differently
from the Sinhalese and Tamils elsewhere. Islamic law was an exception in
that it 'both consolidated and expanded its significance as a distinct
personal law' (Goonesekere n.d.: 9). These legal recordings impinged on
diverse social and economic contexts and had varied effects on women's
property rights among the Sinhalese, the Tamils, and the matrilineal
Muslims, as discussed below.
The Sinhalese. In chapter 4 (and above) we noted how legal

interventions under the British had led to a legal bifurcation of the
Sinhalese community into the Kandyan Sinhalese and Sinhalese elsewhere.
The Kandyans came to be governed by one set of laws (which drew a good
deal from custom) and the non-Kandyans by another set, viz. first by
Roman-Dutch law and subsequently by the General Law. The historical
shifts in these laws and the factors underlying them were detailed in the
previous chapter. Here it suffices to reiterate that British interventions were
guided by a variety of considerations which often could not be reconciled:
their desire to give weight to local custom and at the same time to come up
with an unambiguous set of rules, their own social history and prejudices
regarding appropriate marriage practices, and their need to establish
control over land for economic gain.
Today property devolution among the Kandyan Sinhalese continues to
be in accordance with customary law (described earlier), which makes a
distinction between the binna and diga forms of marriage, disadvantaging
rf/gtf-married daughters in patrimonial inheritance. Non-Kandyan Sinha-
lese are governed by the General Law, under which women (irrespective of
the form of marriage they contract) have the same rights as their brothers in
their father's estate. Also children of both sexes have equal inheritance
rights in the mother's property. When either spouse dies intestate, the
surviving spouse inherits a half share of the property. A widow may inherit
the whole if the husband leaves no descendants, ascendents or collaterals
capable of inheriting his property. She can also sell her deceased husband's
property (movable or immovable) to pay his debts. Moreover, a married
woman (unlike among the Jaffna Tamils discussed below) has complete
freedom to acquire, possess, and dispose of her separate property, including
land and other immovables and any assets received in dowry (Goonesekere
1980).
The Jaffna Tamils. The original Thesawalami customs governing

the Jaffna Tamils described in chapter 3 underwent a number of changes in
the colonial and post-colonial periods. The changes were the result of a
complex set of interactive factors: legislation, judicial decisions, replace-
ment of obsolete customs by new ones accepted in courts as law, the
application of Roman-Dutch law to certain issues, and so on. Banks (1957)
lists five main changes that resulted from colonial interventions (also see
Tambiah n.d.). First, sometime under Portuguese rule, sex-divided
property distinctions were abolished and parents began to give dowry out
of all three categories of property: chidenam (the wife's ancestral inheri-
tance received as dowry), mudisam (the husband's ancestral inheritance),
and thediathetam (property acquired by either spouse after marriage). The
residual after the marriage of all daughters continued to pass, as before, to
the sons on the death of both parents. The abolition of sex-divided property
gave rise to the possibility of significant shifts in the proportion of property
held as chidenam and mudisam. Earlier, by Banks' assessment, landed
property was more or less equally divided between chidenam and mudisam
lands; and, he argues, the fact that this change occurred without any
apparent difficulty suggests that there was no corporate interest in sex-
divided property among the Jaffna Tamils.
Second, the British, by the Jaffna Matrimonial Rights and Inheritance
Ordinance of 1911, introduced a new order of reversion in case of a person
dying without issue. Now parents could succeed before siblings, grandpar-
ents before parents, and great-grandparents before grandparents. Further,
brothers and sisters were to share equally when the shares were decided.
Since sons inherited post-mortem, if all the daughters were already dowered
the property of a deceased woman would now revert to her parents and then
go to her brothers (and not to her sisters' descendants as earlier), thus
enabling chidenam property to be diverted to the male line.
Third, earlier, sets of half siblings had inherited per stirpes; hence each set
of children, say by two marriages, got a half each of the property, which was
then divided equally within each set. Now each child could inherit per
capita. Fourth, sons could now retain their pre-marriage earnings. Fifth,
people could leave wills, whereas under the original code they did not have
the right of testamentary disposal of property.
These inheritance rules continue today, as does the basic principle that
each spouse's ancestral property returns to its source. Neither spouse
succeeds intestate to the other's ancestral property. The widow holds a life
interest in the husband's mudisam, inheritance rights vesting with the
husband's heirs, although she succeeds to half of the thediathetam property
which has not been disposed of by a will or otherwise.
However, a woman's rights to exercise control over her property are only
sightly less restricted than under the old Code. Under contemporary law, a
woman subject to Thesawalami law has complete power to deal with
movable property (which belongs to her separate estate) without her
husband's consent, but the disposition of immovable property inter vivos,
including land obtained in dowry, still requires his consent as long as she is
in the marital union. Also thediathetam property is now the separate
property of the acquiring spouse; but here again the wife needs the
husband's consent to dispose of her portion of the immovables. It is only if a
woman is maritally separated that she has full control over both her
movable and immovable property. The man, however, even while in a
marital union, has full powers of disposal over the whole of his ancestral
and acquired property without his wife's consent. This remains a major
source of gender inequality in current laws.
The matrilineal (Muslim) Moors. Muslim Moors in the Eastern

Province customarily followed a matrilineal system of inheritance, as
described in chapter 3. Increasingly, though, they have been subject to
orthodox Islamic influence. The history of legislative change for the
Muslims, as for the Sinhalese and Tamils, goes back to the early colonial
period. The initial codification of laws governing the Muslims was under-
taken by the Dutch who, under direction from Batavia, compiled a code
framed by the 'best informed and most learned of the Mohammaden priests
who resided within the government' (Mohan 1985: 54). This Mohammedan
code was circulated for acceptance among the headmen of all Muslim
settlements and became the recognized law in Dutch courts of justice.
According to Goonesekere (n.d. and 1980) the initial emphasis was on the
customary basis of Muslim law; it was thus possible for Muslims to
conform to legal norms which were not always endorsed by Islam.
However, dissatisfaction among the Muslim elite with the Mohammedan
Code led to legislative reform, especially from the second half of the
nineteenth century, enshrining Islamic law as the primary source of law for
the Muslims.
Today it is the Muslim identity of the Moors rather than their cultural
identity which has legal primacy, and Islamic law applies uniformly to all
Muslims in the country. This is the only system of personal law in Sri Lanka
whose application is linked with adherence to a particular religion. Most Sri
Lankan Muslims belong to the Sunni sect and are subject to the Hanafl
school of intestate inheritance (discussed earlier).
Under Islamic law, unlike other personal laws in Sri Lanka, women have
an in-built disadvantage, in that their shares are always less than those of
men related to the deceased in equal degree. However, Muslim women can
dispose of their property as they wish, without seeking their husbands'
permission.
Since the introduction of Islamic law, the customary rules of matrilineal
inheritance are no longer legally applicable. Savitri Goonesekere, a legal
advocate and professor of law in Colombo, in a personal communication to
me in 1985, noted:
Ever since Islamic law was introduced in regard to aspects like marriage and
inheritance, our courts have been disinclined to recognize a concept of 'Muslim
customary law'. Consequently, the trend in our courts in recent years is to reject
customary concepts that are in conflict with Islamic law. It seems unlikely that Sri
Lankan courts will recognize matrilineal customs that seek to modify principles of
Islamic law.
In their everyday practice, however, matrilineal customs continue to be
followed by a number of Moorish communities (as will be described in
chapter 6).
In summary then, in Sri Lanka today, the General Law provides both sexes
with equal rights in land and other property. However, the other personal
laws embody inequalities. The Kandyan law, for instance, disadvantages
the diga-married daughter, who forfeits her right to the father's praveni
(except under special circumstances when this right can be re-established).
Since dowries are not mandatory, a diga-married daughter is not necessar-
ily compensated for this loss. Diga marriage being the commonest form of
marriage today, many married daughters among the Kandyan Sinhalese
thus risk losing their shares. Among the Jaffna Tamils, under the Thesawa-
lamai, the biggest source of gender inequality lies in the jural control
exercised by the husband over the wife's immovable property. Under
Islamic law, the inheritance shares themselves are gender-unequal. How-
ever, under all systems, women have a legal right to land, and bilaterality is
today the dominant underlying principle among all Sri Lankan
communities. 89
The existence of several personal laws in Sri Lanka (as indeed elsewhere in the subconti-
nent) does, of course, create complications where the spouses are governed by different
laws prior to marriage. Here, according to varying interpretations, either the husband's
We now come to Nepal, a part of the subcontinent that was never directly
under colonial rule, although British rule in neighbouring India may have
had an influence on the policies of the Nepalese monarchs. Hinduism was
promoted by different rulers and is today Nepal's national religion.
However, the population is ethnically heterogeneous and a significant belt
of Tibeto-Burman communities, located especially in the hills, did not (and
still do not) follow the Hindu caste system. Customary practices of
marriage and inheritance were therefore diverse, although, as described
below, the local rulers, like the British in India, sought to bring some degree
of uniformity in legal procedures in the nineteenth century.
IV. Nepal
Nepal's legal code (MalukiAin) dates back to 1854. At that time, there were
several customary laws in existence, being followed by the many ethnic
groups who were geographically scattered across the country and often
quite isolated from one another. The Maluki Ain sought to establish a
degree of uniformity in civil, criminal, and procedural law across the
country, drawing heavily upon the shastras but with some modifications to
take account of prevailing customary laws. As initially drawn up, the Code,
described by Hoefer (1979), was structured around a hierarchical system of
caste groupings. Every named caste and ethnic group, including groups of
Tibeto-Burman origin, was assigned to one of five broad caste categories.
At the same time, in the practice of civil law:
various groups of the population were openly or tacitly granted a certain degree of
autonomy. Local traditions regulating marriage, inheritance, etc. ... were often
tolerated as a kind of customary law, and jurisdiction was the concern of ad-hoc
councils composed of village notables. (Hoefer 1979: 40)
Legal changes since 1951 have led to the formulation of a Code which
does not recognize caste as the basis of legal difference. The individual has
replaced caste in the new Maluki Ain which is applicable today.
The Maluki Ain of 1854, as well as the version that exists today, were
clearly superimposed on an array of local customs. This is indicated by the
considerable variation in legal practice across ethnic groups revealed in
recent ethnographies, even though, as Gilbert (1991) argues, what ethno-
graphers observe today is itself a modification of earlier practices, which
would have been affected over time by the Maluki Ain coming into force:
personal law or the General Law of the country could apply to the wife. For instance, where
a man married to a non-Muslim under the General Law converts to Islam and takes a
second wife, it is not clear whether, on his death, the first wife's claim to his property will be
decided under the General Law or under Islamic law (Goonesekere 1980: 18).
Studying intra-family dispute over property, persons and inheritance [among the
Brahmin-Chetri immigrants and the Limbu in Eastern Nepal], I discovered that one
of the side effects of the uniform legislation of the modern family code is that such
disputes, patterns of property management, and gender relations within the family
(which were previously ethnically differentiated) are beginning to conform to a
generic 'Nepali' pattern. (Gilbert 1991: 2)
Be that as it may, the discussion here will focus on the central features of the
Maluki Ain as it exists today in relation to women's property rights. 90
Broadly five categories of property are recognized - ancestral property,
daijo,pewa, self-earned property, andyw/m-and different rules govern each
category, as described below.
Ancestral property. Under the Maluki Ain, wives as well as

unmarried daughters over the age of thirty-five have claims in a man's joint
family property. For instance, in a two-generational coparcenary (the usual
depth of a Nepalese joint family estate in practice), a man, his wife, his sons,
and his unmarried daughters over the age of thirty-five are all coparceners
entitled to a single equal share on partition. (Prior to 1975, the unmarried
daughter's share was half that of her brother's.) If the property remains
undivided for three generations, a man's agnatic grandsons have a claim
only in their father's share of the coparcenary and not in the entire joint
estate. Similarly the wife of a son in a three-generational coparcenary has an
interest (equal to that of her own sons and any unmarried daughters over
thirty-five) only in her husband's share of the joint family estate. Married
daughters have no claims in their father's ancestral property. If the
unmarried daughter over thirty-five subsequently marries, the unconsumed
parts of the inheritance (after deducting her marriage expenses) revert to
the heirs of her father. A sonless man can adopt a son or institute his
unmarried daughter as a dolaji and pass his ancestral property to her, rather
than to his brothers. When she subsequently marries, her children and not
her future husband are heirs to the property.
Sons cannot force partition on the father unless he denies them mainten-
ance. An unmarried daughter likewise cannot force partition and is
expected to live under the guardianship of her parents and her brothers
until her death. A wife, however, can force a partition in her husband's
lifetime, in certain circumstances, such as if she is denied maintenance by
her parents-in-law or husband, or is expelled from home or otherwise ill-
treated, or if her husband takes a second wife. But these provisions
explicitly cover only those situations where the husband has partitioned
90
This discussion draws especially on Bennett (1979) and Gilbert (1991). It includes
modifications resulting from the enactment of the 1963 Nepalese National Code and the
Sixth Amendment passed in 1975, the International Women's Year.
and is head of a coparcenary. Where the husband still holds property jointly
with his father or brothers, it is unclear whether the wife can claim a share or
is merely allowed maintenance. Moreover, a sonless widow whose husband
has died before partition cannot claim a share and live separately from her
husband's family until she is thirty: till then she only gets maintenance.
A divorced woman has rights neither in her father's nor in her husband's
ancestral property. Certain specified causes of divorce, including mutual
consent, allow her to claim maintenance for five years or until she
remarries. But a woman divorced for infidelity or elopement forfeits even
this limited right to material support. A widow is similarly divested of her
share if she remarries or indulges in any sexual activity. Only in case of rape
is her property claim protected.
In other words, a woman does not have the same rights in coparcenary
property as a man. As a daughter she acquires a right only if she remains
unmarried till the age of thirty-five, and loses it if she subsequently marries.
On marriage a woman acquires a right in her husband's coparcenary, but
loses this right too on divorce, or as a widow if seen to be sexually immoral.
A woman's rights are thus fragile and primarily defined by her age, marital
status, and sexual conduct. A man's rights in the coparcenary property,
however, remain unchanged in all circumstances, since he acquires such
rights by virtue of birth.
In addition to women's unequal claims in ancestral land, there are
restrictions on the control they can exercise over what they do get. First,
although a woman who is married, unmarried, or widowed and living
separately can, without anyone's consent, freely dispose of all movable
property that she has inherited, she cannot dispose of more than half the
inherited immovable property. To dispose of any part of the remaining half,
an unmarried woman needs the consent of her father, if he is alive, while a
married woman living separately or a widow need the consent of their adult
sons. Second, as long as a woman is still a member of her husband's
undivided coparcenary, except when she is acting as head of the family, she
cannot undertakefinancialtransactions or enter into contracts on the basis
of her eventual shares in her husband's ancestral property since a creditor,
in case of default, cannot make any claims on that property. She can enter
into such contracts only when she actually succeeds to her share.
Daijo, pewa, and self-earned property, Daijo or dowry property

for women consists of assets (both movable and immovable) gifted to a
woman on the occasion of her marriage by members of her natal family and
by neighbours and friends. It usually consists of jewellery, clothing, and
household items. Pewa (woman's own property) can also include movables
and immovables (and any increment thereof) gifted by the husband or his
coparceners (with the consent of all coparceners), as well as gifts from other
friends and relatives on the husband's side. However, both daijo and pewa
need documentary evidence as to their origin, to protect such property from
being included in the ancestral property of the husband's lineage. A woman
can use both daijo and pewa as she wants, including willing the property to
anyone she chooses. If she leaves no will, however, the assets accruefirstto
the woman's sons living jointly with her, if any; then to sons separated from
her, and failing these to her husband, unmarried daughters, married
daughters, sons' sons, daughters' sons, or the nearest relative on the
husband's side.9 J In other words, sons and husband inherit from a woman's
property before daughters, and it is the heirs of her husband, rather than
relatives from her natal lineage, who come into the order of succession.
Over self-earned property92 similarly a woman has absolute rights of
testation or disposal, again provided she can produce documentary proof
of its origin and show that it did not belong to or derive from ancestral
property. Otherwise the law courts assume that all her property, even that
which is self-earned and in her own name or bank account, is a part of the
coparcenary or family property rather than exclusively hers.
Effectively, therefore, if a woman has no documentary evidence, her
property can be deemed joint family property in which all the coparceners
have equal claims, while she has rights only in the husband's share of the
joint estate.
Juini. This is a share in the ancestral property conferred on a

person for her/his maintenance, in lieu of the ancestral share. In theory, it is
identical in size to an official share of family property, but it can be greater
or less than that share by 5 per cent without being legally challengeable. If it
deviates from the official share by more than 5 per cent, the recipient or
other claimants to the disputed amount can challenge it in court.93 It is a
limited right which guarantees the person economic support but does not
allow her/him the freedom to dispose of the property, and is usually
conferred on widows, old men, or elderly parents. In popular parlance, the
term juini bhag is also used to mean the portion of coparcenary property a
person takes to sustain herself or himself for the rest of her/his life. A father
can, for instance, allot SL juini share for himself when he divides his property
among his children. The share subsequently passes to whichever relative (or
spouse) has cared for him in old age. Today, a daughter too can inherit the
91
T h e daughters were included as fourth and fifth in line only after an a m e n d m e n t in 1975
(Bennett 1979: 23).
92
This is property earned by an individual, before or after marriage, t h r o u g h the exercise of
some skill, or as an heir of a n o t h e r person, or as the recipient of a legal gift or award (see
Gilbert 1991: 13).
93
Personal communication, K a t e Gilbert (faculty, Amherst College, U S A ) 1991.
parents' entire juini portion, and a sister can likewise inherit the brother's
entire juini portion.
In sum, there are several basic inequalities faced by Nepali women under
existing property laws. First, unless a woman has a large (documented)
daijo, pewa, or self-earned property, her access to land is essentially
dependent on marriage and chastity. Men inherit landed property mainly
as sons and their rights are not conditional (like women's are) upon their
age, marital status, or sexual conduct. Second, a woman's right of disposal
over what she inherits is restricted in ways that men's is not. Third a woman
can only obtain credit or make a binding financial transaction if she has
some exclusive property (again, such as documented daijo, pewa, or self-
earned assets), or if she has succeeded to a share in her husband's ancestral
property through partition (in her husband's lifetime), or on widowhood.
In contrast, an indebted husband can draw upon his wife's coparcenary
share in the joint estate and thereby reduce its amount. Also a woman can
lose even her daijo, pewa, and self-earned property unless she can prove its
origin through documents. Fourth, divorce, legal separation, or, in the case
of a widow, the failure to remain chaste, requires the woman to forfeit the
share she gets from her husband's estate (and any increment thereof) in
favour of her husband's nearest relative. Hence even though in theory a
Nepalese woman can claim a share in her husband's joint family estate, in
practice this becomes a concrete reality only if she remains married to him.
V. Summary comments on women's legal rights in landed

property in South Asia
In overview, several features stand out when we examine women's legal
rights in landed property in the five countries under study. Traditionally,
prior to the 1950s, women of most South Asian communities had few and
restricted inheritance rights in landed property. Noteworthy exceptions
were communities practising matrilineal (tribal and non-tribal) and bila-
teral inheritance in India and Sri Lanka. Today, legally in allfivecountries,
most women have significantly greater inheritance rights in landed
property than they did before. However, gender inequalities in laws persist,
with the exception of the General Law in Sri Lanka. These inequalities vary
across regions, being greatest under the Maluki Ain laws applicable in
Nepal.
In relation to succession the gender inequalities are of five kinds. First,
among several religious groups women are entitled to smaller shares than
men. For instance, under Islamic law in all of South Asia, and under the
laws governing some categories of Christians in India, daughters inherit
only a portion of what the sons do. Also under Hindu law in India, the
vestiges of the Mitakshara system give sons but not daughters rights in
certain categories of property. Second, in some cases women are legally
entitled only under restrictive conditions and can lose even those rights in
ways that men cannot: for instance, in Nepal women can inherit as
daughters only if unmarried and over thirty-five, and have to forfeit their
claims if they subsequently marry. Married Nepalese women lose their
rights in their husband's property on divorce or if they are unchaste. And in
Sri Lanka, among the Kandyan Sinhalese, daughters lose their rights in the
patrimony if they marry diga. Third, under several legal systems there are
restrictions on women's ability to dispose of what they might inherit: for
instance, under the Maluki Ain women need the consent of men (fathers,
brothers, or sons, as the case may be) to dispose of part of their inherited
immovable property; and under the Thesawalami Jaffna Tamil women who
are married need the husband's consent for disposing of any part of their
immovable property. Fourth, in India, tribal communities of the north-
eastern states continue to be governed by uncodified customary law under
which, among patrilineal tribes, women's rights in land are severely
circumscribed and typically limited to usufruct. Fifth, in India there are
specific gender biases pertaining to the devolution of agricultural land: for
example, in several states, especially of northwest India, rules of devolution
specified in various land enactments (in the form of tenancy and other land
•reform Acts) which give priority to male agnatic heirs, supersede the rules
of devolution spelt out for Hindus in the Hindu Succession Act of 1956.
Similarly for Indian Muslims, again especially in several northwestern
states, customary practices (and land reform laws) which are more gender-
unequal than Islamic law supersede the latter in relation to the inheritance
of agricultural land.
Apart from the inheritance rules, land reform enactments contain other
serious gender inequalities. For instance, in laws pertaining to the fixation
of ceilings in India, many states allow additional land to a cultivator on
account of adult sons, or adult sons are directly allowed to hold such
additional land in their own right, but adult daughters are given no such
consideration; and in several states, unmarried adult daughters do not
figure either as part of the family unit, or as independent units. Also in the
assessment (and confiscation) of ceiling surplus land, a woman does not
count as an owner in her own right, and her land is clubbed with that of her
husband, leaving her vulnerable to disproportionately losing her land.
These ceiling laws affect all religious communities. Again it is the states of
northwest India which are the worst (although not the only) offenders on
this count.
To bring about gender equality in laws pertaining to property, and
especially those pertaining to agricultural land, these inequalities and
anomalies will clearly need to be addressed. In India their persistence

violates both the letter and principle of gender equality that is promised as a
fundamental right under the Constitution. In addition, certain aspects of
the laws which are not technically gender-discriminatory but become so in
practice, need amendment. For instance, the power of unrestricted tes-
tation under Hindu law in India could, in theory, affect sons and daughters
equally, but given the social bias in favour of endowing males it works to
women's disadvantage. There is thus a case here for limiting testamentary
power to protect female heirs. Doing so would not be without precedent: a
number of legal systems in Europe, for instance, also restrain testamentary
freedom (Sivaramayya 1973: 64), as does Islamic law. Again, there is no
concept of community of property after marriage under Hindu law. Hence,
on divorce, a woman gets no property benefit from any direct or indirect
economic contribution she makes during her marriage toward increasing
her husband's wealth. There is a case here for establishing equal rights for
both spouses in the ownership and control of property acquired by either
spouse after marriage, and for an equal division on divorce.
Removing the noted legal inequalities will involve a continuing process
of contestation and struggle. But if women are to play a significant role as
law makers and not just as law takers, this struggle will need to be
increasingly conducted not only from outside the State apparatus, but also
from within it. Greater representation by gender-progressive women in the
legislatures, the judiciary, and the many tiers of the legal machinery, would
be a necessary part of that process, as would be the creation of a favourable
ideological climate, the absence of which can lead to retrogressive shifts, as
illustrated especially by women's experience under regimes dominated by
religious fundamentalist forces in the subcontinent.
Moreover, legal restrictions are only one part of the story. The other part
(told over the next three chapters) relates to the many formidable obstacles
that constrain women from exercising even the rights they currently have.
From that perspective, although legal transformation is a critical step
forward, it is only one of many steps that must be taken.
Whose share? Who claims? The gap between
law and practice
To my brother belong the storied palaces;

But, alas, for me, the foreign land ...
O my father.1
If I take my inheritance, my brothers will forget they have a sister. If I give
it to them, they will remember me and take care of me if I need them.2
Women of most South Asian communities today have considerable legal
rights to inherit landed property. But to what degree can they exercise their
rights in practice? What factors constrain them from doing so fully? These
questions are addressed here primarily in relation to traditionally patrili-
neal communities, with a brief contrasting look at traditionally matrilineal
and bilateral ones. Although regional differences are highlighted at various
points in the discussion below, a more systematic examination of the cross-
regional variations is deferred to chapter 8.
I. The gap between law and practice in traditionally patrilineal

communities
Ethnographic information, although it is extremely fragmentary, consis-
tently indicates that women in traditionally patrilineal communities of
South Asia rarely realize the rights that contemporary laws have promised
them. Custom still dominates practice. Hence the vast majority of women
do not inherit landed property as daughters, most don't do so even as
widows, and few women inherit in other capacities. To the extent women
inherit, it is usually under very restricted conditions.
As daughters, women's claims appear to enjoy little social legitimacy, and
the greatest likelihood of daughters inheriting is still in sonless families,
1
From a popular Urdu song sung on the bride's behalf by her young companions when a
Muslim bride in northern India departs from her father's house (Stuers 1968: 25; she cites a
number of such songs sung to her by several different informants).
2
A woman in Katni village, Bangladesh, to Hartmann and Boyce (1983: 92-3).
249
usually involving uxorilocal post-marital residence.3 Even then, the woman
does not typically gain full ownership of the land, but serves as a trustee on
behalf of her son who ultimately inherits; occasionally her husband (the
son-in-law) is designated heir. 4 However, endowing even brotherless
daughters is explicitly forbidden by custom by some communities, such as
the Gaddis of Himachal Pradesh (India), among whom women cannot hold
any land, not even self-acquired (Newell 1962). Sonless Hindu couples may
also adopt a male child (usually an agnate's son) and designate him as heir,
thus by-passing the daughter. 5 Cases of daughters inheriting land directly
and unconditionally from parents are therefore rare, especially in the
northern parts of South Asia, and most relate to sonless families.6 In
Ramkheri village (Madhya Pradesh, central India), out of 146 persons with
land registered in their names, 121 (83 per cent) were sons inheriting from
fathers, eight were adopted male heirs, and only seventeen were women. Of
the women, only five were daughters (three inheriting from widowed
fathers and two from widowed mothers), while nine were widows, and three
were sisters inheriting from childless widower brothers (Mayer 1960). In
Nepal, among the Tibetan Chumiks, cases of daughters inheriting land are
almost entirely confined to sonless families, and in these usually the eldest
daughter alone inherits the estate: Schuler (1987: 98) found that 11-12 per
cent of married daughters in her study had inherited estates from their
fathers; all belonged to sonless families. Among them in 8-9 per cent of the
cases the husband was living uxorilocally on the wife's estate, and in the
remaining 3 per cent the woman had combined her inherited estate with
3
The studies listed below all mention one or a few cases of daughters inheriting in sonless
families in their study area: For Bangladesh, see Ellickson (1972a, 1972b), Hoque (1987),
Islam (1974), Jansen (1983), Nath (1984), and Schendel (1981). For India, see Ahuja (1966),
Bailey (1957), Beck (1972), Bradford (1985), Cohn (1961), Fukutake et al. (1964), Gupta
(1974), Harper (1971), Hill (1982), Katiyar (1967), Kolenda (1983), Madan (1989), Mathur
(1964), Mayer (I960), Nag (1960), Nicholas (1961), Orenstein (1965), Phylactou (1989),
and U. Sharma (1980). For Nepal, see Fisher (1987), Hitchcock (1980), Krause (1982),
Levine (1982), Macfarlane (1976), Molnar (1978), Ross (1981), and Schuler (1987). And for
Pakistan, see Aschenbrenner (1967), Elgar (1960), Khan et al. (1984), and C. Pastner
(1971). In Nepal the formal rules of inheritance under the Maluki Ain, as noted, do not
allow married daughters to inherit, but custom has been known to deviate from those rules
in rare cases, especially in sonless families.
4
For India, see Bradford (1985), Cantlie (1984), Gupta (1974), Harper (1971), Parry (1979),
and Sengupta (1966). For Nepal, see Acharya (1981), Furer-Haimendorf (1956), Holm-
berg (1989), and Molnar (1981). And for Pakistan, see Aschenbrenner (1967).
5
For India, see Beck (1972), Bradford (1985), Gupta (1974), Hershman (1981), and Sharma
(1973).
6
Studies mentioning such occasional cases in India are Bailey (1957), Fukutake et al. (1964),
Mayer (1960) and Wolkowitz (1984). Interestingly, some of Wolkowitz's informants told
her, during her research in Andhra Pradesh (south India) in 1975-76, that women of
landholding households of the Kamma caste sometimes inherited land from their mothers,
and were trained in agricultural management by their parents, an aspect of inheritance that
is little documented (Wolkowitz 1984: 121).
Whose share? Who claims? 251
that of her husband. In Bangladesh, only four out of forty Hindu and
Muslim women in Kumirpur village whom White (1992: 129) chose for
detailed study had inherited land as daughters, and they had received less
than their entitled shares. Nath (1984) mentions a somewhat larger number
of cases in Natunpur village (Bangladesh), but again these constituted only
a small percentage of those with legal claims, and many involved uxorilocal
residence by the husband.
In this context, it is important to examine Goody's (1990: 287) interpre-
tation of the fact that daughters among patrilineal Hindu families in India,
'even if not normally allowed to inherit, may indirectly act as residual heirs
when in the absence of brothers, they pass on the estate to their sons'. He
argues:
Great significance should be given to this institution of the 'appointed daughter'
who acquires a marrying-in husband or an adopted son. Because once the claim of a
brotherless daughter is admitted, and it is an extension from her claim on movables
in the shape of the dowry, the door is opened for women to share in the family lands
themselves even when they have male siblings.
This argument is problematic on at least two counts. First (as also noted in
chapter 3), the daughter is 'appointed' to receive the father's property
essentially to pass it on to her son (the grandson). The property she receives
in that capacity thus cannot be seen as 'her claim' over the father's property,
but is merely a means used by her natal family to keep landed property
within the patrilineage. From the woman's point of view, there is a critical
difference between having a right to a share in family land which she can
control and use as she pleases (including, if she wishes, passing it on to
daughters), and being used essentially as a vehicle for the transfer of
property from one generation of men to another, namely from her father to
her son. Second, as noted in chapter 3, a dowry in movables is not
equivalent to an inheritance share in land; and although a popular fiction is
maintained that dowry constitutes a daughter's inheritance share, in fact
the difference between a dowry in movables and a share in landed property
is implicitly well recognized by communities throughout South Asia. As
elaborated later in this chapter and the next, there is widespread resistance
to the idea of daughters getting any share in landed property in northern
India, 7 even in communities which may give daughters dowries or recog-
nize the custom of 'appointed daughters', an empirical reality which does
7
The terms 'northern India' and 'north India' are used here and elsewhere very broadly to
distinguish the northern parts of India from the southern peninsula (viz. 'south India') and
the northeastern (mainly tribal) states. In much of the discussion in the book, however,
finer geographic distinctions have been drawn between the northwestern, western, central,
and eastern regions of'northern' India. The states included in these four regions, as well as
in the southern and northeastern ones, are as follows: northwestern includes Haryana,
not suggest that this custom has opened any doors for daughters in general
to shares in the family land.
In families which do have sons, the chances of daughters inheriting land
are usually very low, although within this general pattern there are regional
and community-wise variations. For instance, there is some indication that
among Muslim communities, with the operation of the Shariat, daughters
with brothers now inherit occasionally.8 From the few studies that discuss
the conditions under which this takes place, it appears to be more likely
where the daughter is married within the village or is married to a cross-
cousin:9 both in-village and close-kin marriages keep the land within the
overall control of the extended family. The amounts inherited, however, are
usually less than the daughters' legal shares. Also many more appear to be
formally recorded as landowners than acquire the land in practice. For
instance, Aschenbrenner (1967:61) found in Pakistan Punjab that although
many daughters were listed as landowners in the village land records,
indications were 'that they usually do not claim their rights and that trouble
results when they do'. Similarly, in the Makran region of Baluchistan, C.
Pastner (1971: 157) found that in 1961, out of 16,157 registered owners of
agricultural land, 4,017 (that is 25 per cent) were women; but she also notes
that the figures do not differentiate between daughters and widows. Hence
the percentage of daughters among the landowners would be less than this.
An additional possibility is that in a number of these cases noted by
Aschenbrenner and Pastner, families have registered land in women's
names to evade land ceiling laws, without involving real land transfers to
the women.
Be that as it may, all the above instances of daughters inheriting land add
up to only a small proportion of those so eligible; most village studies
(especially those relating to Hindu communities) mention only one or two
cases or none at all. In Chen's (1992) recent survey on widows in seven states
Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh; western
includes Gujarat and Maharashtra; central includes Madhya Pradesh; eastern includes
Bihar, Orissa, and West Bengal; southern includes Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala,
and Tamil Nadu; and northeastern includes Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur,
Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura.
8
For Bangladesh, see Arens and Van Beurden (1977), Cain et al. (1979), Jahangir (1979),
Nath (1984), Qadir (1981), Westergaard (1983), and White (1992). For India, see Roy
(1984). For Pakistan, see Alavi (1972), Aschenbrenner (1967), Lindholm (1982), C. Pastner
(1971), and Rouse (1988).
9
The village headman in Aschenbrenner's (1967) study for Pakistan Punjab emphasized that
the daughters who inherit are those married within the village; and in the one case of such
inheritance mentioned by Lindholm (1982) for the Swat region (which falls in the 'Settled
Areas' of the NWFP), the woman married her father's brother's son. (It may be recalled
from chapter 5 that the NWFP of Pakistan is administratively divided into two regions:
Tribal Areas' and 'Settled Areas'.)
Table 6.1: Widows in India who inherited land

as daughters
Total Those who

sample inherited1
Region/State No. No. %
Northern India 262 15 6

Bihar 71 2 3
Rajasthan 49 1 2
Uttar Pradesh (hills) 50 1 2
West Bengal 92 11 12
Southern India 283 40 14
Andhra Pradesh 79 12 15
Kerala 104 26 25
Tamil Nadu 100 2 2
All regions 545 55 10
]
Note: Unfortunately, there is no information on how
many of the widows' natal households possessed land.
The percentage inheriting would be somewhat higher if
calculated only for widows who came from landed
parental households, but they would still constitute only
a small proportion of those with legal claims.
Souree: Chen (1992)
of India, in only 10 per cent of her sample of 545 Hindu households with
widows had the widows inherited as daughters (table 6.1).10 In four states
(Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh hills, and Tamil Nadu) the percentage
was less than three, while in three states (West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and
Kerala) it was greater. The north-south contrast was also marked: 6 per
cent of the women in the northern states, relative to 14 per cent in the
southern ones, inherited. Kerala, as might be expected (given a significant
presence of traditionally matrilineal groups), had the highest percentage
inheriting. What is less expected is the noticeable (albeit not dramatic)
deviation of West Bengal from the typical northern Indian pattern of very
few daughters inheriting. The possible reasons for this deviation are
discussed further on. What is striking in overall terms, however, is that in all
the states, including Kerala, a significant majority of women, although
legally eligible, do not inherit as daughters.
1
° Information on what percentage of widows inherited from their deceased husband's estates
is not yet available.
Inheritance aside, in rich families fathers or brothers sometimes grant
women usufruct rights to small plots,11 or gift them some land, especially
but not necessarily as a part of dowry.12 In India, land gifts in dowry are
rare and tend to be confined to the southern states.13 Among the Chumik of
Nepal, on the other hand, they are not uncommon, but the proportion of
family land given as dowry is neither large nor equivalent to the shares that
sons inherit: in 46 per cent of the marriages examined by Schuler (1987:
102-3), daughters had received land as dowry, but (as noted in chapter 3) in
families with both sons and daughters the total value of the dowries,
including land, on average came to only 10 per cent of the family's assets,
while the sons received the rest. In some tribal communities, unmarried
daughters customarily have usufruct rights to land, as among the Ho and
Santal tribals of Bihar in eastern India. In fact, a number of Ho women
today choose to remain unmarried for the sake of this access, although they
lose these rights if made pregnant by a Ho man or if raped by or discovered
to have had a sexual liaison with a non-tribal (Kishwar 1987). Similarly
Phylactou (1989) notes that one of the important reasons why many women
in the Tibetan community he studied in Ladhakh remained unmarried and
became Buddhist nuns, was because they were then entitled to an indepen-
dent house and independent usufruct rights infieldsbelonging to their natal
families. A few also cultivated land leased to them by the monastry.
As widows, women's claims enjoy somewhat greater social legitimacy
than their claims as daughters. In India, for instance, the perception that a
widow has a right to a share in the deceased husband's land appears to be
fairly widespread.14 In practice, however, the fragmentary available evi-
dence suggests that many of those who are eligible to inherit do not, and
those who do inherit do so mostly on severely restricted terms. In a rural
Hindu household in India, for instance, the extent and nature of rights that
a widow enjoys in her husband's land are contingent in practice on a variety
of factors, such as whether or not she remains single and chaste; whether she
11
For India, see Archer (1984), Furer-Haimendorf (1979), Haekel (1963), Kishwar (1987),
and Standing (1987). For Nepal, see Molnar (1981), and Schuler (1987). And for Pakistan,
see Lindholm (1982).
12
For Bangladesh, see Hartmann and Boyce (1983), and Wallace et al. (1988). For India, see
Epstein (1973), Furer-Haimendorf (1979), Gough (1981), Karve (1965), Lakshmanna
(1973), Laxminarayana (1968), Madan (1975), Tambiah (1973), and Shobha Srinivasan
(personal communication based on fieldwork in Tamil Nadu). For Nepal, see Andors
(1976), Fricke et al (1986), Hitchcock (1980), Rajaure (1981), and Schuler (1987). And for
Pakistan, see D. Merry (1983).
13
The following studies which mention land gifts in dowry all relate to south India: Epstein
(1973), Gough (1981), Lakshmanna (1973), and Shobha Srinivasan (personal com-
munication).
14
Personal communication from Marty Chen (Harvard Institute for International Develop-
ment, 1993) and from a former sarpanch (head of the village council) in Jhunjhunu district,
Rajasthan, 1993.
has sons and her sons (if any) are minors or adults; whether the deceased
husband has partitioned from the joint family estate before his death; and
so on. To begin with, as under traditional Hindu law, a widow usually loses
her right if she remarries, is unchaste or leaves her husband's village on his
death. 15 If she has only daughters or is childless she often gets only
maintenance, 16 although there are studies relating to some communities of
northwest and central India that mention Hindu widows with no children
or only female children inheriting a limited interest in the husband's
estate: 17 unfortunately, with the exception of Mayer (1960), discussed
below, none indicates the actual number of such cases. A woman with
minor sons is usually allowed use of the husband's estate as a trustee on
behalf of her sons till they grow to adulthood, after which she is expected to
live with one of them. 18 On adulthood the sons are usually likely to
partition the land during their mother's lifetime; in such cases a part of the
land may well be marked out as hers, but it is generally expected to be
cultivated by the son she lives with, rather than designated for her
independent use. 19
In most cases women do not inherit the absolute estate they are entitled to
under contemporary law. (The regional variations in this are discussed
below.) A widow whose husband had not separated from the joint estate
before death is likely to be given only use rights to a part of his share without
her name being entered into the records: I came across more than one case
in Kithoor village (Rajasthan) of a widow with a minor son cultivating a
small portion of her deceased husband's share in the joint estate which was
formally still in the name of the father-in-law.20 If the joint property is
partitioned before the husband's death, a widow with sons is more likely to
be able to get a formal registration of her rights in her husband's land, but
usually this is done jointly with the sons: for instance, in one recent survey
of two villages in Rajasthan (northwest India), sixteen out of the fifty-seven
Hindu widows surveyed (that is, 28 per cent) had their names in the land
records in relation to their deceased husbands' lands. Of these, one was
sonless and the land was solely in her name; the remaining fifteen were
registered jointly with their adult sons (Nandwana and Nandwana 1992).
The same picture obtains from my survey in March 1993 of land records in
15
See H a r p e r (1971), Mayer (1960), Parry (1979), and N a n d w a n a and N a n d w a n a (1992).
16
This was the widespread perception a m o n g widows and other villagers I spoke to in
K i t h o o r village (Rajasthan) in 1987. Also see H e r s h m a n (1981) for the Indian Punjab and
H a r p e r (1971) for K a r n a t a k a .
17
See M a d a n (1989), Mayer (1960), a n d Parry (1979).
18
See G u p t a (1974), H a r p e r (1971) and H e r s h m a n (1981).
19
Jean Dreze ( L o n d o n School of Economics), personal c o m m u n i c a t i o n , 1992; a n d Chen and
Dreze(1992).
20
In general, village land records are poorly maintained and seldom kept up-to-date (see
W a d h w a 1989, and the discussion on this later in this chapter).
three villages in Jhunjhunu district (Rajasthan): this showed that of the
thirty-six women with land in their names, thirty-four were widows and two
were daughters. Of the widows, all the twenty-seven who had sons were
registered along with their sons. I understand from a former sarpanch of
this region that the registering of widows' claims has only become common
here over the past four or five years.
Having land in her name does not mean that the widow is allowed full
control over it, to use, mortgage, sell, or will it as she wants. In the above
surveys in Rajasthan, the popular perception among the villagers was that
this land was meant for the widow's maintenance rather than for her
independent control, use, or transfer. Nevertheless, formal registration is a
step forward in establishing a woman's legal claim.
Within this overall quite restricted inheritance of land by Hindu widows
in India, there are, however, some noteworthy regional variations within
north India and between north and south India. For instance, Dreze (1990
and personal communication) found that in his 1988 survey of three villages
in north India (one each in West Bengal, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh), in
the West Bengal village, in five out of nineteen Hindu landed households
with widows, all the land owned by the family was in the widow's name; 21
and in two others, the land was still in the deceased husband's name but
seen as belonging to the widow. These together constituted 37 per cent of
the cases. Five of these seven widows with land had adult sons. Dreze
contrasts this with his Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh villages, where there were
virtually no cases of widows with adult sons who had land in their own
names, although there were cases where a small share of the family land was
allotted for a widowed mother and cultivated by whichever son looked after
her. In terms of daughters' rights also, we had noted from Chen's (1992)
data that West Bengal was somewhat more progressive than other states in
northern India. If this is indeed a pattern, it warrants further investigation.
The reasons could lie in factors such as the following: the Dayabhaga
inheritance system that historically prevailed in Bengal, which was some-
what more favourable toward widows and daughters than the Mitakshara
system prevailing elsewhere in the North; 22 the social reform movements in
Bengal in the nineteenth century; and the less strict norms of female
seclusion in Bengal (for instance, veiling is not customary among Hindus in
Unfortunately, in four of these cases there was no information on how the women got the
land; the fifth one had inherited it from her husband.
As detailed in chapter 3, under Dayabhaga a sonless widow was entitled (as a limited
interest) to her husband's entire estate, while under Mitakshara she had a limited interest
only in his separate property. We had also noted how in late nineteenth-century Bengal,
some wealthy sonless widows were found to be managing zamindari estates in which they
had inherited a limited interest.
Bengal, as it is in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan) which would allow women
greater freedom in affirming their claims and in managing land. 23
The above patterns relating to north India, in turn, contrast in overall
terms with south India, in the likelihood of widows inheriting. Preliminary
results from Marty Chen's recent survey on widows indicate that widows'
land claims are relatively better recognized in the south than in the north
(personal communication, 1993).24 Also in chapter 3 we noted that even in
the medieval period a number of sonless widows of wealthy families in
south India had possession of their husbands' estates and enjoyed some
degree of freedom in using their wealth for endowing temples. Again,
Gough (1981: 208-9), on examining land records in Kumbapettai village of
Tamil Nadu, found that in 1952, 19.4 per cent of all registered landowners
were women (including both widows and non-widows). This represented a
notable increase over 1827, when there were no female registered lan-
downers in the village; land shares were then generally held in joint estates
by male heirs, and women had rights only of maintenance. It also
represented an improvement over 1897, when 12.2 per cent of registered
landowners were women: by then the partitioning of extended joint family
estates had become more common and land had begun to be registered in
individual names. Also as land shares became individual property, men
sometimes gave small plots to daughters as dowry.
Among many tribal groups in India and among Hindu and Tibeto-
Burman communities in Nepal today, the pattern appears to be one of
recognizing, at best, the widow's right to a limited interest in her deceased
husband's estate if she has no sons, 25 and to allow the widow who has
minor sons to hold the land on their behalf. Among the Kham Magar
studied by Molnar (1978), a sonless widow gets half the husband's estate as
23
Also see the discussion in Dreze (1990). Dreze gives more credit than appears warranted to
communist rule in West Bengal in promoting women's property rights. Certainly (as noted
earlier) the land reform programme (Operation Barga) launched by the West Bengal
government in 1978 showed no significant deviation from the male-biased land distribution
policies followed elsewhere in the country.
24
The percentage of widows in the rural female population is also greater in the southern
states relative to the northern, especially the northwestern ones. Possible reasons for this,
suggested by Dreze (1990: 28-33), include northern India's lower female life expectancy
rates, greater age differences between the spouses, and acceptance of levirate. Also, he
hypothesizes, widows may have lower survival chances than other categories of women in
northern India.
25
F o r Nepal, see Krause (1982), Macfarlane (1976), M a r c h (1979), M o l n a r (1978), a n d
Rajaure (1981). There is also an occasional case of a Nepalese w o m a n living separately
from her h u s b a n d but continuing to use part of the latter's land which, in due course, would
be inherited by her son (see e.g. Schroeder and Schroeder 1979). F o r tribal groups in India,
see F u r e r - H a i m e n d o r f (1979), Haekel (1963), Kishwar (1987), a n d Sachchidananda
(1978). In F u r e r - H a i m e n d o r f s (1979) study of the G o n d s of A n d h r a Pradesh, a sonless
widow keeps the h u s b a n d ' s estate only if she marries a m e m b e r of the h u s b a n d ' s kin, a n d
forfeits it if she marries anyone else.
a limited interest, but one with minor sons can hold the whole of it. Among
the Tharus, Sherpas, Tamangs, Thakuris, and Chetris of Nepal, the
chances of a widow without sons getting any land at all are noted to be
small. 26
A sonless or childless Hindu widow (in both India and Nepal) sometimes
adopts a son, usually her husband's brother's child, and designates him as
heir. Among the Kham Magar, Molnar (1981) found that six widows in her
study village had done so. Gough (1981) notes several cases in her village
study in Tamil Nadu. 27 And in Ramkheri village (central India), of the nine
widows who had inherited land, Mayer (1960: 244) found that three had
adopted their husbands' agnates as heirs, two others had young sons in
whose names the property would be registered when they were old enough
to work it, two had invited a daughter's husband to live uxorilocally to
work the land which the daughter and son-in-law would later inherit, while
only two had no heirs living with them and farmed the land through tenants
or labourers. In other words, land in the hands of widows usually tends to
pass to male heirs in the next generation.
Of course even a limited interest in land, although not equivalent to full
property rights as granted under contemporary law, is of significance, since
it gives the woman a right to the produce from the land and can be an
important source of economic security. It also restricts the access of her
deceased husband's relatives to that piece of property for the duration of
the woman's lifetime. Therefore, even women's limited interest in land can
be resisted strongly by their husbands' kin, as will be discussed later in this
chapter.
In Muslim communities, although most widows again inherit only as
legal custodians on behalf of sons, 28 there are also cases of widows with
land in their own names. 29 On the whole, though, the women who inherit
would still be only a small percentage of those legally eligible. In Bangla-
desh, in a study of Shaheenpur village, only five out of nine widows were
found to have received their shares (Ellickson 1972b); and in the villages of
26
See M a r c h (1979) on the Sherpas and T a m a n g s ; K r a u s e (1982) on the Thakuris and
Chetris, and Rajaure (1981) on the T h a r u s .
27
She found that sometimes disputes arose between widows and their a d o p t e d sons over
control of the property: in such cases the court usually decided in favour of the adopted son,
or an out-of-court settlement took place, with the land being divided between the
contending parties or with the w o m a n agreeing to pay income to the son.
28
F o r Bangladesh, see Aziz (1979), H a r t m a n n and Boyce (1983), J a h a n (1975), and
Taniguchi (1987). F o r Pakistan, see A h m e d (1980). A h m e d notes that in the 'Settled A r e a s '
of the N W F P (Pakistan), a widow can only keep her h u s b a n d ' s land and house if she has a
son, and in the n a m e of the son.
29
F o r Bangladesh, see Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982), Aziz (1979), a n d Ellickson (1972b).
F o r Pakistan, see A k h t a r and A r s h a d (1958), Aschenbrenner (1967), Asha (1971), D .
Merry (1983), Qadir (1981), and Rouse (1988).
Bogra and Pautakhali, 14 and 28 per cent respectively of the sampled

widows and deserted women had some land, most owning under 0.5 acres
(Qadir 1981). Of the twenty-five rural widows interviewed by Aziz (1979),
only nine had sufficient agricultural land for subsistence, while the rest were
reduced to beggary. However, there is some indication from recent research
that where fathers or brothers do not voluntarily give them their shares,
village women in Bangladesh are beginning to contest this, albeit in limited
degree, as discussed later in this chapter.
In capacities other than as daughters and widows, women (especially
among Hindus) virtually never get land. It is very rare for a sister to inherit.
Mayer's (1960) is one of the few ethnographies that mention such cases, in
this instance of three sisters inheriting from brothers who were widowers
and issueless. There are also likely to be cases in Maharashtra and Gujarat
(formerly part of Bombay Presidency), where (as noted in chapter 3) the
rights of sisters were traditionally recognized, even while they were denied
elsewhere.
The possibility of rural women acquiring land through means other than
inheritance are usually small. In rare cases, women are observed to have
received gifts of small plots from husbands, typically in the form of a limited
interest. 30 Theoretically it is of course possible for women to buy land from
their own resources. But the barriers to this can be three-fold: limited
economic resources in women's hands, even in households where their
husbands' families or natal kin are well-off; difficulties in undertaking land
transactions without male mediation; and (as noted in chapter 1) the dearth
of arable land for sale except in a generalized crisis context, as during a
drought or famine. Hence cases of women purchasing land are few, and the
plots purchased are usually very small. 31
Against this backdrop, it is necessary to emphasize that the widespread
disinheritance of women as daughters is a critical gender disadvantage
which cannot be made up even if women's rights as widows are fully
recognized. Widows constitute only a small percentage of the rural female
population in South Asia, and most belong to the upper age groups: in
India, according to the 1981 census (see GOI 1987c: 47-8), widows
constituted only 11.3 per cent of the rural female population over the age of
ten, 53 per cent of whom were sixty years of age or older, and 76 per cent
were over fifty.32 Hence, once disinherited as daughters, most rural women
30
See e.g. N a g (1960), Plunkett (1973), a n d Sachchidananda (1968).
31
H a r t m a n n a n d Boyce (1983), Jones (1977), a n d N a t h (1984) mention such cases.
32
In Bangladesh, Nepal a n d Pakistan, likewise, by these countries' 1981 censuses, widows
constituted 12.2, 5.5, a n d 6.8 per cent respectively of the rural female populations over ten
years of age (see, Government of Bangladesh 1984: 65, Government of Nepal 1987b: 39,
and Government of Pakistan 1985b: 41).
for the major part of their lives would have no land of their own, while males
whose inheritance claims as sons are well recognized, would. This places
women in a significantly weaker bargaining position vis-a-vis men, both
within and outside the family.
Also, as a result, women's situation in case of divorce can be one of
extreme vulnerability, as is apparent especially in Bangladesh today, where
the rate of male-initiated divorce and desertion is high. The Bangladesh
Fertility Survey of 1975 showed that one-fifth of all first marriages ended in
divorce or separation. And while most of the men remarried, a large
percentage of the women did not (Miranda 1980: 83). The chances of
women not remarrying are especially high if they have children. Several
divorced and widowed women in Bangladesh told Arens and Van Beurden
(1977: 57) that a new husband would refuse to take their children, since 'the
children would only mean more mouths for him to feed', and that they
would never leave their children to remarry. At the same time divorced
women, Hindu or Muslim, and not only in Bangladesh but in much of
South Asia, have no effective means of making claims on the incomes of
their children's fathers for child support. Islam recognizes a woman's right
to ask for payment of the sum pledged as mehr if the husband divorces her,
but in practice mehr is seldom demanded or paid. 33 Also, there is no legal
recognition of a community of property, whereby property acquired by
either spouse after marriage would be owned jointly by both. Hence a
divorced rural woman may easily be left with little or no economic
support. 34 In such a context inheritance of land would make a critical
difference to her ability to sustain herself and her children. What then
prevents women from claiming their shares, especially as daughters?
II. Barriers to women inheriting land in traditionally patrilineal

communities
(1) 'Volun tary' giving up of claims

Typically women give up their claims in parental ancestral land in favour of
their brothers, for a complex mix of reasons. Village women's explanations
33
F o r Bangladesh, see Alamgir (1977), Kabeer (1985), and L i n d e n b a u m (1981). F o r India,
see Jeffery (1979). F o r Pakistan, see A h m e d (1986), K u r i n (1981), and Lindholm (1982).
Also see the general discussion in Qureshi (1992). Indeed it is on the assumption that mehr
will not need to be paid that sometimes quite large sums are promised by the g r o o m ' s side
a m o n g wealthy families (see e.g. Ellickson 1972a). A similar custom of lub is found a m o n g
the Baluch (C. Pastner 1971): this represents a promise of payment by the h u s b a n d in the
event of divorce, and often includes land, trees, water rights, etc.; effectively this is a part of
the h u s b a n d ' s expected inheritance from his father, which may remain in the father's name
till the latter's death.
34
The issue of a divorced Muslim w o m a n ' s right to maintenance became a source of major
legal debate and agitation in India in 1985-86, in the context of the Shah Bano case. F o r a
for this have a common refrain across the subcontinent. In north India, an
old woman from Punjab says:
If a brother and sister are on good terms then ... she will tell her brother that she
does not want her share of the inheritance. After all, if he eats, then she can eat (U.
Sharma 1980: 57).
In Rajasthan I heard the following views commonly expressed:
A sister gives up her claim in order to keep the passage to her natal village open.
If the sister claims the land, then she will have only the land. But if she maintains
good relations with her brothers, she will have a constant flow of gifts each time she
visits them.
If a woman stakes her claim, her brother's wife will refuse to invite her home or
speak to her.
Women in Katni village (Bangladesh) expressed very similar views to
Hartmann and Boyce (1983), as indicated by the quotation at the beginning
of this chapter.
The crucial importance these women place on their relationships with
brothers and on access to their natal homes can only be understood in the
context of their overall life situations: early arranged marriages; patrilocal
residence and village exogamy; economic, social, and physical vulnerability
in case of marital discord, ill-treatment, marriage break-up or widowhood;
and ritual connections and strong emotional ties with brothers. Access to
the natal home can be a significant element in women's economic security
and fall-back position, and brothers are a critical link to the natal home
even when the parents are alive, but especially after their deaths. These
factors vary in strength across communities and regions (as will be
elaborated in chapter 8), and with them the criticality of the brother's
support in a woman's life, the situation described below being especially
applicable to the northern parts of the subcontinent.
Visits to the natal home often serve as women's main or only respite from
the drudgery of housework, childcare, and fieldwork, and represent periods
of rest and personal freedom:
[A]s each woman reaches her father's house, she will uncover her face, shedding not
only the veil of purdah but also the burden of her daily worries ... A visit to her
father's house gives a woman her only chance of a holiday - there she can escape the
tensions of married life, the monotony of constant work and the demands of her
children ... For a brief moment, she recovers her girlhood identity. (Hartmann and
Boyce 1983: 92, on rural women in Bangladesh)
brief but useful overview of this case, and more generally of the problems of obtaining
maintenance faced by divorced women, Hindu or Muslim, see Gandhi and Shah (1991:
237-42).
These visits become particularly important where village exogamy, long
distance marriages, and marriages with strangers are the norm, as they are
in much of northwest India. Women married into another village are
treated with indulgence and as guests during their visits to their natal
homes, and the behavioural strictures on daughters-in-law are relaxed for
daughters. 3 5 In villages in northwest India, it is generally easy to distinguish
between daughters and daughters-in-law, since the former leave their faces
uncovered on the streets and the latter usually cover their heads and faces
with the edge of the sari or dupatta.36 A father in Uttar Pradesh voices a
commonly felt sentiment in the words: 'O, she is with us for a while. Let her
play, sing and dance, enjoy life as she must, for she may have no rest or
leisure in her husband's place' (Majumdar 1954:87).3 7 This freedom takes a
most unusual form in the Jaunsar-Bawar region of Utter Pradesh: here
women are free to take lovers during visits to their natal homes, but are
expected to be strictly faithful in their marital villages (Majumdar 1955).
Visits to the natal village usually provide women who have married into
distant villages the only occasion when they can be with those with whom
they have the closest emotional ties. Particularly in the early years of
marriage, a month-long stay every year is not uncommon. 38 In some
communities of both India and Pakistan, the birth of the first child also
takes place in the woman's parents' home. 39 Brothers play a significant role
in the maintenance of this link. Especially where long distances are
involved, it is the brother who comes to escort a woman to and from her
natal home. 40 In many Hindu communities of northwest India, and among
the Brahmins and Chetris in Nepal, parents and elder relatives are barred
from visiting a woman in her marital home because accepting the hospita-
lity of a son-in-law or of his family would go against the strict logic of
kanyadan, 'the gift of the virgin daughter'. 41 Lewis (1958: 188-9) quotes
Ibbetson's 1883 report as follows:
35
For India, see Wadley (1976), Minturn and Hitchcock (1966), and Palriwala (1991); also
personal observation in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
36
This is graphically illustrated in an ethnographic film on a Haryana village, entitled k Dadi's
Family', directed by Michael Camerini and Reena Gill (1982). Also see Wadley (1976). A
dupatta is a long piece of cloth covering the bosom which can also be used as a veil.
37
Minturn and Hitchcock (1966: 29) similarly comment: 'She is treated as a special guest with
no household duties. She spends her time visiting friends, chatting, singing and playing
games.' Also see Ali (1982) for Pakistan.
38
For India, see Bradford (1985) and Wadley (1976).
39
For India, see Bradford (1985), Cantlie (1984), Harper (1971), Karve (1965), and
Unninathan (1990); and for Pakistan, see Aschenbrenner (1967).
40
See Hershman (1981), Narain (1970), Unninathan (1990), and Wadley (1976).
41
For India, see Hershman (1981) and Leaf (1974) for Punjab; Pocock (1972) for Gujarat;
Lewis (1958) for Delhi; Gupta (1974) for upper castes in Rajasthan; also personal
observation in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. For Nepal, see Bennett (1983). Trautmann
(1981: 26) writes: T o r the wife-givers to accept the smallest return would constitute taking
visible "payment" for their daughter, destroying the invisible merit of the gift and making it
no better than a commercial transaction.'
The village into which his daughter is married is utterly tabooed for the father and
her elder brothers and all near elder relations. They may not go to it, even drink
water from a well in that village, for it is shameful to take anything from one's
daughter or her belongings.
Many Hindu families of northern India still adhere to these taboos strictly.
Others avoid visits unless absolutely necessary and make a formal payment
for any items they use. Thus younger brothers may be a woman's only
regular visitors from her natal home.
Women's songs in northwest India poignantly capture the contradiction
that underlies their relationships with their brothers: resentment at being
disinherited by brothers on the one hand, and dependence on their support
on the other:
To my brother belong your green fields
O father, while I am banished afar ...
This year when the monsoon arrives, dear father,
send my brother to fetch me home.
When my childhood companions return O my father
send me a message, O.42
Even where village exogamy and long-distance marriages are not the
rule, the brother occupies a place of fundamental importance. If the age
difference is small, the relationship is likely to be one of companionship and
relative ease. Indeed it is usually the only male-female relationship in a
woman's life which can be so viewed (except possibly, but not necessarily,
that with her husband in later life). And after the parents' deaths, a
brother's home becomes the woman's natal home. He is held responsible
for arranging an unmarried sister's wedding, and for maintaining the
tradition of gift-giving to the married sister and her children when she visits
or on ceremonial occasions. 43
In Bangladesh, in fact, the woman's access to her brother's home is seen
as a right (naior), and several scholars argue that women exchange their
inheritance in land for a continuation of this right: 44
A sister, instead of claiming her inherited share from her father's or mother's
property, enters into an informal agreement with her brother or brothers whereby
she gains the annual or semi-annual right to visit her family homestead. This
agreement is not legally binding upon either party unless it is put in writing.
(Alamgir 1977: 15)
42
A Hindi folksong sung by Hindu women in north India (my translation). A fragment of this
song was also reproduced at the start of chapter 1.
43
This is true in large parts of the subcontinent. For India, see especially Das (1976), Goody
(1990), Karve (1965), and Wadley (1976). For some discussions in the context of Pakistan,
see Elgar (1960) and C. Pastner (1971).
44
See Alamgir (1977), Ellickson (1972b), Jahan (1975), Sobhan (1978), and Tadahiko (1985).
Deferring their claims, as White (1992: 131) notes, also allows women 'to
keep some material stake in their natal family without souring relations
there, and so mediate their dependence on their husbands' families'. These
observations suggest the possibility of individual negotiation within
custom, something not typically noted elsewhere in the subcontinent.
Usually the fulfilment of customary obligations by the brother towards the
sister is part of a complex network of kinship and religious ties; the
obligations may be subject to individual variation in the degree to which
they are fulfilled, but they are typically not open to individual or explicit
negotiation (of which more later).
Even while the parents are alive, brothers are expected to play important
roles on various ritual occasions in women's lives. Especially in the
marriages of sisters' daughters in north India, they bear responsibility for a
special component of the gifts (the bhat) that the bride receives.45 In south
India, brothers may serve as authority figures for the sister's children and
they may even marry the sister's daughter. (In the north, by contrast, most
Hindu communities forbid uncle-niece marriages, and a brother's relation-
ship with the sister's children is typically one of indulgence.) Ross's (1961:
137) grading of the degree of emotional closeness in eleven types of
relationships within Hindu joint families in Bangalore city (in Karnataka
state), although based on an urban sample, is revealing: she found that the
mother-son and brother-sister relationships occupied the top two
positions, and that between husband and wife came second to last.
Emotional and ritual ties apart, a brother is expected to provide
economic and social support. Brothers (even younger ones), and natal kin
in general, are seen as women's potential protectors. In northern India and
Nepal, this is ritualized in festivals such as raksha-bandhan (literally the tie
of protection) and symbolized by sisters tying a thread (rakhi) on the
brother's wrist. Thus Mayer's (1960: 219) observation for central India
would not be inaccurate for most communities in the subcontinent:
A man's tie with his sister is accounted very close. The two have grown up together,
at an age when there is no distinction made between the sexes. And later, when the
sister marries, the brother is seen as her main protector, for when her father has died
to whom else can she turn if there is trouble in her conjugal household.
The parental home, and after the parents' death the brother's home,
often offers the only possibility of temporary or longer-term support in case
of divorce, desertion, and even widowhood, especially but not only for a
woman without adult sons. Her dependence on this support is directly
45
For India, see Miller and Archer (1985), Phylactou (1989), Reddy (1956), Vatuk (1975),
and Wadley (1976).
related to her economic and social vulnerability. Economically, limited
access to personal property (especially in the form of productive assets),
illiteracy, limited training in income-earning skills, restricted employment
and other income-earning opportunities, and low wages for available work,
can all constrain women's access to earnings and potential for independent
economic survival. This would be true, albeit in varying degree, for rural
women of most classes and communities in the subcontinent. Socially,
women's vulnerability is associated partly with the strength of the prevail-
ing ideology of female seclusion (discussed further below), and partly with
the extent to which a social stigma attaches to widowhood or divorce. Both
these factors vary in strength by community, region, and circumstance.
Although a woman may be somewhat less vulnerable if she has adult sons, a
brother's home can be a social and physical refuge if she has none. Hence if
women don't have a natural brother they may induct one by tying a rakhi
around a relative's or family friend's wrist, or in other ways. Elgar (1960:
188-9) recounts a story of two brotherless sisters, one married and the other
widowed, who each inherited land from their father. The one still married,
rather than allowing her husband to profit from her share, transferred it to
her widowed sister's son, thereby placing on him 'the responsibility of
keeping up the tradition of the parental household', in other words, of
playing surrogate brother.
Few women therefore wish to sour or break their relationships with their
brothers; and Kabeer's (1985: 88,90) observation for Bangladesh has wider
relevance, namely that many give up their claims for a promise of support
and protection in times of distress since: '[although such support is
prescribed by religious and cultural norms it is more likely to be forthcom-
ing if women renounce their rights to inheritance'. When Luschinsky (1963:
575) talked to women in a village in Uttar Pradesh (northwest India) soon
after the 1956 Hindu Succession Act was passed, they said:
Equal inheritance by brothers and sisters ... would have only one result. Brothers
and sisters would quarrel. Brothers would want to obtain their sisters' shares and
the sisters might feel that they were not being adequately reimbursed. The close
protective relationship of brother to sister would be in jeopardy.
Cultural constructions of gender, including the definition of how a 'good'
sister would behave, also discourage women from claiming their rights.
Women in Bangladesh told Westergaard (1983) that it would be 'shameful'
to claim their shares. Albrecht (1974) found the same in Pakistan Punjab, as
did Elgar (1960: 188):
To ask their share of inheritance from their brothers would go entirely against the
love which a woman traditionally cherishes for her brother and against the picture
of a respected and much loved phuphi [father's sister].
In an Indian Punjab village, a married sister who staked her claim and
threatened to pursue it in the courts had, in the community's eyes,
'performed so shameful an act that she might never dare show her face in
her father's village again' (Hershman 1981: 74). Villagers in Kithoor village
(Rajasthan) told me that even leasing or selling the land to a brother was not
desirable, since it would introduce an element of commerce into the
relationship.
What we therefore see in the sister-brother relationship is an idealized
and complex construction of roles and expectations - ceremonially ritua-
lized, culturally elaborated, economically necessitated, and ideologically
reinforced.
How does the idealized image of this relationship match reality? In

particular, to what extent do brothers meet women's expectations of
practical help in times of need? The evidence is mixed. Brothers generally
appear to fulfil their ceremonial roles, such as giving marriage gifts at the
weddings of sisters' children. Stories about their reliability in an economic
crisis are less consistent. Some indicate that brothers are often the only ones
willing to help. Bailey (1957: 83) describes two cases from his Orissa village
study. In one, involving a widow with two daughters and a small son, he
found that:
At every crisis in the life of that family, the widow's father and then her brother have
come forward to help. Theyfinancedthe weddings of the two girls. When the boy
grew up they helped to find him a wife - from their own village - and they helped
build a new big house. The man is now grown with children of his own, but his
mother's people still come to help him and he is a frequent visitor at their house.
In the other case, when the house of a widow with small children needed
roofing, her brother and his friend came from another village to assist her,
while her husband's agnatic kin provided no help whatsoever. Several other
studies cite examples of brothers coming to the rescue of sisters, especially
those widowed (Wadley 1976; Burkhart 1976). In south India, women's
natal families are often significant sources of support during periods of
economic crisis such as a drought, when families might provide interest-free
loans (Caldwell et al. 1988). The extent and nature of assistance offered by a
brother may also depend on the distance of the sister's conjugal home from
her parental village and on how cordially he is received by her husband's
family, both of which influence the frequency of contact between the
siblings. Greater support is possible if the woman lives close by (Mayer
1960).
However, instances of neglect and duplicity by brothers also abound, as
recounted later in this chapter and in chapter 7. Moreover a sister whose
marriage has dissolved, or who has been widowed, may be welcome in her
brother's home for a short while, but usually not for extended periods. Her
presence is less problematic among communities where women contribute
significantly to cultivation, as among the Tibeto-Burman communities of
Nepal: Limbu, Gurung, and Tamang women spend long stretches of time in
their natal homes, usually contributing labour in the parents' fields, even
after marriage. 46 A woman is also less unwelcome among communities
which commonly practise widow and divorcee remarriage and in circum-
stances where such remarriage is more likely (e.g. if the woman is young and
childless).47 Among the Newars of Nepal, the easy remarriage of divorced
and widowed women is one of the significant factors accounting for 'the
total and unquestioning support at all times and under all circumstances of
the natal home, so that a woman can retreat there at anytime for as long as
she wishes without pressure being put on her to return to her husband'
(Pradhan 1981:75). The same is true of the Tibeto-Burman communities of
Nepal's middle-hills.48
But where status considerations and female seclusion practices preclude
women's active labour contribution, and/or where widowhood and divorce
carry a strong social stigma (as among many upper-caste communities of
northern India), the returning sister is viewed as an economic burden. Her
presence is also a source of potential conflict with the sister-in-law over
household management and decision-making. Hence, for instance, among
the Brahmins and Chetris of Nepal: 'while short visits . . . are a cherished
delight . . . prolonged or permanent stays can place severe strains on the
filiafocal relationship' (Bennett 1983: 245). Elgar (1960) observes the same
for Muslims in Pakistan Punjab, as does Ali (1982) for the Burushos. AH
(1982: 252) says: 'Although her brothers are legally and morally obliged to
take her in should she be forced to leave her husband's home, she is often
made to feel unwelcome and pressured to leave as soon as possible.' At the
same time, women there 'simply lack the wherewithal and the personal
autonomy with which to activate and reciprocate external support relation-
ships in their own right'.
Hence it is precisely in communities where women are economically and
socially most vulnerable, and most in need of substantial natal support if
their marriages fail, that such support appears least likely to be readily
forthcoming for any extended period. Such help may of course be provided
grudgingly. In Dreze's (1990: 116A) three study villages, 10.5 per cent of all
widows (including several with adult sons) were living alone. In her ongoing
study on widows, mentioned earlier, Chen found that out of a
46
See A n d o r s (1976), Jones (1977), and M a r c h (1987).
47
O n widow remarriage, see Dreze (1990), D u b e y (1965), H a r p e r (1971), and chapter 8.
48
See H o l m b e r g (1989) on the T a m a n g s , Jones (1973) a n d Jones (1977) on the Limbus,
Messerschmidt (1976) on the G u r u n g s , and Vinding (1979) on the Thakali.
sample of 262 widows in four northern states of India, 40 per cent were
living in households where their adult sons were household heads, 47 per
cent in households which they themselves headed (most but not all of these
women were sonless), and 13 per cent in households headed by 'other'
relatives (presumably including brothers); very few thus used a brother's
home as refuge (see, Chen and Dreze 1992: WS-87). In Bangladesh, Begum
and Greeley (1979) found that out of a sample of twenty-three women wage
labourers who were widowed, divorced, or separated and virtually asset-
less, six were living with brothers; in all six cases the brothers' wives did not
go out to earn a living. In other words, the sisters alone were compelled to
break the norms of seclusion and suffer the associated decline in social
status. As Bangladeshi women said to Hartmann and Boyce (1983: 92):
'A brother's love is not as strong as a father's.' For the assurance of
receiving it, women need to relinquish what is legally theirs, namely their
inheritance.
Weighted against these multiple considerations is the fact that a share in
the parents' land is itself a crucial means of economic security and of
significantly reducing the risk of destitution for women in poor households.
Also (as noted in chapter 2), widows with some land tend to be better
looked after by sons or other relatives than those who have nothing to
increase their bargaining power. To claim or not to claim must thus pose a
painful dilemma.
(2) The necessity of male mediation

Impinging on this dilemma are other practical considerations. Both
economically and socially, rural women's relationship with the world
outside the family is typically mediated through male relatives: fathers,
brothers, husbands, and male extended kin. This especially affects women's
access to economic institutions (markets, banks, and so on), and judicial
and administrative bodies. Such mediation can be necessitated by a variety
of factors (the nature and strength of which vary regionally), but particu-
larly by the physical and social restrictions on women's mobility and
behaviour. In many South Asian communities, these restrictions are
explicit and relate to the norms and ideology of purdah or female seclusion.
In many others, they are implicit and subtle, but nevertheless effectively
restrict women.
The complex manifestations and implications of these gender restrictions
will be discussed in detail in the next chapter, but a few points need
mentioning here. To begin with, purdah (literally meaning curtain) as an
ideology is manifest not just in the veiling of women, but also in the gender
segregation of space and the gendered specification of behaviour. In fact,
veiling is confined to a limited number of communities and regions - it is

stronger among Muslims in northern South Asia, and among upper-caste
Hindus in northwest India, than elsewhere. And even within these regions
and communities, it varies in form (whether a woman wears a burqa49 or
merely veils her face), in extent (e.g. which men are to be avoided), and by
caste, class, and age. But much more widespread than the practice of veiling
is the gender division of space, especially outside the home. Certain parts of
the village - those where men congregate, such as the market place - are
spaces which women are told to avoid or to use minimally. Even more
pervasive and pernicious are the behavioural strictures imposed upon and
internalized by women from late childhood, which define whom they
should speak to and in what manner, how they should dress, move, and so
on. Although such gendering of space and behaviour is strongest and most
apparent in communities which explicitly endorse purdah, in their more
subtle manifestations they constitute an implicit code of expected female
behaviour in large parts of the subcontinent, even where purdah is not
endorsed. Effectively, the ideology of purdah, and more generally the
implicit gendering of space and behaviour, restrict women's interaction
with unrelated men and institutions, their physical and social mobility,
their domain of activity and knowledge, their access to education, and so
on. This has serious consequences for women's ability to claim land and (as
will be elaborated in the next chapter) to control it as well.
First, it means that a brother's potential support is important not just
economically but also socially. Brothers can be critically important as
social mediators not only in the absence of adult sons and husbands, but
also if women wish to undertake transactions independent of their marital
homes. Second, these restrictions affect women's access to information on
the laws, a crucial prerequisite for exercising legal rights. Over half the
women interviewed by Luschinsky (1963) in an Uttar Pradesh village in the
early 1960s knew nothing about the Hindu Succession Act of 1956. In
Panjgur (NWFP of Pakistan), many women to whom C. Pastner (1971)
spoke disclaimed any knowledge of their legal property rights.
Third, given that most officials in judicial and administrative institutions
are men, the noted restrictions can make male mediation imperative in a
land dispute. A widow's dispute against her husband's kin could need the
mediation of her brother or father; a dispute against a brother could require
the woman's husband or an adult son in a mediatory role. 50 A woman's
49
A n overgarment that covers all parts of the w o m a n ' s body and dress, other than her eyes
and hands. Sometimes even her eyes are covered by a net-like veil.
50
Alamgir (1977: 17) notes in the Bangladesh context: 'A male representative is almost an
absolute necessity for any w o m a n who wishes to seek a divorce or any widow w h o wishes to
claim her share of her h u s b a n d ' s estate. M e n often complete most of the formalities as well
as help to pay or give a loan to pay for the legal expenses involved.'
ability to draw upon male support to mediate in her dealings with judicial
and administrative institutions and procedures would thus be a factor in
her decision to claim land. For the same reason, the odds against her being
able to keep control over the land, if she eventually gets any, are high, and
this too would be a deterrent: even for self-managing land, women often
need male support such as that of brothers, sons, or other family members.
The need for male mediation in many spheres of women's lives thus
circumscribes them in complex ways, reducing their ability to act as
independent agents in relation to their legal rights.
At the same time, this very dependency on male relations also leaves a
woman especially vulnerable to being duped by them when they are the
interested parties. Manipulating a woman's statement or claiming that she
has given up her rights is made especially easy where norms of female
seclusion are strong. As C. Pastner (1971: 162-3) notes, referring to
Baluchistan (Pakistan):
Since women are represented by their male kin in most dealings with the non-kin
sector of society, particularly the governmental sector, women ordinarily do not
have the opportunity to speak for themselves and make viable claims when they are
aware of them.
Also daughters, if they are quite young at the time of their fathers' deaths,
would have to be informed of their rights by male kin.
Stuers' (1968: 49-50) comment is even more graphic:
A pardanashin [woman under purdah], for whom all contact with the outside world
had to be through a masculine intermediary, depended entirely on the integrity of
the one who transacted business in her name. 'The purdah\ wrote two jurists, judges
by profession,'... exposes women to fraud, deceit, and undue influence... it makes
women incapable of transacting business.' Even under the most favourable
circumstances, when a Muslim woman was aware of her rights, how could she
obtain the advice of men who were expert as well as honest when she could consult in
person only her nearest relatives? For handling her affairs, the custom was for the
woman in par da to sign blank documents ... which the agents ... named by her then
completed at their discretion. The pardanashin client often had confidence in the
integrity of the agents solely on the recommendation of a relative. There were
numerous cases in which agents and relatives conspired for their own personal
interest and benefit by manipulating or forging these documents. Deliberately or
not, the pardanashin was never told that the Qur'anic law recognized her full
authority over her personal possessions. Thus she was generally treated as a minor
incapable of managing her own property.
In 1976 the Pakistan Women's Rights Committee thus recommended that
in order to protect female heirs, any statement where a woman relinquishes
her share should be attested by a civil judge (Patel 1979).
(3) Hostility from male kin: pre-emptive steps to direct violence

From the very beginning, progressive legislation in the 1950s, which gave.
South Asian women rights to inherit land, was not viewed with favour by
men in patrilineal communities, either Hindu or Muslim. Several ethnogra-
phers undertaking village studies in the early 1960s, soon after the passing
of such laws, commented on this. In Pakistan Punjab, for instance, the
initial response of land-owning villagers to the Shariat law was one of
'uneasiness', and 'by new means they attempted to maintain the old
equilibrium in which men were the holders of productive property and
women shared in it through gifts which were their right ...' (Elgar 1960:
189). Across India, traditionally patrilineal Hindu communities reacted
similarly to gender-progressive legislation giving Hindu women rights of
inheritance and divorce.
The residents of Shivapur village in Mysore (south India) viewed such
laws as 'a deliberate and sinister attempt to destroy the family and
morality', and concluded that:
this equality must have the inevitable consequences of increasing divorce, desertion,
adultery, destroying the love between husband and wife, depriving children of the
certainty of a normal home life, and setting brother against brother, son against
father, and man against man; that it [would] in a word, atomize society by gnawing
at the foundations of the social bonds. (Ishwaran 1968: 183)
In Ramkheri village (central India), Mayer (1960: 242) observed: 'the
villagers assert that the present rules are new and view them with concern,
saying that the increased power of the daughter and widow mean more
chance for the land to leave agnatic hands'. In a village in Himachal
Pradesh (northwest India), the inheritance law 'struck the valley as so
unfair that they petitioned the government not to introduce the law, but
without avail' (Newell 1970: 51). Every single household surveyed in
Jhatikra village near Delhi, after the 1956 Hindu Succession Act was
passed, disapproved of its provisions allowing daughters to inherit the
patrimony (Freed and Freed 1976: 197). In the Konku region of Tamil
Nadu (south India), Beck (1972: 295) observed: 'Everyone has heard
rumours that both daughters and adopted children can now take their
claims to court, although few have actually tried to. My informants still
thought of these laws as just a new way "to get around" the old tradition.'
The Rajputs of Khalapur (in Uttar Pradesh, northwest India) considered
even inheritance by a brotherless daughter with an uxorilocally resident
husband, unacceptable:
Regardless of its legality, such a situation is a very serious breach of village
customary law, which has always held that no wife, daughter, or daughter's
husband could inherit land. This rule was a very important one and still is adhered
to with deep emotion. It was a means of excluding persons who were not members of
the village land-owning caste group, and in large part it accounts for the fact that
this group has been able to maintain almost complete control of the Khalapur land
through the vicissitudes of the past 400 years. (Minturn and Hitchcock 1966: 28)
The emotional strength of these responses suggests that male heirs were
unlikely to relinquish their privileges easily. Not surprisingly, male relatives
of potential female heirs began to take pre-emptive steps to circumvent the
rights of women, especially of daughters and sisters. For instance, to ensure
that only sons would inherit, fathers began to leave wills explicitly
disinheriting daughters, 51 or to make a pre-mortem legal transfer of their
land in favour of sons. 52 Elgar (1960: 187) describes a typical case where a
father in Pakistan Punjab transferred his property to his sons in his lifetime:
Though it was an expensive procedure, he preferred to undertake the expense rather
than expose his sons to whatever inconveniences might be caused by his daughters
or sons-in-law. He died in 1954, and, because two of his sons-in-law who were
brothers had been troublesome all along and were not on good terms with their
family-in-law, everybody now praised him for his wisdom and foresight [!].
Parents in Pakistan Punjab also became more inclined to give their
daughter in marriage in exchange for a bride for their son from the same
family, even though in social terms, such 'exchange' marriages were not
highly regarded. The parents felt that in such cases neither daughter would
claim her inheritance, especially where the two families were of equal
economic status and the daughters' shares would have been about equal
(Elgar 1960: 188).
Over the years, sons (or other prospective heirs) have been known to
forge wills not only after a father's death (Parry 1979), but even during his
lifetime: In Bhaimara village, Jansen (1983:69) heard 'several stories of how
thumbprints of the old father on a piece of paper were taken while he was
asleep at night, as a signature of the will his sons had made, unknowingly,
on his behalf. The rare fathers who may seek to give land to daughters are
likely to encounter the hostility of sons (personal observation, Rajasthan).
Brothers sometimes appeal to revenue authorities who maintain the land
registers, arguing that their sister is wealthy and does not need the land, or
that she is an absentee landlord as she is living with her husband in another
village (Mayer 1960). This last can become an important way of preventing
women from claiming land where village exogamy is a rule and government
policy opposes absentee farming. Brothers have also been known to
51
See Parry (1979) for Madhya Pradesh (central India) and Elgar (1960) for Pakistan Punjab.
52
See Elgar (1960), C. Pastner (1971) a n d Patel (1979) for Pakistan, a n d Aziz (1979) for
Bangladesh.
persuade or coerce a sister into signing a deed gifting her share of the land to
them. Sometimes such subterfuges are later challenged in court (Alavi
1972). Male relatives have also been found to suppress information about
the existence of a female heir, or (as noted earlier) to manipulate statements
before the revenue authorities to make it appear that she has relinquished
her right, or to compel the woman to make such a statement (Patel 1979). In
some cases women claimed to have sold their shares to brothers or to their
father's male relatives for cash, but it is unclear whether this was indeed so
or they were only saying so to avoid family conflict (C. Pastner 1971; Elgar
1960).
Natal kin are particularly hostile to the idea of daughters and sisters
inheriting land, since the property can pass outside the patrilineal descent
group. Strenuous efforts may thus be made by a woman's brothers and her
father's collaterals to prevent this. A widow's claims (as noted earlier) are
often viewed with less antagonism than those of a daughter, since with a
widow there is a greater chance of the land remaining with agnates: she can
be persuaded to adopt the son of the deceased husband's brother (whose
potential hostility is thereby neutralized), made to forfeit the property if she
remarries outside the family, or persuaded or forced into a leviratic union
with the husband's (usually younger)53 brother.54 Levirate appears to be
most easily accepted when the widow is young and childless or has only one
child and the brother-in-law is unmarried, but cases of unwilling widows
with several children being forced to cohabit with married brothers-in-law
53
Marrying the older brother is often forbidden.
54
In Pakistan, Lindholm (1982) notes that levirate is usually obligatory a m o n g the Swat
Pukhtuns of the N W F P if the widow has no sons, while a widow with sons cannot remarry.
A m o n g the tribal Pukhtuns, A h m e d (1986: 295) finds that even a w o m a n with a son m a y
marry the husband's brother if her son is 'not old enough to carry a gun'. A m o n g the
Baluch, levirate was once m a n d a t o r y , although there is greater flexibility today (C. Pastner
1971); while a m o n g the Kohistanis (non-Pakhtuns) in Swat, refusing a leviratic union a n d
marrying someone else is classified as adultery, for which blood revenge is sanctioned by
custom (Barth 1956). In Punjab province, however, although junior levirate is practised, it
is neither m a n d a t o r y n o r c o m m o n (see e.g. Elgar 1960, a n d Aschenbrenner 1967).
Again, in India, the practice is found a m o n g many communities, especially in northern
India: see table A8.3c in chapter 8. Some actively encourage it. A m o n g the Garwalis
levirate is the rule (Berreman 1962). It has also been a long-standing practice a m o n g the
Punjabi Jats, as noted in chapter 5. A number of other communities customarily favour the
practice as well: see D a s (1979), Freed a n d Freed (1976), Haekal (1963), H u (1957),
M a c D o r m a n (1987), M a t h u r (1967), M u r r a y (1984), Pettigrew (1975), a n d Sarkar (1988).
However, in south India, the practice is rare, and communities such as the Coorgs of
K a r n a t a k a , w h o were noted by Srinivas (1965) to have a strong preference for leviratic
unions, are exceptional. In fact, Karve (1965: 224) argues that levirate is normally t a b o o in
south India. Nepal is closer to the north Indian pattern a n d several communities here
commonly practise levirate, although, unlike in parts of Pakistan a n d India, there appears
to be no suggestion of women being forced into it. Leviratic unions are also found a m o n g
Muslims in Bangladesh, although not commonly: of the fourteen cases noted by K a r i m
(1988: 145) in two villages, twelve were a m o n g rich a n d middle farmers.
who then take over their land are not unknown.55 A case in point is a
Punjabi Jat widow I spoke to in Kithoor village (Rajasthan, northwest
India) withfiveminor children (one son and four daughters) who inherited
3.2 acres from her husband, and who was strongly pressured by her
husband's younger brother (already married, but with no sons) to marry
him. But when a daughter was born from this alliance, he abandoned her,
enticed away her fourteen-year-old son (his nephew) who now lives with
him, and through forgery got the widow's land transferred to the boy's
name, thereby gaining effective control over it. He now gives her a part of
the wheat grown on her land, but not any part of the crops grown for cash,
leaving her to fend ineffectively for herself and her daughters. I found her in
a state of extreme depression: she said it was only the thought of her minor
daughters being left destitute that kept her from suicide.
In communities where women have never before been given a share in
land, an attempt by any one member to do so voluntarily can meet with
strong social disapproval. Ahmed (1980: 296-7) describes such an excep-
tional case, involving Pukhtuns from the non-tribal areas of the NWFP,
which came for consideration to the Council of Pukhtun elders in 1977, that
is, well after the passing of the NWFP Shariat Act of 1935 and the West
Pakistan Shariat Act of 1962. In this instance, when A's brother B died, A
nominally gave plots of land to B's widow and daughter (who was also his
daughter-in-law), although de facto possession remained with A's sons. On
A's death, a formal transfer of the women's shares was strongly opposed by
A's relatives who stood to gain otherwise. The Council granted a share to
B's widow but not to his daughter. When the latter's husband (A's son)
challenged this, the Council granted B's daughter land as well, since she was
married to A's son (her parallel cousin) and the land would therefore
remain in the family. Nevertheless, most villagers felt that this decision had
'stamped on riwaj [custom]'. Clearly there was a fear that this would set an
undesirable precedent.
Where pre-emptive tactics are not successful, and daughters and sisters
also do not voluntarily give up their rights, male kin may try various forms
of intimidation. A common tactic is to initiate expensive litigation which
few women canfinanciallyafford (Kishwar 1987). Some women drop their
claims as a result; others press on, with the risk of having to mortgage the
land to pay the legal expenses, thus losing it altogether. Land disputes are
found to be increasing in parts of the subcontinent, and they usually centre
around male attempts to prevent sisters or daughters from inheriting.56
55
Even in the late nineteenth century, as noted in chapter 5, a n u m b e r of communities in
northwest India favoured levirate, especially in order to gain control over land which the
widow inherited as a limited estate in the absence of sons. A t that time too, m a n y widows
objected to the practice, a n d petitioned against it to the British, usually in vain.
56
See Mayer (1960) for M a d h y a Pradesh (India).
Threats to kill those who still insist on exercising their rights are often made.
Single women (unmarried or widowed) are particularly vulnerable to such
harassment. Direct violence is also being used increasingly to prevent
women from filing claims or exercising their customary rights: beatings are
common and murder not unknown. Indeed in eastern and central India,
murder, following accusations of witchcraft, is on the rise. 57
The erosion of women's customary rights and the increasing incidence of
land-related 'witch' killings is particularly apparent among a number of
tribal communities in Bihar (eastern India), such as the Santal, Ho and
Munda. According to the writings of W.G. Archer, a British officer who
was an administrator in Bihar for sixteen years (1931-46), a Santal widow
by custom had a right to maintenance from her deceased husband's land.
This had earlier been interpreted to mean that a widow with sons had a
limited interest in the entire estate of the husband, which she supervised and
managed 'exactly as if she were their father' if the sons were minors; and if
they were adults she was still recognized as the head of the household. Also,
if her major sons had separated from the joint estate, she kept her husband's
share as a limited interest. Even when she had only daughters, as long as she
lived in the village and did not remarry, she inherited a limited interest in all
of her deceased husband's land. She could also adopt a son or bring in an
uxorilocal son-in-law (Archer 1984). However, it appears that over time
this right of maintenance began to be interpreted within the community as a
right to only a plot of land sufficient to maintain the widow, and not to the
entire estate; and now, increasingly, it is being interpreted as a right to
subsistence provided by the male heirs of the husband, rather than as a right
to manage land through which the widow could directly maintain herself
(Kelkar and Nathan 1991).
Recent evidence provided by Chaudhuri (1987) and Kelkar and Nathan
(1991) for the Santal, by Kishwar (1987) for the Ho, and by Standing (1987)
for the Munda, suggests that the incidence of witch killing (whatever its
traditional roots) has today become a means of preventing women in these
communities from exercising their customary claims in land. For instance,
Chaudhuri's compilation of police records relating to Malda district in
West Bengal shows that over the three decades since 1950, forty-two out of
the forty-six witch killings were of women. Of the twelve victims in 1982, ten
were women. All the fifty-two victims rescued by the police since 1972 were
women, most of them widowed and elderly, lacking 'protection or coverage
from powerful relations' (Chaudhuri 1987: 160,156). The women accused
of being witches typically belong to the same tribe and often the same
lineage as the accusers. Many of the accusers are close relatives who stand
57
See Kelkar and Nathan (1991), Minturn and Hitchcock (1966), Sachchidananda (1968),
and Standing (1987).
to gain materially from the women's deaths.58 If the woman accused of

witchcraft is driven out of the village, she can usually find a job as a
domestic servant in a nearby village, suggesting that the real reason for the
accusation was not a fear of her evil influence, as popularly claimed, but an
intent to deprive her of her usufructory rights in land (Kelkar and Nathan
1991).59
Kishwar (1987) comes to the same conclusion in her study among the Ho
tribals of Bihar. She describes a number of cases in some detail, including
the following one:
[A] man who worked as a veterinary doctor in a government hospital was accused of
having murdered his two paternal aunts. The two old women were unmarried and
lived together, working the land over which they had a usufructory right. He had
accused them of being witches and of having caused the death of his wife. A child
had seen [the doctor] murdering them with an axe but he was acquitted by the court.
He inherited the land which the two old women had been cultivating. (Kishwar
1987: 101)
The concerns here appear to be not merely economic but also ideological,
involving male fears of how gender relations might be altered if women
have land.60 For instance, a Santal myth traces the origins of witch killing
to a growing male concern in times long ago that women were no longer
obeying them or recognizing their authority. The men approached Maran
Baru (the great spirit of the Santal tribe), who agreed to teach them
witchcraft the following day to help subdue the women. But the women
impersonated their husbands and learnt the craft instead. On learning of
the deception, Maran Baru in recompense taught the men how to witchfind
(Archer 1974: 292-3). Witchkilling thus became a means of controlling the
mysterious powers of women and preserving male supremacy.
These are but the more extreme examples emanating from a fairly
widespread climate of hostility and opposition to the idea of women
inheriting land.
(4) Responses of village bodies and government officials

Apart from the attitudes of kin, a significant determinant of women's
ability to exercise their legal rights is the male bias in administrative and
judicial bodies and processes. Traditionally, at the village level, both
58
Evidence from several other studies on witch-killings a m o n g the Santal, cited in Kelkar and
N a t h a n (1991), supports this view as well.
59
Also see S a c h c h i d a n a n d a ' s (1968) observations o n the practice of witch-hunting a m o n g the
O r a o n tribe of Bihar. H e too notes that if the person identified as a witch is driven away, her
land is confiscated by the village panchayat.
60
O n this, also see Kishwar (1987), a n d Kelkar a n d N a t h a n (1991).
legislative and judicial functions were served by local councils which took a
variety of forms: caste panchayats (usually consisting of the prominent men
of the caste) in much of India and Nepal, tribal councils among tribal
communities in the subcontinent, village samaj (community) groupings and
the salish or village court in Bangladesh, and so on. 61 Although these
bodies differed somewhat in their membership composition and the level at
which they operated (caste/tribe, single village, or multi-village), a common
feature was their exclusion of women.62 Women had little say either in
framing the rules made by these councils or in the process by which these
rules were enforced. Nor did they have much control over the ideological
underpinnings of such rules and their implementation. (As noted earlier,
even in matrilineal communities jural authority rested with men.) Basically
this exclusion meant that disputes which involved women were settled by
male authority and male-made rules. Only rarely, as among the Santal
tribals or the Bhats (who were Muslim entertainers) of Uttar Pradesh, were
women even allowed to attend tribal council meetings.63
Under colonial rule, with the setting up of British legislative and judicial
machinery, the role of traditional councils was eroded in some degree:
people could now take recourse to higher level courts if their disputes were
not satisfactorily resolved by local bodies such as the village courts. But it
was mainly the rich and powerful who were in a position to go to the higher
courts (which too were male dominated); for the majority, the traditional
institutions still continued to be the instruments of justice.
In the post-colonial period, there have been attempts to democratize the
system in the subcontinent. 64 For instance, in India there have been specific
attempts to increase female representation in local level bodies. Here, in the
1950s, a Panchayati Raj structure was instituted, consisting of district,
block and village level bodies for local self-governance (termed respecti-
vely, zilla parishad, panchayat samiti, and gram panchayat), with elected
functionaries.65 These could be either men or women belonging to any
caste or religious group. The idea that all castes and both sexes should have
a voice in governance went against existing custom, and was a significant
61
See e.g. Jahangir (1979) for Bangladesh; and M i n t u r n and Hitchcock (1966), and C o h n
(1965) for India.
62
F o r Bangladesh, see Arens and Van Beurden (1977), and H o q u e (1987). F o r India, see
Bailey (1957), M a t h u r (1964), Newell (1962), Per-Lee (1981), and Luschinsky (1962). A n d
for Pakistan, see A h m e d (1986).
63
See Archer (1984) and Sachchidananda (1968) on the Santal and Luschinsky (1962) on the
Bhats.
64
See M c C a r t h y and Feldman (1987) for a useful discussion on Bangladesh's attempts to
democratize village bodies, and Frankel (1978) for India.
65
There are some exceptions, such as the northeastern states with primarily tribal popula-
tions where traditional councils, constituted by tribal leaders rather than elected indivi-
duals, typically continue to function (see G O I 1983b).
step forward. A few states also initiated nyaya panchayats (judicial
councils), separating judicial powers from the executive powers vested in
the gram panchayats. These were established to settle village disputes with
jurisdiction over groups of villages, and their members were to be chosen by
the gram panchayat either all through election or some through nomination
and others through election. In some states, such as Karnataka, at least one
member of the nyaya panchayat has to be a woman. 66 Moreover, the
Seventy-third Amendment to the Constitution of India, which came into
force in 1993, provides that one-third of the seats in Panchayati Raj
institutions be reserved for women. In fact, for several years now, most
states have reserved some seats for women, with places for women not filled
by election to be filled by nomination. The potential advantages to women
of these institutional changes are discussed in chapter 10. Much will depend
on whether the women who come to occupy these seats are gender-
progressive and able to focus on women's concerns. So far, however, in
most parts of the country these bodies continue to be dominated by the
economically and socially powerful men in the village, and elected women
representatives, although increasing in number, are still the exception.67
The ideology of female seclusion and more generally the cultural
construction of gender roles also continue to restrict women's attendance in
panchayat meetings, although there is no jural bar to their attending. As an
illustration, consider the following conversation between the anthropolo-
gist Erin Moore and a widow in the Alwar district of Rajasthan in 1988:68
Q: Can you also, as a woman, call a panchayati

A: No.
Q: Why not?
A: The men don't call the women. Being an old woman, I can talk in the
panchayat, but the women who are married can't go to the panchayat.
The young wives can't go . . .
Q: Why can't the wives talk in the panchayati
A: The panch think it is bad . . .
Q: How much land does your son have?
A: Twenty bighas. 69
66
In practice, nyaya panchayats have not d o n e well in most states, and some states have
abolished them (Galanter and Baxi 1989).
67
Also see Arens a n d V a n Beurden (1977), G a r d n e r (1990), and H o q u e (1987) on the
continued d o m i n a t i o n of the samaj organization and salish bench by rich and powerful
village men in Bangladesh.
68
Personal communication from Erin M o o r e , Michigan (USA), 1989.
65
~ There is no uniform conversion rate of bighas into acres. Different regions of India and of
the subcontinent typically use one of the following two rates: 1 bigha = 0.2 acres or 0.33
Q: When your husband died, did half the land go into your name and half
in your son's name?
A: No, all in the son's name . . .
Q: Can't the panchayat help you?
A: There is no panch who can help me.
Q: Have you gone and asked any of them?
A: We have said it many times, but no one helps us. They don't say
anything . . .
Q: If your son gave you five bighas, then you could get the crop.
A: They don't give it, don't give it.
Gram panchayat rulings in northwest India have been observed to favour

the view that family property should be inherited by sons and not
daughters, 70 or that a woman must stay in the village if she is to inherit her
husband's land (Standing 1987).71 The views of the gram panchayat
secretary of Kithoor village in Rajasthan, who was somewhat more
progressive than most villagers I met there, are indicative: he said to me that
he usually pressured daughters to sign away their shares in favour of their
brothers, but sought to persuade widows to keep their shares.
More generally, existing evidence from northern India suggests that the
patwari (village land records official), who maintains the land record
register and plays a critical role in determining whose claim gets formally
registered, usually tends to favour custom (which gives priority to male
heirs) over existing law. The same is usually true of the tehsildar who
oversees the work of several patwaris within the administrative unit of the
tehsil12
Also revealing are government officials' responses to recent attempts by
women's groups to acquire land rights in parts of northern India. In the
Bodhgaya peasant movement of landless labourers and sharecroppers
70
Personal communication by villagers during my fieldwork in Rajasthan in 1987.
71
Also see F u r e r - H a i m e n d o r f (1985), w h o notes that in tribal communities sometimes the
village panchayat has no clear guidance on these matters in terms of customary law, since
two generations ago land had been plentiful and was not considered to be a vital part of a
m a n ' s estate.
72
Record keeping on land rights is typically poor. N a n d w a n a a n d N a n d w a n a (1992), for
instance, observed in t w o villages of Rajasthan that the patwari usually entered only the
n a m e of the eldest son, even if there was m o r e t h a n one successor; sometimes entries were
m a d e 5-10 years after the death of the household head. A l t h o u g h in some parts of
Rajasthan (as noted earlier), widows' claims are now being better recorded, this is clearly
not the case everywhere in Rajasthan, or elsewhere. See, e.g. W a d h w a (1989) for a general
comment, based o n a country-wide survey, o n the dismal state of agricultural land records
in India. H e emphasizes the need for a systematic registration of titles to land. As he notes,
with the increasing pressure of population o n land, the importance of formal titles will
increase. H e does not touch on gender, but clearly, in this context, ensuring that the land to
which w o m e n a r e entitled gets registered in their names becomes especially important.
(mentioned in chapter I), 7 3 the women's struggle was not only (along with
the men of their community) against the religious institution (the Math)
which held illegal possession of the land these households cultivated; it was
also against the prejudices of men in their own community and in the local
government administration, when the women wanted land in their own
names. Through an extended struggle, in which women played a crucial
role, the peasant households were able to establish their rights over the land
held by the Math. In some villages the women were also able to prevail upon
the men of their community to allow the land so gained to be registered in
the women's names. But the district officer initially refused to do so on the
ground that titles could only be granted to men, since they were the
household heads (Manimala 1983). In the end, many women did get land
titles, but only after considerable contestation. Again, when landless
women in Udaipur district (Rajasthan) claimed a part of their village
wastelands for growing herbs, fodder, etc., the bias of the local official was
clear: 'But we do not allot to women.' When asked why not, he said with
unbeatable logic: 'Because we never have . . . so that is why we won't' (Lai
1986).
Similarly illustrative is the case of a patwari in Pakistan Punjab who tried
to allot a widow her inherited share in four separate parcels scattered across
the village. It was only when she paid a fee, and some of her husband's
associates threatened violence on her behalf, that the patwari agreed to allot
her a consolidated plot; but even after a year of this agreement she had not
been given formal possession of the land (D. Merry 1983: 715). Other
evidence from Pakistan (noted earlier in this chapter) suggests that in parts
of the country the registration of a daughters' claims, and more generally of
women's claims, is no longer uncommon, but the actual transfer of the land
to women remains rare.
Official actions both reflect and reinforce traditional attitudes. Prevailing
biases affect the formulation and implementation of government policies,
including land reform programmes. As noted in chapter 1, even in the late
1970s and early 1980s when the government of West Bengal (east India), in
an important land reform initiative (Operation Barga), undertook the
registration of tenants, primarily men (rather than, say, both spouses) were
registered.74 Ironically, in the process, widows who owned small amounts
of land which they were sharecropping out to male tenants would have lost
73
See chapter 9 for a detailed account of the movement.
74
The very few women w h o were registered were typically widows in households without
adult males, who had been able to continue leasing the land their deceased h u s b a n d s had
sharecropped (personal c o m m u n i c a t i o n in 1993 from Nipen B a n d y o p a d h y a y a , who
evaluated the p r o g r a m m e in 1985).
their land to the sharecroppers, a possibility which Dasgupta (1984: A-90),
who played a significant role in the implementation of Operation Barga,
saw as unimportant:' [T]he number of such widows left alone without any
adult male relatives looking after them cannot be very large.' This view
unquestioningly endorses women's dependency on male relatives, and
assumes that widows without independent sources of income will be well-
treated by those relatives. 75
Also illustrative of the general official attitude to women's land rights is
my own experience with the bureaucracy. An invited presentation by me on
the question of gender and land rights at the Indian Planning Commission
in June 1989, to an almost all-male gathering of high-level government
officials, elicited the following response (also cited in chapter 2) from the
then Minister of Agriculture, who came from northwest India: 'Are you
suggesting that women should be given rights in land? What do women
want? To break up the family?' Indeed the issue of women's rights in
immovable property hits at the very fundamentals of class and gender
relations in most Third World societies. Not surprisingly, the resistance to
it is strong.
These official attitudes also impinge on matters of dispute settlement,
including court judgements. One commentator argues that if a female
litigant in a land dispute in Bangladesh is not closely identified with and
supported by a man, she will probably lose, regardless of the merits of her
•case (Cain et al. 1979). Gender biases may be reinforced by class and caste
biases. Poignantly illustrative of how the procedures of British courts in
colonial India could prevent tribal women from obtaining justice is a case of
two Santal women cited by Archer (1984). The women gave the following
reason for failing to file appearance in a land inheritance suit in which they
were both potential heirs: 'We went to court. We had no money. We saw the
other party with his Diku pleaders. We did not like it. We went back home'
(Archer 1984: 678). On this Archer comments (1984: 678):
The two women saw stretching before them a hearing conducted by pleaders who
knew neither their language nor their law, before a judge who did not know Santali
in a court room, the very antithesis of a Santal village. They knew that D was
wealthy and that if he failed at Dumka he could go to Patna. They themselves had
never left the Santal Parganas. They saw demand after demand for lawyer's fees.
They saw no end to the hearing. They took one look. They did not like it. They went
home ... No one, I think, will blame them but no one, I think, will call this justice.
75
Recent research in Bangladesh on mortality rates among widows living in different
household arrangements in fact shows that those living as dependents of male relatives,
other than adult sons, are at significantly greater health risk than widows who are heads of
households (Rahman and Menken 1990), and who presumably have some independent
sources of income.
I understand from legal activists that the situation today would differ only
in detail, not in substance.
The critical point here is that village women's illiteracy and lack of
education, the ideology of female seclusion, and the restrictions on
women's interaction with the extra-domestic sphere, necessitate male
mediation in disputes and claims, especially but not only in cases that are
not settled locally. Not only are the local village councils constituted largely
of men, but so are the government administration and the judiciary. Male
domination of the administrative and judicial bodies at every level, as well
as of the social and other public networks of access to these bodies, 76 and
the complicated procedures and red tape involved in dealing with them, all
work to women's disadvantage, as does women's relative lack of financial
resources. As a Pakistani woman lawyer notes, 'the lack of knowledge of
the assets, the stamp duty, the cost and length of litigation and customary
stigma, usually deters the sharer [who has been] denied her rights from
going to court' (Patel 1979: 139).
III. Glimmer of change: women claim inheritance shares in some

traditionally patrilineal communities
Despite the many obstacles to their claiming land, women in some regions
are beginning to do so in noticeable degree. Here the contrast between
Pakistan and Bangladesh, both formally governed by Shariat laws, is
interesting. In Bangladesh increasing numbers of women (especially mar-
ried ones) are now reported to be claiming (or intending to claim) their
shares; in Pakistan this still appears to be an uncommon occurrence. 77 In
fact there is little to suggest in the available village studies that in Pakistan
the situation has changed significantly from that described by Elgar (1960:
186-7) in her village study for Pakistan Punjab: 78
In a few cases, daughters took advantage of the new laws and, although they had
been married for years and had received their dowries ... they now wanted their
share in land as well. A few cases were brought to court, and the brothers of these
women tried to show that their sisters had in reality already received more than their
share in their father's property... But such cases were few in number, and it was felt
that they came up when the relationship between a brother and a sister was already
strained, so that the new law provided them with an opportunity for bringing
trouble into the open. Otherwise such cases would not come to court and sisters
would not claim their property.
76
In this context, female functionaries in such bodies could m a k e a difference (as will be
elaborated in chapter 10).
77
Studies which mention such cases are few: see D . Merry (1983) on Pakistan Punjab, a n d
Ahmed (1980) on the 'Settled Areas' of the N W F P .
78
A systematic investigation of this aspect today would be useful.
Bangladesh today provides a contrast. Aziz (1979) and Abdullah and

Zeidenstein (1982) note that Bangladeshi widows with sons alwaysfilefor
their claims on behalf of their sons. In Bhaimara and neighbouring villages,
Jansen (1983) heard that women from poor families were now claiming
their shares of the patrimony. Almost every woman Nath (1984: 229)
interviewed was planning to claim her share in her father's property after
his death: 'I encountered only one woman in Natunpur who said that she
had no intentions of ever claiming her land entitlement.' This woman's
natal home was 200 miles away, which would have made it difficult to make
such a claim effective. All other Natunpur women made it clear that even if
they allowed brothers to use their shares for a few years after the father's
death, they were determined to stake their claims sooner or later, the timing
depending on the economic status of their husbands and on what phase of
his domestic cycle the brother was in. Villagers similarly told Taniguchi
(1987: 30) that 'formerly daughters used to give up their rights to their
father's assets in favour of their brothers, but nowadays 80% of them
actually demand their shares'.
Although such assessments are probably on the high side, the overall
trend certainly appears to be towards a significant number of Bangladeshi
village women seeking to exercise their rights. Ellickson (1972b), Hoque
(1987), Jansen (1983), Nath (1984), Taniguchi (1987), and Zaman (1981) all
mention one or more cases of daughters who had staked their claims in the
study villages. Indeed, given the small percentage of women who are
voluntarily granted their shares as daughters or widows, and the noted field
observations by a number of writers that a large proportion of widows and
daughters in their study villages were planning to stake their claims, we
have a situation of considerable potential conflict within families.
Some writers on Bangladesh argue that the giving up of claims by women
is not recognized under Islamic law. Ellickson (1972b: 52) notes, for
instance: Though women usually give up their claims to a share of an
inheritance in favour of their brothers, Islamic law did not recognize such a
renunciation. The woman's rights to claim her share of the inheritance
remained in abeyance.' However, prospective male heirs do not always
accept this view, and women's attempts to later claim the 'temporarily'
relinquished land can lead to bitter disputes.
Hence the circumstances which underlie the noted increase in women
filing claims are often grim. To begin with, women don't always claim
voluntarily. Sometimes they do so due to pressure from and even intimida-
tion by their husbands. Nath (1984: 227) notes: 'Among small farmer
households, husbands often pressurise their wives and sometimes torture
them to get them to claim their parental heritage. Mostly in cases where the
daughter's husband is considerably poorer than her parental household she
tries to exercise her legal rights to get a share ...' In another Bangladeshi
village, Kabeer (1988) found that:
Some of the women interviewed had been driven by family poverty or by their
husband's threats to lay claim to their share of the patrimonial property. From the
information offered it appeared that husbands frequently used the threat of
desertion to force wives to sell off their share of inherited land. Sometimes the
husbands left anyway, having appropriated the proceeds of the sale. One aban-
doned woman had incurred her husband's wrath for refusing to sell her share of
land, at the same time as alienating her brothers by agreeing to sell trees from the
same piece of land.
Even without the husbands' instigation, given the widespread landless-

ness and poverty prevailing in Bangladesh today, poor rural women are
faced with a difficult choice: on one side lies the economic security that a
piece of land (even a small one) can provide; on the other side lie the risks of
losing the social and economic security that the brother can offer in case of
marital breakdown. Under extreme poverty the advantage of filing a claim
may outweigh that of not doing so on at least two counts: one, where the
woman has an adult son, he could substitute to some degree for the loss of
the brother's support; and two, if the brother is also poor, he would be less
willing or able to provide economic security. Essentially what we appear to
be witnessing in Bangladesh today is a conflict over scarce resources where
women too are increasingly willing to stake a claim, either on their own
account or under pressure from husbands and sons. This has probably been
accentuated by the severe erosion of traditional kinship support systems.
Stories of widowed mothers being abandoned by sons abound. 79 As White
(1992: 135) notes on the basis of her fieldwork:
Family relationships alone are no longer enough: women are much less likely to be
abandoned by their children if they own some land from which to draw their
subsistence. In circumstances of declining family solidarity, increasing numbers of
women may be caught in the scissor action of norms which largely preclude material
independence through expectation of other (social) sources of support, and the
actual failure of those forms of support to sustain them.
We might expect similar trends to be developing elsewhere in the subconti-
nent. Mayer (1960: 243), for instance, argues that in central India, women
seldom claimed their shares when land was plentiful, 'but now land is in
short supply, and any daughter inheriting it will try to gain possession'.
This also provides a clue as to what may underlie the noted contrast
between Bangladesh and Pakistan in terms of women staking their claims. I
suspect the answer lies in the much greater poverty and landlessness
prevailing in Bangladesh today compared with most parts of Pakistan,
especially the agriculturally prosperous Pakistan Punjab.
79
See e.g. Cain et al. (1979) and White (1992).
It is worth noting, though, that most of the Bangladeshi women who (in
the studies cited earlier) had claimed or had indicated their intention of
claiming their shares were married women or widows with sons: husbands
and sons can provide the mediation necessary for dealing with local or
distant institutions and authorities. Also the religious legitimacy enjoyed by
Shariat law probably helps women's bid for land shares, and must to some
extent neutralize the ideology of female seclusion which too is given
religious approval. In other words, both the material context of poverty
and prevailing ideological conditions would be determining factors in
whether or not women stake their claims and in the resistance they
encounter. In Pakistan, women faced with religious and gender ideologies
similar to those in Bangladesh perhaps do not have the same material
imperatives or pressures from kin for claiming their shares.
Consider now the situation in matrilineal and bilateral communities. In

these communities, since women's rights in landed property are recognized
by custom, women don't need to establish the social legitimacy of their
claims, nor do they encounter the hostility toward their legal rights in land
that women in the northern part of the subcontinent face. Women in these
groups are therefore more likely to inherit land in practice. Chapter 4
focused in detail on the current situation in three of these communities - the
Nayars, Garos, and Sinhalese. But a further discussion (especially on some
of the other such groups) would provide an interesting contrast to the
patrilineal context discussed above.
IV. A look at traditionally matrilineal and bilateral communities

To gain an idea of the present situation in traditionally matrilineal and
bilateral communities, we have to depend on ethnographies undertaken
mostly in the 1960s and 1970s. Since these focused mainly on issues of
kinship and household structures and neglected the intra-household gender
distribution of property on which these structures directly impinged, the
evidence on land ownership by women is fragmentary. What exists gives a
mixed picture.
Among the Nayars and Garos, daughters often inherit some landed
property, but available evidence (cited in chapter 4) does not permit an
assessment of the extent of the prevailing gender gap. In broad terms
property division among the Nayars has moved toward bilaterality, with
both sons and daughters receiving some land: typically the father's
property devolves equally on both sexes, but there are regional differences
in the extent to which sons share in property held by the mother. There are
also regional differences in the degree to which tendencies toward nuclear
households and neolocal residence are manifest. The Garos remain predo-
minantly matrilineal, but Garo women are adversely affected by two types
of trends. One, there is a widespread decline in land available to the
community, leading to inter-household and inter-village inequalities, and
many women who earlier had use rights to communal land no longer do so.
Two, there is a shift toward gifting land to sons and toward virilocal and
neolocal post-marital residence patterns.
Trends among the Khasis are in some ways similar to those found for the
Garos, but as we noted in chapter 3, there were in-built tendencies in Khasi
communities toward inter-household and intra-household inequalities,
which over time have been accentuated in a number of ways. To begin with,
some households have managed to bring under their possession tracts of Ri
Raidland, that is public land belonging jointly to a village or to a group of
villages. A typical way in which this is achieved is by planting trees on a tract
of public land and then claiming that the trees and the land belong to the
planter. In addition, among families facing land shortage only the heiress
daughter today inherits land: in a study of Mawnai village in the Jaintia
hills, all the seventy-two persons interviewed indicated that this was the case
(GOI 1967b). The remaining daughters, who earlier had received some part
of the family land, thus get excluded. Nakane (1967: 105) found that the
best houses in the Khasi villages she visited in the late 1950s were those of
the heiress (usually youngest) daughters: '[They] are usually landowners,
while their elder sisters have often to become day-labourers after their
marriage, unless their husbands are capable men, or their fathers wealthy
...' Also, although village endogamy and uxorilocality were still dominant
in the 1950s, virilocality was a growing trend.
For the Lalungs, since there is no direct evidence on land inheritance by
gender, inferences about trends in inheritance patterns have to be drawn
from changes in post-marital residence practices: these are found to be
shifting toward virilocality. In one of their study villages, Syamchaudhuri
and Das (1973) found that in forty-six out of a hundred first-generation
marriages, the men had gone to live with their wives, while in the next
generation in only seven out of fifty-eight marriages had the men done so.
When women continued to reside in their natal homes, non-heiress
daughters as well as sons received a usufruct share in the land. But when
women went to live with their husbands, they forfeited their claims. The
shift toward virilocality is thus likely to mean a shift of land in favour of
males.
The link between women's post-marital residence and the likelihood of
their inheriting land is again noted in the context of the Sinhalese in Sri
Lanka. Here (as we observed in chapter 4) many women today do receive
some part of the parental property, but not all who are legally eligible do so;
and the shares of those that inherit are usually smaller than the shares of
Table 6.2: Dowry land by type among the Jaffna Tamils
Type of land Paddy Garden Compound Palmyra Coconut Rocky
No. of dowries with

given type of land 82 74 79 43 22 10
Total area (acres) 103.0 58.2 29.4 25.4 9.4 27.5
Average land per dowry
in whole sample (acres)1 0.981 0.554 0.280 0.242 0.089 0.262
Average land per dowry,
where dowries actually
contained land (acres) 1.256 0.786 0.372 0.591 0.427 2.75
x
Note: The sample size (that is, the total number of dowries) is 105.
Source: Banks (1957: 189)
Table 6.3: Landownership in three Jaffna Villages by source of acquisition
Source of acquisition
Dowry Inheritance Purchase Total
Sector No. % No. % No. % No. %
Agriculture 64 67 20 21 12 12 96
883 8
Fishing 159 78 38 19 6 3 203
Artisan 20 44 15 33 10 22 45
All sectors 243 71 73 21 28 8 344
Note: Land listed under dowry is owned by women alone; that listed under inheritance and
purchase is likely to be owned largely by men.
Source: David (1980: 114)
their brothers. Women's chances of inheriting are also weakened if they

reside outside their natal village.
However, one Sri Lankan community where women were found to
receive significant amounts of parental landed property is the Jaffna
Tamils. Both Banks' (1957) study in the 1950s and David's (1980) in the
1960s establish this (see tables 6.2 and 6.3). Indeed 71 per cent of the land in
David's three study villages was dowry land owned only by women. The
remaining 29 per cent was obtained by the owners via inheritance or
purchase. Even if we assumed that this latter was exclusively male property,
it would still constitute less than a third of all landed property in the village.
Traditional marriage preferences have also persisted among the Jaffna
Tamils: in Chirripudi village studied by Banks (1957: 35), 69 per cent of the
marriages were between relatives, and 35 per cent between cross-cousins
(actual or classificatory); and David (1973a: 26) found that 90 per cent of
the marriages in his study area were within the village and 65 per cent in the
same ward. 80 This would be conducive to women protecting their interests
in any property disputes and exercising control over their land. It is difficult
to say, however, in what ways the political disruptions of recent years have
affected these patterns in Jaffna or in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka
where the Muslim Moors, discussed below, are concentrated.
For the matrilineal Muslims of South Asia - the Moors of Sri Lanka, the
Mappilas of north Kerala, and the Lakshadweep Islanders - the picture is
mixed. Legally, these groups are governed by Islamic law. In practice,
Islamic inheritance laws have made only limited inroads in all three
communities. Munck (1985), who did fieldwork among the matrilineal
Moors in Kotabowa village (Uva district, Sri Lanka) in the early 1980s,
describes a community still following customary practices: daughters
inherited paddy lands and houses via dowries and mostly lived matrilocally.
The dowry land was always written into a deed in the woman's name; and
where the family had insufficient land for all daughters, some daughters
were leased land on a sharecropping basis. In 79 per cent of the 119
marriages surveyed by Munck, daughters received paddy land in their
dowries, and in 71 per cent of the cases they also received cash. Thus the gap
between contemporary law and customary practice in this community has
favoured women. Munck's work suggests that no major erosion in
women's rights had occurred till the time of his study. McGilvray's (1989)
fieldwork in 1969-71, 1975 and 1978 among the Muslims of Amparai
district similarly showed that the women still inherited much of the landed
property through dowries. What we might expect, however, is that any
disputes which come to court, as could happen with growing frequency as
land scarcity increases, would be settled in accordance with Islamic law and
favour male over female inheritance.
Information on the Mappilas of north Kerala is, unfortunately, very
dated. In 1948 when Kathleen Gough did fieldwork in Kottayam village,
although 71 per cent of post-marital residences were matrilocal and
duolocal, neolocality had also become significant. Ancestral property was
being inherited according to the Mappilla Marumakkatayam Act, 1938
(Madras Act 17 of 1939), under which the shares of female and male
members of the matrilineal joint family in the taravadwere determined on a
per capita basis. But a man's self-acquired and separate property, if he died
intestate, devolved according to Islamic rules (under the Mappilla Succes-
sion Act of 1918), whereby daughters received half the shares of sons.
80
A ward is a section of the village constituted of a cluster of houses, gardens, and often also a
temple.
However, daughters were also receiving shares in men's newly acquired
lands in dowry, and among the aristocracy, houses and gardens were being
gifted to wives near the women's natal homes. In other words, Islamic law
had not entirely displaced custom, even for self-acquired land. Today,
however, Islamic law applies to all Mappila property, although without up-
to-date ethnographic evidence it is difficult to say to what extent the law has
altered practice.
In the Lakshadweep Islands, again, custom still dictated practice in the
early 1960s, when Kutty (1972) found a predominance of duolocal (77 per
cent) and uxorilocal (19 per cent) residence in Kalpeni (one of the nine
Islands in Lakshadweep proper). 81 Trees were still the main form of
property. Although, like the Malabar Mappilas, the Islanders followed a
dual system of inheritance, there was very little property which could be
subjected to Islamic law: 80 per cent of the taravads in Kalpeni only
possessed matrilineally inheritable trees, and another 17 per cent possessed
both types of trees, viz. those matrilineally inheritable and those inheritable
according to the Shariat. Other aspects of Islamization were also very
limited in the 1960s. As among the Moors, Lakshadweep women did not
veil themselves (although in Kerala Mappila women did so in limited
degree), and divorce, initiated by both men and women, was fairly frequent.
There are, however, recent winds of change: a small but growing number of
Islanders, influenced by outside contacts and with the support of govern-
ment officials (of largely patrilineal backgrounds), are suggesting that Islam
and matriliny are incompatible and arguing for a stricter enforcement of the
Shariat (Dube and Kutty 1969).
In short, while custom still prevails in significant degree to women's
advantage among the matrilineal Muslims of the subcontinent, the direc-
tions of change are adverse. So far, changes appear to be most apparent
among the Mappilas of Kerala, who are also likely to be more susceptible to
the influence of Muslims elsewhere in the country (Miller 1976).
In general, the barriers to women inheriting land among the traditionally
matrilineal and bilateral communities, compared with traditionally patrili-
neal ones, are much less formidable, but not absent. As noted, at the
ideological level, women's claims receive clear recognition among the
former communities. The typically high levels of female literacy among
these groups are also conducive to legal awareness and action. Compared
with northern South Asia, the absence of female seclusion practices makes
the women less dependent on male relatives. And unlike the Hindu
communities of northwest India, village endogamy is allowed and
common. At the same time, women are still not on a par with men in their
81
Also see Dube and Kutty (1969).
ability to exercise their claims. First, the growing tendency for women's
post-marital residence to be outside their natal villages, noted for several of
these communities, is likely to reduce a woman's chances of being given her
share of the ancestral estate; and women living outside the village are also in
a less-strong position to protect their interests in inheritance disputes,
especially where village-level institutions determine the decisions.
Second, women of matrilineal and bilateral communities are not invul-
nerable to the male bias in government policy and in the bureaucracy which
affects women in patrilineal communities. For instance, among the Garos,
under the land privatization being encouraged by the State, the title deeds
granted to individual households are typically in male names. In 1988 when
I visited the Garo Hills and asked the male officials concerned why even in a
matrilineal community they allotted the titles to men, they said: 'Because
women cannot come to our offices tofillout papers.' Yet two streets away
there were women traders to be seen everywhere!
In Sri Lanka, similarly, the land allotted to Sinhalese couples in irrigation
resettlement schemes, such as the Mahaweli scheme, is usually registered
only in the names of the husbands, who are assumed to be the household
heads. Moreover, each household can nominate only one heir, who is
almost invariably a son if the family has one. This undermines the bilateral
rules of inheritance recognized by customary as well as contemporary law,
whereby married Sinhalese women have independent rights to own and
control land. Under the Mahaweli scheme, if a woman divorces her
husband she is deprived of any means of subsistence from the land,
underlining her dependent and subordinate position. An anthropologist
who studied one of the Mahaweli settlements found that ninety-six out of
112 (or 86 per cent) of the land allocations were made to men. Of the six-
teen women who were granted land, only two (a widow and a separated
woman) were living in the project area and managing their own farms.
Typically 'a woman only applied for land if there was a minimum chance
for male members of her family obtaining a plot' (Schrijvers 1988: 44-5).
Given the trend toward village exogamy and the male bias in access to
legal and administrative institutions, the noted disadvantages women face
in protecting their interests are likely to be felt more and more acutely, as
land scarcity grows and the interests of all contenders (male or female)
come increasingly into conflict.
All said, therefore, although in legal terms we see a movement toward

bilateral forms of inheritance everywhere in the subcontinent, in practice
there continue to be striking differences between traditionally patrilineal
communities and traditionally matrilineal and bilateral ones, in the extent
to which women actually realize their legal rights. This divergence between
contemporary law and actual practice stems from the continued dominance
of custom. A weakening of custom and a greater adherence to prevailing
laws is likely to benefit women within patrilineal settings, but to have the
opposite effect for women in several of the traditionally matrilineal
communities, especially the Muslim ones.
V. Some hypotheses
On the basis of our discussion we can hypothesize that the likelihood of
individual women exercising their inheritance claims to land would depend
especially on the following factors: (a) the strength of purdah norms and
practice; (b) post-marital residence and marriage distance; (c) the extent of
male support; (d) women's level of education; and (e) the extent of women's
economic vulnerability. The stronger are the practices of purdah and village
exogamy and the greater the marriage distance, the higher are the chances
of a woman giving up her claim. However, the greater the male support she
can fall back on, the more likely is she to file a claim. For instance, if she has
adult sons a woman will be in a stronger position to fight for her share both
in her partrimony and in her husband's land if widowed, than if she has no
male-mediatory support. Economic vulnerability, however, could work in
either direction: it could cause a woman to relinquish her claim because she
does not have the financial means to exercise her rights, or it could induce
her to stake a claim because the potential economic security of a piece of
land could outweigh other considerations. Three of these factors (namely a,
b, and d) show a systematic variation across the subcontinent and will be
mapped in chapter 8, while chapters 9 and 10 will seek to provide pointers
on how the noted constraints on women could be reduced. Let us now
move, however, to the difficulties women tend to face in controlling and
self-managing the land they do come to possess.
7 Whose land? Who commands? The gap
between ownership and control
When my husband died, my neighours wanted my land. They beat me on

any pretext, they tried to chase me out. Then they started to say I was
having an affair with my brother-in-law, that was why I wouldn't leave
despite their harassment. My homestead is like a jungle. I cannot grow any
crops on it because my neighbours let their goats graze on my land. When I
go to the bazaar, they steal what few crops I have.
(A Bangladeshi widow to Kabeer 1988:20)
The gap between women's dejure and defacto ability to own land, discussed
in chapter 6, is only half the story. The other, equally significant, half
concerns the gap between ownership and control.
The issue of control has several dimensions, three principal ones (in the
context of individual ownership) being the following: women's ability to
retain title to the land they inherit or otherwise acquire; their ability to take
decisions regarding the disposal of the land through sale, mortgage,
bequest, or gift; and their ability to take decisions regarding the use of the
land, including leasing it out or self-managing it, and disposing of its
produce. By self-management I mean directly cultivating the land with
one's own labour and/or cultivating it through hired labour under personal
supervision. Each of these dimensions of control is important if women are
to benefit from their land, and their advantage is greatest if they have
control in all three ways. None of these forms of control, however, is
guaranteed to a woman by virtue of legal ownership alone. This chapter
examines the odds against which women have to labour to exercise control
over land in practice.
I. Women's ability to retain their land

Even after a woman has inherited land, her brothers, other relatives, and
even neighbours may continue to seek ways of dispossessing her. This is
especially noticeable in Bangladesh today where, as noted, conflict over
small parcels of land is intensifying under conditions of extreme land
scarcity. Those interested in acquiring the land resort to all kinds of
methods to achieve this end. Many Bangladeshi village studies provide
292
Whose land? Who commands? 293
vignettes of cases from which a larger picture can be constructed. To begin
with (as also noted in chapter 6), land inherited by a woman may not
formally be registered in her name: there are examples of sons falsely
registering in their own names land belonging to their widowed mothers
(Zaman 1981). Where the woman's share is registered, close kin may yet get
the land records changed by bribing the concerned village officials (Hoque
1987). There are also cases of men coercing their sisters into selling the land
to them at a low price, and sometimes defaulting on the promised payment.
One woman cheated of her inheritance, unable to bear being betrayed by
her own brother, committed suicide (Hartmann and Boyce 1983). In
another instance, a widow with a minor daughter sold the land she had
inherited from her husband, and went to live with a brother who promised
to help her buy another plot in his village. Instead, he kept the money
(Abdullah and Zeidenstein 1982). A woman's illiteracy and trust can both
leave her vulnerable to fraud, sometimes through ingenious means. Arens
and Van Beurden (1977) relate how a man, who had himself inherited nine
acres, contrived to appropriate an additional three and a half acres that his
sister had inherited in accordance with the Shariat after their father's death.
Inviting her to a film in a nearby town, he obtained her thumbprint on a
piece of paper, saying that this was needed to get the cinema ticket. In fact
the document was an agreement transferring the legal ownership of her
land to him.
Divorce threats by husbands, and even torture, if wives refuse to transfer
their land to the man's name, are not uncommon (Yunus 1984). A widow
who inherits is likely to be subjected to pressure from the husband's
relatives to give her share up; and where the relatives are powerful, she can
be dispossessed. In one such case, the woman is today working as a
domestic servant (Islam 1985). In another, described by Bertocci (1972), a
widow vigorously resisted all attempts to deprive her of her inheritance,
earning the title of 'pagalf (madwoman) because she hung on tenaciously
despite the litigation that ensued. Indeed, involving a woman in a court case
is a common way of forcing her to mortgage or sell her share when legal
expenses become unaffordable.l Pressure may also come from the woman's
natal family where its interests are involved. In 1985, Rowshan Qadir, a
Bangladeshi sociologist, told me about a woman who had inherited a total
of forty acres from both parents and was living abroad with her husband.
She was being pressured by her mother's relatives to divorce her husband
and marry a relative from her natal village. They planned to kill her if she
ever sought to directly control the land, which was being farmed by her
maternal uncles.
Neighbours may also be part of the fray. Some have been known to
1
See Bertocci (1972) and Cain (1978).
appropriate a woman's land by bribing the land records officer;2 others by

forcibly occupying her land; and still others by physical violence, as
indicated by the story of the Bangladeshi widow quoted at the beginning of
this chapter and by similar cases documented by several other writers. 3 The
frequency of these stories suggests that they are not just isolated instances,
but part of an overall pattern. Within this general climate of hostility, one
may expect that widows who have adult sons would be better able to retain
control over their land, although, as noted, sometimes sons too defraud the
mother.
Although all the cases described above relate to Bangladesh, I would
hypothesize that elsewhere too similar gender conflicts over land are likely
to be developing, as land becomes increasingly scarce. The land-associated
resurgence of witch-killing in tribal Bihar and West Bengal, described in the
previous chapter, is a case in point. (There is a strong case here for the
systematic collection of data on such conflicts in the subcontinent.)
In addition to these pressures, conditions of poverty can make it difficult
for households to retain land. Although both sexes are affected by this,
women (and especially women heads of households) are more likely to be
forced to sell land in a crisis, given their greater economic vulnerability.
Some micro-studies from Bangladesh bear this out. In land sales in Sherpur
thana (Bogra district) during 1976-77, women constituted 7 per cent of the
sellers and 2 per cent of the buyers, contributing 5.3 per cent of all land sold
but only 0.7 per cent of all land bought. As a group, women thus lost out
(Sultan 1982). Again in two villages of Comilla district, of the fourteen
women who had inherited shares, only six still retained them at the time of
Westergaard's (1983) study in the late 1970s.4 Similarly, 26 per cent of the
146 women who had inherited land from their fathers in Kabeer's (1985:
88-90) study village had sold it; another 48 per cent had waived their claims
in favour of brothers. Only a small percentage had retained their inheri-
tance, the land being cultivated by their husbands or sharecropped out.
Let us now turn to the other aspects of control.
II. Control over the transfer and use of land

What autonomy do women have in relation to the land over which they do
retain ownership? This question becomes necessary because of potential
differences in the rights that land ownership confers on women and men.
For men, ownership tends to imply full control over the transfer and use of
2
See e.g. Hoque (1987): in this case the woman had inherited as an only child. But the land
was owned jointly with another villager who had her name erased from the land records by
bribing the concerned officer. The matter went to court but is yet to be decided.
3
See Arens and Van Beurden (1977), Hoque (1987), and Kabeer (1988).
4
On the greater likelihood of women than men losing land in the context of increasing
landlessness in Bangladesh, also see Jansen (1983).
land, if not as individuals (in case the property is joint) then certainly as a
gender. But when women have ownership, control over the land may still
vest in varying degree with men. The limitations on women's control may
be both legal and social. Legally, in some parts of South Asia, women are
not free to dispose of their landed property as they wish. In Nepal, for
instance, a woman can dispose of only half the land she inherits. Disposal of
the other half requires the permission of her father (if she is unmarried) and
of her adult sons (if she is widowed or living separately from her husband).
Among the Jaffna Tamils in Sri Lanka, a married woman living with her
husband needs the husband's consent for disposing of any land she owns,
whether inherited or self-acquired after marriage.
Laws apart, male kin may also attempt to intimidate women against
bequeathing their land as they wish. For instance, a sonless widow in Tamil
Nadu was prevented from bequeathing to her daughter's sons the fields she
had inherited from her husband, and instead was forced to adopt an
agnate's son as heir (Beck 1972). In another case, a widow's attempt to
bequeath her land to her sister's sons led to murder in Pakistan Punjab (D.
Merry 1983).
The right to alienate the land is an important aspect of control. The
freedom to mortgage or sell the land can prove critical in an economic crisis,
and is important even in non-crisis situations where land may be needed as
collateral for a loan. This right also gives the owner extra leverage and a
stronger fall-back position than lifetime usufruct rights over the land are
likely to provide. For example, in old age women are more likely to receive
assistance and good treatment from their relatives if the latter are also
potential heirs (White 1992; Dreze 1990).
The freedoms to decide how to manage and use the land and how to
allocate the produce are also crucial ones, and are applicable to both owned
land and land over which individuals only have use rights. Women have
typically been disadvantaged in these respects even in some of the custo-
marily matrilineal communities, especially where large property holdings
were involved. For instance in Kerala, among the Nayars and matrilineal
Mappilas, although women were the legal owners, in that inheritance
passed through the female line, men were the formally designated managers
of the estates. Management could involve, among other things, exercising
control over the distribution of produce from the land: among Nayar
households of central Kerala, for instance, the allocation of farm output is
noted to have been strictly controlled by the karanavan,5 who also enjoyed
5
Gough (1961a: 337) notes that normally no crops were sold and no produce allocated
without the karanavarfs consent. He decided on the quantities of unhusked rice, vegetables,
etc. that were to be transferred from the granary to the storerooms within the house. He
also controlled purchases from the town and twice a year distributed clothing to both male
and female members.
the advantages of public authority associated with property management.
Again, among patrilineal groups governed by Mitakshara law, although
individual men could not freely dispose of joint family property which they
collectively owned, men as a gender still had overall managerial control
over it.
Today, even where women individually own land or have use rights over
it, cases of self-management are rare, although they do exist.6 Women are
subject especially to two types of constraints if they seek to self-manage the
land: direct ones in the form of pressure from relatives, and indirect ones
defined by women's social context (as discussed in the next section). Both
types of constraints tend to discourage women from self-managing land
and push them to either rent it out or let male relatives manage it. Typically,
their husbands or adult sons manage their land.7 A widow without grown
sons may get a son-in-law to settle uxorilocally, but usually she sharecrops
out the land inherited from her husband to his relatives, while daughters
who inherit usually sharecrop to a brother. 8
In theory, of course, leasing out land need not be a bad deal in itself, and
men often do so as well. The lease money (in case of cash renting), or a share
of the harvest (in case of sharecropping), can improve women's fall-back
position in the family both by giving her some independent means of
survival (crop produce can be consumed directly or sold for cash), and by
making her economic contribution to the family's welfare more visible (and
thereby reducing the 'perceived contribution' bias discussed in chapter 2). If
a woman leases out her land to her brother, sometimes this too can work to
her advantage by enabling her to accumulate savings in her natal home
outside the control of her marital family (Kabeer 1988).
In practice, however, these advantages from leasing out don't always
accrue to women. They are vulnerable to being defrauded even if they lease
out to brothers and are often not in a position to ensure they will get the
agreed-upon share of the harvest (as detailed below). In fact, the decision to
lease out her land is not always a voluntary one for the woman. She is likely
6
Among studies which mention cases of women managing the cultivation of their own land
are the following: for Bangladesh, see Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982) and Nath (1984);
also personal communication in 1985 from Lily, a member of Nari Pokkho, a woman's
group. For India, see Bailey (1957) and Murray (1984). And for Pakistan, see Asha (1971),
Khan et al. (1984), and D. Merry (1983).
7
For Bangladesh, see Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982), Cain (1978), Nath (1984), and Qadir
(1981). For Pakistan, see Pastner (1978) and Rouse (1988). Also see footnote 3 in chapter 6
for cases where daughters in sonless families have inherited land; here the uxorilocal sons-
in-law generally manage the land.
8
A number of studies mention cases of women renting out their land: for Bangladesh, see
Begum and Greeley (1979), Gardner (1990), Hartmann and Boyce (1983), Jansen (1983),
Kabeer (1985), Nath (1984), and personal communication from Lily, Nari Pokkho. For
India, see Furer-Haimendorf (1985), Kessinger (1979), and Minturn and Hitchcock (1966).
And for Pakistan, see Aschenbrenner (1967) and Young (1984).
to face considerable pressure from brothers or the husband's agnates (as the
case may be) to lease the land to them, 9 and a refusal to do so may even lead
to violence: Minturn and Hitchcock (1966: 28) report how in Khalapur
(northwest India), 'a widow with an only daughter who insisted on
managing her own estate and let it out on shares was severely beaten by her
husband's kinsmen'. In another case, in the Indian Punjab, a widow with a
young son continued farming her husband's land, resisting pressure from
her brothers-in-law to turn over its management to them and to accept
room and board with them. As the conflict escalated, she retreated to her
parents' home and rented out the land, whereupon the enraged brothers-in-
law had her murdered and appropriated her land, depriving her young son
of his share (Murray 1984: 359n).
Leasing out land, whether to the woman's natal kin or to her husband's
relatives, is likely to be on below-market terms. 10 Where the lease is on a
sharecropping basis (as is the common pattern), this disadvantage is
compounded by the limitations on a woman's ability to ensure that she
receives the harvest share agreed upon. First, if she inherits from her father
but is married into another village, she will find it difficult to keep track of
how good the harvest has been. Norms of female seclusion (discussed in the
next section) also impinge on this. She will thus have to accept on trust
whatever share she is given. Second, if the sharecropper is a brother or other
relative, even if she suspects she is being cheated, it will be difficult to
confront him, if she needs to maintain cordial relations with him. Instances
of brothers cheating are not uncommon. Field workers on the Bangladesh
Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) project told me of several cases
where a brother had forced a married sister, living in another village, to
lease him her portion of their inherited parental land on a sharecropping
basis, and had then kept defaulting on her harvest share by pleading that
the crop had failed or making some other excuse. In one instance, the
woman was finally forced to sell the land to her brother at a very low price.
In another case, described by Cain (1978), a Bangladeshi widow was
pressured by her husband's brothers to lease her land to them until her
minor son was old enough to manage the land, on the promise that they
would give her a part of the harvest. But after a while the payments stopped.
The agnates also failed to pay property tax on the land. The government
therefore seized the land, but the agnates purchased it back at a nominal
price by bribing the authorities, thus becoming its owners.
Cases of women self-managing land appear more common in tribal
9
For Bangladesh, see Qadir (1981). For India, see Mayer (1960), Minturn and Hitchcock
(1966), and Standing (1987). And for Pakistan, see Aschenbrenner (1967).
10
See Qadir (1981). It would be useful to have systematic data on the extent to which the
rental terms a woman gets deviate from prevailing market rates.
communities, although today this is often under extremely hostile social
conditions, as noted in the last chapter for the Ho, Santal, and Munda
tribals. Female management is also common in the hill regions of India and
Nepal where, due to long-distance male outmigration, women are left to
cultivate on their own (even while the legal titles are held by men) as de facto
heads of households. However, a range of factors, as discussed below, can
restrict women's ability to function effectively as independent farmers.
These factors can also limit their ability to lease in land where they own little
or none. Although most of these obstacles would apply to women as a
gender, their importance and implications vary by class and region.
III. Barriers to women self-managing land
(1) The physical and social confinemen t of women

Critical to women's ability to self-manage land is the freedom they can
exercise in their interaction with men, embodied in the cultural practices
which define what sorts of interaction are permissible, with which men, in
what contexts, within which spaces, and using what modes of conduct.
These cultural norms vary a great deal across the subcontinent, ranging
from severe restrictions in Pakistan, northwest India, and Bangladesh, to
much subtler ones in South India and Sri Lanka, with barely discernible
restrictions among tribal communities in northeast India and the Tibeto-
Burman communities of Nepal. The forms these restrictions can take and
their implications for women's autonomy vis-a-vis land use are described
below. A mapping of their regional gradations is deferred to chapter 8.
In broad terms, restrictions on male-female interactions fall into three
interrelated categories: the veiling of women, the gender segregation of
space, and the gendered specification of behaviour. Effectively, the first two
work towards the physical containment of women and the third toward
their social containment. In some regions and communities, strictures
relating to all three overlap and reinforce each other. In others, only the last
may come into play. Indirectly, however, norms of 'feminine' behaviour
can also work in subtle ways to physically restrict women's movements even
in societies (including western ones) which do not seek to gender spaces in
explicit terms.
Purdah ideology, or the ideology of female seclusion, is embodied in all
three categories of practices. At the same time, not all societies which
gender spaces and behaviour can be labelled purdah societies, since not all
forms of gendered behaviour are variations of'purdah'. The tendency, in
some recent discussions on purdah in South Asia, to conflate all observed
11
forms of gendering as facets of purdah, in my view obscures some notable
differences between purdah practices and the more general social construc-
tion of gender that cuts across cultures. In terms of the implications for
women it is important to recognize both the commonalities and the
differences in how communities and societies gender behaviour across
South Asia and in other parts of the world. It can be suggested that a
possible, admittedly crude, way of distinguishing purdah regions from
others could be to see whether or not there are explicit strictures concerning
the physical confinement of women. 12 By this count, south and northeast
India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal would not be labelled purdah regions,
although these societies do gender behaviour in a number of ways (as
discussed later in this section).
Common to all three sets of practices embodying purdah ideology is the
principle of avoidance in interaction with men, although the specification of
which men and in which social contexts varies across groups and communi-
ties. The rationalizations for this avoidance are cloaked in terms of izzat
(family and personal honour), female chastity and modesty, the need to
control female sexuality, and so on; and the precise nature of these practices
varies by region, religion, caste, class, and circumstance.
Veiling, the most visible aspect of purdah and that which is most
commonly associated with it in the popular imagination, is in fact not very
widespread: it is not universal even among Muslims, and among Hindus is
restricted to northern India (being more common in the northwest than
elsewhere). Its norms vary between Muslim and Hindu communities.
Muslim women in patrilineal societies are expected, from soon after
puberty, to veil before all men defined as outsiders (strangers, distant
relatives)13 but usually not before near kin, close family friends, and certain
categories of high and low-ranking men (such as religious leaders and
servants). In contrast, a Hindu woman is usually required to veil only from
older male affines, although where all members of a woman's marital village
are notionally considered her in-laws, she is expected to veil before all older
male members of that village.14 Overall, the range of men before whom
women are expected to veil themselves is narrower among Hindus than
Muslims. 15
1
* For instance, see Chakravarti (1986), Kabeer (1988), U. Sharma (1980), and Vatuk (1982).
12
Crude because what is actually observed is a gradation of purdah practices and not a clear-
cut dichotomy.
13
In practice who gets defined as 'outsider' varies a great deal: on this, see especially, Vatuk
(1982).
14
Occasionally young Hindu brides veil or cover their heads before mothers-in-law or older
female affines as a sign of respect (Luschinsky 1962).
15
For useful discussions of the differences and similarities in Hindu and Muslim veiling
norms and practices, also see Mandelbaum (1988), Papanek (1982), and Vatuk (1982).
In practice, the extent and form of veiling is highly variable among both
Muslims and Hindus. A graphic description of veiling among rural
Muslims in the 1950s, in one of its more extreme forms, is provided by Barth
(1956: 46-7) for the NWFP in Pakistan:
A woman, walking through the fields or on the paths in the company of her
husband, will leave her husband's side whenever a man appears, seek the shelter of a
bush, and cover her head and face completely with her heavy black sheet, till the
stranger has disappeared. Similarly, groups of women working in the fields
discontinue their work, and squat, totally covered by their sheets by the side of the
terrace wall, when a man approaches.
Elsewhere in Pakistan, veiling has been used as a signifier of underlying
hierarchical relationships: for instance, in Baluchistan in the late 1960s
lower-ranking Hitmatkar women traditionally did not veil before the
upper-ranking Hakim, as a sign of respect towards the latter (C. Pastner
1971).
The extent of covering varies as well. For most women, it means covering
the face with the end of the sari, shawl, or dupatta. The burqa or chador is
worn only by Muslim women and then not by all, being more common
among the better-off households and outside the home. 16 Age permits some
relaxation in these norms among both Hindus and Muslims. 17 Also the
often emphasized differences in veiling practices between Hindus and
Muslims obscure the many similarities which point to the subtle intermin-
gling of religious and cultural prescriptions. 18 In fact, among the matrili-
neal Muslims, both in Sri Lanka and on India's Lakshadweep Islands,
women do not veil, and they only do so in limited degree (especially as a
result of recent Islamic influences) in Kerala.
Geographically, more pervasive than the practice of veiling is the related
notion of'territorial' purdah, or the gender segregation of space. Again this
can take various forms: within the house it can mean allocating the
innermost parts of living spaces almost exclusively for women's use and the
outer quarters almost entirely for male use. Or it can take the form of
confining women to the family compound: in rural Bangladesh, this is the
bari, typically consisting of an inner courtyard surrounded by a cluster of
huts, with vegetation and sometimes also screens of woven rushes protect-
ing it from outside view (Abdullah and Zeidenstein 1982). Most commonly,
however, territorial purdah relates to spaces outside the home. Particularly
in the villages of northwest India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, certain spaces
16
For Pakistan, see Asha (1971), K. Merry (1983), Rouse (1988), Shaheed (1984), and Weeks
(1964).
17
For Bangladesh, see Gardner (1990); and for India, see Minturn and Hitchcock (1966).
18
On this see especially Vatuk (1982).
are defined as public, open to men but restricted for women. There is of
course some variation in the spaces that are deemed public, but in general,
places where men congregate (such as tea stalls, the panchayat house, and
the market place) are spaces which women must avoid, strictures being
strongest in relation to the bazaar or market place. Minturn and Hitchcock
(1966: 27) note for the Rajputs of Khalapur in northwest India:
The life of a woman is surrounded by restrictions imposed by purdah. Women may
visit neighbours, particularly if their houses connect with each other and they can go
over the roofs unseen by men; but for visits to more distant neighbours they must
wait for ceremonial occasions . . .
Although a woman's seniority, her age, whether she is a daughter or a

daughter-in-law, and her class and caste all affect her freedom of move-
ment, so that older women with grown-up sons, village daughters (among
Hindus), and women of poor and low caste families are less restricted, even
for these women there are restrictions in relation to spaces of predomi-
nantly male presence.
Purdah restrictions are maintained in complex ways. To begin with, a
woman's character and chastity may be associated with compliance to
purdah norms, so that women who observe the norms are assumed to be
chaste and good and those who transgress them to be of questionable moral
character. Girls are socialized into this way of thinking from an early age
and generally require no external policing. For instance, in the NWFP of
Pakistan, where purdah is extremely strict, eight- and nine-year-old girls are
completely separated from male society and must not show their faces to
males other than near relatives (Barth 1956). In Pakistan Punjab, girls close
to puberty are expected to cover their heads in front of male strangers and
to lower their eyes when speaking to men, and as they grow older are
increasingly confined to the home (Kurin 1981). Modesty and submissive-
ness are often the two most emphasized characteristics of ideal female
behaviour. These ascriptions, internalized by women over long years of
socialization within the family, manifest themselves in docility of demeanor
and respectfulness toward male authority. The codes of modesty can
include such explicit standards of feminine behaviour as:
'Shyness' of demeanor, avoidance of eye-contact with males, avoidance of loud
speech and laughter (particularly in the presence or within earshot of males), and the
limitation of conversation with non-family males to necessary, work-connected
topics. They include also such gestures as rising (or crouching on the floor) in the
presence of male visitors or family members, turning one's face aside and refraining
from participation in male conversation when one is unavoidably present, and
covering the mouth with the hand or a corner of the sari or head-shawl when
speaking. The particular form of these gestures varies from one part of the
subcontinent to the other, but their function is similar. (Vatuk 1982: 70)
A graphic illustration of how women internalize these values of avoi-
dance is provided in a study of an Indian Punjab village, where American
anthropologist Sandra Murray (1984: 269-70) reports the following con-
versation between herself and thirty-four-year-old Kiran Kaur (KK) as
they were returning from the gurdwara (the Sikh place of worship):
KK (not wishing to be seen): Let's take this lane.

Murray: Why?
KK: Can't you see that group of men outside the lambardar's [head-
man's] house?
Murray: Yes, but what of it?
KK: No, I don't want them to see me. I don't want to give them
anything to talk about.
Murray: What could they talk about?
KK: Oh they may say Sat Sri Akal [a greeting], to us, but when we are
gone, they will say: 'Where did she go? What did she have to go
out for?' And then they may tell someone else they saw us on the
street.
Murray: Oh?
KK: Or they may ask me: 'Where have you been? Why did you go
there?'
Murray: Yes, but we have only been to the temple.
KK: But I don't want to talk to them. I don't really know them, and if I
have to talk to them then someone else may see us doing so, and
then they will go around talking about it.
The assumption that even innocent encounters will lead to gossip about her
character - something to be avoided at all costs - can thus lead a woman to
self-restrict her movements.
The threat of gossip and of being labelled a woman of loose character,
however, is only one means of controlling female behaviour. Among the
Pukhtuns in the tribal belt of the NWFP of Pakistan, the restrictions of
purdah are the severest in the subcontinent, and an actual or suspected
transgression can lead to death. Lindholm (1982) and Ahmed (1980, 1986)
describe several such cases. An illustrative one is the case of a woman whose
fiance, on seeing her speak to a young male cousin of hers in the fields,
complained to her family, whereupon her father and brother shot her dead.
In speaking to a potential sexual partner other than her fiance, she was
suspected of being unfaithful (Ahmed 1980:207). In another instance a man
shot his wife dead on the mere suspicion of her infidelity aroused by village
gossip (Lindholm 1982). In this community, Lindholm (1982: 220, 222)
notes, the notion of purdah goes far beyond anything enjoined in the
Koran: 'It is stretched to signify a prohibition on divorce, a taboo on female

inheritance of land, and the complete dominance of husband over wife
To a greater degree than perhaps anywhere else in the subcontinent,
among the Pukhtuns the honour of men is integrally tied to the chastity and
seclusion of women as part of Pukhtunwali (the Pukhtun code of honour
which precedes Islamic tenets). And ensuring that a woman observes these
prescribed norms is seen as the direct concern of men, particularly her
brothers and father.19
However, interaction between the norms of purdah and its actual
practice is complex. In ideological terms, purdah is associated with social
status and deviations from it with the loss of status, albeit in varying degree.
But not all households can afford the strict confinement of women.
Economic necessity constantly pushes and strains against the ideological
wall of purdah, testing how far it will give with no loss or minimal loss of
social status. Among those peasant households in Pakistan Punjab which
cannot afford to substitute family female labour by hired labour, there is
social acceptance for women working on the family fields. Rouse (1988)
found that except among families which came very high in the religious and
social hierarchy (the Syed and Miane), most women worked in the fields
and did not observe strict veiling. Only sixteen out of 287 households in K.
Merry's (1983) study village adhered to the strict ideals of purdah. In fact, in
Pakistan Punjab, the family fields are not considered public spaces for
tenant and subsistence farmer households, although they are out-of-
bounds for large farmer and landlord households (Shaheed 1984). How-
ever, what this also makes clear is that the ideal still remains one of female
seclusion. The families with the most social prestige in the village practise
strict purdah, be they the landlords of Shaheed's study or the religious
leaders of Rouse's study. Hence if a household prospers economically, it
seeks to emulate this ideal. In Naveed-I-Rahat's (1979) study village in
Pakistan Punjab, an increase in remittances due to male migration to the
Middle East led women who had earlier worked in the family fields to
retreat into stricter seclusion.
Other people's fields, in any case, are considered public spaces in
Pakistan, Bangladesh, and much of northern India, and it is only severe
economic necessity which forces women among Muslims and upper-caste
Hindus to do agricultural wage work. Indeed, in Bangladesh, allfieldsare
considered public spaces, and traditionally the only major agricultural task
19
On the strictness of purdah practices among the Pukhtuns, also see Spain (1957) and
Vreeland (1957). Some other communities too associate male honour with the seclusion of
women, although among them this does not usually lead to bloodshed: see e.g. Jahangir
(1979) and Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982) for Bangladesh, and Hershman (1981) for the
Indian Punjab.
undertaken by women was post-harvest paddy processing that could be
done in the family compound. Today as landless and near-landless women
are being forced by economic necessity to seek wage work, as far as possible
they work for better-off relatives within the latter's bari. Such work can still
be considered inside' work, and does not violate purdah norms in the way
that working in the fields does (Westergaard 1983). Also the women travel
out in the early mornings and return only when the dusk can render them as
invisible as shadows (Abdullah and Zeidenstein 1982). Even so, such work
is sought reluctantly and usually involves some sacrifice of social status.
Off-bari work is generally disapproved: the majority of men interviewed by
Westergaard (1983) in two villages of Comilla district in Bangladesh did not
approve of women seeking such employment. Hence the freedom of
movement which low caste or poor women appear to enjoy needs to be
weighed against this loss of social status which affects both them and their
families. As a poor widow said to Hunt (1983: 27) in Bangladesh:
I was married when I was 13. As long as my husband was alive, I never went out of
the house. When my husband died, I still didn't go out and I wore the burqa. I had
some help from relatives. But as my children grew, they needed more to eat and what
little I got was no longer enough. I then decided I had to go out and work to earn
money. They said you will lose your self-respect, we will make an outcast of you. But
I didn't care. It was a matter of the stomach. I couldn't worry about self-respect any
more.
The decision was clearly a painful one.

The strictures on women's visibility, mobility and behaviour, whether
internalized by women or imposed on them by threat of gossip, reprimand
or violence, impinge directly on their autonomy and ability to claim and
control land. The degree of restriction and its adverse implications are
greatest where purdah is most explicitly and strongly advocated. First,
purdah affects women's overall development, including their access to
education. In strict purdah-practising communities, even households that
can afford to forego the girl child's labour withdraw her from school before
puberty, or never send her at all. This, coupled with the generally low value
placed on female education, makes for extremely low literacy rates in the
northern part of the subcontinent, the 1981 rates being 6 and 15 per cent in
Pakistan and Bangladesh respectively for rural females over fifteen. (By
contrast, literacy rates are significantly higher in south India (especially
Kerala) and in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, 79 per cent of rural females over
fifteen were literate in 1981.) Illiteracy compounds women's disadvantage
in gaining access to legal and other information, filing property claims, or
dealing with public institutions. Also, as noted in chapter 6, it leaves them
vulnerable to being cheated, such as by signing away their land rights on
documents they cannot read.
Second, purdah adversely affects women's self-confidence in dealing with
the non-domestic sphere. A widow in northern India, suddenly forced to
survive alone, put it graphically:
If a woman wants to cultivate her piece of land or wants wages to be increased or to
make an official enquiry, she has to talk to men which she has never done before. She
cannot argue. She cannot bargain ... All these days you have never come out in the
open to talk to any men except your father, brother or husband, and that too
occasionally, how can you suddenly lift your eyes and start discussing anything with
a man? (Cited in Dreze 1990: 86)
Third, purdah restricts women's participation in activities outside the
home, including working in the fields, supervising cultivation, or interact-
ing in the market place. To directly manage land by hiring labourers, or
even to ensure that she is not cheated by a tenant, a woman would usually
need to move about alone in the village or between villages if the land is
located elsewhere.20 In purdah-practising communities, such as among the
Rajputs of Khalapur, 'even if she is a fairly old woman, this always
stimulates gossip, and her affinal relatives are annoyed because it damages
the family reputation' (Minturn and Hitchcock 1966: 28). Bangladeshi
village women who move out of the homestead into what is seen as 'male
space' are considered to be both provocative and offensive (Abdullah and
Zeidenstein 1982). And in a recent study in West Bengal, 80 per cent of the
rural Muslim women interviewed said purdah was a major hindrance to
their taking up employment (Jehangir 1991: 111).
Fourth, purdah affects a woman's familiarity with the outside world,
especially that beyond the village. Many women of the Hindu community
in Sind (Pakistan) studied by Young (1984: 255) told her that 'they did not
know what the other side of the sand-dunes looked like', and 'few knew in
what direction all but the nearest villages lay'. Most young married women
in the Jat-Sikh community of an Indian Punjab village similarly told
Murray that 'they [did] not know the lay of the village, because they [had]
seldom been in its lanes'. Some had only seen the location of visiting
neighbours' houses 'by being shown these from their own rooftops'
(Murray 1984: 269). These may be relatively extreme examples, but they are
not atypical in their reflection of the bounded nature of women's existence
under seclusion. This is not to say that women do not move out of their
homes, but that the paths they traverse are strictly defined and not open to
exploration. They are especially likely to be unfamiliar with the village and
its environs where the village is large and they have only entered it as brides.
20
Of course a wealthy woman landowner could employ a manager to supervise her estate: for
instance, in chapter 3 we noted cases of sonless Hindu widows in Bengal who had inherited
limited interests in their husbands' estates in the late nineteenth century, and whose estates
were being looked after by managers, while the women themselves were living in purdah.
But for most women this would not be an economically feasible option.
This limited familiarity and mobility can also restrict women's access to
credit and agricultural inputs in both direct and indirect ways. For instance,
credit and input cooperatives situated in the urban centres are rendered
relatively inaccessible to women who are unfamiliar with bus routes and
forms of urban interaction, and are illiterate in addition. Several poor
widows with whom I spoke in Kithoor village (Rajasthan), described a visit
to the nearest town by themselves as a traumatic event. A few also said: 'If a
woman travels out of the village too often on her own, they say she roams
around, that she is a loose woman.' At the same time, many of them said
they find it difficult to get loans within the village: 'The moneylender often
refuses to lend to us, but men can get credit more easily since they can find
some wage work, if necessary by migrating, to repay the debt.'
Contacts that men develop socially and in the market place are critical to
their ability to obtain production inputs and labour and to solicit reciprocal
help from fellow farmers. It is through such contacts that arrangements are
made, bargains struck, and information exchanged. Women, restricted
from speaking to male strangers either by direct strictures or by fear that
aspersions will be cast on their character, and excluded from the market
place, are strongly disadvantaged in seeking information on new agricul-
tural practices, purchasing inputs, hiring labour, leasing in land from non-
relatives or leasing it out to them, selling their produce, and so on.21
All these factors can make male mediation imperative. The stricter the
norms of purdah, the greater the need for this mediation. However, the
mediators cannot be just any men, but only those with whom the woman's
interaction is deemed socially acceptable. A poor widow in Kithoor village
said to me: 'If my brother-in-law helps me, people insinuate we have a
sexual relationship.' In Baluchistan, the NWFP, and Bangladesh, hus-
bands and sons usually undertake all marketing activities.22 In Bangladesh,
even women's transacting with house-to-house traders is disapproved
socially: Harder (1981) found that women in only 13 per cent of her sample
of 497 households interacted directly with tradesmen; the rest depended on
the mediation of children or household men. Abdullah and Zeidenstein
(1982: 58-9) graphically summarize the constraints that strict purdah can
impose on village women in Bangladesh:
Maintenance of purdah, the behaviour society values and enforces, means that
women cannot have access to the world that lies beyond the imposed physical
boundaries of their mobility except through intermediaries - young children for
small matters, husbands, fathers, brothers and grown sons for whatever they need
that comes from outside. They do not go to the marketplace which is the center of
21
Also see A r e n s a n d Van Beurden (1977), H a r d e r (1981), a n d K a b e e r (1985) for Bangladesh.
22
F o r Bangladesh, see Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982) a n d Cain et al. (1979). F o r Pakistan,
see Pastner (1978) for Baluchistan, and A h m e d (1980) a n d L i n d h o l m (1982) for the N W F P .
economic, social and political activity ... They do not go to the mosque, the center
of religious and social activity. They do not go to thefields,the accepted center of
agricultural activity. They do not go to school past puberty, even if they can afford
it, if it involves being with males or walking beyond permissible boundaries. They
do not have direct access to the products of their labor nor the chance to labor when
in need. They do not go to the Union or Thana where medical and family planning
services are available. They do not have access to the courts. They cannot see the
families to whom they send their daughters in marriage ... Women without men
simply cannot get their money's worth or their rights.
This paints perhaps too dark a picture, since not all rural Bangladeshi
women, at all times in their life cycles, are so constrained, but it does help to
identify the ideological barriers against which women have to struggle, and
the conflicts inherent in the imposition of such a restrictive set of norms in
the context of a rapidly changing economic reality.
At the same time, the variability of purdah norms between communities,
classes, regions, and historical periods, suggests a degree of flexibility and a
potential for the norms to be challenged and changed. To some extent, this
already appears to be happening in countries such as Bangladesh where
extreme economic deprivation and the struggle for physical survival are
forcing more and more women not only to seek off-bari work, but also, in
the process, to question the legitimacy of strict seclusion (as will be
elaborated in chapter 9).
The obstacles described are less acute in non-purdah contexts, or where
purdah norms are more flexible. Women in Nepal, Sri Lanka, south India,
and among tribal communities in India would therefore have greater
freedom to assert their claims and to control and self-manage land. But this
freedom is still not equal to that enjoyed by the men of their classes and
communities. Indeed, many aspects of the cultural construction of appro-
priate female behaviour are not confined to purdah-practising communi-
ties. Even Tibeto-Burman women of Nepal, who enjoy considerable
freedom of movement and are significant and visible participants in all
types of economic activity, including agriculture and trading, are not free
from the more subtle aspects of gendered behaviour patterns. These
impinge, among other things, on women's ability to assert their rights,
including property claims within the family. As an illustration, March's
(1988: 19-20) description of the response of a Tamang woman, Nhanu,
when her family property was being divided is revealing. She had left an
expensive bronze drinking bowl, purchased from the profits of a trading
expedition she'd made, in her parents' house. After her father's death, when
the brothers were dividing the family property, she watched the fate of the
bowl and described the event in the following words:
I sat there quietly, without saying a word, just sitting and watching as they each took
their separate shares of the family property.
[Whispering] The bronze drinking bowl that I had bought that time in Kathmandu
was given out in my younger brother's - Busru's Father's - share.
Well! While they were dividing the shares, I thought to myself, 'Oh dear! My bronze
drinking bowl, the one I bought from the efforts of my trips to Kerong and
Kathmandu, has been given out in Busru's Father's share!' But I continued to sit
there quietly.
[Loudly] Then well! my second younger brother came up to get his share. He said,
That bronze drinking bowl must be given to Elder Sister! That's the one she bought
with the gallon measure of salt she was given after going to Kerong! The only thing
that she bought from that salt was that bronze drinking bowl; that bowl's hers! She
didn't waste even one paisa on that trip
And then, right then!, he reached out and in a single sweep of his arm, Lo! he
grabbed that bronze drinking bowl back and set it in a separate pile for me. Since he
spoke up, they gave it to me and I took that bronze drinking bowl away with me -
[laughing] .. ,23
March (1988: 20) remarks: 'Nhanu could have spoken up to claim her
bowl, but instead she waited to see whether or not her rights would be
remembered by her brothers themselves.' March interprets Nhanu's silence
as a form of testing 'the limits of [her] rights' in the family. While such an
interpretation adds a new and subtle dimension to the language of silence,
silence is not necessarily a very effective way of affirming one's rights:
without her younger brother's mediation, Nhanu may well have lost the
bowl. Her silence contrasts with the volubility of her brothers, and
underlines accepted and expected differences in male and female behaviour
even in communities where women are not explicitly constrained from
asserting themselves.
The gendering of behaviour patterns similarly affects women's interac-
tions outside the home. For instance, in most south Indian Hindu commu-
nities, there is neither formal veiling nor any explicit rule mandating the
physical confinement of women. Yet behavioural norms can have a
confining effect. The importance placed on female chastity is widespread, as
are cultural constructions of femininity which discourage women from
engaging in the public bargaining and the assertive wheeling and dealing
that often mark lucrative marketplace transactions. Fisherwomen in
Kerala, who find it necessary to sing or joke in order to attract customers in
an increasingly competitive market, have been subjected to beatings from
men in the community, who choose to interpret their behaviour as sexual
soliciting.24 More generally, the haggling, aggressiveness, and loudness
associated with fish trading is looked down upon by the fisherwomen's
23
In the above q u o t a t i o n s , the insertions are as in the original.
24
See the longer version of the d o c u m e n t a r y film Hidden Hands, Unheard Voices: Women in
Indian Agriculture, directed by R a h u l R o y and Saba D e w a n (Roy and D e w a n 1988).
young educated daughters, who summarily reject such behaviour as
'masculine' (Ram 1989).
Again, women retail traders in Madras city, seeking to keep within the
bounds of respectability, have adapted their mode of operation even
though this involves an economic cost, as Lessinger's (1989) study reveals.
Lessinger notes that the central wholesale market from which retailers
procure their supplies is largely a 'male space' where few women, other than
prostitutes, typically go. As a result, urban poor women who depend on
retail trading for a livelihood usually avoid going there altogether, instead
buying their supplies from the larger male retailers of their own markets, at
higher prices that cut into their slender profit margins. The few who venture
into the wholesale markets do so in groups, avoiding the pre-dawn auction
rush when the best bargains can be obtained. Also, women operate only as
retailers of petty items, and within their specific retail area build up kin-like
relations with other (especially male) traders. This provides them with a
nominal chaperonage and shield in their interactions with 'outsiders' - male
customers, market tax collectors, and moneylenders. But they are reluctant
to venture outside the immediate retail market area, such as to the
wholesale markets, where no such social chaperonage is available. Nor do
they take advantage of contract-supplying in bulk, which is one of the
routes to accumulating investible capital, since to obtain goods at conces-
sional rates requires the building up of close contacts with the wholesaler.
Any attempt to do so would leave the women open to aspersions of sexual
immorality. For the same reason, if they have no male kin support, women
do not hire male helpers who could enable them to function more efficiently
and perhaps expand their businesses, since to do so would earn them a bad
name. Likewise, women's dependence on social ties, protection, and
chaperonage within their familiar trade markets makes it difficult for them
to relocate their trade if their market collapses, or to take advantage of
expanding and more prosperous market locations. As a result, even in the
retail market, women operating without adult male kin are amongst the
poorest. It is also a telling point that nubile daughters are kept away from
the retail shops for fear of tainting their reputations, even in families where
the mother trades alone and critically needs an extra pair of hands. And in
families that become prosperous on the basis of an initial equal participa-
tion in trading by both spouses, the wife often withdraws from active work
for status considerations.
This last response has also been noted in the rural context. Women in the
villages of Karnataka (in south India), for instance, have been found to
withdraw from visible work in the fields with increasing agricultural
prosperity just as they do in the purdah-practising north, since in the
southern states also doing manual work outside the home is associated with
lower social status. 25 In other words, even in the absence of veiling or any
explicit gender segregation of space, a preoccupation with the purity and
chastity of women and the family's social status tends to define appropriate
female behaviour in ways which restrict women socially and, in indirect
ways, also physically.26
The threat of male violence compounds the constraints already set by
social norms. During fieldwork in Janakpur village (Chitwan district,
Nepal), for instance, Enslin (1990: 169-71) found that the women belong-
ing to a local women's organization were afraid to hold their meetings in
certain public spaces such as the village panchayat, and the teashop and
bazaar areas where men drank and gambled. They felt that 'bad men
[would] come and make trouble', and they described several incidents of
sexual harassment when they moved about in the village, especially after
dark. Indeed the threat of male violence has global resonance for women: it
is often the primary way by which many public spaces, particularly at night,
are appropriated by men even in western societies. The lurking shadows of
midnight keep women away from the streets as much in New York as in
New Delhi!
Constraints such as these which adversely affect their ability to function
as independent farmers are shared in greater or lesser degree by women
across South Asia. Also shared across the region is another dimension of
gendered social norms, namely the domestic division of labour, especially
women's primary (and usually sole) responsibility for childcare. This can
particularly restrict women in regions of high fertility, such as in the
northern parts of the subcontinent. Some childcare responsibility could of
course be delegated to other women, if there is a joint family, or to older
siblings. But this still would not free the mother of central responsibility for
25
See e.g. Epstein's (1973) study of two Mysore villages; also see Agarwal (1984). Underlying
the social status associated with different types of work are not merely the economic returns
from such w o r k b u t also a complex set of attitudes which are not entirely coincident with
the economic, such as attitudes t o w a r d s m a n u a l vs. mental labour, rural vs. u r b a n location,
tasks d o n e with machines vs. those d o n e by h a n d , j o b s requiring various levels of skills/
education vs. the unskilled (or so labelled), and so on.
26
It is revealing to c o m p a r e similar contexts in E u r o p e , where t o o the ideological division of
public space into 'male' a n d 'other' has historically restricted w o m e n ' s mobility and public
interactions. F o r instance, T h o m a s H a r d y ' s description, in his novel Far from the Madding
Crowd, of the stir caused a m o n g the male farmers by Bathsheba Everdene's visit to the
c o r n m a r k e t as an independent w o m a n farmer, in nineteenth-century rural England,
highlights the prevalence of a notion o f ' m a l e ' space (that w o m e n were expected to avoid).
This notion, in its essence, was not dissimilar to that discussed here in the context of village
India.
Similarly, in 1844 when the H o u s e of C o m m o n s was built in England, it was with great
difficulty that a Ladies' Gallery was sanctioned. A compromise solution was finally
reached: a grille was put u p to screen the female occupants from the public gaze. This grille
was removed only in 1918 (Altekar 1956: 178).
the children's care in the way that men are typically freed. If a woman's
farm is located at a distance, or in another village, this factor can constitute
a serious constraint to her self-managing the farm.
(2) Post-marital residence: village exogamy andpatrilocality

In many Hindu communities of northern India, as we have seen, intra-
village marriages are forbidden and village exogamy and long-distance
marriages are the norm. But even among communities where village
endogamy is allowed, as for instance among Muslims, tribals, and Hindus
of south and northeast India, a certain proportion of marriages still take
place outside the village; and the norm of patrilocality (or virilocality)
ensures that it is the women who leave the village.27 When a woman inherits
as a daughter while residing in a distant village, this poses difficulties for her
not only in claiming her legal rights (as noted), but also in managing the
farm. To begin with, there may be resentment from her natal kin.
Hershman (1981: 76) anticipated that if a Punjabi woman, married in
another village, returned with her husband to take over her father's estate,
she would face considerable opposition from her father's collateral kin and
'blood would no doubt be shed'. In addition, there are practical difficulties
in managing land when residing at a distance. Even where veiling is not
practised, women's primary responsibility for childcare and housework
would restrict their mobility between villages. The greater the distance, the
more would be the difficulty.
Where village exogamy coincides with purdah, the problems are com-
pounded. This would be true for Muslim women married outside their
parental villages and also for upper-caste Hindu women in northern India
married at considerable distances from their natal homes. Indeed, Lus-
chinsky (1963) notes that when the 1956 Hindu Succession Act was passed,
rural women in Madhya Pradesh found it hard to even conceive of a
daughter as heir, for (they asked) how would she be able to manage the land
in her father's village while living in her in-laws' village? A woman in
Rajasthan put it to me graphically: 'where would I take the land, even if my
brother parted with it?'
(3) Male control over labour and technology

Typically village women tend to have less command over the labour of
relatives than do men, since they usually cannot provide reciprocal labour
or favours in the ways men can. Robinson (1968: 422) relates a telling case
27
For a detailed cross-community and cross-regional mapping, see chapter 8.
of a Sinhalese widow, living in her natal village in Sri Lanka, who could not
get help for cultivating her land either from her father or her half-brother,
while the assistance rendered by her full brother was too little to make much
difference: 'It appears that there is no method of cooperative labour which
can be used to help someone perpetually unable to pay.' Although labour
could in theory be hired, the noted difficulties women face when functioning
in village markets place them at a considerable disadvantage in comparison
with male farmers.
Similarly, women's higher illiteracy levels, their limited access to cash
and to markets for purchasing inputs, and gender (along with class) biases
in extension services, all become constraints to their self-managing land by
limiting their access to production technology. These factors particularly
restrict female heads of households who have no male relatives for market
mediation. In general, the importance of this mediation has increased with
the shifts in crop technology from traditional to 'modern'. Traditionally,
women of farming households who participated in cultivation often had an
extensive knowledge of indigenous seeds and farming techniques, and such
seeds could be selected and stored for use by each household. In chapter 1
we noted that Garo women knew of some 300 indigenously cultivated rice
varieties and the men always deferred to the women on this count. In Nepal
women do the seed selection work among virtually all agricultural commu-
nities (Acharya and Bennett 1981). However, high-yielding variety seeds
that are now extensively in use are developed on seed farms by specialized
agencies, and new ones have to be purchased every two-to-three years.
These seeds, along with chemical fertilizers and an assured water supply
that form the 'Green Revolution' technology 'package', require access to
cash or credit, on which count women in general, and poor women in
particular, are seriously disadvantaged. The Green Revolution has also
amplified the role of agricultural extension agents in transferring the new
technology and practices from the research stations to the cultivators. Such
knowledge is typically transferred to male heads of households, in large
part because the extension agents are usually men who do not see women as
worthy targets for agricultural extension work, not only in purdah societies
such as Bangladesh (Goetz 1990) but even in Sri Lanka (Kilkelly 1986).
Additionally, in a purdah context male agents do not have easy access to the
women farmers, and female agents are more difficult to recruit.
But it is the taboo against women ploughing, found in most cultures, and,
to my knowledge, certainly in all communities of South Asia, which
presents perhaps the biggest obstacle. Ploughing occupies a central place in
intensive agriculture. Male monopoly over the plough is believed by some
scholars to date back to neolithic times, and to have been one of the
significant factors that eroded the monopoly women historically enjoyed in
cereal production among hunting/gathering societies (see e.g. Childe 1942).
Although it appears unlikely that there would have been a simple causal
relationship between the advent of the plough per se and the decline in
women's role in agriculture, what appears undisputed is that while field
preparation with the hoe has normally been done by women, ploughing has
typically been done by men. According to Childe (1942), even in the oldest
Sumerian and Egyptian documents, those who ploughed were always men,
although the plough itself is said to have been developed from women's
digging sticks (Allaby 1977). Male control over both female labour and
surplus production appears to have been facilitated by men's prior control
over pastoralism and stock breeding (Childe 1942) and to have been
entrenched subsequently by strong ideological control and by instituting
punishments for transgressions.
In India today, some communities (for example, the Oraon tribals of
Bihar) believe that if a woman were to plough, there would be no rain, and
calamity would follow (Dasgupta and Maiti 1986). Himachali men told U.
Sharma (1980) that GWhad decreed that women should not plough. When
women in dire circumstances have ploughed family land, they have often
been severely punished. An illustrative case is that of a Bihari tribal woman,
with a bed-ridden husband, who was unable to get help from neighbours for
ploughing the family field and tried in desperation to do so herself. Within
an hour or two of her starting, she was forcibly stopped by the villagers, and
a village council was convened which decided to punish her by yoking her to
the plough along with one bullock, and forcing her to plough the village
headman's field for an hour in this way (Dasgupta and Maiti 1986). Ho
women in Bihar, if seen to touch the plough even accidentally, are heavily
fined by the tribal council and, in rare cases, even stoned to death (Kishwar
1987).
This taboo makes dependence on men unavoidable under settled cultiva-
tion, and severely constrains women's ability to farm independently. Poor
female-headed households are placed in a particular quandary. As U.
Sharma (1980: 114) notes: 'It is at ploughing time that Durgi complained
most bitterly of her widowhood; no-one was prepared to plough her fields
for her without being paid, and even those who would do it for pay would
only do it after they had completed their own ploughing.' I found that
tractor owners in Kithoor village demanded advance or immediate cash
payment for ploughing the fields of poor widows. One widow told me: 'A
man doesn't face this problem because it is assumed that he will be able to
work and repay.' Delays in ploughing adversely affect crop yields, which
are linked to timely field preparation.
The justification often given for exclusive male control over the plough is
that ploughing is a heavy operation which women lack the strength to
handle. Yet young boys, by no means always stronger than their mothers,
are inducted into it at an early age: in Bangladesh, twelve-year-olds are
taught to plough (Cain 1980), and in Uttar Pradesh (India), lower caste
boys learn to plough and thresh grain at eight to twelve years of age
(Luschinsky 1962: 241). The real reason for women's exclusion clearly lies
elsewhere than in the 'heaviness' of the operation. I would like to suggest
that a possible reason why men have sought to establish exclusive male
control over ploughing is that it serves to assert male claims over the
agricultural surplus. Control over ploughing means control over an
operation that is usually critical for good yields (and surplus production)
under settled intensive cultivation; and it provides the ideological justifica-
tion for male right over that produce. The age-old analogy of sexual
reproduction is often invoked in this regard, in which the woman is
symbolized as the field, the man as the seed, and the produce (children,
grain) is seen as belonging to the one who sows the seed.28 Here 'sowing' the
seed would be not the literal placing of the seed in the soil, which women
often undertake (although some groups forbid even this), but preparing the
ground for sowing by ploughing, which only men are allowed to do. It is a
telling point that in many potter, weaver, andfishingcommunities in India,
women are barred from touching the very production technologies on
which the livelihoods of these communities depend, namely the potter's
wheel, the loom, and thefishingnet.29 Historically women are believed to
have been the first potters, but once the potter's wheel was developed this
activity too became exclusively male (Childe 1942). The persistent nature of
such taboos warrants further exploration.
In sum, so far we have seen that women's ability to claim as well as

control and self-manage land is* likely to be a function of a number of
factors, some of which appear to be uniform across all regions, such as the
taboo on female ploughing, while others vary cross-regionally, such as
purdah practices, norms of post-marital residence, and female illiteracy
rates. The next chapter will collate data on the geographic incidence of these
and other variables to provide pointers on regional variations in the
difficulties women are likely to face in exercising their land rights and in
functioning as independent farmers.
In all regions, though, for women to enjoy rights in land comparable to
those of men, many material and ideological changes will be necessary. But
it needs emphasis that the severity of the constraints women face in
28
F o r a discussion on this analogy, see, for instance, D u b e (1986).
29
See e.g. R a m (1989) o n t a b o o s o n w o m e n ' s use of fishing nets. A m o n g the H o tribals of
Bihar, w o m e n c a n n o t touch bows and arrows either (Sachchidananda 1968).
controlling and managing their land cannot justify depriving them of their
claims. Rather (as will be elaborated in chapter 10) the situation calls for
institutional support to increase women's access to inputs and technology.
It also calls for support systems to strengthen women's ability to challenge
the social norms that restrict their autonomous functioning, as indeed some
gender-progressive organizations (which will be described in chapter 9) are
today seeking to do.
8 Tracing cross-regional diversities
More than one student of India, confronted by the variety of its regional
languages and cultures, has compared the subcontinent, in this respect, to
the whole of Europe. (Bhatt 1980: 43)
A description can give but a generalized picture of a type of social conduct

which is ever changing and it is necessary to understand the variety and
mode of the changes which are found in each . . . region . . . to understand
well the implications of a social structure. (Karve 1965: 378)
Woven through the discussion so far has been the argument that there are
marked geographic variations in the incidence and strength of factors
which affect women's ability to claim and control land. Here I will seek to
systematically examine these variations, drawing upon a number of cross-
regional tables and maps that I have constructed. This is meant to provide a
broad regional gradation of the degree of difficulty women are likely to face
in realizing their inheritance claims in arable land and in exercising control
over its management. In addition, the cross-regional presentation is meant
to serve two purposes: one, to make the general point that there is a marked
diversity in women's situation across South Asia, and so to contradict the
excessive generalizations about the status of South Asian women that
proliferate in the literature; and two, to share with other scholars my
ethnographic information base which they could draw upon and perhaps
use to answer questions not addressed in this book. However, what
economic, sociological, and even ecological factors have operated histori-
cally to produce the noted geographic differences, especially in cultural
practices, is a complex and contentious question which I do not attempt to
address here. Indeed, in the absence of detailed cross-regional historical
information on the range of variables examined, any answer about 'origins'
must necessarily be highly speculative.
Below I will first summarize the arguments made earlier about why
certain factors are significant in determining women's ability to exercise
their rights in land, and discuss the information solirces used to trace the
regional variations in these factors. I will then focus on each factor
separately, offering in conclusion an overview identifying broad geographic
zones that stand out when the variables are examined together.
316
Tracing cross-regional diversities 317
I. Some hypotheses
The factors which appear important in determining women's ability to
claim and control land fall into two broad categories:
—Social, economic, and demographic: such as post-marital resi-
dence, especially village exogamy/endogamy practices and dis-
tance from the natal village; close-kin, including cross-cousin,
marriages; purdah practices; other forms of control over female
sexuality, as reflected in the extent of social tolerance for
divorce, divorcee and widow remarriage, pre-marital sex and
adultery; female labour force participation rates; and total
fertility rates;1 and
—Land-specific: such as land/person ratios, inequalities in the
ownership of agricultural land, and the percentage of land under
village commons and forests.
Let us recall why each of these factors is likely to be significant.
Post-marital residence. This variable has two aspects: (a) the type
of residence: virilocal, uxorilocal, duolocal, and so on, and (b) the spatial
location of the residence, that is, whether it is within the village or outside it,
and if outside then at what distance from the woman's natal home.
Both aspects were noted to be significant for two reasons. First, a
daughter's post-marital residence impinges directly on the degree of control
her natal family can exercise over the land she inherits. In chapter 3, we
observed a close correspondence between a daughter's customary inheri-
tance claims in land and her post-marital residence: in communities
customarily practising matrilineal or bilateral inheritance, a daughter's
rights in land were associated with matrilocality/uxorilocality and occasio-
nally with duolocality or neolocality, but not with patrilocality/virilocality.
In matrilineal communities where the woman went to live with her husband
and his matrilineal kin after marriage, as among the north Kerala Nayars,
she did so for the duration of her marriage, returning to her natal home on
divorce or widowhood; the land meanwhile was controlled and managed by
the karanavan, the seniormost male in her maternal home. Among the
Kandyan Sinhalese, residence and inheritance were quite explicitly linked:
it was the binna-married daughter (with an uxorilocally resident husband)
who had the right to a share in the parents' landed property, while the diga-
married (virilocally resident) daughter forfeited that right. Even in traditio-
nally patrilineal Hindu communities, the inheritance claim of a daughter in
The total fertility rate represents the number of live children on average that a woman
would bear if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children at each
age in accordance with prevailing age-specific fertility rates (see World Bank 1992: 297-8).
a sonless family was linked to her remaining in the natal home with an in-
resident husband.
Contemporary law gives women inheritance rights in land among most
communities; but there is an inherent conflict between these laws and the
prevailing norms of patrilocal post-marital residence followed by traditio-
nally patrilineal communities. This conflict would be especially acute where
patrilocality is linked with village exogamy, since a mere shift by the woman
to the husband's home within the same village is likely to be less problema-
tic than a shift to a different and distant village. Hence among the Kandyan
Sinhalese, even daughters living in the husband's home sometimes inherited
parental land as long as they were resident in the natal village and could
look after their old parents, but their chances of inheritance were low in
cases of village exogamy. Moreover (as discussed in chapters 6 and 7),
village exogamy presents a major practical constraint in claiming and
controlling parental land, especially where the marital village is far from the
natal home.
We can thus hypothesize that in regions where village exogamy and
especially long-distance marriages are the norm, women as daughters are
likely to face considerable hostility from their natal families as well as
practical difficulties in claiming their shares in land and retaining and self-
managing them. I will focus on village exogamy and residence distance,
rather than patrilocality per se, since those variables (for the reasons stated)
would have a greater predictive potential. Marriages within five miles of the
woman's natal home are defined as 'near'. This is about the maximum
distance that a woman could reasonably cover on foot if she wished to visit
a farm in her natal village for purposes of supervision and return to her
marital village on the same day. Marriage in the range of five to fifteen miles
will be defined as 'medium'-distance, and those over fifteen miles as 'far'.
Within the medium-distance range, marriages closer to five miles will be
termed medium-near and those closer to fifteen as medium-far. Since the
village is taken as the unit, villages will be characterized according to the
category (near, medium or far) in which over 50 per cent of village women's
marriages fall.
Close-kin, including cross-cousin, marriages. In communities where

daughters are allowed to marry one or more category of close-kin,
including cross-cousins, there is a greater likelihood of land remaining in
the hands of the natal family. Hence in such communities we would expect
less opposition to daughters inheriting land or being given use rights or gifts
in land, than in those where all forms of close-kin marriages are forbidden.
Similarly we would expect less opposition to widows inheriting where
levirate is practised.
Purdah practices. In regions where the physical seclusion of
women is practised, women are likely to be particularly constrained in both
claiming and controlling land. Seclusion practices would also adversely
affect women's labour force participation and literacy levels.
Control over female sexuality. Strictures on women's sexual

behaviour include constraints on pre-marital and post-marital sexual
alliances, on freedom to initiate divorce, and on divorcee and widow
remarriage. These strictures, unlike purdah, do not prescribe or necessitate
women's physical seclusion. But they represent an important aspect of
social control, constitute part of the cultural construction of gendered
behaviour and, like purdah, restrict women's interaction with men. The
greater is this form of control, the greater would be the constraints on
women's ability to claim and effectively manage land.
Ruralfemale labour force participation rate (RFLFPR). This can

serve as a proxy for a number of factors, such as:
—the degrees of physical and economic visibility of women's
work, which affect social perceptions about women's productive
contributions to the household and to the economy. The greater
is this visibility, the greater will be the likelihood of a woman's
needs being taken into account within the family and of her
being able to claim social legitimacy in exercising her rights in
land;
—the extent of women's familiarity with their physical environ-
ment and the likelihood of their having some practical exper-
ience of farming operations; and
—the extent to which women can be physically mobile, which
impinges on their ability to assert their rights directly, or to join
women's grassroots groups to fight for these rights along
with other women in similar circumstances (of which more in
chapter 9).
Ruralfemale literacy rate (RFLR). Illiteracy is likely to adversely

affect women's ability to claim as well as control land in many ways. For
instance, it can limit women's knowledge of laws and legal rights, their
ability to deal with administrative and legal procedures in relation to land
claims, their access to information on new agricultural technologies and
practices, their physical mobility (facilitated, among other things, by the
ability to read signboards), their overall self-confidence, and their intra-
household bargaining power and autonomy in decision-making, including
in fertility decisions. Regions of high literacy are therefore likely to be more
conducive to women successfully claiming and controlling landed property
than regions of low literacy. Literacy has been measured here for the age
group fifteen years and above.
Total fertility rate (TFR). This gives us an indication of the

average number of live births that women in different parts of the
subcontinent tend to have during their reproductive lives. We would expect
that the greater the number of births, the more time a woman will spend in
pregnancy, lactation, and childcare (assuming the children survive), and
the greater will be the constraints on her physical mobility and overall
ability to control and manage land.
Land scarcity. Land/person ratios, inter-household inequalities in

land ownership (including landlessness), and the availability of village
commons and forests are all variables which, in different ways, serve to
measure the extent to which land-dependent livelihoods are being squeezed
in a region. Land-person ratios indicate the pressure of population on land
in average terms. However, the more unequal is the distribution of private
land, the less is available to the majority of households for subsistence.
Also, the less the availability of non-private land (such as State forests and
village commons), the greater the dependence on private land and the more
the economic pressure on poor households.
Taken together, we would expect that the lower the land-person ratio and
availability of non-privatized land, the greater the landlessness, and the
higher the degree of inequality among those owning land (this last as
measured by Gini coefficients),2 the greater would be the economic pressure
on large sections of land-dependent populations. As subsistence possibili-
ties get squeezed, this could lead to an increase in land conflicts not only
between households but also between the genders, for at least three reasons.
First, traditional kinship support systems, including the support that
brothers provide, would tend to get eroded, pushing women to opt for more
direct ways of securing their future such as claiming their shares. Second,
husbands and sons would put greater pressure on women to assert their
rights in parental land. Third, there would be greater hostility from
brothers towards sisters inheriting and from husbands' relatives towards
widows inheriting.
A Gini coefficient is a statistical measure of inequality in a given distribution, which ranges

in value between 0 and 1. It is used here to measure land concentration in two distributions:
(a) landowning households and (b) all rural households, including landed and landless, and
should be seen only as a broad indicator.
By examining the regional variations in these factors we can identify, at
least in broad terms, the regions in which women are likely to face most
hostility from their relatives in exercising their rights. Consider now the
available information base.
II. Information sources

I have drawn primarily on two kinds of information sources: ethnographies
and macro-surveys. Large-scale surveys - the census and others - have the
advantage of providing quantitative data on some variables for all the
countries under study, such as on the land-use variables, female labour
force participation rates, literacy rates, and total fertility rates. But macro-
surveys give little or no information on many of the social variables; for
these we thus have to depend on ethnographic evidence. Ethnographies
have been used here for information on the norms and practices of post-
marital residence,3 close-kin marriages, control over female sexuality, and
purdah practices. For regions for which ethnographic information on
purdah is not available, I have drawn upon my personal observations as
well as the observations of people (especially anthropologists) familiar with
the social practices of those areas. 4 In addition I looked at the percentage of
Muslim and tribal populations in the different Indian states. Although
Islam prescribes female seclusion, the percentage of Muslim population in a
region in India is at best a partial indicator of the likelihood of purdah
practice in that area, since in some states with sizable proportions of
Muslims in their populations, such as Kashmir and Kerala, the rural
Muslims practise purdah in very limited degree. The percentage of sched-
uled tribe population, however, is a more consistent indicator, in that tribal
populations in India do not practise purdah. For assessing purdah practices
by state in India I have thus utilized all the above types of information.
On close-kin marriages, often communities permit them with some
categories of kin while forbidding them with others. However, not all
ethnographies give details of which categories are permitted and which
forbidden: typically only the preferred categories are indicated. Where
available, such information has been incorporated in the tables. But for our
3
For India alone it would have been possible to use census data on marriage migration and
migrants enumerated by their place of birth to obtain some estimates of territorial
endogamy and marriage distance, as Libbee (1980) does from the 1961 census and the
formulation of a mathematical model. But to my knowledge comparable data are not
available for all five countries. I therefore decided to rely solely on the ethnographies.
4
It may be recalled that in chapter 7 we distinguished between purdah societies and other
societies on the basis of whether or not there were explicit social strictures limiting women's
physical mobility and interaction with men.
purposes here the main distinction is between communities which forbid all
forms of close-kin alliances and those which permit at least some forms of
them.
The ethnographies also have some general limitations (a few of which
were briefly mentioned in chapter 1):
—There is a regional clustering of available studies: wefindseveral
studies for some regions and none for others. Pakistan Punjab,
the states of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala in India,
and the middle-hills of Nepal are relatively well-studied, as are
certain communities such as the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka or the
Nayars in Kerala. However, there is a dearth of useful ethnogra-
phies on Sind in Pakistan and on some of the eastern, central,
and western states of India.
—There is no necessary relationship between the relative import-
ance of a given community in the population of a region and the
availability of ethnographic material on that community.
Hence, in some regions, the primary focus of ethnographies is on
the tribal groups even though such groups constitute only a
small part of those regions' populations.
—Not all ethnographies provide information on each of the
variables mentioned. Information on levirate, divorce, and
divorcee and widow remarriage is especially thin.
—Most studies describe a community's norms but not its actual
practice. For instance, they may say whether cross-cousin
marriage or divorce are allowed, but not necessarily their actual
incidence within the village or community studied. (In the
discussion therefore I have made a distinction between what is
permitted, preferred, and actually practised.) Also they may say
that marriages are arranged outside the village, but not always
at what distances.
Despite these limitations, an illustrative picture can be drawn for the social
variables mentioned.5 And where the ethnographies do provide quantita-
tive information (as many do for marriage distance and the incidence of
close-kin marriages), this is summarized and presented in the tables.
For rural women's labour force participation and literacy rates across
South Asia, I have used the 1981 census data for each of the countries. It is
of course now well recognized that RFLFPRs based on data from national
censuses in South Asia underestimate women's actual participation in
5
For India, some of the gaps mentioned above may be filled by the information being
gathered (but not yet available) under the 'People of India' project, launched a few years
ago by the Anthropological Survey of India (see the introductory volume by Singh 1992).
economic activity (Agarwal 1985b, Sen and Sen 1985). There are several
reasons for this: perceptions in many parts of South Asia (sometimes shared
by women themselves) that women's labour on the family fields or their
doing farm-related work within the home compounds is 'domestic' rather
than 'productive' work because it is unwaged and less physically 'visible';
definitional biases in the census that tend to explicitly or implicitly associate
'working' with doing paid work; and cultural values which associate
women's involvement in work outside the home with low social status.
Hence a good deal of women's productive work is not reported as work by
male respondents, and often not even by women respondents. However,
since an important part of our concern is with the economic and physical
visibility of women's work, the censusfiguresare still helpful, because they
do capture that component of a woman's work which brings in some
income and is done outside the home. The census figures also help, in a
rough way, to indicate the physical mobility permitted to women and to
measure one aspect of their fall-back position. They are, however, not a
comprehensive measure of women's familiarity with field-related work,
since many women who work sporadically on the familyfieldsget excluded.
For India the National Sample Surveys are less prone to these biases, but
comparable surveys for other parts of South Asia are not available. The
noted biases are minimal in regions where no negative connotation attaches
to women doingfield-relatedwork as, for instance, among tribal communi-
ties in India and among most Nepalese communities.
For Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, the 1981 census figures
relate to female workers aged ten and above as a percentage of the female
population of the same age group. For India, the 1981 censusfiguresrelate
to female 'main' workers agedfifteenand over as a percentage of the female
population of that age group, since disaggregated data for female workers
between the ages often and fifteen are not available.6
Information on total fertility rates is obtained from two sources. For
India they are taken from the Sample Registration Scheme of the Census:
6
The 1981 Indian Census divides workers into 'main' and 'marginal' depending on whether
or not they have worked for the major part (that is, for over 183 days) of the previous year.
The figures for main workers have been used here (rather than for main plus marginal):
these are more directly comparable with the estimates for other South Asian countries.
Also our concern here, as noted earlier, is to capture the physical and economic visibility of
women's work and women's physical mobility: these are better indicated by taking only the
'main' workers category. The 'marginal' workers would also include many women who are
involved in work within the home compound, such as looking after family cattle and
poultry. Although undeniably this is important to capture if our purpose were to measure
women's economic contribution, aggregating the main and marginal categories is less
appropriate here in view of our present concern with women's ability to claim and manage
agricultural land. Of course, even the main workers category is only a very rough pointer
for this.
the latest available figures are for 1988 and are separated by rural and urban
areas. For countries other than India, figures for 1988 are taken from the
World Bank's World Development Report (WDR) 1990. These, unfortuna-
tely, are not disaggregated by rural and urban sectors. For comparative
purposes, therefore, the map is based on the aggregate fertility figures, while
the table also gives the rural estimates for India alone.
The land-person ratios (population densities) are taken from the World
Bank's WDR 1992 for countries other than India, and from the 1991 census
for India. The information on rural landlessness and land distribution
patterns by size class is drawn from several different sources, including
agricultural censuses and large sample surveys; and the Gini coefficients for
land distribution among the rural landowning households and all rural
households have been calculated from these land distribution data. The
land ownership data for South Asia are poor in general, but worse in some
countries than others: those for India and Sri Lanka are relatively more
reliable than those for Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal. For Bangladesh
the estimates made by Jannuzi and Peach (1980) based on a 1977 Land
Occupancy Survey have been used, and for Pakistan I have drawn on
Khan's (1981) estimates for 1976, which do not include the province of
Baluchistan. There appear to be no direct measures of landlessness for
Pakistan, so I have used an indirect estimate cited in Singh (1990). For
Nepal, recent information on land distribution appears to be available only
for operational holdings, hence for land ownership I have had to rely on the
rather-dated 1970 sample survey carried out by the FAO and the Govern-
ment of Nepal to evaluate the land reform programme. Assessing the
availability of land under village commons and forests is also problematic.
From the available data it is difficult to arrive at comparable assessments
for village common land across the five countries. (For India, a state-wise
breakdown of such land was given in table Al.l.) Hence the more readily
available forest cover data alone have been used. Despite its noted lacunae,
however, the available information suffices for a broad assessment of land
scarcity.
The information on the variables noted has been presented in tables 8.1
to 8.9, appendix tables A8.1 to A8.3, and in maps 8.1 to 8.10. Before
discussing these below, three caveats need mention. First, in maps 8.1 to 8.3
(that is those relating to village endogamy, close-kin marriages and
purdah), for some of the states, tracing the pattern has necessitated making
'heroic' generalizations on the basis of very few ethnographies. I have done
so to enable a quick visual comparison of the variables. A reader interested
in the detailed ethnographic evidence could, however, refer to the tables.
Regions for which I could locate no ethnographic or other evidence are
indicated by a question mark. Second, the hypotheses set out at the
beginning of the chapter cannot be statistically tested, since there is very

little information on what could be seen as the dependent variables, viz.
land ownership and control by gender in different regions; or the degree of
resistance from kin that women seeking to exercise their legal claims are
likely to face. There is clearly a case here for macro-surveys to gather such
information, especially gender-disaggregated data on land ownership. In
India, for instance, land ownership surveys at the household level are
periodically undertaken under the government's National Sample Survey
scheme, and a gender-wise disaggregation could be incorporated within
that ongoing system.
Third, by emphasizing the broad regional patterns in my discussion
below, I do not mean to suggest that there is uniformity within those
regions. Indeed we would expect variations within a given state/province
especially by caste and class, and (for some variables) also by districts.
However, limitations of available information do not allow me to disaggre-
gate further by class/caste categories within each region, although the
information that does exist on this count has been incorporated in the
tables. Unless otherwise specified, the ethnographic information for India
relates to non-Muslims, and mostly to Hindus, while that for Pakistan and
Bangladesh relates to Muslims.
III. The cross-regional patterns 7
(1) Marriage location and post-marital residence (see tables 8.1, 8.2,
A8.1 and map 8.1)
In the northern part of the subcontinent, most women live patrilocally or
virilocally after marriage, while in south and northeast India and Sri
Lanka, post-marital residence varies considerably, with cases of all forms of
residence: patrilocal/virilocal, matrilocal/uxorilocal, ambilocal, neolocal,
and avunculocal. However, as noted earlier, our concern here is more with
village endogamy/exogamy and marriage distance.
Village endogamy is permitted among all Muslims in South Asia and
among all communities in Sri Lanka and Nepal (with the exception of
upper-caste Brahmin and Chetri Hindus). Indeed there is a marked
preference for village endogamy in Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
However, Bangladeshis prefer to marry outside the natal village, although
7
As mentioned in chapter 6, the terms 'northern India' and 'north India' are used here only
when a very broad comparison of the northern and southern (viz. the peninsular) parts of
the country is intended, and would roughly include the northwestern, western, central, and
eastern states, but exclude the northeastern (mainly tribal) states. Typically, however, the
finer six-fold geographic division is used in the discussion.
Table 8.1: Village endogamy norms in South Asia
Allowed and Strongly

Region accepted disapproved Not allowed
INDIA
Northwest
Haryana and — — Lewis (1958), Sharma
Delhi (1973), Freed and Freed
(1976)
Himachal P. — — Newell (1970), Parry
(1979), U.Sharma (1980)
Kashmir — Madan (1989)1 —
Punjab — — Hershman(1981), Leaf
(1972), Nag (1960),
Pettigrew(1975),
U.Sharma (1980)
Rajasthan Carstairs(1954), 2 Mandelbaum(1968) Chauhan (1967), Plunkett
Gupta (1974)3 (1973), Personal
observation
Uttar P. Bhandari(1963) 4 Berreman(1970) 5 Gould (1960), H u ( 1955),
Luschinsky(1962),
Majumdar(1954, 1955),
Marriott (1955),
MacDorman (1987),
Minturn and Hitchcock
(1966), Sharma (1973),
Singh (1970), Vatuk
(1975), Wadley (1976)
West and
Central
Gujarat — Chen(1990), 6 Fukutake et al. (1964) [all
Haekel(1963) castes], Pocock( 1972),
Goody (1990)
Maharashtra Chapekar(1960) 7 Laxminarayana —
Malhotra(1980), (1968),
Rao and Chowdhury Orenstein(1965)
(1988)
Madhya P. Yadav(1970), 8 Haekel(1963), —
Jay(1970) 8 Jacobson(1970),
Mathur(1964),
Mayer (1960)
East
Bihar — Sachchidananda Gallagher (1965),
(1968) Standing (1987)
Table 8.1: (cont.)

Onssa Bailey (1957),9 — —

GOI(1965b,d,e), 10
GOI(1967c,e) 10
W.Bengal Fukutake, et al. Nicholas (1961), Fukutake et al. (1964)
(1964) [lower Klass(1966) [upper caste],
caste/tribe] Kolenda(1983)
Northeast
Arunachal P. Sarkar(1977)
Assam Cantlie(1984)
Manipur Chaki-Sircar
(1984)
Meghalaya 11 Agarwal (1990b),
Majumdar(1978)
Mizoram GOI (1966a)10
Nagaland Furer-Haimendorf
(1976)
Tripura GOI(1966b,c) 10
South
Andhra P. Furer-Haimendorf
(1979),
Tyler (1970)
Karnataka Claus(1975),
Dillon (1955),
Epstein (1962),
Harper (1971),
Hill (1982),
Ishwaran(1968),
Laxminarayana (1968),
Srinivas(1965)
Kerala Gough (1961a, 1973),
Mencher(1962, 1965)
Tamil Nadu Beck (1972)
Good (1981)
Kapadia(1990)
Silvertsen(1963)
BANGLADESH
All regions and
communities 12
Table 8.1: (cont.)

NEPAL
All regions and Acharya(1981) Bennett (1983, and
communities [Maithili] personal communication)
except Chetri, [Chetri and Brahmin]
Brahmin and Maithili
PAKISTAN
All regions and
communities 13
SRI LANKA
All regions and
communities
Notes: 1 This relates only to the Hindus; village endogamy is allowed among the Muslims.
2
Relates to Bhils, a tribal group.
3
Relates to all castes in a village near Madhya Pradesh which is therefore likely to have
been influenced culturally by the lesser insistence on village exogamy in that region.
4
Tribal group, Korwas.
5
Relates to the k paharf communities living in the lower foothills of the Himalayas.
6
Personal communication on the basis of her fieldwork in Gujarat in 1987. This is only
true of lower castes; the upper castes practise stricter village exogamy.
7
Relates to a hill tribe.
8
Relates to the Gonds, a tribal community.
9
Relates to the Kond community.
1
° These are village surveys undertaken by the Government of India as a supplement to the
1961 census. In all such surveys mentioned in the table the noted communites are tribal,
except in GOI (1965d) where the population surveyed was entirely Hindu.
1
' Primarily matrilineal tribal communities.
12
Hindus in Bangladesh can also marry within the village (Aziz 1979).
13
1 found no information on this for Hindus in Pakistan.
in a nearby one. Among Indian Hindus, there is a marked regional

variation, especially between the northwest, and the northeast and south.
The central and eastern states come in between the northwestern and
southern. In northwest India, marriages among Hindus are almost always
outside the natal village, village endogamy being forbidden among virtually
all caste groups and especially the upper castes. The exceptions, as seen
from table 8.1, are few and relate primarily to tribal groups, some hill
communities, and Rajasthani communities bordering central India which
were probably influenced by the lesser emphasis on village exogamy norms
\Z~Z\ Mostly forbidden

1 1 Mixed
| Mostly allowed
Source: Table 8,1
Map 8.1 Village endogamy norms
in the latter region.8 Some groups, such as the Jats in villages near Delhi,
forbid marriage into any village which shares even a border with the natal
one (Sharma 1973) or in which other clans of one's village are well
represented (Lewis 1958).
Often, the preferred direction in which the marital village should lie is
also specified.9 The ecology of the region, among other things, appears to
have something to do with this. For instance, in Kangra district (Himachal
Pradesh), villagers prefer to marry daughters westwards where the more
fertile land and prosperous villages lie, rather than eastwards wherein lies
increasingly inaccessible and barren hill country, although the villagers
themselves justify this by arguing that people eastwards are less refined and
8
Also see Chauhan (1967) on this.
9
Several studies for Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh note this: Lewis (1958), Kolenda
(1983), Marriott (1955), Minturn and Hitchcock (1966), Newell (1970), and Parry (1979).
civilized! (Parry 1979: 219-20). Similarly, in Chamba district, also in
Himachal Pradesh, Newell (1970) finds a clear preference for marrying
daughters down the valley into villages with less land hunger and a less
physically arduous life, and taking (presumably hardier) daughters-in-law
from higher up (Newell 1970).
In northeast and south India, by contrast, there is a marked preference for
in-village marriage, and village endogamy is never forbidden. Indeed, the
Assamese have an appropriate proverb for the maximum appropriate
marriage distance: 'A girl within a day by road, a cow within shouting
distance' (Cantlie 1984: 57). In the western, central and eastern states, the
picture is a mixed one: the lower castes often allow village endogamy, while
the upper castes often forbid it outright or allow it in rare cases, but
disapprovingly.
Information on the extent to which village endogamy is practised among
communities which permit it is more limited but suffices to provide a broad
picture, as summarized in table A8.1. The table suggests that practice
follows stated preferences: in Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, the incidence
of intra-village marriages is high, and in Bangladesh and much of India it is
low.
Gould (1960, 1961) identifies four factors underlying village exogamy in
north India: caste endogamy, territorial stabilization of kin groups, gotra
exogamy, and the tendency to regard affinal and consanguineal kinship ties
as mutually exclusive in the patrilineal kinship system and so avoid
conflicting claims. 10 This last factor, he argues, is what differentiates the
northern Indian pattern from the southern one. Gould's explanation helps
illuminate the dominant north/south contrast, but Berreman (1962) points
out that the four factors listed by Gould are not sufficient conditions and
village endogamy may still occur in their presence, as it does among the
Paharis of Garhwal in Uttar Pradesh whom Berreman studied. An explicit
prohibition of village endogamy may therefore be necessary to entirely
prevent it, as is in fact done by most northern Indian communities listed in
table 8.1. Also factors such as the desire to create a geographically wide
network of alliances for political or other reasons are likely to affect the
decision to marry outside the village, as found by Parry (1979) in Himachal
Pradesh, and noted below for Bangladesh. Regional variations in close-kin
marriage preferences are also relevant to the geographic patterns of kin and
political networks; and their implications for women's experience of
marriage, and ability to control land, will be elaborated later in the chapter.
10
Spatial separation from the bride's family, for instance, reduces interference from them on
behalf of their daughter. The desire to avoid friction between the bride's and groom's
families is often expressed as an important reason for endorsing village exogamy: see
Mayer (1960) for Madhya Pradesh and MacDorman (1987) for Uttar Pradesh.
On marriage distance, the contrasts between regions are less sharp, as
seen from tables 8.2 and A8.1 (which give actual practice). In Nepal,
Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, as we might expect, given the preference for village
endogamy, marriages outside the village tend to be within a five-mile
radius. Among the Tibeto-Burman communities of Nepal, the distances are
small enough to be covered in an hour or two by foot. In fact, among the
Limbus and Gurungs women normally do not move to the husband's home
immediately after marriage, but stay on with their parents usually till the
first child is born and sometimes longer (Jones 1977; Andors 1976). In
Bangladesh, however, although most marriages are within a five-mile
radius, there are also some at distances of over fifteen miles. Unlike
Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladeshi Muslims prefer to spread their network
of kin and acquaintances through marriage alliances geographically:
people argue that within their village they already know each other and
therefore do not need to use marriages for this purpose (Aziz 1979).
In India, although the south and northeast still contrast with the rest of
the country, the differences in marriage distance are less marked than those
found for village exogamy/endogamy. In the south and northeast, mar-
riages are almost always close to the natal home, within a five-mile radius or
at most in the medium-near range. In the rest of the country the pattern is a
mixed one. Certain caste groups strongly prefer long-distance marriages:
the Rajasthani Rajputs, for instance, sometimes marry at distances of over
sixty miles. However, Jats and other middle castes in Uttar Pradesh and
Rajasthan in India tend to marry closer to the natal village. In general, the
bias in northwest India is towards distant marriage alliances, especially
among the upper castes.
Libbee's (1980) mapping of territorial endogamy and of marriage
distance across rural India highlighted regional patterns similar to those
described here. He found high village endogamy in south India and low
endogamy in the north, as well as a 'striking clustering of large marriage
distances in the northwest, in Rajasthan, western Madhya Pradesh, Pun-
jab, and western Uttar Pradesh' (Libbee 1980: 93).
The overall pattern for South Asia is therefore as follows. In Pakistan,
Nepal, Sri Lanka, and south and northeast India, women are likely to be
married either within or very close to their natal villages. In the rest of India
women usually move to other villages, sometimes to nearby ones, but more
often (especially in the northwest) to distant ones. Bangladesh comes in-
between: village endogamy is allowed but marriage distances range from
near to far.
These post-marital residence patterns suggest that women in northwest
India and Bangladesh are likely to have a particularly difficult time laying
claim to and managing land inherited from parents.
Table 8.2: Marriage distance from a woman's natal home in South Asia
Distance (miles)
Near Medium-near Medium-far Far

Region (0-5) (over 5 to 10) (over 10 to 15) (over 15)
INDIA
Northwest
Haryana and — Lewis (1958) Lewis (1958)
[Jat [Chamar and Nai]
Delhi and Brahmin]
Himachal P. Newell (1970)l — — Parry (1979)1
Kashmir — — Madan(1989) —
Punjab Leaf(1972)>
Rajasthan Chauhan (1967) Chauhan (1967) [Rajputs],
[Jats, Gadris] Gupta (1974), Palriwala (1991),
Plunkett(1973)
Uttar P. Berreman(1970), Luschinsky (1962), Gould (1960), Marriott (1955), Minturn and
Bhandari(1963), Majumdar(1955) Vatuk(1975) Hitchcock (1966), Sharma
Majumdar(1955) [Rajputs, Bajgi] (1973)1
[Koltas]
West and Central

Madhya Pradesh Yadav(1970) Jay(1970) 1 Mayer (1960) Jacobson(1970) 1
[farmer] Mayer (1960) [Rajput]
Maharashtra Malhotra(1980),
Rao and Chowdhury
(1988)
Gujarat Fukuteke et al. (1964)1
East
Bihar Gallagher (1965) Sachchidananda
(1968), Standing
(1987)
Northeast
Assam Cantlie(1984)
Manipur Chaki-Sircar(1984)
Meghalaya Agarwal (1990b)2
Majumdar(1978) 2
Nagaland Furer-Haimendorf
(1976)1
South
Karnataka Beals(1962),1 Claus Hill (1982),1 Laxminarayana
(1975),1 Epstein (1962), Silvertsen(1963) (1968)
Harper (1971),
Ishwaran(1968) 1
Kerala Gough (1961a),2
Mencher(1965) 2
Tamil Nadu Beck (1972) Beck (1972)
[agriculturists] [all castes]
BANGLADESH
Comilla dist Ellickson (1972a),
Harder (1981)
Dacca dist Jahangir (1979), Jansen Islam (1974)
(1983)
Faridpur dist Kabeer(1988)
Garo Hills Harbison et al. (1985),2
Khaleque(1983) 2
Table 8.2: (cont.)
Distance (miles)
Near Medium-near Medium-far Far

Region (0-5) (over 5 to 10) (over 10 to 15) (over 15)
Mymensingh dist Aziz (1979)

Rajshahi dist Nath(1984) Zaman(1982)
Sylhet dist Gardner (1990)
NEPAL
All regions and Acharya(1981),
communities Andors(1976),
Hitchcock (1980),
Holmberg(1989),
Jones (1973), Khatry
(1986), Molnar (1981),
Pradhan(1981),
Rajaure(1981)
PAKISTAN
Punjab Ahmad (1968), Alavi
(1972), Aschenbrenner
(1967), Donnan (1981),
E l g a r t ^ O ) , 1 Kurin
(1981), Kurin and
Morrow (1985),
Naveed-I-Rahat(1979)
Baluchistan S. Pastner(1971) 1
NWFP and Vreeland (1957),l
northern areas Lindholm (1982), Ali
(1982)
SRI LANKA
All regions and Banks (1957), Brow
communities (1978), Leach (1961),
Munck(1985), 2
Robinson (1968), Ryan
etal. (1955), Selvaduri
(1975), Tambiah (1958,
1965), Yalman( 1967)
Notes: l Only qualitative assessment by author, or such assessment made by me from information given. All the other studies give actual distances.
2
Traditionally matrilineal communities, mostly still practising matrilocal or in-village residence.
(2) Close-kin marriages, especially between cross-cousins (see tables

8.3, A8.2 and map 8.2)
Again it is useful to distinguish between what is permitted, preferred and
practised. Here, in contrast to village endogamy, it is more difficult to
translate preference into practice, since even where a community prefers
certain kinds of marriage alliances, say between cross-cousins, demogra-
phically there may not be enough eligible members.
In terms of what is permitted, the regional pattern for close-kin alliances
is very similar to that for village endogamy. Women among Muslim
communities can marry close-kin, be they cross-cousins or parallel cousins.
Cross-cousin (but not parallel cousin) marriages of one or both types (viz.
matrilateral or patrilateral) are also permitted among many non-Muslim
communities in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and northeast and south India (where
uncle-niece marriages too are allowed among Hindus, and often preferred).
The pattern in the rest of India varies (see table 8.3 and map 8.2). In the
northwest, cross-cousin marriages are typically forbidden. Even in the
occasional exceptional case, such as the Jaunsar Bawar communities of the
Uttar Pradesh Hills, the incidence is probably low. In eastern India also, kin
marriages are usually disapproved among non-tribal groups, especially
upper-caste Hindus.
The western and northeastern belt comes in-between. In Maharashtra,
for instance, most castes allow cross-cousin marriages and come closer to
the south Indian pattern, as also noted by Karve (1965). Moreover, among
those matrilineal tribes of the northeast where only one daughter inherits,
there are greater strictures on the heiress daughter in her choice of marriage
partners than on her sisters. For instance, among the Garos the heiress
customarily had to marry a cross-cousin (actual or classiflcatory), but other
daughters were free to marry anyone outside their mother's clan. However,
there has also been a considerable degree of Hinduization of tribes in the
region: the giving up of cross-cousin marriage among the matrilineal
Lalungs of Assam, noted earlier, appears to be a result of this process, as
does possibly the forbidding of close-kin marriages among the patrilineal
groups of Assam who, as Cantlie (1984) notes, have yet to fully assimilate
other Hindu customs such as gotra exogamy in practice.
Preferences, in any case, may or may not fully overlap with what is
permitted. In Pakistan Punjab preferences do reflect what is permitted. D.
Merry (1983: 541) found a particularly strong preference for marriage
alliances among the children of two brothers or of a brother and sister:
In one large joint family, where two married brothers and their wives and children
live together with the brothers' parents, the two brothers say they have given strict
orders to their wives not to nurse each others' babies; such nursing would make the
aunt a 'milk mother' and be a bar to the marriage of their children.
In Bangladesh, by contrast, although close-kin marriages are permitted, as
among Muslims elsewhere, the preference is for marrying non-kin: 'Why
should I seek a marriage tie with a family to whom I already have a
connection when I can use the occasion to gain one with a different family?'
(a villager to Bertocci 1981: 111). Here marriage alliances for extending
social ties appear to be more important than strengthening kinship ties per
se.
Information on actual practice (summarized in tables 8.3 and A8.2) is
somewhat sparse, but that which exists suggests that stated preferences for
certain kinds of kin-based alliances, such as between cross-cousins, are not
always fulfilled in practice. In Sri Lanka, for instance, the Sinhalese have a
strong preference for marrying cross-cousins, but in actual practice Yal-
man (1967) and Tambiah (1965) found in their respective village studies
that only 16 per cent and 18 per cent did so. Among matrilineal Moors the
percentage was higher: 52.4 (Munck 1985). In a study in Karnataka (India),
75 per cent of those Hindus who did not marry cross-cousins said it was
because there was no such person alive, and another 20 per cent said that
girls of the right age were not available (Conklin 1973: 59). However, when
we extend the circle to include kin other than actual cross-cousins, there is
less of a gap between preference and practice. Communities with an overall
preference for close-kin marriages follow this in practice, as is found in
most communities of Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Pakistan as well as among the
noted communities in India, especially in the south. In some south Indian
communities, 100 per cent of marriages are between kin, as found in a
village in Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu, where half the marriages were
between close-kin (cross-cousins and uncle-niece) and half with other kin:
Silvertsen 1963). In Nepal the incidence of kin marriages is very high among
Tibeto-Burman communities such as the Magars and Tamangs. In Pakis-
tan, in almost all regions and communities, at least half and often more
marriages are between kin. But in Bangladesh where the preference is for
non-kin, except among the matrilineal Garos and the inhabitants of
Chittagong district (where tribal populations dominate), less than a quarter
of marriages are between kin; in some cases the percentage is less than ten.
Where both village endogamy and close-kin marriages are preferred, in
practice the two preferences may play themselves out in complex ways. In
Pakistan Punjab, for instance, the preference for kin endogamy is stated to
be stronger than that for village endogamy. Hence although families
attempt to fulfil both criteria, if no suitable person is found among kin
within the village the search is extended outside (Aschenbrenner 1967;
Table £>.3: Close-kin marriage norms in South Asia
Close-kin marriages
Region Forbidden Permitted1 Preferred2 Practised2
INDIA
Northwest
Delhi Sharma(1973)
Himachal Pradesh Parry (1979)
Kashmir Madan(1989)
Rajasthan Plunkett(1973)
Uttar Pradesh Bhandari(1963), Majumdar(1954)3 Majumdar(1954)
Gould (1960),
Hu(1957),
Luschinsky(1962),
Kolenda(1983),
MacDorman(1987),
Minturn and
Hitchcock (1966),
Vatuk(1975),
Wadley(1976)
West and Central
Gujarat Goody (1990), Fukutake^a/. (1964)
Haekel(1963),
Pocock(1972)
Madhya Pradesh Haekel(1963) Jay (1970), Jay (1970)
Mathur(1964), Yadav(1970) Yadav(1970)
Mayer (1960)
Maharashtra Chapekar(1960), Chapekar(1960),
Orenstein(1965), Orenstein(1965),
Rao and Chowdhury Rao and Chowdhury
(1988) (1988)
East
Bihar Das and Raha Das and Raha
(1963),4 (1963),5
Kochar(1963) De(1988),
Sachchidananda
(1968)
Standing (1987) Standing (1987)
Orissa GOI(1965d) GOI(1965b,e), GOI(1965b,e),
GOI(1967e) GOI(1967e)
West Bengal Fukutake et al.
(1964)
Northeast
Assam Cantlie(1984) 6
Arunachal Pradesh Sarkar(1977) Sarkar(1977)
Manipur Chaki-Sircar
(1984),7
Saha(1988)
Meghalaya
Agarwal (1990b)8
[Khasis],
Agarwal (1990b) Agarwal (1990b) Agarwal (1990b)
[Garos] [Garos] [Garos]
Mizoram Burman(1970)
Nagaland Furer-Haimendorf Furer-Haimendorf Furer-Haimendorf
(1976) (1976) (1976)
Tripura GOI (1966c) GOI (1966b)
South
Andhra Pradesh Dube(1955), Dube(1955),
Furer-Haimendorf Furer-Haimendorf Furer-Haimendorf
(1979), (1979), (1979),
Table 8. 3: (cont.)
Close-kin marriages
Region Forbidden Permitted1 Preferred2 Practised2
Lakshmanna (1973), Lakshmanna (1973), Lakshmanna (1973),

Naidu(1988), Naidu(1988)
Rao (1973),
Reddy(1987) Reddy(1987) Reddy(1987)
Karnataka Beals(1974), Beals(1974) Beals(1974)
Bradford (1985), Bradford (1985)
Claus(1975), Claus(1975),
Conklin(1973), Conklin(1973), Conklin(1973)
Epstein (1973), Epstein (1973),
Hill (1982), Hill (1982), Hill (1982)
Ishwaran(1968), Ishwaran(1968),
Laxminarayana Laxminarayana Laxminarayana
(1968), (1968) (1968),
McCormack(1958), McCormack(1958)
Srinivas(1942), Srinivas(1942),
Srinivas(1965) Srinivas(1965) Srinivas(1965)
Kerala (central
and northern) Gough (1961a) Gough (1961a)
[Nayars], [Nayars],
Mencher(1965) Mencher(1965) Mencher(1965)
[Nayars], [Nayars], [Nayars]
Gough (1961a) Gough (1961a)
[Tiyyars] [Tiyyars]
Tamil Nadu Beck (1972), Beck (1972) Beck (1972),

Djurfeldt and Djurfeldt and
Lindberg(1976), Lindberg(1976),
Good (1981), Good (1981), Good (1981),
Kapadia(1990), Kapadia(1990), Kapadia(1990),
Silvertsen(1963) Silvertsen(1963) Silvertsen(1963)
BANGLADESH
Muslims in all Typically not To a limited
regions and extent
communities
NEPAL
Brahmin, Chumik, Gurung, Chumik, Gurung, Gurung, Magar,
Chetri, Limi, Magar, Limi, Magar,Tamang, Thakali Tamang, Nyimba
Maithili, Tamang, Thakali,
Newar Thakuri, Nyimba
PAKISTAN
Muslims in all Muslims in all Muslims in all
regions and regions and regions and
communities communities communities
SRI LANKA
All regions and All regions and All regions and
communities communities communities
Notes: x This implies that at least some forms of close-kin marriages are permitted, although some other forms may be forbidden: e.g. cross-cousin
marriages may be allowed but parallel-cousin marriages may be forbidden.
2
Blanks indicate that there is no information on preference or practice (also see appendix table A8.2 for more details).
3
Jaunsar Bawar area.
4
Oraons tribe in Chotanagpur area.
5
Oraons in Sunderbans area.
6
It is unclear how strictly this rule is applied in practice. The tribes here are still in the process of assimilating Hindu influence (Cantlie 1984).
7
Relates to the Meitei community which constitutes two-thirds of the state's population.
8
Permitted but they have an aversion to it.
Forbidden
I I Mixed
• I Mostly allowed
Source: Table 8,3
Map 8.2 Close-kin marriage norms
Alavi 1972). In Alavi's West Punjab study village, out of 287 marriages, 73
per cent were both in the village and within the biraderi.11 In Panjgur,
Baluchistan, by contrast, although both kin and territorial closeness are
desired, marriage within the village with non-kin is preferred to marriage
with distant kin in other villages, since factors such as the availability of
political support within the village are important (C. Pastner 1971: 119).
Indeed kin and territorial endogamy in combination have some import-
ant implications. Together, marriages within the village and between close
11
Biraderi is defined variously by different authors (see Alavi 1972; Elgar 1960; and Kurin
1981). In its most specific sense, it refers to members of a patrilineage who trace their origins
to a common ancestor. Alavi (1972: 1-2) notes, however, that in a more general sense
biraderi refers to 'brotherhood' and need not be composed solely of kin. In this particular
context, though, Alavi is referring to the patrilineage (personal communication, Hamza
Alavi, Manchester (UK), 1992).
kin, repeated over a period of time, tend to produce territorially concen-

trated kindred groupings, or what some anthropologists have referred to as
'kinship universes'.12 This appears to be the pattern among Muslims in
Pakistan and Hindus in south India. Here the bifurcation between lineal
and affinal kin that results from the north Indian Hindu pattern of village
exogamy and marriage with strangers does not hold. Karve (1965: 251-2)
characterizes this difference in marriage patterns between the north and
south Indian Hindus as follows:
The north represents the principle of extended exchange, a policy of expansion,
incorporation of outsiders as wives into the family . . . The south represents the
principle of immediate exchange, a policy of consolidation, a clustering of kingroup
in a narrow area, no sharp distinction between kin by blood and kin by marriage . . .
Karve links these differences to earlier-prevailing local livelihood systems,

in particular a greater dependence on pastoralism in north India relative to
the south.13 Goody (1990: 310-12) links the difference to (among other
things) earlier and greater economic prosperity in the south, especially
increased agricultural productivity associated with the spread of wet-rice
cultivation in the eleventh century. This, he suggests, would have served to
increase the transfer of wealth to women in general, and to daughters in
particular, which in turn would have encouraged close-kin marriages. No
doubt a number of such historical factors could be conjectured to explain
the regional differences, including (I would venture), especially in relation
to marriage distance, the many invasions in the north which made marriage
alliances between neighbouring kingdoms (rather than neighbouring kin)
strategic, particularly among the royalty.
But be that as it may, these patterns affect not only the form that local
political alliances and networks take, but particularly women's situation.
Where women are married among strangers and at long distances from
their natal homes, as Hindu women often are in northwest India, their
social situation is one of great vulnerability, and the support and interven-
tion of kin in case of mistreatment cannot be depended upon. In fact
contact with their parental homes is restricted and limited. In some cases, as
noted in chapter 6, the separation is formalized by taboos against parents
accepting hospitality in a daughter's marital home, or even of visiting her
12
S. J. Tambiah (Harvard University), personal communication, 1992. Also see Yalman
(1967).
13
Karve appears to have overemphasized this latter difference. Although north and south
India are noted to have differed in the nature and possibly also extent of pastoralism,
Karve's assumption that there were 'very few or almost no pastoral traditions' in the south
(p.252) is not borne out by existing evidence: for instance, Roy Burman (anthropologist
and former Deputy Registrar General of India) in a personal communication in 1993,
mentioned a number of communities and regions of south India with notable pastoral
traditions.
there, except possibly on important ceremonial occasions. Marriage thus
represents a much more dramatic locational and emotional break in the
lives of women in most rural northwest Indian communities than elsewhere
in South Asia. Women's songs (cited in chapters 1 and 6) bear testimony to
the poignancy and pain of this separation. Moreover, in these circum-
stances parents can typically expect or take no material help from their
married daughters. This adds to their disincentive towards endowing
daughters with property, especially land. Taboos on parental visits also
increase a woman's dependency on brothers as links with those with whom
she has close emotional ties.
In south India, by contrast, marriage does not leave a woman so
vulnerable. The noted locational and social closeness of south Indian
marriage alliances encourages constant contact between the families of the
bride and groom. Moreover the mother-in-law may also be an aunt or (in
case of uncle-niece marriage) a grandmother. When married among close-
kin, a woman can thus draw upon the help of relatives, some of whom she
has known since childhood, and if also living near her parents she can call
upon their support in marital quarrels. As one Tamil village woman
commented to Kapadia (1990:167): 'Look at Rani - every time she quarrels
with Natrajan (her husband) she runs across the street to her mother's
house, so she's in her parents' house half the time.' Parents, in turn, can and
often do draw upon the support of married daughters in a crisis (as also
noted in chapter 6). They would thus be less conflicted about endowing
married daughters with property. In any case, the property would remain
within the extended kin group.
These advantages accrue to Muslim women as well. Women in C.
Pastner's (1971: 119) study area in Baluchistan were especially conscious of
the benefits of kin and territorial endogamy. They believed they were less
likely to be 'mistreated' if they married within the kin network or if their
relatives were available for 'intervention' in the village itself.14 A number of
Baluch women (as noted in chapter 6) were also endowed with landed
property as widows or daughters, although purdah practices can undercut
this advantage in significant degree by constraining women's ability to
manage the property owned.
(3) Purdah practices (see table 8.4 and map 8.3)

Pakistan and Bangladesh, with predominantly Muslim populations, are
regions of high purdah. 15 Kashmir in India, also with a majority Muslim
14
Also see S. Pastner's (1971) study of Baluch pastoral nomads.
15
See table 8.4 for definitions of high purdah, medium purdah, and non-purdah regions.
population, is something of an exception: here, as noted, veiling is not
usually practised by most rural Muslims and the more general seclusion of
women is also limited. Kerala Muslims again practise purdah only in
limited degree. Elsewhere, as in Uttar Pradesh, the practice is more
widespread. Purdah among Hindu communities in India shows a similar
regional variation: it is especially high in northwest India but is practised to
a lesser extent in parts of east, west, and central India. These latter regions
are mostly characterized by medium-purdah, while south and northeast
India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are regions of non-purdah. Within the
predominantly non-purdah regions, there are of course pockets of purdah-
practising Muslim and Hindu communities, just as within the purdah
regions there are tribal and other groups which do not practise purdah, or
do so in limited degree. For instance, in Nepal some upper-caste Hindus,
such as the Maithili Brahmins, practise purdah similarly to those in
northwest India (Acharya 1981). Table 8.4 and map 8.3 provide a broad
picture of dominant practice. Taking the dominant practice as indicative is
also relevant in so far as the majority practice tends to influence social as
well as administrative responses toward all women in a region, including
women of the minority communities.
(4) Sexual control over women (see tables A8.3a to A8.3c)

' Purdah practices impose one form of constraint on women's physical and
social mobility and on their freedom to interact with men; the generalized
control over female sexuality imposes another. Both severely limit women's
independence and their ability to claim and control land.
Few of the factors examined thus far show as much cross-regional
variation as the extent of sexual control exercised over women. Controls
range from the strictest among the Pukhtuns in the NWFP of Pakistan, to
great laxity among tribal groups in northeast India, with in-between
gradations across the rest of South Asia. For Pukhtun women in the Swat
Valley, life is strongly circumscribed:
[Women] are given in marriage without their consent, they cannot claim any form of
divorce compensation {haq mehr), there is no written marriage contract, they cannot
own or inherit any land or, in any case, and under any conditions, divorce their
spouse ... A divorced woman would threaten the rigid norms of chastity ... and
therefore would be liable to be killed. (Ahmed 1986: 31)
Both Ahmed (1980, 1986) and Lindholm (1982) document cases among
the Pukhtuns where the merest suspicion of sexual transgression on
women's part led to their deaths. Some of these incidents were described in
the previous chapter. An additional case, which took place in the Tribal
Table 8.4: Purdah practices in South Asia
Per cent
Per cent tribal Purdah among Hindus Assessment of
Region (1981) (1981) Practised Source in the state 1
INDIA 11.3 9.5

Andhra Pradesh 8.5 7.2 no: Dube(1955) —
Arunachal Pradesh 0.8 73.0 no: Burman (personal communication) 2 —
Assam 24.03 n.i. no: Cantlie(1984)
Bihar 14.1 8.9 yes: Srivastava (personal communication) 4 *
Gujarat 8.5 19.1 yes: Fukutake et al. (1964)[all castes]; Jhala 5 (personal
communication) *
Haryana and Delhi 4.0 — yes: Camerini and Gill (1982)[Jat]; Lewis (1958) **
Himachal Pradesh 1.6 4.9 yes: U. Sharma(1980) **
Jammu and Kashmir 64.2 — yes: Madan (personal communication) 6 *
Karnataka 11.0 6.0 no: All ethnographies; Personal observation —
Kerala 21.27 1.2 no: All ethnographies —
Madhya Pradesh 4.8 27.8 yes: Jacobson (1970); Mayer (1960) *
Maharashtra 9.2 12.7 no: Orenstein(1965) —
Manipur 7.0 32.8 no: Chaki-Sircar (1984)[Meitei] —
Meghalaya 3.1 86.1 —
Mizoram 8 0.4 95.0 —
Nagaland 1.5 89.7 —
Orissa 1.6 24.3 no: Bailey (1957)[all castes]; GOI (1965b-e) —
Punjab 1.0 — yes: U. Sharma(1980) **
Rajasthan 7.3 14.9 yes: Chauhan (1967)[Rajput]; Mandelbaum (1968);
Unninathan (1990); personal observation
Sikkim9 1.0 23.6 —
Tamil Nadu 5.2 1.4 no: All ethnographies —
Tripura 6.8 31.5 no: Roy Burman (personal communication)
Uttar Pradesh 15.9 0.2 yes: Minturn and Hitchcock (1966)[Rajput]; Luschinsky 1
(1962)[Kshatriyas]; Vatuk (1975)[Gaur Brahmin] f **
no: Berreman (1970)[Pahari] *
West Bengal 21.5 10 7.4 yes: Mazumdar; Burman (personal communication) 11 *
BANGLADESH 86.6 12 n.i. n.i. **
NEPAL 2.6 n.i. yes: In limited degree and only among Brahmins, Chetris *|
(Bennett 1983) and Maithilis (Acharya 1981) >
no: All other communities (various ethnographies) J
PAKISTAN 96.7 12 n.i. n.i. **
SRI LANKA 7.6 13 n.i. no: All ethnographies —
Notes: x Inferred from information in columns 2 to 4; assessments relate to majority practice.

—No purdah or very low purdah (that is, it is practised only by a small percentage or in very limited degree).
* Medium-degree of purdah: many practise to some extent.
** High-degree of purdah: most practise to considerable extent.
2
Roy Burman, earlier Deputy Registrar General of India.
3
Data relate to 1971.
4
Jaya Srivastava, social activist from Bihar with ANKUR, Delhi.
5
Jaisinghji Jhala, Dept of Anthroplogy, Harvard University, based on his fieldwork in Gujarat.
6
T.N. Madan, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi; sociologist with extensive fieldwork experience in the region. He mentions that Kashmiri
Muslims do not usually practise purdah; Jammu Hindus, however, do so, as in the neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh.
7
Muslims in rural Kerala do not usually practise purdah (personal communication: Leela Gulati, Kerala, 1993).
8
Most of the population (84 per cent in 1981) is Christian.
9
Most of Sikkim's population is non-Purdah-practising Nepalese.
10
Purdah practices among Muslims in West Bengal are widespread and quite strong (Jehangir 1991).
1
' Vina Mazumdar and Roy Burman, both maintain that although veiling is not practised, some degree of purdah in terms of restricted movement
in public spaces and interaction with male strangers is observed by rural women, especially in upper-caste, landed families.
12
All ethnographies indicate a high degree of purdah among Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslims, although nuanced by age and class.
13
7.1 per cent are matrilineal Moors who do not practise purdah in Sri Lanka (see Munck (1985); also Nur Yalman, Harvard University, personal
communication); only 0.5 per cent are other Muslims.
n.i. No information.
Sources: Per cent Muslims: For India, GOI (1984a: x-xi, xiv-xv) for states other than Assam; for Assam, GOI (1972: 2); for Bangladesh,
Government of Bangladesh (1984: 74); for Nepal, Government of Nepal (1991: 33); for Pakistan, Government of Pakistan (1985b: 13); for Sri
Lanka, Government of Sri Lanka (1983: 32-33).
Per cent scheduled tribe (rural) population in India by state, GOI (1984b: 7).
ID Low or none
I 1 Medium
• I High
Source: Table 8.4
Map 8.3 Purdah practices
Area of the NWFP 1 6 and is recounted by Ahmed (1980: 205), is especially

graphic: A husband and wife, A and B, were guests in C's house. When C's
son began an affair with B, A reported it to his host C. On hearing this C
arranged a feast, at the end of which he shot his son dead. After the
customary forty days of mourning for his son's death, he gave the same
revolver to A, asking him also, for the sake of his honour, to kill his wife. A
did so. C then publicly declared A to be his son and married him to his
16
As noted in chapter 6, in the Tribal Areas'of the North West Frontier Province of
Pakistan, the country's criminal, civil, and revenue laws do not apply. Pukhtuns constitute
some 90 to 95 per cent of the total population of these Tribal Areas. In other parts of the
province (which are termed the 'Settled Areas') the country's laws do apply. However, as
the stories related in the previous chapter and here indicate, among Pukhtuns in both parts
of the province notions of 'honour' and 'manhood' are tied to control over women and
result in extreme restrictions on, and often violence against, women.
dead son's wife! Ahmed (1980: 295) further observes: 'If the husband dies
without a son both his wife and daughters are subject to the mercy of his
brothers who may marry them, eject them or, as until the 1960s among the
Burhan Khel living east of Shati Khel, sell them.' Similarly, Lindholm
(1981:148) observes: 'men are permitted and encouraged to beat their wives
regularly. Only if bones are broken is a woman allowed to flee to her family,
and even then she must return to her husband after a year or so.' Further:
'The severity of purdah and the violence with which women are treated [by
the Swat Pukhtuns] are ... extraordinary, even in comparison with other
Pukhtun areas' (Lindholm 1982: 222).
In sharp contrast to this, women among most tribal and many hill
communities in India and Nepal are free to choose their own partners,
initiate divorce, and remarry as divorcees or widows. Pre-marital sex is
often tolerated or permitted. And although adultery is disapproved and
rarely condoned, the punishment it carries is usually light, such as the
payment of compensation to the aggrieved husband by the woman or her
lover. Sometimes adultery can be a ground for divorce.
In between the two ends of this spectrum are gradations in the extent of
sexual control exercised over women in the subcontinent. Considerfirstthe
patterns relating to individual elements of sexual control and then the
elements taken together.
Pre-marital sex. To begin with, the norms and practice regarding

pre-marital virginity and post-marital chastity vary both by community
and region (table A8.3a). Pre-marital sexual liaisons, for instance, are
tolerated and sometimes even openly allowed among many lower-caste
Hindus and most hill and tribal communities in India and Nepal. They are
also tolerated among Sri Lanka's (especially Kandyan) Sinhalese. How-
ever, such liaisons are strongly condemned among upper- and middle-
caste Hindus in India and Nepal, and by the Jaffna Tamils in Sri Lanka. In
many of these communities, parents seek to forestall such a possibility by
the early and even pre-pubertal marriage of girls. Although declining, such
marriages are still common in parts of India, despite the higher minimum
age of marriage (eighteen for girls and twenty-one for boys) currently
decreed by law.17 This community-wise variation in sexual control over
women overlaps with the regional pattern to a fair extent, given the
17
Dubey (1965), for instance, found in his study of three caste groups in Madhya Pradesh
that out of 233 married women, 77 per cent were married before the age of seven and all
before the age of twelve. In some districts of Maharashtra in the 1950s, child marriages
accounted for half or more of all marriages (Dandekar 1959: 36). In 1981, in the rural areas
of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar (all in the northern part of India)
the mean age of marriage was approximately sixteen, lower than in other parts of the
country (Goyal 1988).
concentration of tribal groups in central, eastern, and northeastern India
and of the Tibeto-Burman communities in the middle-hills of Nepal.
Attitudes toward pre-marital sex also affect the degree of autonomy
women can exercise in choosing their spouses. For instance, among most
communities of Nepal, the tribes of northeast and eastern India, and the
Sinhalese of Sri Lanka, women enjoy considerable freedom of choice.
Indeed marriage by elopement is socially accepted and practised even today
by many groups in Nepal and northeast India, including the relatively
Hinduized Assamese.18 In contrast, marriages are strictly arranged among
upper-caste Hindus in northwest and east India, and rural women usually
have little choice regarding which stranger they end up marrying. Among
Hindus who allow close-kin marriages and among Muslims, marriages are
still arranged to a large extent, but here women have some chance of getting
to meet their potential spouses and therefore of exercising some choice.
Adultery. Adultery is generally treated as a much more serious

offence than pre-marital sex, and by a wider range of communities,
including many tribal groups in India which permit or tolerate pre-marital
liaisons. The nature of punishment for adultery varies from the noted blood
revenge among the North West Frontier tribes of Pakistan, to social
ostracization of the woman among upper-caste Hindus, to the mere
payment of afineto the aggrieved party among most tribal groups in India
(such as the Santal, Ho, Munda, and Bhil) as well as several Tibeto-Burman
communities in Nepal. (In table A8.3a, the noted 'tolerance' of adultery
among Indian tribes essentially means that although afineis imposed, the
woman is not socially stigmatized in the way she would be in communities
where adultery is forbidden.)
However, two unusual exceptions to these patterns need comment. First
is the custom noted earlier in the Jaunsar Bawar region of Uttar Pradesh,
where adultery is forbidden in the marital village but women visiting their
natal villages can take temporary paramours. Second, in parts of northwest
India, tacit sexual activity is socially tolerated within the extended family
between a woman and her affines, even while adultery outside the extended
family is strongly condemned. Particularly (but by no means only) relation-
ships between a woman and her husband's younger brother (who is a
potential marital partner on the husband's death) are tolerated. And this is
not a recent phenomenon. The Punjab Gazetteer of 1904 commented on
this, as did the 1961 Census of India monograph of Mahsa Tibba village in
the Indian Punjab (cited in Hershman 1981: 175): 'Adultery is not socially
approved; in fact, it is severely condemned. In actual practice, however,
18
Cantlie (1984: 97) found that 11 per cent of the marriages in the Assamese village she
studied during 1969-71 were by elopement.
adultery is detected, known and put up with ... The general attitude
towards adultery demands that whereas the daughter of a person belonging
to the village must not be molested, it is not a grave offense if a person has
illicit relations with his brother's wife.' Hershman (1981), Lewis (1958),
Murray (1984), and Pettigrew (1975) all mention such cases in their village
studies in the Punjab-Haryana-Delhi region.19 Hershman (1981), who
presents the most detailed picture of this, noted that in his study village,
among family members, there were twenty-six cases of wife-sharing and
thirty-seven of adultery (the former being those where the concerned
husband was aware of the relationship and accepted it, the latter where the
concerned spouse or relative was unaware of the relationship or had
strongly objected to it on discovery). Of these sixty-three cases, most were
among the Jat and Tanner castes; and 40 per cent involved a brother's wife,
27 per cent a son's wife, 24 per cent a wife's sister, and 9 per cent others.
These relationships were not always ones the woman wanted: there were
cases of women being forced into acceptance, for instance by fathers-in-
law;20 but more often the accounts of all the noted authors suggest that this
system has provided Jat women with a limited degree of sexual freedom.
Consider Pettigrew's (1975: 51) description:
Women will arrange affairs for a beloved bhabi (brother's wife) when she is lonely
and if she is in her own house on a visit may lend her their own husband if they are
not too possessive. Whereas a man offering his wife to a friend can often imply
indebtedness, a woman who offers her husband to another woman does so as an
expression of silent solidarity.
At the same time, since this sexual 'freedom' is confined to members of the
extended family, it does not reduce the restrictions on women in terms of
land management, in so far as such management would necessitate
interaction with male strangers in the field and in the market place.
Of course, even communities which strongly condemn pre-marital sex
and adultery often have a story or two to tell about clandestine love affairs.
But such affairs carry strong public condemnation and social stigma for the
women involved. This contrasts sharply with communities where such
affairs are publicly tolerated and do not result in a loss of status for the
woman or her family. Among most Tibeto-Burman communities in Nepal,
for instance, although adultery is not approved, cases of married women
eloping with lovers are common, and do not cause any serious harm to the
woman's reputation. In Sri Lanka, the emphasis on post-marital chastity
varies between communities. The strictures are strong among the Jaffna
19
M a c D o r m a n (1987) also speaks of one case where brothers shared a wife in his U t t a r
Pradesh village study.
20
H e r s h m a n recounts one case where a w o m a n raped by her father-in-law subsequently
killed herself.
Tamils and weak among the K a n d y a n Sinhalese, about whom Yalman

(1967: 187-8) comments:
Great sexual freedom is granted to both partners . . . It is well known that married
men often sleep with other women. If their wives were asked about it, they would
say: 'How should I know what he is up to? I do not follow him around!' In the case of
women, it is generally felt that their husbands cannot easily prevent their wives from
sleeping with other men.
Divorce and divorcee remarriage. Social attitudes towards adul-

tery often parallel attitudes towards divorce and divorcee remarriage.
Legally, women can divorce and remarry among all communities of South
Asia. However, what concerns us here is the degree to which this is socially
accepted and practised (see table A8.3b). In India, with the exception of
Brahmin and occasionally Bania communities, divorce by either side is
permitted in principle. In practice, woman-initiated divorce, and the
remarriage of divorced women, appear to be relatively rare among upper-
caste Hindus, although generalizations are difficult, given the limited
information on this. Among low caste, tribal, and hill communities,
however, for whom there is a fair amount of information, women fre-
quently divorce and remarry. Usually the northeastern tribes as well as
some non-tribal communities elsewhere in India require the new husband
to pay monetary compensation to the ex-husband or to his family.21
In Pakistan (aside from the Tribal Area inhabitants) and Bangladesh, by
law both men and women can initiate divorce: men could always do so
unilaterally, but the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961 passed in
undivided Pakistan has made it somewhat easier for Pakistani and Bangla-
deshi women to initiate divorce as well. In India, however, Muslim women
governed by earlier laws have much more restricted rights to initiate
divorce. Everywhere divorcee remarriage is readily permitted by law. In
practice, however, women seldom initiate divorce, given their economic
and social dependency. Men generally face no such constraint: the percent-
age of divorced women in Bangladesh in the 1960s and 1970s was as high as
fifteen to twenty in some regions (see table A8.3b). The rates of remarriage
are also consistently higher for men than women. If divorced, although
Muslim women can in principle ask for the payment ofmehr, in practice (as
noted in chapter 6) few do so or get it; and since most do not inherit
property from their parents either, they would be left in an extremely
vulnerable position economically.
In Nepal, however, except among the Brahmins and Chetris, it is women
21
See Bailey (1957), Bhatt (1978), Chauhan (1967: Jats and Gadri), Chapekar (1960), Katiyar
(1967), Sansal (1966), and Sachchidananda (1968); also, personal observation among Mevs
and scheduled castes during fieldwork in a village in Rajasthan in 1986-87.
who generally initiate divorce, and divorcee remarriage is socially accepted
and commonly practised, especially but not only among the Tibeto-
Burman communities. Indeed, among the Newars, Limbus, and Tharus,
women often initiate divorce or separation, usually by simply eloping with
someone else, or by going back to their parents' homes and refusing to
return to their husbands. Twenty-one of the twenty-four cases of separation
among the Limbus in Jones's (1973) study resulted from the woman
running away with another man. Similarly, among the Newars of Bulu
village:
[DJivorce or separation and remarriage are completely acceptable, socially and
ritually, within the society so that a woman can leave her husband at any time she
chooses without any social or ritual disadvantages. Her children by a previous
husband are socially acceptable to the new family group, and nowadays provision is
being made for them to become ritually acceptable also. [As a result] women much
more than men break up marriages. (Pradhan 1981: 75)
Three-quarters of the marriages that ended by desertion or elopement in
Pradhan's sample were at women's initiative, and three women had married
four times without harming their social standing. The same freedom is
exercised by Kandyan Sinhalese women in Sri Lanka (Yalman 1967, Ryan
1953), in sharp contrast to the Jaffna Tamils, among whom divorce is rare
and typically the man's prerogative.
Widow remarriage. The issue of widow remarriage is a complex

one. In India, low caste, tribal, and hill groups have always freely practised
widow remarriage. But upper-caste Hindus forbade it, and among them
historically widowhood was associated with severe social disabilities
(Altekar 1956). Greater social acceptance of widow remarriage through
pressure from the nineteenth-century social reform movement, and legal
changes both before and after India's independence, were thus important
steps forward for such women. Today, as seen from table A8.3c, only a few
groups still explicitly prohibit widow remarriage: all are upper-caste
Hindus located primarily in northwest India and, more limitedly, in
western India, while upper-caste Hindus in the northeastern, eastern, and
southern states (except some southern Brahmin communities) allow widow
remarriage.
In practice, widow remarriage in India continues to be uncommon
among the upper castes in all regions and common among low caste, tribal,
and hill communities (table A8.3c). 22 Most communities consider it an
22
Changes in this regard in recent years have been in both directions: lesser restrictions
among some upper castes (Singh 1969) and greater restrictions among some tribal groups
(Deliege 1985), the latter due to the adoption of upper-caste Hindu practices by such
groups.
inferior form of marriage: it usually involves little or no ceremony and is
identified by a different term than used for a first marriage. Its incidence
varies with the widow's age, the number of children she has, and whether
these children are sons or daughters. Young, childless widows, or those
with very small children, are more likely to remarry. Older widows with
children and especially those with sons, do not usually remarry. Dubey
(1965: 52-4) found in his Madhya Pradesh study that 45 per cent of ever-
widowed women remarried. The rates varied by age: 94 per cent of those in
the thirteen to twenty-two age group remarried, but only 20 per cent in the
twenty-three to thirty-two age group did so. None with more than two
children remarried. Dandekar (1963, cited in Dreze 1990: 24) similarly
found in her sample from western India in 1954-55 that 26 per cent of ever-
widowed women remarried, but none remarried if widowed after the age of
forty-three, and 87 per cent of those below thirteen did so. Also a widow is
more likely to remain unmarried and stay on in her marital home if her
husband had owned land than if he had been landless (Harper 1971).
Here the distinction between leviratic and other unions is also important.
Upper-caste widows, even when allowed to remarry in principle cannot
exercise a free choice over whether or not to do so and whom to marry. A
widow may, for instance, be forced into a leviratic union to keep the landed
property within the family. As discussed in chapter 6 and seen from table
A8.3c, leviratic unions are especially favoured in northwest India and
Pakistan, and even practised as a rule in some communities. The rates of
widow remarriage, broken down into leviratic and non-leviratic unions,
can be revealing: in a sample study of seventy-seven villages in the Indian
Punjab in 1963, 25 per cent of ever-widowed women had remarried, of
whom 88 per cent had contracted leviratic unions. Most of the non-leviratic
remarriages were of childless widows and none were of widows with more
than two children, while leviratic marriages were not so constrained and
some were of widows with even four children (Agarwala 1972: 99). It also
appears to be the case that while in most northwest Indian communities
levirate is actively encouraged, and cases of forced levirate are not
uncommon, 23 in southern India it either receives no mention at all in
discussions of widow remarriage, or (among some communities) it is
explicitly forbidden. Whatever the underlying reasons for this difference,
the function that levirate serves in northern India, of keeping the landed
property on which the widow has a claim within the control of her marital
family, is served in the south by close-kin marriage. As noted earlier, if a
Hindu widow in northwest India remarries, but not in a leviratic union, she
typically loses her rights over her husband's property.
23
See e.g. Agarwal (1989), Kolenda (1983), and chapters 5 and 6.
When we take all the elements of sexual control together, viz. constraints
on extra-marital sexual liaisons, on initiating divorce and remarrying as
divorcees, and on exercising choice in remarriage as widows, a broad
community-wise and regional picture emerges. Community-wise, women
belonging to low caste, tribal, and hill groups in India and Nepal, and
Sinhalese women in Sri Lanka, are relatively less socially constrained than
those belonging to upper-caste Hindu communities in India and Nepal.
Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh come in-between, in so far as usually
no social stigma attaches to divorcee or widow remarriage. Regionally,
Pukhtun women of Pakistan's NWFP are the most severely constrained,
and the Tibeto-Burman women in the middle hills of Nepal the least. The
remaining regions occupy various positions within this spectrum; north-
west India comes closer to the Pakistan pattern, and northeast India to the
Nepali one.
Both purdah practices and the more general sexual control over women
restrict women's interactions with men as well as their overall mobility. In
regional terms, however, the two types of controls do not entirely overlap.
As we would also expect from our discussions in chapter 7, sexual control
over women is much more widespread and extends well beyond the
boundaries of purdah practices. Both types of controls however (as noted
earlier) have an adverse effect on women's ability to claim and control
landed property in multiple and complex ways. They segment social and
public interactions along gender lines, but do not impinge equally on
women and men: most restrictions apply principally or only to women. Yet
the rules and punishments for violation are determined in predominantly or
solely male forums. Contesting these restrictions (and the double standards
they embody) would thus be an integral and critical part of the struggle by
women to establish their rights in land.
(5) Rural female labour force participation rates (see table 8.5 and
map 8.4)
Female labour force participation rates, aside from being important in
themselves as a measure of women's economic situation, also serve, as
noted, as a proxy for several dimensions of women's ability to claim and
self-manage land. The participation rates vary both by class/caste status of
the woman's family, and regionally. Ethnographic information and farm-
level micro-surveys give us some idea of the class/caste variation: they
indicate that participation is highest among tribal and low caste women and
lowest among the upper castes. For instance, women of Rajput and
Brahmin communities normally do not participate in field-related work,
although poverty can sometimes push them to seek such work. Upper-caste
Table 8.5: Rural female labour force participation rates and rural female
literacy rates in South Asia (1981) (percentages)
RFLFPR 1 RFLR 2
(lOyrs. (15 yrs.
Country and above) and above)
BANGLADESH 4.2 15.3

INDIA 24.4 17.6
NEPAL 47.2 7.6
PAKISTAN 3.0 6.8
SRI LANKA 23.7 78.6
INDIA INDIA
by state2 RFLFPR RFLR by state RFLFPR RFLR
Northwest Northeast
Haryana 7.6 12.7 Arunachal Pradesh 67.1 8.9
Himachal Pradesh 29.2 26.1 Assam 55.43 n.i.
Jammu and Kashmir 9.2 9.4 Manipur 61.2 25.0
Punjab 2.6 25.0 Meghalaya 60.8 27.8
Rajasthan 16.1 5.2 Mizoram 60.6 62.8
Uttar Pradesh 9.4 8.7 Nagaland 72.6 32.7
Sikkim 60.6 16.0
Tripura 14.3 28.0
West and Central
Gujarat 20.2 22.8 South
Madhya Pradesh 39.7 8.5 Andhra Pradesh 46.6 13.2
Maharashtra 47.3 22.3 Karnataka 33.4 18.8
Kerala 20.2 69.0
Tamil Nadu 39.8 23.5
East
Bihar 15.3 9.4
Orissa 16.7 18.0
West Bengal 10.0 23.0
Notes: 1 Economically active rural female population in a given age group as a percentage
of total rural female population in that age group. For India the figures relate to 'main
workers' in the age group fifteen years and above; disaggregated figures for workers in the
age group ten to fourteen years were not available.
2
Rural female literate population of fifteen years of age or more as a percentage of total
rural female population in that age group.
3
Figure relates to 1961. Data for 1981 were not available for Assam and the 1971 census
seriously undercounted women workers.
Sources: For RFLFPRs: For Bangladesh, Government of Bangladesh (July 1988: 97). For
India, Government of India (1987a: 134-95). For Nepal, Government of Nepal (1987a:
210). For Pakistan, World Bank (1989: 64). For Sri Lanka, Government of Sri Lanka
(1986: 164).
For RFLRs: For Bangladesh, Government of Bangladesh (1984: 195). For India, GOI
(1987c: 142-301). For Nepal, Government of Nepal (1984: 1). For Pakistan, Government
of Pakistan (1991b: table 1.6). For Sri Lanka, Census of Sri Lanka, 1981.
E Z 1 Less than 20%

d l 20 to < 40%
H 40 to < 60%
• 60% and more
Source: Table 8.5
Map 8.4 Rural female labour force participation rates (1981)
households which can afford to do so substitute poor, lower caste women's

labour for the labour of family women.
Regionally, both the degree of emphasis on purdah and the sexual
control exercised over women impinge on women's participation outside
the home. Farm-level data also show that women's participation in
agricultural fieldwork declines as the households' landholding size and
incomes rise (Agarwal 1984). The regional rates of female labour participa-
tion captured in macro-surveys thus reflect several factors: the proportion
of low caste and tribal populations, the incidence of poverty in the region,
and cultural variations in purdah practices and sexual controls over
women. From table 8.5 and map 8.4 we note that Pakistan, Bangladesh,
and much of northwest and eastern India constitute areas of low female
labour participation in farm-related work outside the home confines. Nepal
and northeast India are regions of high participation, while south, west,
and central India, and Sri Lanka come in between. Of course, within these
regional divides there is some variation: for instance, participation rates for
Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh are much lower than those for
Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, but even taking this into account, the
overall rates in northwest India are on average lower than in other regions
of India.
The observations thus far broadly support the propositions extended

earlier in chapter 3, especially when we contrast the northern part of the
subcontinent, where women were essentially excluded from land rights,
with the northeast and south, which contain the communities where
women's inheritance rights in land were customarily recognized. We have
noted that in these latter regions there is also an overall marked preference
for in-village and close-kin marriage, often greater sexual freedom for
women, and high female participation in agriculture. At the same time, the
contrary is not necessarily true: regions where women's inheritance rights in
land were not customarily recognized do not necessarily have marriages at
considerable distance with non-kin, or low female labour force participa-
tion. These patterns hold for the northwestern but not for the central and
eastern belt of the subcontinent. Basically while women's inclusion in land
rights has been associated with the existence of certain other noted
practices, their exclusion from land rights is a more widespread condition
and is not necessarily associated with the absence of those practices.
Consider now some additional factors which impinge on women's ability
to claim, control, and self-manage land.
(6) Rural female literacy rates (see table 8.5 and map 8.5)
Women's literacy rates in rural South Asia show dramatic differences
between countries and within India. The rates are very high in Sri Lanka
and Kerala, and abysmally low in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and much
of northwest India (where only Punjab and Himachal Pradesh rise above
the national average). The rest of India presents a mixed picture, with the
rates ranging from low to high. Overall, the rates are especially low in
Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh - the 'Hindi
heartland' of India. In contrast, the high rate in Kerala is striking and
attributable to several factors, of which the significant ones would be the
dominance of matrilineal inheritance practices in the state, the importance
given here to women's education historically, both by the rulers24 and by
24
In 1817, for instance, the young queen of Travancore, Rani Gouri Parvathi Bai, placed
responsibility for promoting education clearly on the State:
The state should defray the entire cost of education of its people in order that there might be
no backwardness in the spread of enlightenment among them, that by diffusion of
education they might be better subjects and public servants and that the reputation of the
State might be advanced thereby (cited in Sen 1990b:66).
Less than 15
15 to < 30
30 and above
No Info.
Source: Table 8.5
Map 8.5 Rural female literacy rates (1981)
individual communities such as the Nayars, 25 missionary educational

activity, and in more recent years the state-funded expansion and consoli-
dation of basic education. The high female literacy in both Sri Lanka and
Kerala, despite much lower per capita incomes in these regions than, say, in
Punjab or Pakistan, also indicates that a lack of wealth need not prevent
progress on this critical aspect of human development.
(7) Total fertility rates (see table 8.6 and map 8.6)
Both between countries and within India there is a marked regional
variation in total fertility rates. Between countries, the rate is lowest in Sri
Lanka and highest in Pakistan; India is on the lower side of the range and
Nepal and Bangladesh on the higher side. Within India the rates are below
25
In 1891, almost half the female literates in Kerala were Nayars (Nayar 1989: 211).
Table 8.6: Total fertility rates in South Asia (1988)
Total fertility
Country rate (TFR)
BANGLADESH 5.5
INDIA 4.0
NEPAL 5.8
PAKISTAN 6.6
SRI LANKA 2.5
INDIA TFR INDIA TFR

by state TFR (rural) by state TFR (rural)
Northwest East
Haryana 4.2 4.5 Bihar 5.4 5.5
Himachal Pradesh 3.7 3.7 Orissa 3.8 3.9
Jammu and Kashmir 4.4 4.9 West Bengal 3.5 4.0
Punjab 3.4 3.5
Rajasthan 4.5 4.8
Uttar Pradesh 5.4 5.6 Northeast
Assam 3.8 3.9
West and Central
Gujarat 3.4 3.6 South
Madhya Pradesh 4.7 5.1 Andhra Pradesh 3.3 3.4
Maharashtra 3.5 3.9 Karnataka 3.4 3.7
Kerala 2.0 2.0
Tamil Nadu 2.5 2.7
Sources: For India see Government of India (1991b: 26-7).

For countries other than India see World Bank (1990: 230-1).
the national average in most states, but especially in all the southern states,
with Kerala and Tamil Nadu falling at the bottom of the scale. (We have no
information on most of the northeastern states.) In contrast, the rates are
especially high in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, followed by Madhya Pradesh
and Rajasthan. These four northern states geographically cover much of
the northern part of the country, and account for some 40 per cent of the
country's population. Women tend to bear on average two to three children
in Sri Lanka and three to four in south India, but women in the noted four
northern states of India, as well as in Bangladesh and Nepal, tend to bear up
tofivechildren or more; while Pakistani women tend to have, on average,
more than six children in a lifetime.
Although rural women in the subcontinent who normally work in the
fields usually continue to do so during periods of pregnancy and lactation,
frequent childbearing and continuous childrearing cannot but adversely
Less than 3
3to<4
4to<5
5 and more
No Info.
Source: Table 8.6
Map 8.6 Total fertility rates
affect their work capacity and time available for farm work. It would also
circumscribe the geographic radius of their lives. Although, when older,
children could assist in farming, high fertility is likely to be a constraint on
women's ability to work on and supervise their own farms precisely in the
periods of their lives when they could be most physically energetic and
mobile. Regionally on this count women in south India and Sri Lanka are
clearly better off than women elsewhere in South Asia.
(8) Land scarcity (see tables 8.7 and 8.8, and maps 8.7 to 8.9)
Four different variables have been used here to measure the extent of land
scarcity prevailing in different regions: population density, percentage of
landless rural households, land inequality (as indicated by size-class
Table 8.7: Population density, landlessness, land concentration, and forest

area in South Asia
Gini coeffs. of
Population Per cent land owned
per sq km landless Per cent
(1981)1 to total landowning all geo-area
Country/Region (in '000) rural hhs rural hhs rural hhs under forest
BANGLADESH 630 32.82 (1978) 0.546 (1978) 0.695 15.73 (1985-86)

INDIA 216 11.34 (1982) 0.677 (1982) 0.714 19.5 (1985-87)
NEPAL 102 7.85 (1970) 0.683 (1970) 0.718 37.6 (1978-79)
PAKISTAN 106 18.0 (1979-80) 0.554 (1976) n.a. 5.46 (1986-87)
SRI LANKA 230 11.17 (1982) 0.525 (1982) 0.578 39.0 (1982-85)
INDIA by state (1981) (1981) (1982) (1982) (1985-87)
Northwest
Haryana 292 6.1 0.678 0.698 1.3
Himachal Pradesh 77 7.7 0.515 0.552 24.0
Jammu and Kashmir 59 6.8 0.491 0.526 9.1
Punjab 333 6.4 0.750 0.766 2.3
Rajasthan 100 8.1 0.589 0.623 3.8
Uttar Pradesh 377 4.9 0.608 0.627 11.5
West and Central

Gujarat 174 16.8 0.631 0.693 6.0
Madhya Pradesh 118 14.4 0.592 0.650 30.1
Maharashtra 204 21.2 0.628 0.707 14.3
East
Bihar 402 4.1 0.673 0.687 15.5
Orissa 169 7.7 0.583 0.615 30.3
West Bengal 615 16.2 0.637 0.700 9.6
Northeast
Arunachal Pradesh 8 20.6 0.516 0.633 82.3
Assam 2548 7.5 0.522 0.558 33.3
Manipur 64 2.1 0.420 0.432 80.0
Meghalaya 60 10.2 0.466 0.520 69.8
Mizoram 23 12.8 0.353 0.436 86.2
Nagaland 47 n.i. n.a. n.a. 86.8
Sikkim 45 n.i. n.a. n.a. 42.8
Tripura 196 14.9 0.548 0.615 50.1
South
Andhra Pradesh 195 11.9 0.702 0.737 17.3
Karnataka 194 13.7 0.635 0.685 16.7
Kerala 655 12.8 0.648 0.693 26.1
Tamil Nadu 372 19.1 0.704 0.761 13.6
Notes to Table 8.7: 1 The 1991 census estimates are at present available only for India. For
comparative purposes I have therefore used 1981 estimates for all countries.
2
Households owning no land other than homestead land, that is, these households own no
agricultural land. If we take households with neither homestead nor agricultural land the figure is
11.1 per cent.
3
The figures are over 10.0 in only 4 districts: Noakhali, Chittagong, Chittagong (hill tracts) and
Khulna.
4
This covers households which own neither agricultural nor homestead land. The figure would be
higher if we took as 'landless' those households which own no agricultural land but do own some
homestead land. No direct information on this is available, but one indirect indicator would be
the percentage of rural households not cultivating any land, which comes to 26.0 per cent in 1982
(GOI 1986a: 12). However, this figure would include households owning no agricultural land as
well as those which have leased out all their owned agricultural land. The actual percentage of
those owning no agricultural land would thus be less than 26.0.
5
Households owning land up to 0.12 ha. Zaman (1973) believes that this is an overestimate of
landlessness since it includes a sizable number of cultivators in the eastern Terai and western hills
who have not registered the land they own and till.
6
The figure was over 10.0 only in the North West Frontier Province.
7
Agricultural operators owning no land, not even home gardens. Another 38.5 per cent own
home gardens but no other land. An agricultural operator is the person operating the land and/or
managing livestock or poultry. Hence these data do not cover all rural households.
8
Based on projected population of Assam since there was no census there in 1981.
n.a. Not applicable.
n.i. No information.
Sources:
For population density
1. For Bangladesh: Computed from World Bank (1983: 148).
2. For India: Government of India (1987a: xxi).
3. For Nepal: Government of Nepal (1987a: 15).
4. For Pakistan: Government of Pakistan (1985a: 6).
5. For Sri Lanka: Government of Sri Lanka (1984a: 18).
For landlessness
1. For Bangladesh: Jannuzi and Peach (1980: 101, appendix table D.3).
2. For India: Government, of India (1987b: S33-S46).
3. For Nepal: Zaman (1973: 82).
4. For Pakistan: Singh (1990: 77).
5. For Sri Lanka: Government of Sri Lanka (1984b: 17).
For Gini coefficient

Computed from the landownership data taken from the sources given in table 8.8.
For forest area

For Bangladesh: Government of Bangladesh (1988).
For India: Satellite Imagery, Government of India (1989b).
For Nepal: Government of Nepal (1988).
For Pakistan: Government of Pakistan (1990).
For Sri Lanka: Government of Sri Lanka and World Bank (1986).
Table 8.8: Distribution of ownership holdings in South Asia among rural

landowning households
Per cent of rural

Size of holding and households owning Per cent of
date of survey land area owned
BANGLADESH (1978)l
(acres) (ha) 2
> 0.01-1.00 (0.40) 43.3 9.6
> 1.00-5.00 (2.02) 46.7 48.7
> 5.00-9.00 (3.64) 6.6 19.4
> 9.00-15.00 (6.07) 2.2 10.9
> 15.00 1.1 11.4
INDIA (1982)3
(ha)
0.002-1.00 62.4 12.2
> 1.00-2.02 16.6 16.5
> 2.02-6.07 16.6 38.0
>6.07-12.14 3.3 19.0
> 12.14 1.1 14.3
NEPAL (1970)
(ha)
0.00-< 1.00 65.1 9.7
1.00 < 3.00 17.8 14.6
3.00-< 15.00 14.8 44.7
15.00-< 20.00 1.0 8.3
20.00 and above 1.2 22.7
PAKISTAN (1976)
(ha)
0.00-6.25 70.8 24.9
> 6.25-12.50 17.5 21.3
> 12.50-25.0 7.6 17.8
> 25.0-50.0 2.6 13.2
>50.0 1.5 22.8
SRI LANKA (1982)4
(acres) (ha)
0.00-< 1.00 (0.40) 42.8 9.4
1.00-< 2.00 (0.81) 21.0 13.6
2.00-< 4.00 (1.62) 22.1 29.4
4.00-< 10.00 (4.05) 12.1 32.8
10.00 and above 2.0 14.8
Notes: ' Includes only agricultural land.

2
1 ha = 2.471 acres.
3
Includes land owned and used for both agricultural and non-agricultural (e.g. homestead)
purposes.
4
Relates to ownership holdings of only agricultural operators; includes land under home
gardens.
Less than 150

150 to < 300
300 to < 450
450 and more
Source: Table 8.7
Map 8.7 Population density (1981) (persons per sq km)
distributions and Gini coefficients) among the landowning households and

among all rural households, and per cent geo-area under forests. For some
of these factors the variations between regions are quite small. For instance,
land ownership is highly concentrated everywhere on the subcontinent,
although especially so in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh if we take the Gini
coefficients of all rural households (including the landless), and especially
so in India and Nepal if we take only the rural landowning households. But
for other variables the differences are marked. For instance, population
Sources to Table 8.8

For Bangladesh: computed from Jannuzi and Peach (1980: 100).
For India: computed from Government of India (1987b: S5 to SI8).
For Nepal: computed from Zaman (1973: 93).
For Pakistan: computed from Khan (1981: 75).
For Sri Lanka: computed from Government of Sri Lanka (1984b: 17).
Less than 10%

10 to < 15%
15 to < 20%
20% and more
No Info.
Source: Table 8.7
Map 8.8 Per cent landless to total rural households
density in Bangladesh is six times that in Nepal and Pakistan and almost
three times that in India. Again the percentage of geographic area under
forest is only 5.4 in Pakistan; it is almost four times more than this in India
and almost eight times more than this in Sri Lanka. Within India, the
northeastern region is the most densely forested and the northwestern the
least, the percentages ranging from eighty-six in parts of the former to one
in parts of the latter. Also the four variables do not entirely overlap
regionally, so the picture we get is a mixed one.
Making a broad assessment on the basis of all the land scarcity variables
taken together, it is fairly clear which regions fall at the two ends of the
spectrum. Bangladesh is the most land scarce, 26 and northeast India the
26
Although Bangladesh on average has more forest cover than, for instance, Pakistan or
northwest India, much of its forest land is concentrated in a small belt in the eastern part of
the country.
1 I Less than 10%

C Z U 10 to < 20%
1 20 to < 40%
I 40% and more
Source: Table 87
Map 8.9 Per cent geographic area under forest
least. Pakistan and south India come closer to Bangladesh at the high end of
the spectrum, and Nepal comes closer to the northeast at the lower end. The
remaining regions of the subcontinent come in-between. Pakistan,
although it has a relatively favourable land-person ratio, falls at the upper
end of the spectrum by the other criteria: high landlessness, high inequali-
ties in the distribution of owned land, and extremely low forest cover.
Similarly, in south India, landlessness and land inequalities are high, as is
population density, although forest cover is greater than in Pakistan. Sri
Lanka's population density is on the higher side, but it falls in the lower part
of the spectrum by the inequality measures and its fairly high forest cover.
Northwest, west and central India fall in the middle part of the spectrum,
with high to medium levels of population density and a mixed picture in
terms of land inequalities and forest area.
IV. An overview of regional patterns

In overview, an interesting regional picture emerges, summarized in broad
terms in table 8.9 and in maps 8.10 (juxtaposing eight of the maps presented
above). It can be seen that the four regions more conducive to women being
able to exercise their rights in land are northeast and south India, Sri Lanka,
and Nepal. In all of these, women marry either in their natal villages or in
nearby ones, and close-kin marriages are preferred. There is no adherence
to purdah, and the overall control over female sexuality is less than in other
parts of the subcontinent. Women's labour force participation varies
between medium and very high. Literacy rates are very high in Sri Lanka,
although they vary between low-to-high in south India and northeast India;
while total fertility rates are low in Sri Lanka and low-to-medium in south
and northeast India. Nepal, however, is an outlier on the latter two counts,
with very low female literacy rates and very high total fertility rates. The
picture for land scarcity is also a mixed one: population densities range
from low in northeast India and Nepal to medium-to-high in south India
and Sri Lanka. Land concentration is on the lower side in Sri Lanka and on
the higher side in Nepal and South India. But these regions, other than
south India, are quite favourably placed in terms of forest area, and Nepal
also has lower levels of landlessness than most other regions.
Moreover, with the exception of Nepal, these are the regions which
contain all the traditionally matrilineal and bilateral communities. The case
of Nepal is somewhat paradoxical in this regard: legally, it is the one region
where even today daughters' inheritance rights in land are extremely weak;
but the social freedoms enjoyed by most women here are highly conducive
to their being able to claim and manage land independently. This provides
fertile ground for women's grassroots groups to push for legal changes. In
general, in these four regions, the assertion by women of their rights in land
is likely to be met with much less opposition than elsewhere in the
subcontinent.
The regions where women are likely to encounter the most resistance to
their claims are northwest India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. In northwest
India (especially the Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan belt),
village endogamy is typically forbidden, marriages are often at some
distance from the natal village (especially among the upper-caste landown-
ing communities), close-kin marriages are usually taboo, purdah is prac-
tised, control over female sexuality is strict, and women's labour force
participation rates are low. Also population densities and total fertility
rates (especially in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan) are high, female literacy is
low, inequalities in the ownership of private land are considerable, and non-
privatized land in the form of village commons and forests is limited and
rapidly disappearing. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, some conditions are

favourable, in that village endogamy and close-kin marriages are permit-
ted, and women's inheritance rights are endorsed by Islam and cannot in
principle be denied by the orthodoxy. At the same time, female seclusion
practices negate these advantages to a significant degree. The very high
population density and considerable landlessness and land inequality in
Bangladesh also produce a situation of considerable potential conflict over
land. In these three regions, therefore, women's attempts to assert their
rights in land are likely to be met with especially strong opposition from
male kin. And the degree to which women can prevail against this
opposition will depend crucially on their ability on the one hand to weaken
the hold of purdah through ideological shifts, and on the other hand to
mobilize group support and overcome individual vulnerabilities. To some
degree this has begun to happen in parts of the subcontinent, as will be
discussed in chapter 9.
Central, western, and eastern India come in-between these two ends of
the spectrum. Village endogamy is not common but neither is it usually
forbidden, and women in many communities do marry within the village or
in nearby villages. Some communities also allow close-kin marriages.
Purdah is practised in some communities and not in others. Central and
eastern India also contain a significant belt of tribal populations among
whom women have greater autonomy than among non-tribal groups.
Within this middle belt of the subcontinent, some regions such as West
Bengal are closer to the overall north Indian pattern, and others such as
Maharashtra to the south Indian pattern.
In essence what we therefore get are four broad geographic zones,
ordered below in terms of the degree of difficulty, hostility, and opposition
women are likely to encounter in affirming their rights in land: zone 1:
Pakistan, northwest India, and Bangladesh; zone 2: Middle India (the
western, central, and eastern states); zone 3: Nepal and northeast India; and
zone 4: south India and Sri Lanka. Zone 1 is likely to provide the most
hostile climate, and zone 4 the least. Although Nepal and northeast India
are less unfavourably placed than south India and Sri Lanka in terms of the
land scarcity factors, they have been ranked lower because of the legal
obstacles to women's inheritance rights that still remain in these regions. As
noted in chapter 5, there are significant gender inequalities in Nepal's
codified laws; while in northeast India, where tribal populations dominate,
legal codifications for most tribes have yet to be undertaken: here to ensure
gender equality, codification will need to supersede many prevailing
inheritance customs which are unfavourable to women.
Of course the four regional divisions outlined above should only be taken
as broad indicators of the overall patterns and not as strict demarcators.
Table 8.9: Summary for cross-regional comparisons
INDIA 1
West
North- and North-
Variable BANGLADESH PAKISTAN west Central East east South NEPAL SRI LANKA
Village endogamy allowed allowed mostly mixed mixed allowed allowed allowed allowed
taboo
Marriage distance mixed near mostly medium medium near mostly near near
far to near near
Close-kin marriage allowed allowed mostly mixed mixed mixed allowed mostly allowed
taboo allowed
Purdah high high high low low none none mostly none
none
Pre-marital sex taboo taboo mostly mixed mixed mostly mixed mostly mixed
taboo tolerate tolerate
Adultery taboo taboo mostly mixed mixed mostly mixed mostly mixed
taboo tolerate tolerate
Divorce allow allow mostly mostly allow allow mostly allow allow
allow allow allow
Widow remarriage allow allow mostly mostly allow allow mostly mostly allow
allow allow allow allow
Rural female labour v.low v.low low medium low v.high medium high medium
participation rate 2 to high to high
Total fertility v.high v. high high medium medium medium low to v.high low
rate 3 to high to v.high medium
Rural female low v.low v.low v.low v.low low to low v.low v.high
literacy rate 4 to low to low to low medium to high
Population v.high low medium medium high low medium low medium
density5 to high to high
6
Per cent landless v.high high low high low to low to medium low medium
medium medium
Land concentration high high high to v.high v.high low to v.high v.high medium
(Gini coefficients)7 v.high medium
Per cent forest
land 8 medium low low medium medium v.high medium high high
1
Notes: ' Given the variations within each of the five sub-regions, 'low', 'high , etc. indicate only broad assessments.
2
RFLFPR: v. low to low = <20%; medium = 20 to <40%; high = 40 to <60%; v.high = 60% and more.
3
TFR: low = < 3.0; medium = 3.0 to <4.0; high = 4.0 to < 5.0; v. high = 5.0 and more.
4
RFLR: v.low = < 15; low = 15 to < 30; medium = 30 to < 45; high = 45 to < 60; v. high = 60 and above.
5
Population Density: low = < 150; medium = 150 to < 300; high = 300 to < 450; v.high = 450 and more.
6
Per cent landless: low= < 10%; medium = 10 to < 15%; high= 15 to <20%; v.high = 20% and more.
7
Gini coefficients: low= <0.45; medium = 0.45 to <0.55; high = 0.55 to <0.60; v. high = 0.60 and more.
8
Per cent forest area: low = < 10%; medium = 10 to < 2 0 % ; high = 20 to <40%; v.high = 40% and more.
Traditional forms of land inheritance
^\ Patrilineal
^ | Bilateral
^ H Matrilineal
Village endogamy norms
I 1 Mostly forbidden
; ] Mixed
Source: Table 8.1 • i Mostly allowed
Maps 8.10 A comparative perspective

Close-kin marriage norms
D Forbidden
I ^H Mixed
Source: Table 8.3 Mostly allowed
Purdah practices
I I Low or none
L Z J Medium
Source: Table 8.4 H Hg

ih
Maps 8.10 (cont.)

Rural female labour force participation rates (1981)
K \
W/
<?)
/* f
wLess than 20%
en 20 to < 40%
40 to < 60%
Source: Table 8.5 V / / \ 60% and more
Population density (1981)

{persons per sq. km.)
V— / / / VrK^
•n ^3?
m
Less than 150
150 to < 300
••••: Y j f ca 300 to < 450
Source: Table 8.7 ' ^ ^ f \ • • 450 and more
Maps 8.10 (cont.)

Percent landless to total rural households
ED Less than 10%

10 to < 15%
VV \ ^ J
nm 15 to < 20%
BBS 20% and more
Source: Table 8.7 ' X ^ | \ CD No Info.
Percent geographic area under forests
I Z Z I Less than 10%

I I 10 to < 20%
20 to < 40%
Source: Table 8.7 40% and more
Maps 8.10 (cont.)

Attempts at the regional patterning of society and culture in the Indian

subcontinent are by no means new, but most have been confined to post-
independence India and usually do not cover the other four countries. Such
attempts include those by geographers and social anthropologists such as
Sopher (1980), Miller (1981), Mandelbaum (1970), Libbee (1980), and
Karve (1965). In the works of these writers, the geographic divisions vary
from a two-fold north-south divide to a four-fold one or more, with some
variation in the identification of areas included within these divisions. For
instance, in Sopher's (1980) proposed north-south separation of India's
historical-cultural regions, the north essentially relates to the northwestern
Gangetic plains, and the south largely to the southeastern and far southern
areas. He sees the ancient Vindhya-Narmada axis extending northeast-
wards as a significant cultural divider, as does Miller (1981). Mandelbaum's
(1970) north-south division highlights differences in the institutions of
marriage and family and the status of women, the south comprising the
four southern Dravidian-language states (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karna-
taka, and Andhra Pradesh), and the north the Hindi-speaking belt centred
around Uttar Pradesh. Libbee's (1980) mapping of territorial endogamy
and marriage distance again suggests a marked difference between the
peninsular south and the northwest; while Karve (1965) discusses the
agrarian organization of kinship within a four-zone linguistic-cultural
division, with the four southern states comprising one zone and the rest
three. In general, there is a fair degree of agreement among scholars in
defining the south, and the differences among them relate largely to the rest
of the country, with several areas being left indeterminately
characterized.27
Clearly in any such geographic patterning, much depends on what
variables constitute the basis of the divisions. My geographic divisions
overlap in some degree with those of earlier scholars on some variables,
such as Libbee's on marriage residence, but not on others. In particular my
analysis highlights four aspects. First it indicates the importance of a more
nuanced grading of India than is usually undertaken, by distinguishing
within 'northern' India between the northwest, west, east, and central, and
by taking account of northeast India. Second, it points to the usefulness of a
South Asia-related analysis as opposed to only an India-based one, since
some patterns which just begin to appear within India are revealed with
greater starkness in the neighbouring countries. For instance, the associa-
tion between women's post-marital residence and their traditional land
27
For additional attempts at defining regions in India, and discussions of the problems
therein, see Crane, ed. (1966) and Sopher, ed. (1980). Also see Dyson and Moore's (1983)
attempt to regionally map kinship structures, female autonomy, and demographic
behaviour in India; and the discussion in Goody (1990).
rights within matrilineal and bilateral communities, which is indicated by
the Indian case studies, is affirmed by the Sri Lankan ones. Similarly the
patterns of women's disinheritance and the constraints on their autonomy
noted in northwest India are found in their extreme form in the North West
Frontier region of Pakistan. Again, Bangladesh brings out the contradic-
tions between purdah ideology which confines women within the home, and
economic necessity which pushes many out to search for work, in ways that
would not be revealed as starkly through a focus on north India alone.
Including Bangladesh also helps to highlight women's responses and
contestations around the issue of purdah, as will be discussed in the next
chapter.
Third, the analysis brings out the strength of cultural commonalities over
religious differences. The patterns in Hindu northwest India are closer to
those of Muslim Pakistan than to those of Hindus in Sri Lanka or south
India. Similarly, the communities of Sri Lanka - Buddhist, Muslim, and
Hindu - show greater similarity to one another in relation to the mapped
variables than to the people of these religious persuasions in the northern
part of the subcontinent. The identities sought to be constituted by religious
and ethnic fundamentalists today thus often move in contradiction to these
historically forged cultural links.
Finally, the analysis suggests that favourable social and legal conditions
are not sufficient in themselves to guarantee women their land rights. For
instance, given that by most of the mentioned indicators, the conditions for
women inheriting and managing land in south India and Sri Lanka are
relatively favourable, we would have expected more of them to be doing so
than appears to be the case. 28 Although (as we saw in chapter 6) the
situation in these regions is better than, say, in the northwest, in that many
women do inherit land in Sri Lanka and Kerala among the traditionally
matrilineal and bilateral groups, even here not all who are legally eligible do
so. And in the traditionally patrilineal groups of south India, the gap
between law and practice remains marked. In terms of land control, again
the gender gap is considerable in all regions, including the south. What then
are the missing ingredients? At least three could be suggested. One, there is a
wide gender gap in all the regions, including southern South Asia, in the
role that women play and the bargaining power they have in public
decision-making bodies at every level (from village to national bodies): 29
this, as noted earlier, both directly and indirectly and in complex ways
28
While this can be surmised from the ethnographies, systematic, region-wise information-
gathering on the extent to which women in different regions d o inherit and m a n a g e land is
clearly warranted both in macro-surveys and in village-level ethnographies.
29
F o r instance, in 1987 only 5.5 p e r c e n t of Parliament members from the four south Indian
states were women, and in no region was the percentage over 11 ( G O I 1988b: 178).
ensures predominant male ownership and/or control over significant
economic resources, including land. Two, women in all the regions are
subject to restrictions imposed by the social structuring of appropriate
female roles and behaviour and the gendering of public space, although
admittedly less so in southern and northeastern South Asia than elsewhere.
And three (in my view most importantly), favourable social conditions can
complement but not substitute for women themselves taking the initiative
infightingfor their land rights, both as individuals and in groups. Indeed
this appears to be the necessary condition for change as much in the
southern parts of South Asia as in other parts, although the constraints
against which this struggle has to be waged are significantly greater in
northern South Asia than elsewhere.
In the chapter that follows, we therefore turn to the ways in which women
have been resisting and contesting many of the constraints they face in
making their legal rights in land effective.
Table A8.1: Women's post-marital location and distance from the natal home: detailed evidence from South Asia
Post-marital
location and Per cent
Region distance marriages Source
INDIA
Northwest
Delhi state
Rampur Village Jats and Chamars Nais Lewis
Brahmins (1958:161)
^ clVClclgC HlllCd )
12-13 20 24
Kashmir
Utrassu-Umangri Brahmins Madan(1989:97)
village In village 20.0
(Anantnag dist) Up to 15 miles outside 74.0
> 15 miles 6.0
100.0
(N=150)
Rajas than
Ranawaton-ki-Sardi Rajputs Jats and Chauhan(1967:74)
village, Gadri
(Chittorgarh dist) (—average miles—)
64 4^-5 (max =12)
Awan village All castes Gupta (1974: 69)
(Kota dist) In village 19.3
Up to 15 miles outside 11.8
> 15-25 miles 46.1
> 25 miles 22.7
100.0
(N = 321)
Table A%.\:(cont.)
Post-marital
Uttar Pradesh
Sirkanda village Up to 4 miles 80.0 Berreman(1970:82)
(Uttar Pradesh hills)
Two villages, village 1 village 2 Bhandari
(Mirzapur dist) In village 33.3 30.8 (1963:100-1)
Up to 4 miles outside 33.3 21.5
> 4 miles 33.3 47.7
100.0 100.0
(N = 30) (N = 63)
Sherpur village All castes: 10.5 Gould (1960: 488)
(Faizabad dist) (average miles)
Senapur village high middle low Luschinksy (1962: 322)
(Jaunpur dist) caste caste caste
Up to 3 miles outside 22 12 28
> 3 - 7 miles 30 52 35
> 7 - 11 miles 18 23 28
>ll 30 13 9
100 100 100
(N = 88) (N = 60) (N=144)
Lohari village Rajput Bajgi Kolta Majumdar(1955: 172)
Jaunsar Bawar area In village 0.0 0.0 0.0
(Dehradun dist) Up to 3 miles outside 35.2 0.0 43.0
> 3-6 miles 28.3 50.0 34.4
> 6 < 10 miles 25.3 0.0 18.2
10-15 miles 7.7 50.0 4.3
>15 3.4 0.0 0.0
100.0 100.0 100.0
(N = 233) (N=102) (N = 48)
Kishan Garg Village In village 0.0 Marriott (1955: 175)
(Aligarh dist) > 14 miles 50.0
West and Central
Madhya Pradesh
Orcha village Gond tribe Jay (1970: 79)
(Bastar dist) In village 21.2
Ramkheri village Rajputs All Mayer (1960: 210)
(Malwa region) and farmers castes
(average miles outside)
12-17 9-20
Two villages Gond tribe Yadav (1970: 291)
(Chhindwara dist) In village 43.0
Up to 5 miles outside 31.0
> 5 - 10 miles 18.0
> 10 miles 8.0
100.0
(N = 315)
Maharashtra
(All dists, averages) Dhangar Distance per cent Malhotra (1980: 26-7)
(Shephard) outside marriages
subcastes village in village
Hatkars 8-24 miles 29.5
Khutekars 8-17 miles 19.4
Ahirs 11-17 miles 10.1
Dange 4-7 miles 30.1
Table A8.1: (cont.)
Post-marital
31 village average In village 14.8 Rao and Chowdhury

(Five dists) Up to 10 miles outside 36.7 (1988: 107)
> 10 miles 48.5
100.0
East
Bihar
Three villages Tribal groups Sachchidananda
(Three dists) Munda Oraon (1968: 148)
(per cent marriages:
range over 3 villages)
In village 3 3-8
Up to 3 miles outside 10-35 40-55
> 3-9 miles 29-46 36-46
> 9-15 miles 19-30 3-4
> 15 miles 9-14 1-3
Northeast
Assam
Panbari village In village 14 percent of all Cantlie(1984:82)
(Sibsagar dist) daughters' marriages
Manipur < 3 miles most Chaki-Sircar
(1984:65)
South
Karnataka
Haripura village In village 23.0 Dillon (1955)
(Mandya dist)
Two villages Wangala Dalena Epstein
(Mandya dist) In village 46.5 15.3 (1962: 166,296)
> 4 - 10 miles 17.6 12.1
> 10 miles 9.1 12.1
100.0 100.0
(N=142) (N=124)
Totagadde village Within 5 miles 87.0 Harper (1971: 97)
(Shimoga dist) > 5 miles 13.0
Six villages All castes Hill (1982: 203-^)
Anekal Taluk In village 22.0
(Bangalore dist) very close 10.0
close 38.0
far 30.0
100.0
(N = 415)
Seven families In village 4.0 Laxminarayana
(Mandya and Hassan Up to 15 miles outside 43.0 (1968:115)
dists) [all castes] > 15 miles 53.0
100.0
(N = 236)
Tamil Nadu
Olappalaiyam All castes cultivators Beck (1972: 231)
village (KavuNTar)
(Coimbatore dist) In village 6.0 4.0
> 20 miles 20.0 4.0
100.0 100.0
(N = 200) (N=116)
Average (miles) 10 4-5
TM village In village 17.2 Silvertsen
(Tanjore dist) (1963: 96)
Table A8.1: (cont.)
BANGLADESH
Location of woman's marital home
In In In In Outside All
Village Union Thana District District
Region oerce nt^Qp of marriiiP^P^ Source
233 villages 7.2 9.6 43.4 25.0 14.8 100.0 Aziz (1979: 166)
(Comilla and Dhaka (N=1485)
districts)1
Badarpur village 6.6 37.4 12.0 39.2 4.8 100.0 Islam (1974: 79)
(Dhaka district)
Amarpur village 30.2 13.1 24.1 29.3 3.3 100.0 Kabeer(1985:89)
(Faridpur district)
Ulashi village 23.0 15.0 18.0 26.0 18.0 100.0 Zaman(1982: 134)
(Jessore district) (N = 295)
Dhononjoypara 26.9 28.0 45 1 100.0 Karim(1988: 144)
(Rajshahi district) (outside the union) (N = 93)
Gopalhati 35.4 25.8 38 8 100.0 Karim(1988: 144)
(Rajshahi district) (outside the union) (N=178)
Post-marital
Region/ location and Per cent
Community distance marriages Source
Shimulia village In village 27.0 Arefeen (1983)

(Dhaka district)
Shaheenpur Village In village 24.9 Ellickson (1972a: 60)
(Comilla district) Up to 2 miles outside 23.4
> 2 miles 51.7
100.0
(N = 269)
Talukpur village pre-1971 1981-88 Gardner (1990: 389)
(Sylhet district) In village 69 48
Up to 5 miles outside 18 19
> 5 miles 13 33
Three villages, Within 3 miles 82.0 Harbison et al. (1985: 9)
(Garo Hills)
Four Villages Walking distance 42.0 Harder (1981: 174)
(Comilla district)
Bargapur village In village 30.0 Hoque(1987: 147)
(Chittagong district)
Bhaimara village Within 2-3 miles most Jahangir(1979)
(Dakha district)
Barimpur Village In village 10.0 Jansen(1983:82)
(Dakha district) A few miles outside 90.0
Natunpur village 10-15 miles radius most Nath(1984)
(Rajshahi district)
Nine villages, In village 26.0 Qadir (1970, quoted in
(Mymensingh district) Outside village 74.0 Aziz, 1979: 130)
Table A8.1: (cont.)
Post-marital
Region/ location and Per cent
Community distance marriages Source
NEPAL
Gurungs
Balkot village In village most Andors(1976)
(Central Lamjung dist)
Limbus
Tehrathum Bazaar In village 2.6 Jones(1973: 234)
(Tehrathum dist) Up to 1 day's walk 58.3
> 1 day's walk 39.1
100.0
Magars
Banyan Hill village In village 39.1 Hitchcock (1980: 64)
(Nuwakot dist) Up to 5 miles outside 47.8
> 5—15 miles 10.9
> 15 miles 2.2
100.0
Thabang village In village 90.0 Molnar(1981: 105)
(Rolpa dist)
Maithili
Sirisia Parbari In village 2.9 Acharya(1981:84)
village Up to 6 hrs walk 84.1
(Dhanusha dist: Terai) 1 day's walk 13.0
100.0
(N = 69)
Newars
Dolakha dist In village 60.0
Bungmati Khatry(1986)
(Kathmandu Valley) In village 16.0
Bulu village In village 26.1 Pradhan(1981:60)
(Lalitpur dist) < 1 hr walk 63.0
1-6 hr walk 10.9
100.0
Tamangs
Tamdungsa village In village 33.3 Holmberg(1989:59)
(Nuwakot and Rasua Few hrs walk rest
dists)
Tharus
Sukhrwar village In village 40.6 Rajaure(1981:45)
(Dang Deokhuri dist: Up to 3 hrs walk 56.3
Terai) > 3 hrs walk 3.1
100.0
PAKISTAN
Punjab Province
Jalpana village In village 46.7 Ahmad (1968: 8)
(Sargodha dist) Up to 4 miles outside 9.1
> 4-10 miles 23.7
> 10-15 miles 10.9
> 15 miles 2.2
other or not known 7.4
100.0
Table A&.\:(cont.)
Post-marital Per cent

Region/Community location and distance marriages Source
Faqiriawall village In village 34.8 Aschenbrenner

(Lahore dist) Up to 5 miles outside 21.5 (1967:253,281)
> 5-10 miles 13.4
> 10-20 miles 14.8
> 20 miles 15.5
100.0
Choaya village In village 37.6 Donnan(1981: 183)
(Murree Hills) Up to 5 miles outside 56.1
[Dhund Abbasi] > 5 miles 5.7
Not known 0.6
100.0
(N=157)
Chakpur village In village 74.0 Kurin (1981: 339-40)
(Sahiwal district) Outside (within 26.0
20 miles) 100.0
(N=177)
Chakpur village In village 54.0 Kurin and Morrow
(Okara district) Up to 5 miles outside 16.0 (1985: 244)
> 5-10 miles 14.0
> 10-15 miles 12.0
> 15 miles 4.0
100.0
(N = 31)
Meharabad village In village 95.4 Naveed-I-Rahat
(near Islamabad) (1979: 16)
NWFP
Swat Valley In village 30.0 Barth(1956:41)
Shin Bagh village (Swat) In village 70.0 Lindholm(1982: 144)
Peshawar Valley Near most Vreeland(1957)
SRI LANKA
Sinhalese
Pul Eliya In village 46.2 Leach (1961: 82)
(North-central P.) Up to 3 miles outside 35.9
in 1954) > 3-10 miles 17.9
100.0
(N = 39)
Morapitya (Central P.) In village 36.0 Robinson (1968: 405)
Three villages (in three provinces) In village (3 village range) 39-53 Ryan et al. (1955: 152)
Mulgama (Western P.) In village 68.3 Selvadurai(1975: 106)
Pata Dumbara In village 51.0 Tambiah(1958:33)
(Central P.) Up to 3 miles outside 7.0
> 3-6 miles 12.0
> 6 miles 30.0
100.0
Rambukkoluwa In village 54.1 Tambiah (1965: 146)
(Central P.) 3-5 miles outside 37.8
in 1958 > 5-10 miles 5.4
> 10 miles 2.7
100.0
(N = 37)
Terutenne (Central P.) In village 52.4
Udamulla (Uva P.) In village 65.8 Yalman(1967:42)
Vilawa (North-central P.) In village 33.3
Veddas
Willachchiya In village (1931-50) 69.7 Brow (1978: 144-5)
(North-central P.) (1951-70) 60.4
Tamils
Chirripudi (Jaffna P.) In village most Banks(1957)
fishing village (Jaffna P.) In village 90.0 David (1973a: 26)
Notes: l Includes both Hindu and Muslim marriages. P. = Province

Table A8.2: Close-kin marriage norms and practice: detailed evidence from South Asia
Close-kin marriages1
Forbidden Permitted Preferred Practice
Region/ Type of Per cent

Community relationship marriages Source
INDIA
Northwest
Delhi state
Basti village yes Sharma (1973)
[Jats and Thakurs]
Himachal Pradesh
Chadhiar mauza yes Parry (1979)
(Kangra dist)
Kashmir
Utrassu-Umanagri yes Madan (1989)
village (Anantpur
dist) [Pandits]
Rajasthan
[Rajput royalty] yes Plunkett(1973)
(cross-
cousin)
Uttar Pradesh
(Mirzapur dist) yes Bhandari (1963)
(cross-
cousin)
Sherupur village yes
Gould (1960)
(Faizabad dist)
Bhagwanpur village yes
(Gonda dist) Hu(1957)
[Tharus]
Khalapur village yes
(Saharanpur dist) Kolenda(1983)
Senapur village yes
(Jaunpur dist) Luschinsky(1962)
Jaunsar Bawar yes yes
(Dehradun dist) Majumdar(1954)
[Bajgi and Kolta]
Khalapur village yes
(Saharanpur dist) Minturn and Hitchcock
(1966)
Several villages yes
(Meerut dist) Vatuk (1975)
[Brahmins]
Karimpur village yes
(Mainpuri dist) Wadley(1976)
West and Central

Gujarat
Samiala village — yes
(Baroda dist) Fukutake e/a/. (1964)
(matri-
lateral
cross-
cousin)
Two villages (Baroda
and Nimar dists) ves
Haekel(1963)
Table A8.2: (cont.)

Three villages yes — — Pocock(1972)

(Kaira dist) (Patidar)
Madhya Pradesh
One village yes — — — Haekel(1963)
(Nimar dist)
Orcha village — yes yes n.i. n.i. Jay (1970)
(Bastar dist) (bilateral
cross-cousin)
Potlan village yes — — Mathur(1964)
(Malwa region)
Ramkheri village yes — — — Mayer (1960)
(Malwa region)
Two villages — yes cross- 82 Yadav
(Chhindwara dist) cousin (N = 210) (1970:291)
[Gond]
Maharashtra
Patgaon Pathar — yes cross- common Chapekar(1960)
village (Thana dist) cousin
[Thakurs]
Gaon, Poona dist.
[Upper castes] — yes cross- 16 ( Orenstein
cousin (N = 292) f (1965:95)
[Lower caste] — yes cross- 41
31 villages yes
cousin
kin (consan-
(N=159)
10.3
J Rao and Chowdhury
(Five dists) [Teli]
guineous) (N = 757) (1988: 109)
East
Bihar
Sunderbans area yes __ _
Das and Raha
[Oraon tribe]
(1963)
(Singhbhum dist) yes n.i. n.i. De(1988)
[Teli, Lohar, (cross-
Bagti, Ghasi, Dom] cousin)
Kuapara village yes _ Kochar(1963)
[Santal tribe] (cross-
cousin)
Chotanagpur area yes Sachchidananda (1968)
[Oraon tribe]
Das and Raha (1963)
[Munda tribe] — yes cross- Standing (1987)
cousin
West Bengal
Supur village yes
Fukutake et al.
(Birbhum dist) (all castes) (1964)
Northeast
Arunachal Pradesh
(Lohit dist) — yes yes Sarkar(1977)
[Khamti tribe]
(MoBrDa)
Table A8.2: (cont.)

Assam yes — — — — Cantlie(1984)

Manipur
[Meitei] yes Chaki-Sircar(1984)
Meghalaya
[Khasis] yes no cross-cousin n.i. Agarwal (1990b)
[Garos] yes yes cross-cousin n.i. Agarwal (1990b)
[Lalungs] yes Agarwal (1990b)
(but earlier
permitted)
Nagaland
[Nagas] — yes yes cross-cousin n.i. Furer-Haimendorf
(1976)
South
Andhra Pradesh
Shamirpet village — yes n.i. cross-cousin 18.0 Dube(1955: 119)
(Hyderabad) (N = 340)
[Gonds] yes yes cross-cousin 71.6 Furer-Haimendorf and
Furer-Haimendorf
(1979:310-11)
11 districts — yes yes cross-cousin common Lakshmanna (1973)
[all castes]
Two settlements yes kin (consan- 74.6 Naidu (1988: 268)
(Kurnool dist) guineous)
[Tribes: Chenchu
and Sugali]
Jalaripalem village yes Rao (1973)
[East Coast near
Vishakapatnam)
Karnataka
Elephant village yes yes close kin 49.0 Beals(1974: 115-16)
Gopalpur village yes yes close kin 21.0
Namhalli village yes yes close kin 33.0
Somvarpethe yes n.i. MoBr,SiDa 7.8 Bradford (1985: 290)
(Dharwada dist) cross-cousin 8.0
[Lingayats] (N = 550)
S.Kanara [Bants] yes yes n.i. n.i. Claus(1975)
26 villages yes yes cross-cousin 36.6 Conklin(1973:59)
(Dharwar dist) (N = 558)
Two villages yes yes n.i. n.i. Epstein (1973)
(Mandya dist)
Six villages yes yes cross-cousin 52.0 Hill (1982: 204)
(Anekal taluk) and uncle-niece (N = 240)
(Bangalore dist)
Shivapur village yes yes Ishwaran(1968)
(near Dharwar town)
Seven families yes yes Preferred 28.8 Laxminarayana
(Mandya and Hassan (cross- All kin 92.8 1968: 105)
dists) cousin
and elder
SiDa)
Table A8.2: (cont.)

Two villages yes n.i. kin 27.2 McCormack(1958:35)

(Bangalore dist) (N = 518)
14 villages — yes yes first cross- Reddy (1987: 359)
(Chittoor dist) (cross- cousin 33.9
[Malas] cousin) uncle-niece 2.8
(Coorg province) — yes yes cross-cousin common Srinivas(1965)
[Coorgs] (cross-
cousin)
(All dists in state) __ yes yes n.i. n.i. Srinivas(1942)
[All castes] (cross-
cousin)
Kerala
(central and
northern)
[Nayars] — yes yes cross-cousin n.i. Gough (1961a)
[Tiyyars] — yes yes cross-cousin n.i. Gough (1961a)
Tamil Nadu
Olappalaiyam village
(Coimbatore dist)
[Agriculturists] — yes n.i. kin 32.2 Beck (1972: 254)
(N = 525)
[All castes] yes kin 38.8
Thaiyur yes cross-cousin common Djurfeldt and
(Chingleput dist) Lindberg(1976)
Two villages
(Tirunelveli dist) yes yes first cousin 25.0 Good (1981: 119)
Poovaloor yes yes uncle-niece 10.0 Kapadia(1990:
(Tiruchirappali) (N = 201) 186-7)
other kin 37.0
(N = 745)
TM village yes yes cross-cousin 30.6 Silvertsen
(Tanjore dist) uncle-niece 20.3 (1963: 96)
other kin 49.1
100.0
(N=157)
INDIA (Muslims)
Shamirpet village yes cousins 47.5 Dube(1955: 119)
(nr. Hyderbad city) (N = 40)
(Andhra Pradesh)
Mappilas
(Kerala) yes yes cross-cousin n.i. Gough (1961a)
(Lakshadweep Is.) yes yes kin 35.4 Kutty(1972: 176)
Several villages yes yes first cousins 17.1 Huq(1988:92)
(24-Parganas dist) other kin 14.9
(West Bengal)
[Syed and Tanti]
Four villages yes yes first cousins 53.9 Rizvi(1988:87)
(Lucknow, Hardoi, other cousins 12.4
Kanpur, Unnao dists)
(Uttar Pradesh)
Table A8.2: (cont.)
Close-kin marriages 1

BANGLADESH
Comilla and Dhaka — yes no cousins 8.5 Aziz (1979: 59)2
dists (cross and (N=1719)
parallel)
Chittagong dist — yes n.i. kin 34.0 Hara(1967:98-9) 3
Chittagong dist — yes n.i. kin 30.0 Hoque(1987)
Chittagong dist — yes n.i. cousins < 12.0 Koda(1966: 158)3
(N = 460)
Chittagong dist — yes no n.i. n.i. Prindle(1982)
Comilla dist — yes yes cross-cousin n.i. Harder (1981)
Comilla dist yes no parallel cousin 3.3 Ellickson
(N = 269) (1972b: 47)
Dhaka dist — yes n.i. cross-cousin 0.6 Arefeen(1983)
parallel cousin 2.2
(N = 323)
Garo Hills yes yes kin 85.0 Harbison et al.
(1985:9)
Jessore dist — yes n.i. kin 21.0 Zaman(1982: 134)
Mymensingh dist — yes no n.i. n.i. Cain etal. (1979)
Rajshahi dist yes n.i. kin 8.0 Mashreque
(N = 510) (1980: 115, 139)3
Rajshahi dist yes n.i. kin rare Nath(1984)
NEPAL
Brahmins and /es Bennett (1983; and
Chetris personal
communication)
Chumiks yes yes n.i. n.i. Schuler(1987)
Gurungs yes yes n.i. often Andors(1976)
yes n.i. cross-cousin uncommon Macfarlane(1976)
yes yes n.i. n.i. Goldstein (1977)
Limis (cross-
cousin)
yes yes real MoBrDa 25.0 Hitchcock (1980: 64)
Magars (cross- other kin 75.0
cousin)
— yes yes real MobrDa 49.0 Molnar(1981: 106)
(cross- other kin 25.0
cousin)
Maithilis yes — — — — Acharya(1981)
Newars yes — — — — Nepali (1965),
Pradhan(1981)
Tamangs — yes yes cross-cousin 36.0 Holmberg(1989: 59)
other kin 64.0
Thakali — yes yes n.i. n.i. Fisher (1987)
(cross-
cousin)
Table A8.2: (cont.)

PAKISTAN
Baluchistan
Panjgur Oasis — yes yes kin 30.0 1 S. Pastner
(Makran dist) parallel and " (1971:151)
[Agriculturists] cross-cousin 20.0
(N = 250) J
Panjgur (Coast) yes yes first cousins 64.0 Pastner
[Zikri Baluch: (parallel and (1982: 184)
Fisherfolk] cross-cousin)
[Marri] — yes yes Tent Badra Pehrson
Camp village (1977: 57)
agnatic kin 63.0 51.0
other kin 9.0 12.0
NWFP
Shin Bagh village yes yes kin (real and 52.0 Lindholm
(Swat) classifica- (N = 247) (1982:144)
tory)
Peshawar Valley yes yes n.i. n.i. Vreeland(1957)
Punjab
4
West Punjab village yes yes Biradari 80.0 Alayi (1972: 6-7)
(Sahiwal dist) (FaBrDa) (28.6)
Faqiriwalla village yes yes kin 58.4 Aschenbrenner
(Lahore dist) (bilateral) (1967: 245)
Choaya village yes yes kin 49.7 Donnan
(Murree Hills) (1981:174)
Behkri village yes yes n.i. n.i. Fatima (1982)
(Jhelam dist)
Chakpur village yes yes kin 100.0 Kurin (1981: 279)
(Sahiwal dist) (N = 586)
Chakpur village yes yes kin 100.0 Kurin and Morrow
(Okara dist) (1985:242)
Gondalpur village yes yes cousin 53.1 K. Merry (1983: 191)
(Gujarat dist)
SRI LANKA
Sinhalese
Kande yes yes n.i. Gunawardena
(Kandyan Highlands) (1989)
Pul Eliya village yes yes n.i.
(North-Central P.) Leach (1961)
Jungle village yes yes blood-kin 75.0
(North-Western P.) Ryan (1953: 152)
and Kandyan Highland
village (Central P.)
Low country village yes yes blood-kin 25.0 Ryan (1953: 152)
(Western P.)
Pata Dumbara village yes yes first 18.0 Tambiah(1965:26)
(Central P.) (MoBrDa) cross-cousin
Terutenne villlage yes yes cross-cousin 15.8 Yalman (1967: 213)
(Central P.) (cross-
cousin)
Table A8.2: (com.)
Close-kin marriages 1

Veddas
Willachchiya villages yes yes first cross- 11.0 Brow (1978: 148)
(North-Central P.) cousins (N=135)
Tamils
(Jaffna P.) yes yes kin 68.6 Banks (1957: 35)
Matrilineal Moors
Kotabowe Vidiya yes yes n.i. n.i. Yalman(1967)
village
(Eastern P.)
Kotabowa village yes yes cross-cousin 52.4 Munck(1985: 148)
(Eastern P.) other kin 11.1
Notes: 1 Many studies do not specify the exact kinship relationship; where they do, the relevant information is given below. Also, some communities
permit certain forms of close-kin marriages, but not other forms; hence when it says 'yes' under 'permitted', it only implies that at least some forms
of such marriages are permitted.
2
Muslims only.
3
CitedinBertocci(1981: 110-11).
4
See footnote 11 in text of chapter 8.
Mo = Mother; Br = Brother; Da = Daughter; Si = Sister.
P. = Province, n.i. = No information
Table A8 .3a: Sexual control over women in South Asia: norms of pre-marital sex and adultery
Pre-marital sex Adultery

Region Forbidden 1 Tolerated Allowed Forbidden 1 Tolerated Allowed
INDIA
Northwest
Luschinsky Carstairs Berreman Madan(1989) Carstairs Berreman
(1962) (1954) (1970) [Pandit] (1954) (1970)
[high caste] [Bhil tribe] [Pahari] [Bhil] [Pahari]
Madan(1989) Luschinsky Mathur(1967) Minturn and Hershman Majumdar
[Pandit] (1962) [Tharu] Hitchcock (1981)2 (1954)3
[low caste] (1966)
[Rajput]
MacDorman Srivastava Lewis (1958)2
(1987) (1966)
[Kumaon Bhotia]
Minturn and Wadley(1976) Murray (1984)2
Hitchcock Newell (1962)
(1966) [Gaddi]
[Rajput]
Sansal(1966)
Wadley(1976) [Kumaon
Khasiya]
West and
Central
Jay (1970) Chapekar Chapekar
Orenstein(1965) (1960) (1960)
Table A8.3a: (cont.)
East
Nicholas (1961) Archer (1984) Standing Das and Raha Archer (1984)
[Santal] (1987) (1963) [Santal]
[Munda] [Oraons of
Sunderban]
Das and Raha Gallagher Kochar(1963)
(1963) (1965) [Santal]
[Oraons of [Oraons of
Sunderban] Chotanagpur]
Kochar(1963) Sachchidananda
[Santal] (1968) [Ho]
GOI(1965b,c)
[Koya, Kandha]
GOI(1967c,d)
[Bhuiya, Bhumij]
Standing (1987)
[Munda]
Northeast
Chaki-Sircar Cantlie(1984) Furer- Furer-
(1984)[Meitei] [Assamese] Haimendorf Haimendorf
(1976)[Nagas] (1976)
[Nagas]
GOI (1966a) Majumdar Majumdar
[Mizos] (1978)[Garos] (1978)
[Garos]
South
Beck (1972), Gough(1956) Furer- Gough(1956) Furer-
Gough(1956) [non-Brahmin] Haimendorf [Brahmin], Haimendorf
[Brahmin], (1979) Srinivas(1965) (1979)
Mathur(1969), [Gonds] [Coorgs], [Gonds]
Yalman(1963) Yalman(1963)
[Nambudiris] [Nambudiris]
BANGLADESH
Yunus(1984) Yunus(1984)
NEPAL
Brahmins *| Bennett (1983) Bennett (1983)
and V Folmar(1985)
Chetris J
Chumik Schuler(1987)
Gurungs Andors(1976) Messerschmidt
(1976)
Lepchas Macfarlane
(1976)
Limis Goldstein
(1977)
Magars Hitchcock Molnar(1981)
(1980)
Maithili Acharya(1981) Acharya(1981)
Newars Pradhan
(1981)
Nyimba Levine
(1988)
Table A8.3a: (cont.)
Tamangs Furer- Fricke

Haimendorf et al.
(1956), (1986)
Fricke et al.
(1986),
Holmberg(1989)
Tharus Rajaure Rajaure
(1981) (1981)
Thakali Fisher (1987)
PAKISTAN
Baluchistan Pehrson(1977),
C. Pastner(1971)
NWFP Ahmed (1986), Ahmed (1986),
Barth(1956) Barth(1956),
Lindholm(1982)
SRI LANKA
Jaffna Tamils Banks(1957) Banks(1957)
Matrilineal Munck(1985) Munck(1985)
Moors
Sinhalese Yalman(1967), Yalman(1967),
Risseeuw(1988) Brow (1978)
Notes: x Incidents may occur of course, but there is a strong public disapproval and censure.
2
These are all instances of adultery within the extended family; adultery with outsiders is condemned.
3
This relates to women in the Jaunsar Bawar community which allows women to take lovers when they visit their natal villages but forbids them
from doing so in their marital villages.
Table A8.3b: Sexual control over women in South Asia: norms and practice of divorce and divorcee remarriage
Divorce Divorcee remarriage
Region and Whose For whom

community Forbidden Allowed Practice initiative Allowed allowed Practice
INDIA
Northwest
Berreman(1970)
[Paharis] common either yes both common for both
Bhandari(1963)
[Korwas] common either yes both common for both
Cohn(1961) n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i.
Freed and
Freed (1976) rare H usually yes both rare for women
Hu(1957) rare n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i.
Luschinsky
(1962)
[low caste] n.i. either yes both common for both
[high caste] rare n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i.
MacDorman (1987) rare n.i. yes n.i. rare
Majumdar
(1955:172)
[Rajput] 61.7% mar. either yes both common for both
[Bajgi] 50.0% mar. either yes both common for both
[Kolta] 55.2% mar. either yes both common for both
West and
Central
Chapekar(1960)
[Thakur] common either yes both common for both
Pocock(1972) n.i. n.i. yes both rare
Table A8.3b: (cont.)

Mathur
(1964)
[Brahmin
and
Bania]
Mathur (1964)
[other castes] common either yes both n.i.
Orenstein
(1965)
[Brahmin]
Orenstein (1965)
[non-Brahmin] rare n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i.
Yadav(1970)
[Gond] common n.i. yes both common
East
Bailey (1957)
[Gond] yes either yes both yes
Gallagher (1965)
[Oraons] yes either yes both yes
GOI(1965b,c)
[Koya, Kandha] yes either yes both yes
GOI (1967c-e)
[Bhuiya, Bhumij,
Ganda] yes either yes both yes
Sachchidananda
(1968)[Karia,
Munda, Oraon,
Santal, Sauria
Paharia] yes either yes both yes
Standing (1987)
[Munda] yes either yes both yes
Northeast
Chaki-Sircar
(1984)[Meitei] common either yes both common
Majumdar(1978)
[Garo] common either yes both common
[Khasis] common either yes both common
GOI(1966b,d) rare either n.i. n.i. n.i.
South
Beck (1972) n.i. either n.i. n.i. n.i.
Das (1979)
[Gonds] n.i. either yes both n.i.
Dube and Kutty
(1969)[Mappilas]
[Lakshadweep
Is.] common either yes both common
Furer-
Haimendorf
and Furer-
Haimendorf
(1979) [Gonds] common either yes both common
Good (1981) yes either yes both n.i.
Gough
(1981)
[Brahmin]
Table A8.3b: (cont.)

Gough(1981)
[Adi-Dravidas] common n.i. yes both common
Gough (1961a)
[Tiyyars] yes n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i.
Harper
(1971) 3% n.i. yes both rare
Kapadia
(1990)
[Brahmin]
Kapadia (1990)
[Pallar] yes n.i. yes both n.i.
Srinivas
(1942)
[Brahmin]
Srinivas (1942)
[Other castes] n.i. H only yes both n.i.
Unni(1956)
[Nayars] common either yes both common
BANGLADESH
Ahmed
(1982:223) 10% mar. either yes both n.i.
Arens and Van
Beurden
(1977: 58) 15-20% mar. usually H
Chen (1983) n.i. usually H n.i.
Ellickson
(1972a: 61) 16.3% mar. usually H n.i. n.i. n.i.
Gardner (1990) n.i. n.i. yes n.i. n.i.
Hartmann and
Boyce(1983) common usually H
Harbison et 3% women n.i. n.i.
al. (1985:4) (N = 211)
Herbson 1.4% women n.i. n.i.
(1985:166) 0.3% men
Jahangir(1979) n.i. n.i. yes H>W n.i.
Kabeer
(1985:102) 7-12% mar. n.i. yes n.i.
Miranda
(1980:83) 11.6% women n.i. yes n.i. n.i.
Zaman 4% women n.i. yes n.i. n.i.
(1982:134) (N = 387)
NEPAL
Gurung Messerschmidt
(1976) common either • yes both n.i.
Macfarlane
(1976) common either yes both common
Limbu Jones(1973) common either yes both common
Magar Molnar(1978) common either yes both common
Maithili Acharya
(1981)
[Brahmin]
Acharya (1981)
[non-Brahmin] n.i. n.i. yes both
Table A8.3b: (cont)

Newar Nepali (1965) 10.1% women either yes both n.i.
Pradhan(1981) common usually W yes both n.i.
Tamang Frike et al.
(1986) common n.i. yes both n.i.
Holmberg(1989) common either yes both n.i.
Thakali Vinding(1979) common either yes both n.i.
Tharu Rajaure(1981) common either yes both n.i.
Nyimba Levine(1988) uncommon either yes both common
PAKISTAN
Baluchistan Pehrson(1977)
[Marri Baluch] n.i n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i.
C. Pastner(1971) rare both n.i. n.i. n.i.
NWFP Ahmed
(1986)
Barth (1956) n.i. H only n.i. n.i. n.i.
[Kohistanis]
Barth
(1956)
[Swat
Pathans]
Lindholm
(1982)
Punjab Aschenbrenner
(1967) n.i. usually H yes both common
Asha(1971) n.i. n.i. yes both common
Kurin(1981) n.i. usually H n.i. n.i. n.i.
D. Merry (1983) n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i.
SRI LANKA
Jaffna Banks (1957)1 rare only H only men
Tamils
Matrilineal Yalman(1967) n.i. n.i. yes both n.i.
Moors Munck(1985) rare n.i. yes both rare
Sinhalese Yalman (per cent both yes both common
(1967: 186) marriages)
[Terutenne] of women 6.9
of men 10.6
Brow (1978) common both yes both common
Risseeuw(1988) common both yes both common
Notes: ' Strongly disapproved.

W = Wife; H - H u s b a n d .
mar. = percentage marriages ending in divorce.
n.i. = no information.
Table A8.3c: Sexual control over women in South Asia: norms and practice of widow remarriage
Widow remarriage Levirate

Region and
Community Forbidden Allowed Practice Allowed Practice
INDIA
Northwest
Chauhan(1967)
[Rajputs]
Agarwal(1989) yes yes yes
Agarwala(1985) yes prefer yes
Berreman(1970) common desired as a rule
Bhandari(1963) common yes rare
Bhatt(1978) common n.i. n.i.
Chauhan(1967)
[other than Rajput] yes yes yes
Freed and Freed
(1976) rare yes yes
Gupta (1974)
[lower caste] common yes n.i.
Gupta (1974)
[upper castes]
Hershman(1981) rare yes rare
Hu(1957)[Tharus] common yes 5.3%
of mar.
Katiyar(1967)
[some lower castes] n.i. n.i. n.i.
Kolenda(1983) yes yes yes
Lewis (1958)
[non-Brahmin] n.i. yes n.i.
Lewis (1958)
[Brahmin]
Luschinsky (1962)
[low caste] common n.i. n.i.
[high caste] very rare n.i. n.i.
MacDorman(1987) rare yes yes
Madan(1989)
[Pandit]
Mathur(1967) common desired n.i.
Minturn and
Hitchcock
(1966) [Rajput]
Miller (1975) n.i. yes n.i.
Murray (1984) yes yes common
Nag (1960) common n.i. n.i.
Newell (1962) n.i. n.i. n.i.
Parry (1979)
[Rich Rajput and
Brahmin]
Parry (1979) n.i. yes n.i.
[low castes] [low castes;
poor Rajput;
and Brahmin]
Pettigrew(1975)
[Jats] n.i. yes n.i.
Sansal(1966) n.i. yes n.i.
Sharma(1973) rare yes rare
Singh (1970) common n.i. n.i.
Table A8.3c: (cont.)

Region and
West and
Central
Bailey (1957) n.i. yes n.i.
Chapekar(1960) common forbidden —
Dandekar(1963) 26% of widowed n.i. n.i.
Dubey(1965) 45% of widowed n.i. n.i.
Haekel(1963) n.i. yes if man n.i.
unmarried
Mathur(1964)
[Brahmin and Bania]
Mathur(1964)
[other castes] n.i. n.i. n.i
Mayer (1960) rare yes no
Pocock(1972) rare yes n.i
[low castes]
Orenstein(1965)
[Brahmin and Maratha]
Orenstein(1965)
[Rajput] yes n.i. n.i
Sidiqui (1979) n.i. yes n.i
Yadav(1970) common n.i. n.i
East
Archer (1984) common yes n.i
Bailey (1957) n.i. yes n.i
Das and Raha (1963) n.i. yes n.i
Fruzetti(1982) rare forbidden
Gallagher (1965) n.i. n.i.
GOI(1965b,c)
[Koya, Kandha] yes prefer yes
GOI(1965d)
[Khandayat] yes no
GOI(1967c,e)
[Bhuiya, Ganda] yes prefer yes
Kochar(1963) common yes rare
Nicholas (1961) rare n.i. n.i.
Pocock(1972) rare n.i. n.i.
Sachchidananda
(1968) n.i. n.i. n.i.
Standing (1987) common yes n.i.
Northeast
Cantlie(1984) yes n.i. n.i.
Chaki-Sircar(1984) n.i. n.i. n.i.
GOI(1966b,d) common yes yes
Majumder(1978) common n.i. n.i.
South
Das (1979) [Gonds] common yes
Dube(1955)
[all castes] n.i. n.i.
Furer-Haimendorf
and Furer-Haimendorf
(1979) [Gonds] common n.i. n.i.
Good (1981) n.i. n.i. n.i.
Gough(1981)
[Brahmin]
Gough(1981)
[Adi-Dravidas] n.i.
Table A8.3c: (cont.)

Region and
Gough (1961a)
[Nayars] n.i. n.i. n.i.
Harper (1971) n.i. n.i. n.i.
Ishwaran(1968)
[some lower castes] rare n.i. n.i.
Kapadia(1990)
[Pallar] n.i. n.i. n.i.
Lakshmanna(1973)
[lower castes] n.i. n.i. n.i.
Laxminarayana
(1968) [low castes] rare n.i. n.i.
Mencher(1970) rare n.i. n.i.
Mukerjee(1961)
[some tribes, Kerala] n.i. yes n.i.
Rao (1954) n.i. yes n.i.
Srinivas(1965) common preferred yes
[Coorg] [younger br.]
Srinivas(1942)
[Brahmin]
Srinivas(1942)
[Kuruba and Medar] — forbidden
[Bestha] n.i. allowed n.i
BANGLADESH
Aziz (1979) less than for
widowers
Barkat-E-Khuda W<M
(1982)
EUickson (1972b) 71% remarried
Herbson(1985) W<M
Jahan(1975) W<M
Jahangir(1979) 60%(W<M)
Miranda (1980) n.i.
Rahman and W < M (45-59
Menken (1990) age group)
White (1992) n.i.
NEPAL
Brahmin and
Chetri Bennett (1983)
Gurung Macfarlane(1976) n.i. yes no case
Limbu Caplan(1970) n.i. yes n.i.
Jones(1973) yes yes 1.9% of
marriages
Magar Molnar(1978) common n.i. n.i.
Maithili Acharya(1981)
[non-Brahmin3] n.i. n.i. n.i.
Newar Pradhan(1981) n.i. n.i. n.i.
Tamang Fricke etal. (1986) common n.i. n.i.
Tharu Rajaure(1981) common yes common
PAKISTAN
Baluchistan Pehrson(1977)
[Marri]
C. Pastner(1971) yes common (once
the rule)
Table A8. 3c: (cont.)

Region and
NWFP Ahmed (1986) common yes common

Barth(1956) common yes as a rule2
[Kohistani]
Lindholm(1982) yes as a rule
(if no sons)
Punjab Aschenbrenner yes yes
(1967)
Asha(1971) n.i. yes no case
Donnan(1981) rare yes rare
Elgar(1957) not if with n.i. n.i.
adult sons
SRI LANKA
Jaffna Tamils Banks(1957) Banks
(1957)
Matrilineal Yalman(1967) rare n.i. n.i.
Moors Munck(1985) rare n.i. n.i.
Sinhalese Brow (1978) yes n.i. n.i.
Yalman(1967) common n.i. n.i.
Notes: ' In most instances the incidence of widow remarriage is less than that of widower remarriage.
2
Levirate is strictly observed and a breach of this right is classified with adultery, allowing the aggrieved party blood revenge.
3
Maithili Brahmins forbid widow remarriage.
9 Struggles over resources, struggles over
meanings
I take the politics of needs to comprise three moments that are analytically
distinct but interrelated in practice. The first is the struggle to establish or
deny the political status of a given need, the struggle to validate the need as
a matter of legitimate political concern or to enclave it as a nonpolitical
matter. The second is the struggle over the interpretation of the need, the
struggle for the power to define it and, so, to determine what would satisfy
it. The third moment is the struggle over the satisfaction of the need, the
struggle to secure or withhold provision. (Fraser 1989: 164)
In South Asia today, struggles of all three sorts are necessary in relation to
women and land: to establish women's need for rights in land; to define the
parameters of that need; and to translate that need into actual rights in
practice. We noted in chapter 2 that a critical factor in women's ability to
bargain for a share in arable land is social acceptance of the legitimacy of
the claim. In many parts of the subcontinent, recognition of women's need
for rights in land has itself to be struggled for. The depth of opposition even
to the idea has been noted throughout our discussion, in the contestation
over the Hindu Code Bill, in the responses of patrilineal communities when
gender-progressive property laws were passed, and in the formulation and
implementation of government policy. At the same time, I have argued that
perceptions about needs are not given but contested, and are constantly in
the process of reformulation. The contestation by women's groups over
gender-progressive legislation, described in chapter 5, requires no repeti-
tion. The focus in this chapter will be on the emergent struggles around
several related issues.
The obstacles against which these struggles have to be waged, as we have
seen, are simultaneously material and ideological, interacting with and
reinforcing each other. The struggle for change thus has to be both a
struggle over resources and a struggle over meanings. And it has to be
conducted in several different arenas - the family, the community, and the
State - and across the lines drawn by class, caste, religion, ethnicity, and so
on.
The issue of land rights cannot be seen in isolation from the diverse
421
dimensions of women's multiple ongoing struggles over both resources and

meanings in the subcontinent, especially over the last decade and a half.
Although the topic of social change as it affects women's lives is too vast to
be examined here in all its manifestations, it forms the critical backdrop
against which the specific changes that relate to women and land will be
addressed. Women's resistance and forms of contestation are defined here
in the broadest possible way, ranging from individual acts of covert non-
compliance to open confrontation by organizations of women. Indeed, the
situation of disaffection reflected in women's everyday forms of individual
resistance provides a necessary (if not sufficient) ground for mobilization on
a mass scale, that is for progression from a situation of individual-covert to
group-overt forms of contestation and resistance (as elaborated later in this
chapter).
The first section of this chapter will examine the many, typically covert,
ways in which rural women are observed to individually resist existing
inequities in gender relations, and what this reveals about women's
perceptions about those relations. Section II will focus on more overt and
collective forms of resistance embodied in some major struggles around
privatized land in the late 1940s and the late 1970s-80s, in which large
numbers of women peasants participated, but which differed in notable
ways in the attention given to women's lack of independent land rights and
other aspects of gender inequities. In section III, some recent attempts by
women's groups in South Asia to claim rights in public land are described.
These examples of struggles over both privatized and public land demon-
strate the necessity of contesting gender inequalities simultaneously on the
economic and the ideological fronts. Finally, section IV illustrates further
how the social construction of gender is a result of contestation and
bargaining, and focuses on some of the ways in which increasing numbers
of rural women in South Asia are now beginning to challenge established
norms and representations about appropriate gender roles and behaviour.
I. On women's consciousness and individual resistance

Within the spectrum of social science views on how the poor and subjugated
respond to oppression, two contrasting ones dominate. A long-standing
view, which continues to hold sway, is that the oppressed have a false
perception of their real economic interests, buy into the ideology of the
oppressor, and so become complicit in their own oppression. Raising
people's consciousness about their oppression and revealing where their
true economic interests lie thus becomes a necessary condition for change.1
1
Although this view has been most clearly articulated within Marxist analysis (e.g. Lukacs
1971), it is shared within a wide political spectrum and underlies a significant body of social
and political thought.
Struggles over resources, struggles over meanings 423
An alternative, more recent, view is that the oppressed are not passive
victims who uncritically accept the ideological justifications promulgated
by the privileged, but that they resist oppression in many covert and subtle
ways. Variants of both views, albeit in less polarized forms, may be found in
current social science discussions on Asia. By way of illustration, consider
the approaches of two influential writers: Amartya Sen (1990a, 1990b) and
James Scott (1985). Sen, in explaining observed gender biases in intra-
family resource distribution, especially in South Asia, emphasizes the need
to distinguish between women's perceptions of their self-interest and 'some
more objective notion of their . . . well-being' (Sen 1990a: 133). He suggests
that, especially in 'traditional societies', women may suffer from a form of
false consciousness in that they may not have a clear perception of their
individual self-interest, and may attach less value to their own well-being
than to the family's well-being, in effect making them complicit in the
perpetuation of their own oppression:
[I]nsofar as intrafamily divisions involve significant inequalities in the allotment of
food, medical attention, health care, and the like (often unfavorable to the well-
being - even survival - of women), the lack of perception of personal interest
combined with a great concern for family welfare is, of course, just the kind of
attitude that helps to sustain the traditional inequalities. There is much evidence in
history that acute inequalities often survive precisely by making allies out of the
deprived. The underdog comes to accept the legitimacy of the unequal order and
becomes an implicit accomplice ... (Sen 1990a: 126, emphasis mine)
In contrast, Scott (1985), in his book Weapons of the Weak, based upon
his fieldwork in a Malaysian village, seeks to demonstrate that even under
the most oppressive conditions, the disadvantaged resist. This resistance
can take a variety of forms, including passive noncompliance, subtle
sabotage, evasion, and deception:
Most of the forms of [peasant resistance] ... stop well short of collective outright
defiance. Here I have in mind the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups:
foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance,
slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth. These Brechtian forms of class struggle have
certain features in common. They require little or no coordination or planning; they
often represent a form of individual self-help; and they typically avoid any direct
symbolic confrontation with authority or with elite norms. To understand these
commonplace forms of resistance is to understand what much of the peasantry does
'between revolts' to defend its interests as best it can. (Scott 1985: 29)
Scott argues that these are conscious acts by individuals who are capable of
penetrating the ideological fabric woven by the privileged and that these
acts give their resistance symbolic meaning; that is, the poor are not victims
of false consciousness. The 'everyday forms of peasant resistance' thus have
both material and symbolic manifestations - they are part of a struggle over
both resources and meanings.
Scott does not 'gender' his analysis, however, nor does he probe into the
family. He focuses on the class nature of resistance, particularly on the
encounters between poor peasants and landlords, and fails to ask how
gender might interact with class (or other forms of social hierarchy) both to
structure that hierarchy in specific ways, and to determine the forms that
resistance to it might take. In particular, women's resistance would have a
dual dimension: against the class (or caste/race) character of economic and
social oppression and against its specific gender aspects, both within the
household and outside it.2 Nevertheless, the basic thrust of Scott's argu-
ment has relevance for analysing gender responses, and contrasts with Sen's
characterization.
How we characterize women's consciousness and perceptions is of
considerable importance, since it impinges critically on how we assess the
prospects for change in women's situation, and identify what the most
effective forms of action would be. The contrasting views that exist on this
raise several questions which are worthy of in-depth empirical investi-
gation, such as: what are women's perceptions about themselves and their
economic and social situations within and outside the family? To what
extent have women absorbed the ideologies favouring male interest? Does
this acceptance differ by women's positions in the social hierarchy (such as
by class, caste, etc.)? What covert forms does women's resistance take in
speech and action? What are the material constraints on women's overt
resistance? And so on.
Existing evidence suggests that an emphasis on women's false percep-
tions (as in Sen's analysis) is problematic on several counts as a characteri-
zation of women's understanding of, and responses to, gender inequalities.
At the same time, 'gendering' resistance reveals a variety of complexities
which are not obvious when the only basis of inequality examined is class,
as in Scott's analysis. Consider first the argument that women may tend to
accept the legitimacy of the unequal order within the family, indeed that
they may become accomplices to its continuance. Empirical work which
probes beyond women's overt behaviour into their covert responses reveals
many diverse examples of women's resistance, although the focus on this
2
In addition, women's forms of resistance might be quite different from those of men,
because neither the nature of oppression nor the weapons available for resistance are
identical. Hart (1991), for instance, shows how poor women's resistance in the region
investigated by Scott is much more radical, confrontationist, and organized than that of the
men. She argues that the resistance of poor men gets co-opted and muted by the patron-
client relationships within which they function, the advantages of which they do not
entirely wish to sacrifice. The women, who have never been 'clients' in the same way, are not
similarly entrapped and can resist more openly. Hart does not, however, directly discuss in
this work how women resist gender inequities within the home.
South Asian experience too highlights the greater militancy of women in many
situations, including in the peasant movements discussed later in this chapter.
phenomenon is recent and largely unsystematic. The examples given below
are illustrative and relate primarily to intra-family gender relations,
although some instances of resistance to community norms are also
recounted.
Within the family, women's resistance is seen to be directed on the one
hand against inequalities in resource distribution and control, and on the
other hand against the authority exercised by family members such as
husbands and parents-in-law. There are numerous examples of village
women covertly seeking to gain access to some cash which they can
independently control, by undertaking income-earning activities in secret
or selling small amounts of household grain clandestinely to safeguard their
earnings from their husbands. 3
Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982: 47), for instance, in their many inter-
views in Bangladeshi villages, observe:
Women told us usually what other women have done. For example, one woman
stocked rice in another woman's house so her husband would not know she had it.
Another woman had a neighbour raise a goat for her so her husband would not
know about it... Yet another woman has opened a pan business with her young son
and has told him to keep their earnings a secret from the husband. Most women say
that they hide their savings in holes in the bamboo, in the roof, or under piles of
cloth.
Similarly, Nath (1984) finds that Bangladeshi village women often use the
cash they earn from trading, or cash and jewellery they have received as
marriage gifts, to invest in goats and cows which they keep in their parental
homes. This is especially typical of women living with their in-laws, where
any benefits from the earnings have to be shared with the rest of the
extended household.
Such responses are also observed in other parts of South Asia. For
instance, village women in India and Pakistan are found to secretly sell
grain to get some autonomous access to cash so that they would not need to
ask their husbands for money every time a curd vendor or a cloth seller
appeared (Luschinsky 1962, and Lindholm 1982). In the NWFP, Lindholm
(1982: 201) notes: T h e husband considers this theft, but the wife considers
it her just dues for her work.' And women coir workers in Sri Lanka are
found to 'usually hide their money in different parts of the house, so that,
after a beating, [the woman] can disclose one place, thereby giving [the
husband] the illusion she has handed all her savings to him' (Risseeuw 1988:
278).
Women use the money they so control in different ways. Although most
3
For Pakistan, see Lindholm (1982). For India, see Luschinsky (1962). For Bangladesh, see
Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982), Jansen (1983), Nath (1984), and White (1992).
spend it on the family's subsistence needs, some also spend it on their own
needs. One woman told her husband the money she had earned came from
her family and bought a house in her own name, because if it were in his
name he would sell it and 'eat' the proceeds (Abdullah and Zeidenstein
1982). Some others bought gifts for family members to win their support
and affection (Luschinsky 1962).
Unequal food sharing in a joint family household may also be circum-
vented in ingenious ways. Two women in Enslin's study village in Nepal
had a clandestine picnic which one of them described as follows (Enslin
1990: 167-8):
One day when we lived in the hills, Thultidee came to me and said she wanted to have
a good afternoon snack (kaza) because she never got to eat good food in her house.
For us the best snack is lots of rice and ghee (clarified butter). She asked me to bring
some of the ghee which I could claim as my own since I had just brought it from my
maternal home. Thultidee said she would bring rice.
But we could not cook in our own house because we did not want anyone to know.
We thought we could go to the forest but we needed an excuse. We couldn't just
disappear. We decided to do parma (cooperative labour) on each other's family
fields. We could do some work and then cook our meal.
We worked all morning in our field and then began to cook. I was afraid . . . [my
husband] might come and then see me even though he was sick. He did come after we
had finished our meal. We felt guilty and worked hard to show him we had done
nothing wrong. But we enjoyed our meal and freedom that day.
Resistance to intra-family authority structures similarly takes diverse

forms. White (1992: 138) recounts how a village woman in Bangladesh
made tea with milk for herself and her woman visitor but served tea without
milk to her husband and his friends, so that the men would 'not think she
has nothing better to do than make tea for them all day, and should be
discouraged from returning'.
In addition to such spontaneous acts, covert resistance may also take
more structured forms. One such is spirit possession. This is noted to be a
common form of covert resistance among men in some disadvantaged
groups in India and elsewhere (see e.g. Gough 1958, and Lewis 1989).
Gough, for instance, observed that low caste men in Kerala used the cults of
spirit possession, sorcery, witchcraft, and so on, to express aggression
against their Nayar employers and to highlight injustices which could not
readily be brought before a secular authority. In ritual contexts, low caste
men possessed by 'alien ghosts' had to be treated with great respect by the
Nayar employer and be given whatever gifts they demanded. The workers
also used this opportunity to voice the grievances of their community
against their employers. Spirit possession as resistance has yet to be
examined systematically in relation to women. In Rajasthan a number of
village women, including some from my grandmother's village, told me that
women sometimes claimed to be possessed by a spirit which demanded
appeasement, in order to extract food items otherwise denied to them. They
would be given what they asked for, with the spirit rather than they being
blamed for their greed. Similar cases may be found elsewhere. Khan (1983)
recounts how in the tribal belt of Pakistan's NWFP, a woman became
possessed every time she saw meat, and in that state demanded and ate large
quantities. Khan (1983: 92), on enquiring from a relative of the woman
whether she showed any after effects from excessive eating, was told: 'It is
not she who eats so much, it's her peryan [the spirit], so why should she
show after effects of excessive eating?' 4 And one poor peasant woman in
Rajasthan told me she had used the method of spirit possession successfully
to pressure her husband into giving up alcohol!5
Both silence and words can be a means of resistance and protest. Tamang
women in Nepal sometimes use the language of silence to register their
disapproval of family decisions or social interactions. March (1988) notes:
Silence is expected in subordinate and respectful relations. But it can be called upon
to (threaten to) break off peer relations. The special difficulty in interpreting
women's silence, then, revolves around the uncertainty as to whether a woman is
acting out of deferential respect for and duty toward especially ... [a relation], or
whether she is, silently of course, making a declaration of her independence from
that very relation, (p.21)
Hence:
When [women]... who are not constrained to be silent, don't talk, they seem to be
testing the limits of their rights (to speak among other things) in those relations.
Their threat is precisely that they will cease to speak, that they will break off
relations; and the ultimate right they hold in the relationship is to sever it. (p.20)
More commonly it is in the words of women's songs, with their pointed
irreverence toward the authority of in-laws, that protest is discernible,
especially among Hindus and Muslims of northwest India and Pakistan
Punjab, and among Nepali Hindus. 6 Parts of two songs from Rampur
village in Uttar Pradesh (India) are reproduced below:
4
I am by no means suggesting that all those seemingly under spirit possession are contriving
or play-acting for some benefit, but that a closer investigation, with this possibility in mind,
could be revealing.
5
The mode of spirit possession was also used by women workers in the 1970s to resist the
strict discipline in Malaysian electronics factories. One person's seizure would soon be
transmitted to others, leading to mass hysteria. This sometimes forced the closure of an
entire work section or factory floor and compelled the management to give the afflicted
workers a few days of medical leave (Lim 1978, Ong 1983).
6
Enslin (1990: 182) observes: 'The joking presentation belies the critical substance of the
songs. Women express their dissatisfaction with their married life, criticize their in-laws'
cruelty and even express their desire to commit suicide or to return to their natal home.'
O my friend! My in-laws' house is a wretched place.

My mother-in-law is a very bad woman.
She always struts about full of anger.
O my friend! My in-laws' house is a wretched place.

My husband's elder brother is a very bad man.
He always slips off to the threshing at his hayrack . . .
(Lewis 1958: 188)
0 mother-in-law! Why do you strut about

And pretend that you love me so much?
1 will not get down from my palanquin
Unless you give me a separate fireplace.
0 Father-in-law! Why do you jingle your moneybag?
1 will not get down from my palanquin
Unless you build a separate big house for me.
(Lewis 1958: 186)
In an oral tradition, especially given the prevailing high levels of illiteracy,
songs have effectively provided the basis of a 'subculture' of protest, not
only but especially for women.7
Again, during Hindu weddings in many regions, an irreverence towards
men and marital relations in general is ritually enacted by women after the
wedding party has departed from the groom's house. An integral part of
this enactment is male impersonation and the parodying of male behaviour
in various contexts. 8 In Muslim weddings too, in parts of north India and
Pakistan, customs similar in intent, though varying in form, prevail.
Drawing on fieldwork in Pakistan Punjab, K. Merry (1983: 291) comments
on this as follows:
Throughout her life, there is the ever present possibility that a woman's pursuit of
self-interest will foil the plans of her father, brothers, or husband who pursue other
goals . . . The suppression of a woman's self-interested action and the potential for
frustration of her desires and goals are the source of the customary disrespect shown
by women to men at weddings. These customs permit women to vent their
frustrations and hostilities while remaining submissive and obedient.
Sexual jokes and songs about male impotency similarly seek to undermine
7
In this context, it is also interesting to take note of Mirabai's resistance. A Rajasthani poet-
saint of the fifteenth century, she resisted the authority of husband and in-laws on grounds
of religious faith. Born a Rajput princess and married into a royal family, she refused to
comply with the norms of married life, proclaiming herself already married to the God
Krishna, and writing devotional songs of her love. Later she left home altogether to become
an ascetic. Today her songs, which have come down to us through the oral tradition, are
enshrined in the religious-classical and folk music traditions of the country.
8
For descriptions from Nepal, see Bennett (1983) and Enslin (1990). I have personally seen
such enactments in Rajasthan.
notions of male superiority and are a well-developed genre in Bangladesh
and north India. 9
More generally, persistent complaining, pleading ill-health, playing off
male affines and consanguines against each other, threatening to return to
the natal home, and withholding sex from husbands are all means by which
women try to get their own way within the family.1 °
Less common, but also illustrative of individual resistance, are instances
of women openly and simultaneously defying both familial and public
authority, the latter as represented by the village community or the
traditional caste council. Cases described by Mathur (1969) and Fuller
(1976), although not strictly of an 'everyday' nature, are illuminating. They
date back to the first half of this century, and relate to the Nambudiri
Brahmins of Kerala, among whom extra-marital affairs were prohibited
and female seclusion and sexual purity were strongly emphasized.11 A
woman of this community who was accused of illegitimate sexual relations
could be outcasted by a special procedure (smarthavicharam) under which
she was interrogated by a caste court held under the king's patronage. The
men she named as her lovers were outcasted along with her if found guilty.
Innocence or guilt was determined through ordeals such as requiring the
accused to plunge his hand into boiling oil: if burnt, the man was presumed
guilty (Fuller 1976: 13).
In one such case in 1905 a Nambudiri woman known for her beauty, who
had been married off at the age of eighteen to a sixty-year-old man, was
accused of illicit relations with younger village men and brought to trial by
the caste council which held the smarthavicharam. The trial lasted six
months. During the proceedings she disclosed the names of sixty-three
paramours, most of them men of high caste, influence, and repute within
the community. As a result she and all the men she named were perma-
nently ostracized by the community. Following this case the Raja of Cochin
proclaimed that in future, for holding such a trial the caste council would
need to deposit a specified large sum of money in the royal treasury as a
security (Mathur 1969: 211). The woman's naming of several influential
men as her lovers was clearly an act of defiance, and the Raja's proclama-
tion was primarily intended to protect men of rank from caste ostraciza-
See White (1992) and Gold (1989); also personal observation in Rajasthan.
For Bangladesh, see Arens and Van Beurden (1977:63). For India, see Mandelbaum (1988:
52) and Borthwick (1984: 23), the latter in the context of nineteenth-century Bengal. For
Nepal, see Bennett (1983: 176-7), who notes: 'Women told me frankly that sex, as the
means to have children and as the means to influence their husband in their favor, was their
most effective weapon in the battle for security and respect in their husband's house'. For
Pakistan, see Pastner's (1974: 41) study of the Panjgur oasis in Baluchistan.
On this subject also see Yalman's (1963) illuminating essay.
tion. The most famous such case from Cochin in the 1920s, recounted to
Fuller (1976) by several informants, finally led to the end of such trials:
[The] case lasted for weeks as she proceeded to name virtually every man of
substance in the city. Eventually, the raja stopped the trial because, according to all
who recount the tale, his name was next on her list! Since then, so it is said, there
have been no more of these trials. (Fuller 1976: 13)
However, cases of individual defiance by Nambudiri women continued
to surface. In one case in 1943, a Nambudiri widow of Trichur district was
expelled from the caste for committing incest with her stepson. Despite her
ostracization, she did not leave the village; in fact she demanded her share
from the property of the Nambudiri Mam (joint family estate), which she
managed to get upon the intervention of the local Raja (king). On this land,
on the outskirts of the village, she had a house built where she continued to
live with another lover, 'challenging the authority of the caste elders'. It
took these elders over four years to finally drive her away by constantly
pelting her house with stones (Mathur 1969: 213-14).
All these examples, in different ways, challenge any simple notion that
village women have accepted the legitimacy of their subordinate situa-
tion. 12 Also, leaving aside the Nambudiri cases of open resistance, they
indicate that women's overt behaviour patterns and public assertions are
not the best measures of how they really perceive their situation. 13 To
understand women's perceptions, it is necessary to penetrate the surface of
behaviour, taking cognizance of covert acts of resistance and probing the
obstacles to overt resistance. The appearance of compliance need not mean
that women lack a correct perception of their best interests; rather it can
reflect a survival strategy stemming from the constraints on their ability to
act overtly in pursuit of those interests. Hence although I agree with Sen
(1990a: 126) that 'it can be a serious error to take the absence of protests and
questioning of inequality as evidence of the absence of that inequality ...', I
12
Although I have focused primarily on women's resistance to intra-family gender inequali-
ties, examples of women's covert resistance to employers also exist. For instance, we had
noted earlier (footnote 5) how women workers in Malaysian electronic factories claimed
spirit possession to resist the strict factory discipline. Ong (1983) describes other forms of
covert protests, such as stalling machines to slow down production. And Gunawardena
(1989) found that Sinhalese women workers on the sugarcane plantations in Sri Lanka,
who also had small plots of land, reported frequent absenteeism, tardiness, and irregular
work hours during peak cultivation seasons, in order to stay back and devote time to their
farms. More generally, on the basis of her eighteen months of fieldwork in the Kandyan
Highlands, she notes: 'rural women ... simply did not comply to the dominant forces
operating in their lives, but devised means by which to skirt, side step and bend the system,
so to speak, to their advantage whenever possible.' She calls this strategizing for
maximizing self-advantage.
13
Even in the Nambudiri context, the public cases must hide other clandestine incidents.
would add that it can be equally an error to take the absence of overt protest
as the absence of a questioning of inequality. Compliance need not imply
complicity.
The same argument would hold in relation to women's responses to
receiving less than they deserve of the family's resources. What a person
deserves might be assessed - by women and by others - in relation, say, to a
person's contribution to family welfare, and/or in relation to a person's
individual needs. Women's contributions (as Sen 1990a, also notes) are
often perceived as smaller than they actually are. But here we need to look
at both how women themselves perceive the value of their contributions,
and how other family members perceive that contribution. 14 In relation to
women's own perceptions, studies based on interviews with peasant women
in many parts of India and Bangladesh suggest that women do in fact
recognize the importance of their work contribution to family welfare,
while lamenting the little recognition their contribution receives from other
family members. A Jat woman in a middle peasant household in rural
Punjab comments:
We are the slaves of slaves. Agricultural labourer men help Jat men in the fields, but
for Jat women it only means more work. We have to cook more food and feed the
labourers as well ... Women should also have fixed hours of work. We too must
have a rest period. (Horowitz and Kishwar 1982: 17)
Similarly, a poor peasant woman in rural Himachal Pradesh says:
We women stay at home and do back-breaking work even if we are feeling ill or if we
are pregnant. There is no sick leave for us. But we do not have any money of our own
and when the men come home we have to cast our eyes down and bow our heads [i.e.
act submissively] before them. (U. Sharma 1980: 207; insertion as in original)
We also noted earlier how some women looked upon stealing from the
family's granary as taking their just dues.
Where there does appear to be a clear perception bias in relation to
women's contribution is in the undercounting and undervaluation of
women's work by others (including not just family members but also policy
makers and bureaucrats implementing development programmes). 15 Like-
wise, in many parts of the subcontinent (even if not uniformly), women's
needs are underplayed and assumed to be subordinate to or even synony-
mous with the needs of the 'family', while, for men, the distinction between
family and personal needs is widely accepted and sanctioned.
However, the fact that society may undervalue women's contributions
14
Although it is the second dimension on which Sen explicitly focuses, the first is implicit in
his discussion on self-perception.
15
See e.g. Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982), Goetz (1990), and the remarks of bureaucrats
quoted in chapter 7.
and needs does not mean that women themselves accept that valuation as
just. Rather, as noted, they often show in various ways that they object to
the unfair deal they are getting. Establishing the legitimacy of their personal
needs is therefore itself an issue of contestation for women, as is gaining
recognition of the worth of their contributions.
This is not to deny that socialization shapes attitudes among both men
and women, or that some women may understate their contributions and
needs. Rather it is to emphasize that we cannot infer from overt behaviour
alone whether women really accept the ideological justifications of male
privilege and the inequitable distribution of resources and work burdens
within the home, or whether they do perceive their self-interest but feel
compelled to adopt compliant behaviour as a survival strategy, or whether
their perceptions are some combination of both. As shown throughout the
book, the observations of researchers and activists who have made it a
point to speak to village women in contexts where they could express
themselves relatively freely, or who have used the method of participant
observation to penetrate the subculture of resistance, suggest that: (a)
village women are much less accepting of gender inequity in their percep-
tions and understanding than their overt behaviour patterns suggest; (b) on
certain issues many women articulate and appear to believe in ideologies
that benefit men, for instance maintaining that childcare and housework
are women's responsibilities, but on many other issues there is observable
resistance, such as towards family authority structures, male control over
cash, and domestic violence; and (c) there are often notable differences in
the views expressed by middle or rich peasant women and poor peasant
women. In my talks with village women in Rajasthan, it was the middle and
rich peasant women (who benefited from their husbands' properties and
were also socially constrained from taking up outside employment), rather
than women agricultural labourers, who typically mentioned that it was
important to have sons for continuing the lineage or who had a more
adverse attitude toward daughters. Horowitz and Kishwar (1982) also
made the latter observation in the Indian Punjab; and for Bangladesh,
Gardner (1990: 439) notes: 'It is the poorest women who are the most
outspoken, smoke tobacco, sing the songs of love and passion more openly,
and who leave the confines of their BARIS most often... [They also] appear
very much less submissive or passive than the women whose men provide
for them.' Added to these complexities is another one distinct to intra-
family gender oppression, arising out of the fact that marital and kin
relationships have an emotional dimension which makes it more difficult
for women to confront these relationships as oppressive. This issue does not
arise with class oppression.
Taking cognizance of these and related complexities means that although
insights such as those of Scott, based on an observation of class-related

forms of covert resistance, have considerable relevance for analysing
gender resistance, they also need modification for a gender analysis,
especially when probing intra-family relations.
In other words, in the spectrum between approaches that emphasize false
consciousness (as Sen's does) and those that emphasize full consciousness
(as Scott's does), the situation in relation to gender appears to be some-
where in-between, closer to Scott's position but not entirely congruent with
it. 16
However, if women's actions are not necessarily dictated by false
consciousness, then what would explain why peasant women in north India
usually eat last and least while feeding the best food to their sons and
husbands? 17 Or how would we account for the common observation that
women spend the resources they control largely on family needs rather than
on personal needs, that they fulfil the 'family's' choices even in their
'personal' choices? A number of writers explain this if not in terms of false
consciousness then in terms of women being socialized into acting more
responsibly or altruistically than men. 18 There is probably some validity in
this explanation, but it is also inadequate on several counts. First, it is put
forward as a generalization, although, as noted, there are significant
differences in patterns across regions and communities. It could of course
be argued that these reflect differences in socialization, but it cannot be
denied that there are also clear variations in women's material conditions
which make women in some regions and communities much more depen-
dent on their marital families than in other regions and communities. It is a
telling point that in India, in contrast to women in the patrilineal-patrilocal
northwest, women among the matrilineal-matrilocal Garos of the north-
east don't wait for late-returning husbands before eating their evening
meal. 19
Second, women's notion of 'family' needs probing (as also noted in
chapter 2). In a documentary film on women in Indian agriculture made in
1988, a constant refrain of poor rural women interviewed across the
16
Indeed, even without gender analysis, it would be difficult to insist that the poor are always
able to penetrate the ideologies of the rich. Religious, caste and ethnic identities, for
instance, are often evoked by the rich to generate support for certain types of political
movements that in economic terms may not benefit the poor who support such movements.
Movements based on religious or ethnic fundamentalism in South Asia are cases in point.
17
The evidence on intra-household distribution of food and health care in favour of males in
north India was reviewed in chapter 1.
18
See e.g. White (1992), U. Sharma (1980), and Papanek (1990).
19
More generally, in chapter 3 we noted many ways in which women in traditionally
matrilineal and bilateral communities enjoyed more egalitarian gender relations, and at
times openly challenged their husbands in ways that women in patrilineal communities
usually do not.
country was that they needed land and work independent of their husbands
to feed their children (Roy and Dewan 1988). The women clearly felt
responsible for their children's welfare, and saw their interests as congruent
with those of their children but antagonistic to those of their husbands.
Again in Bankura district (West Bengal), women agricultural labourers at a
camp organized in 1980 by the government's department of revenue and
land reforms said:
Will the sarkar [government] please tell us why when land is offered for homesteads
it is not given to us? What is a home for? We feel that a home should be mainly to
provide some security for children. Who is responsible for children? Not our men.
They are our responsibility. (Mazumdar 1983: x)
In other words, women's concern with 'family' needs did not necessarily
extend to include the husband. A number of Indian grassroots activists I
have spoken to affirm that this is often the case. I found this too in
conversations with lower caste women in Rajasthan. 20
Third, spending their income on family needs, especially on sons, can be
women's indirect way of securing their own future. For instance, given
prevailing male advantage in labour markets and property rights and
women's need for male mediation in the community, a woman may expend
most care on her sons because she sees them as her best investment for her
future, 21 rather than because she does not perceive her own interests and
has bought into the dominant male ideology, or even out of altruism: after
all, would altruism be so obviously sex-selective? Similarly, if women give
up their individual rights in family assets or resources in favour of their
sons, brothers, or the extended family, or show a considerable concern for
family welfare, or give gifts to kin to secure their affection, this could be
interpreted as a way by which women with a weak resource position seek to
strengthen their intra-family and kinship ties in order to ensure that they
will receive economic and social support when they need it. In other words,
women may sacrifice their immediate welfare for future security; this would
be perfectly in keeping with self-interested behaviour, and need not imply a
20
In many African societies, in fact, the mother-child unit has a 'relative autonomy and
separate identity', with 'its own name, space, property and rights' (Guyer and Peters 1987:
207). This unit, termed 'hearth-hold' by some Africanists, could, given its emotive
dimension, also be termed 'heart-hold'! Maher's (1984: 115-16) observation in Moroccan
villages is of interest here as well: 'women look on husbands and fathers as potential
enemies and on sons and brothers as potential allies in the struggle they engage in to
mitigate the power of the former over the conditions of their existence'.
21
See especially Cain's (1988) and Papanek's (1990) discussions on the economic insecurity
faced by Indian and Bangladeshi rural women in the absence of a son. Sons improve a
woman's bargaining power in her conjugal home with both the husband and his kin. Maher
(1984: 115) describes a similar situation in Morocco: 'A woman's minimal guarantee of
security lies in her bearing sons, but .also in her mother having done so and thus providing
her with a brother.'
gap between women's 'objective' well-being and their perception of their
well-being.
Similarly, Bangladeshi village women's increasing assertion (or pro-
claimed intention to assert) their land rights today when kin support
structures are eroding, while a generation ago their mothers gave up those
rights in favour of brothers when kin support was more readily forthcom-
ing, are both actions that can be interpreted as congruent with self-interest,
given the inter-generational changes in their situations, even though the
mothers' behaviour may appear to be altruistic and that of the daughters
self-interested.
Both altruism and self-interest would thus be consistent with women's
observed concern with expending their energies and earnings on the
family's, and especially the children's, needs. I would suggest that typically
both motivations would be operating, but that this mix is not limited to
women, although notions of self-sacrifice, nurturance, and so on are
usually more emphasized for women than men. 22 (In addition, I may point
out that altruism need not imply false consciousness. Altruistic and self-
interested actions can both be self-aware actions.)
The recognition that South Asian rural women, like men, may be
motivated by self-interest as well as altruism, and by concern with
individual as well as family welfare, even if in differing degrees, and even if
their overt actions tend to place men and women on different sides of the
spectrum, also helps focus attention more directly on the material con-
straints that affect women's behaviour. It cautions against explanations
which are socio-biological in their thrust (e.g. 'women are by "nature"
more self-sacrificing'), or which presume deficiencies in women's self-
perception or economic motivation. 23 It calls for a strengthening of
women's fall-back position so that they are less economically and socially
dependent on sons, husbands or brothers, rather than locating solutions
primarily in raising women's awareness of their oppression or changing
their perceptions about what constitutes their well-being. The clarity with
which Chinese peasant women 'spoke their bitterness' against patriarchal
22
O n this last point, see especially Papanek's (1990) discussion.
23
Folbre and H a r t m a n n (1988) provide a sharp critique of the rhetoric of self-interest found
in both neoclassical a n d Marxist economic theory. They argue (a) that both approaches
assume that individual self-interest motivates men's decisions in the capitalist market place
but does not motivate men or women in the private sphere of the home; a n d (b) that by
virtue of their association with the family a n d home, women came t o be portrayed as
relatively ' n o n - e c o n o m i c \ naturally altruistic creatures w h o lack self-interested motiva-
tion. T h e authors point o u t that this latter portrayal of women has been used as a
rationalization for women's lower wages a n d limited j o b opportunities, a n d note:
' W o m e n ' s commitment to family is not necessarily a function of their preferences or their
productivity. It is often constrained by the reluctance of other family members to help with
housework a n d childcare responsibilities' (Folbre a n d H a r t m a n n 1988: 195).
intra-family relations and landlord oppression, when for the first time they
were entitled to receive land in their own names under the Communist
Party's Agrarian Reform Law of 1947,24 suggests that what held them
back earlier was not lack of self-interest, but lack of the economic and
political support necessary to speak out without undue risk. Grassroots
organizing experience among women in South Asia also suggests that what
usually needs changing is not so much women's perceptions of their own
well-being as their perceptions of the possibilities of improving their
situations.
Whether or not women overtly protest and resist gender inequalities is
likely to depend substantially on their economic, social and political
position, which affects what they risk by doing so. Some women may be less
willing to protest against intra-family inequalities than others: for instance,
we would expect a woman of a middle peasant household to be less inclined
to protest than a poor peasant woman, since the former has more to gain
from her husband's class position, and therefore more to gain in cooperat-
ing with him, than the latter. 25 Again, some women may be less able to
overtly protest than others. A Bangadeshi woman in purdah with limited
employment opportunities who perceives and covertly resists inequality in
intra-household resource distribution is much less in a position to openly
protest than is a tribal woman in the hills of Nepal who has income from
wage work or trading. 26
An important aspect of the constraints women face is individual isola-
tion. Just as it is necessary to recognize that rural women often possess a
significant degree of awareness of gender oppression and resist it in their
everyday lives, so it is critical to recognize the limited effectiveness of
individual acts of resistance in changing the macro-context. It is easy to
romanticize such resistance. What such acts affirm is that women are not
necessarily complicit in their own oppression, and that their existing levels
of consciousness could provide a basis for building more organized overt
resistance. At the same time, in themselves, these are unlikely to constitute a
sufficient condition for effective change.
It is useful to make an analytical distinction here between individual-
covert and group-overt gender action. The former manifests women's
disaffection with and resistance to existing gender inequalities. Depending
24
F o r details see H i n t o n (1972) and chapter 1.
25
Gillian H a r t (personal communication) found a noteworthy difference in the behaviour
patterns of middle and p o o r peasant women in rural Malaysia in this regard.
26
Also see Kandiyoti (1988), who argues that women's responses to a b r e a k d o w n of
patriarchal familial security can range from conservative (pressuring men to live up to their
obligations and exchanging submissiveness and propriety for male protection) to radical
(seeking greater independence from men), but both types of responses represent strategic
choices by women based on available alternatives.
on the constraints women face, resistance could also take the form of
individual-overt action. But as long as it remains individual in form, its
effectiveness is likely to be limited. Similarly, group action could take a
covert form, but its effectiveness too would be limited. A shift to the group-
overt stage in gender resistance appears crucial, since this implies a
combination of things: a recognition by women of their common gender
interests, a willingness to collectively pursue those interests, and an explicit
challenging of the structures of inequality.27 Group-overt contestation can
produce ripple effects both by demonstrating to other women (who may not
yet have made the leap) what is necessary and possible, and by bringing
undiscussed issues into the arena of public consciousness and debate (in
other words by challenging 'doxa').
In this context, I would agree with those (including Sen 1990a, 1990b)
who place importance on gainful employment for women outside the home,
not only because this would make women's contributions more visible and
therefore reduce their families' perception bias, but also because it would
facilitate group formation and enable women's resistance to take overt
shape. It is noteworthy that during the late 1970s, women's organized
grassroots resistance movements in the rural areas of India emerged
precisely among poor peasant and agricultural labourer women whose
poverty conditions necessitated their working outside the home. 28
At the same time, outside employment is by no means a sufficient
condition for shaping group resistance in general, and resistance against
gender inequities in particular. The move from individual-covert to group-
overt action is likely to involve at least two steps of importance: (1) a rise in
group consciousness among women, based on a recognition that many of
the forms of gender oppression that they individually face (and may
covertly resist) are manifestations of a wider system of gender inequities,
that is that their situation is shared by many other women with whom they
therefore have a common interest in fighting these inequities; and (2) the
articulation of this common interest through organized overt action as a
group. Without these steps, there may be little change in the gendered
structures that constrain women. This is especially well illustrated if we
examine women's participation in struggles to gain command over arable
land. While poor peasant women were a significant part of most organized
27
I had also considered using the terms 'gender-in-itself and 'gender-for-itself\ instead of
'individual-covert' and 'group-overf, but decided against doing so for two reasons. One,
the former terms are based on an analogous distinction in Marxist literature relating to
class (viz. 'class-in-itself and 'class-for-itself) which carries the implication that one of the
main obstacles to be overcome in a g r o u p ' s progression from 'in itself to 'for itself 1 is false
consciousness. This implication, as noted, I explicitly reject. T w o , the terms 'gender-in-
itselP and 'gender-for-itself d o not take account of covert resistance.
28
Also see Omvedt (1978) for a detailed discussion on this for India.
peasant struggles in the subcontinent in the 1940s, they did not usually
identify their own gender-specific interests within the movements, indepen-
dent of the interests of the men of their households, although they did feel
individual disaffection with men's treatment of them in the movements. The
absence of group organization and action based on gender meant that they
made few gains in terms of independent land rights, in contrast to some
peasant struggles since the late 1970s during which more group-overt
gender-specific action by women led to some important gains in this regard.
The Telangana movement in Andhra Pradesh (south India) and the
Tebhaga movement in Bengal (east India) are illustrative examples from
the 1940s, and are strikingly similar in terms of women's experiences.
Recently collected oral histories of women who were involved in the
Telangana movement show that although women were active participants
in the struggles, indeed were often the backbone of the movement, the
question of gender relations within the family and within the organization
Women's weapons of resistance were the commonplace objects of their
daily existence - household implements used for husking and chopping
wood, brooms, knives, etc. - with which they sought (often successfully) to
disarm police parties. Chakravartty (1980: 90) recounts their methods
graphically:
As the police entered the villages, bells and conchshells used to be blown and the
echo could be heard from one end to the other... It was the peasant womenfolk who
organized this novel form of warning. Almost immediately on hearing this, all the
womenfolk would take hold of broomsticks, lathis and their husking pestles ... and
form a barricade on the village road, so that the police could not enter.
In disarming police parties, in resisting arrests, and in rescuing people,
women's initiatives assumed heroic dimensions. On several occasions,
attempts by landlords to appropriate the harvested paddy from the
peasants' fields with police help were also thwarted by the women. For
instance, in Kendemari village:
they least expected that a militant group of [peasant] women... would advance with
daos, choppers and broomsticks. Tied to their saree-ends they carried handfuls of
dust, mixed with chilli powder. As they approached the police, they threw this
powder in their eyes and the police ran for their lives. (Chakravartty 1980: 94)
Often, however, the confrontations were violent, and many courageous
women were injured or killed in police firings.
During the course of the campaign, a number of gender concerns also
came up within the movement, such as wife-beating, women's rights to
income from their sale of poultry and other small products, and their
breaking the norms of purdah. Many women objected to wife-beating both
in the Tebhaga peasant courts and in local branches of MARS. As one
woman graphically put it: '[W]hen the husband and wife together are dying
in the field, in the battle for Tebhaga; when the two together are fighting
against the enemy, how then was it possible for one soldier to beat the other
after returning home?' (cited in Custers 1987: 177). In some areas the
campaign against domestic violence made a strong impact, but in others the
culprits got off lightly. Again, especially in Muslim areas when male
peasants objected to women attending the kisan samiti (peasant committee)
meetings, some of the women retorted: Tt does not hurt your sense of
propriety when we sow or harvest in the fields along with you. How does it
become objectionable when we want to attend kisan samiti meetings?'
(cited in Custers 1987: 172). Objections nevertheless continued, and the
issue was never settled.
Whatever gains women made in these contexts, however, were ad hoc and
'not the outcome of conscious policies to eradicate rural poor women's
social oppression on the part of the Communist Party, the Kishan Sabha or
even MARS' (Custers 1987: 180-1). Despite women's active participation
in the struggle, unequal gender relations persisted both within and outside
the movement. For instance, the issue of women's rights in land was not
discussed, although the women's demand that money from the sale of
vegetables and poultry raised by them be exclusively theirs, was conceded.
Most of the women were excluded from the formal organization of the
BPKS and the Communist Party, and thus could play little role in decision-
making. Women's objections to domestic violence led to the boycott of
some of the male activists responsible, but the issue was not seen as integral
to the larger political struggle and the social relations that the movement
was addressing. And although during the most intense periods of the
agitation women were able to emerge out of subordinate and domestic
roles, they were forced to return to largely unchanged gender relations
within the family when the struggle ended.
These features, in one form or another, were strikingly paralleled in the
Telangana struggle being waged around the same time in another part of
the country.
(2) The Telangana struggle

The Telangana struggle, which was initiated around 1945, intensified
during 1948-51, and called offin 1951, was an armed struggle against feudal
rule in the Andhra Pradesh countryside, organized by the Communist
Party of India. It was a movement to restore land to the peasant cultivators,
raise agricultural wages, and end forced labour and the sexual exploitation
of women. At its height, the struggle involved some three million men and
women across 3,000 villages in several districts of Telangana (Lalita et al
1989: 2).
As in undivided Bengal, feudal oppression under the Nizam of Hydera-
bad on the eve of independence included both economic exploitation of the
tenant and labourer families and the sexual exploitation of women:
'Everything the men suffered under the system, the women suffered twice
over. If the landlord fancied a woman, she was taken. When she got
married, it was the prerogative of the landlord to sleep with her on the first
night' (Lalita et al 1989: 3). The women who participated in the struggle
came from both landless and middle peasant backgrounds. They joined the
movement for diverse reasons: most fought for economic improvement and
land, but some also sought escape from violent marriages or from their
restricted lives and came for 'the opportunity of experiencing something
other than producing for the family' (Lalita et al. 1989: 259). The struggle
was strongly repressed by the police: those participating were frequently
beaten up, many killed, and there were several incidents of mass rape.
As the repression intensified and many of the men moved to the forests,
the women remained behind, 'holding together what was left in the village'
and forming the backbone of resistance (Lalita et al 1989: 260). Like their
counterparts in the Tebhaga movement, the Telangana women used
everyday objects to defend themselves: chilli powder, slings, and pestles.
They evolved collective forms of resistance which were spontaneous and
untaught. Disguised as boys, women served as couriers passing secret
messages, and women also bore much of the burden of finding safe shelters
in the city.
Yet the attitude of the Communist Party toward the women remained
ambiguous. In a series of graphic interviews with women who had
participated in the struggle, Lalita et al. (1989) paint a picture of how the
Party behaved and how women felt at the collapse of the struggle. The
Party's ambivalence was revealed in a number of ways. First, while
recognizing that the women were indispensable to the movement, the Party
was reluctant to see them as more than merely 'supportive'. Few women
were admitted as Party members. Many who came forward to join the
struggle, leaving behind their husbands, 'would feed the comrades, giving
up their own meals . . . carry letters for us, get beaten up because of us, and
yet there was no question of membership for these women'. 31 Custers'
(1987: 196-7) interview with Ravi Narayyan Reddy, one of the leaders of
the Communist Party in Hyderabad state, is revealing. When asked why so
few women were recruited in the Party despite his claim that there was
'absolute equality between men and women' in the Telangana movement,
Reddy answered: 'They did not have the consciousness to fight with rifles
and all that.' When Custers persisted, Reddy admitted that it had really to
do with the fact that: 'After all they are women. We did not like that women
should be taken into the battlefield.' Women's large-scale participation in
demonstrations, rallies, and even in armed struggle in some instances,
amply indicates that their exclusion from the Party had little to do with their
'consciousness' and much to do with the Party's prejudices.
Second, the women found the Party's attitude towards sexual mores to be
at best ambivalent and typically highly conservative: 'We women are still
being looked upon with the old outlook, that we are inferior. Any slip or
mistake we commit, our leaders come down very heavily on us. It becomes a
subject of open gossip and scandal . . . If we move a little freely, we are
watched with suspicion.' 32 The Party was not sure 'whether it was the
correct thing to take such women away from their husbands. They were
afraid that the Party would lose its reputation.' 33
Third, issues concerning gender relations in the home, such as wife
31
Dayani Priyamvada's narrative (Lalita et al. 1989: 73).
32
Extract from N a r a s a m m a ' s letter (Lalita et al. 1989: 24).
33
Dayani Priyamvada's narrative (Lalita et al. 1989: 72).
beating, and social problems affecting women, such as dowry demands and
women's unequal access to property, received little serious attention:
'[T]hey never took up women's issues as political or ideological issues to be
discussed and analyzed. It was more like a ritual... Some leaders used to
dismiss these issues lightly.' 34 They were not issues that seemed large
enough to break up lives.' 35 These attitudes were also reflected on the land
question. The possibility of women having independent titles, or even titles
jointly with their husbands, was not raised. And in the land distribution
programme of the Party, women's land rights were recognized only if they
were widows.
Although the struggle changed women's lives in some significant ways, it
left them untouched in many others. A tenancy law passed as a result of the
struggle abolished the forced labour system, undermining many elements of
economic and sexual exploitation associated with feudalism. Also, many
middle peasant women who had participated in the struggle did not go back
to a secluded existence: '[Earlier] we did not know what was behind this
wall. We could never go out. But now we go out and look to our agricultural
work.' 36 However, the impact of women's participation in the movement
on intra-family gender relations and the gender division of labour was
marginal. Mallu Swarajyam, who commanded a guerrilla squad and gained
a legendary reputation during the movement, said: 'So when the struggle
was withdrawn [the Party] told us to go and marry... We fought with them.
We said that even if the forms of struggle had changed we should be given
some work.' 37 And other women added with bitterness: 'They have used us
so long and now they say go stay at home. How could they even understand
what the situation was at home? How could one ever tell them? What
mental torture - I was really upset. That was my first taste of suffering.'38
And: 'What do you think it means, to wield weapons in the struggle and sit
before sewing machines now?' 39
The Tebhaga and Telangana struggles show strong similarities on several

counts and have some common lessons to offer on the question of gender.
First, the overall perspectives of both movements reflected the assumption
that in economic terms, the family is a homogeneous unit within which the
benefits of economic gain would be shared equitably. Land distributed after
the Telangana struggle thus went to the male household heads, the
exceptions being widow-headed households. Second, intra-family gender
34
S. S u g u n a m m a ' s narrative (Lalita et al. 1989:
35
Mallu Swarajyam's narrative (Lalita et al. 1989: 245).
36
Kausalya's narrative (Lalita et al. 1989: 16).
37
Mallu Swarajyam's narrative (Lalita et al. 1989: 271-2).
38
Basavapunniah's narrative (Lalita et al. 1989: 272).
39
Brij Rani's narrative (Lalita et al. 1989: 18).
relations were typically seen as belonging to the personal sphere, and at best
as a social issue and not a political one needing to be addressed with the
same seriousness as class and caste inequality. The double standards in the
sexual mores prescribed for men and women in the community were
replicated rather than challenged within the movements. There was inade-
quate recognition that women's oppression within the family could not be
explained solely as an offshoot of feudal relations. (The limited action
against wife-beating did not translate into a theoretical perspective on
gender relations.) This view of gender relations was not unique to these
movements: it broadly reflected leftist thinking (within and outside the
Communist Party context) in much of the world, and it continues to be
widely prevalent even today. Third, despite women's indispensable role in
the struggles, their relegating domestic work to the background was seen as
only a temporary aberration, and life was expected to revert to the familiar
pattern after the struggle. This view also impinged on women's exclusion
from major decision-making processes within the organizations. Fourth,
although women cooperated closely with one another in the resistance
movement, their cooperation on gender-specific issues was limited. In
particular, during the Telangana struggle any show of solidarity between
women on such counts was discouraged by the Party. This weakened
women's ability to take up gender issues forcefully.
It is almost three decades later, in the late 1970s, that we begin to see a
growth of awareness in some mass-based organizations that gender
concerns need to be integral to any struggle for building a more just and
equal society. A spreading women's movement in India and a growing
feminist consciousness have been crucial to this recognition. A significant
example of this is the Bodhgaya movement in Bihar, during which some of
these issues were explicitly addressed (probably for the first time in a
peasant movement in South Asia). It is important to examine this case in
some depth because it illustrates several things: the importance many
peasant women place on having independent rights in land, and their
emphasis on the links between women's economic dependency and their
social oppression; the multiple tiers of resistance that women must over-
come in their struggles; and the need to link local land struggles with wider
legal, institutional and ideological ones.
(3) The Bodhgaya struggle

The Bodhgaya peasant movement was initiated in 1978 in the Gaya district
of Bihar (one of India's most caste-factionalized states, containing a
substantial proportion of the country's poor). 40 It was a struggle by
40
The account below is based on Manimala (1983), Alaka and Chetna (1987), my meeting in
Patna in 1988 with some of the peasant women who had participated in the Bodhgaya
under the protection of a corrupt local police, unleashed terror on the
people. Initially they threatened them with beatings and rape. Subsequently
they attacked demonstrating labourers in one village, killing two male
activists and injuring others. The demonstrators, including women and
children, eschewed violent retaliation and continued their non-violent
protest. On August 15 there was a massive demonstration, with women in
the forefront, under the slogan: Zameen kenkar? Jote onkarl (Whose is the
land? Theirs who plough it.)
November 1979: Women organized a shivir (camp) to discuss their concerns

within the struggle. The discussion focused on women's exploitation and
their exclusive responsibility for housework, discrimination against girl
children, men's use of abusive language and violence against women,
women's exclusion from much of the discussion about the struggle, factors
restricting solidarity among women, and (most importantly) women's need
for independent rights to land. A number of resolutions were passed,
including one against wife-beating and another demanding that land be
distributed in women's own names. Many such shivirs were subsequently
organized.
June and November 1980: Although cooperation between the landless

labourers and sharecroppers was still uneasy, a decision was taken by the
muzdoor-kisan samitis to seize the land and cultivate it independently of the
Math. About 3,000 acres were captured and ploughed, essentially by the
labourers. Attempts by the peasant activists to plough and sow thefieldsled
to physical attacks by the police and the arrest of two activists. Nevertheless
the sowing was completed. At harvest time, in November, the attacks were
renewed: since women usually harvested the crops, it was they who faced
the brunt of the attacks.
As the repression intensified, peasant women's involvement increased.
By now they were participating in equal numbers with the men and were
also courting arrest along with the young children who accompanied them.
October 1981: The government identified about 1,000 acres of land as

illegally held by the Math and available for redistribution to landless
labourers. The Vahini was not consulted on who should get the land.
Protesting this top-down approach, the Vahini drew up its own list, giving
priority to landless labourers, the disabled, widows, and poor peasants.
Women other than widows did notfigurein the list, and they protested their
exclusion. They pointed out that these criteria implied that 'for a man to be
without land and for a woman to be without a man, that is, a widow, was an
identical situation' (Manimala 1983: 15). While the Vahini activists con-
ceded the male bias in their approach, there was a prolonged debate
(described further on) on why women should have independent land rights,
before the perspectives of the male peasant activists underwent a change.
February 1982: At the Vahini's Bihar state conference, attended by some

Bodhgaya women activists (peasants as well as Vahini members), a decision
was taken that women should be given land in their own names in any
future distribution. Subsequently, in two villages, lists were drawn up to
give land only to women and widowers, with the unanimous approval of the
villagers. However, the District Officer in charge of registering the titles
strongly opposed the giving of land in women's names: he argued that there
was no precedent for this and that land could only be given to heads of
households, who in India were usually men. The villagers, however,
adamantly refused to take any land unless it was given in the names of the
women.
After 1982:42 It took a while before land was finally allocated in the names
of women in two villages. Meanwhile the struggle to gain rights in the
undistributed land continued. In time, all the Math's illegal holdings were
distributed among the villagers (along with additional ceiling-surplus and
other government land). In these distributions women received land in a
variety of ways: as individual title holders, as title holders jointly with their
husbands, as widows, destitutes and disabled persons, and (unpreceden-
tedly) in some cases as unmarried adult daughters. This last occurred in
some villages where land was relatively plentiful and all adult children (sons
and daughters) were counted as separate units. Although the number of
such women was very small, since most girls in the area are married before
they are eighteen, the acceptance in principle that unmarried daughters
were eligible was a significant step forward. Each person received about one
acre.
How did all this come about? In particular, how did women overcome the
opposition they met along the way? They encountered opposition at three
levels: first within the family, especially from their husbands; second from
the male activists (especially the villagers, and to a lesser extent the Vahini
members) in the organization; and third from the government officials.
In the family, the obstacles were both implicit and explicit. Implicitly,
women's participation in the organizational meetings was constrained
because of their sole responsibility for housework and childcare and the
42
Manimala's (1983) narrative covered events up to early 1982. Discussion on the post-1982
phase is based on conversations in 1993 with Manimala, supplemented by those with
Prabhat and Hemant (two former Vahini activists based in Patna) who have kept in touch
with developments in the region.
social norms which limited their mobility. This also partly underlay
women's exclusion from decision-making within the organization, at least
in the initial phase of the struggle: full participation in decision-making
processes required attending all-day meetings and also travelling to other
villages. This was usually not possible for women unless male family
members were willing to share the housework and childcare, but this issue
was not initially pressed or given serious consideration within the organiza-
tion. Also there was no tradition of public speaking by women in the village:
older women sometimes spoke out, but the younger ones usually remained
silent.
Village men's opposition to women becoming independent erupted more
explicitly when one of the Vahini activists opened a school in Piparghati
village to promote female literacy in 1980. It was the only such school for
adults in the Bodhgaya region, and the men resented the fact that none
existed for them. Women seeking to attend the school were abused and
harassed, and some were beaten up by their brothers and husbands
because, according to Manimala (1983: 10-11): 'They thought the women
were getting too smart and were trying to get ahead of the men ...' The
school was closed as a result, and remained closed, although the men were
later reprimanded in an organization meeting.
In the organization, little attempt was made in the early phases of the
movement to include the peasant women in the decision-making process.
Women complained that the men seldom informed them about develop-
ments within the struggle. Even decisions about demonstrations were often
presented as fait accompli, and although women's participation in the
demonstrations was avidly sought, they were rarely told exactly what kind
of demonstration they were being asked to join. Women's low involvement
in decision-making was only partly due to the gender division of labour
within the household; equally important was the organization's limited
appreciation initially of the necessity of including women in that process.
The women described this exclusion graphically: 'We were in the forefront
of the fight, carrying our children in our wombs and in our arms. We went
to jail and faced the lathis [sticks], we also did all the housework. But when
the land was distributed, we were pushed back, we didn't even come to
know by what rules the land was distributed' (Manimala 1983: 15). Clearly
underlying this attitude was the assumption that women's interests were
subsumed within those of the household and could be represented adequa-
tely by the men. The same approach also resulted in women's exclusion
from the Vahini's initial list of beneficiaries for land distribution. I
understand that this changed over time and women in the later phase of the
movement became much more active participants in decision-making
processes within the organization. Nevertheless, certain gender concerns
such as male alcoholism and domestic violence which some of the women
activists focused on actively, received attention and sympathy from only a
few male activists, and were not initially taken up by the organization as
problems of central concern.
The third and, according to many Vahini activists, the strongest layer of
resistance was from the government administration. As noted, the District
Officer charged with registering land titles initially refused to register land
in women's names unless they were widowed heads of households, despite
the community's strong endorsement of the decision. It was only due to
firm refusal by the villagers (both men and women) to take land in male
names, and only after considerable contestation, that the officer agreed to
give titles to women.
The Bodhgaya women's ability to ultimately overcome these multiple
layers of opposition appears to have depended on the interactive effects of
several variables: one, the strength of women's participation in and their
considerable contribution to the struggle, which over time was recognized
by the men as not merely supportive but crucial for the movement's success;
two, the growing solidarity among women and their articulation of their
gender-specific interests as distinct from those of the men of their class and
community; three, the involvement in the Vahini of some middle-class
women activists with a feminist perspective; and four, the process of
discussion in which women insisted on their demands and persuasively
countered opposing arguments.
Manimala's (1983: 15-16) vivid account helps reconstruct this last
process. For instance, when the women protested against their exclusion
(except as widows) from the Vahini's list of recipients of land titles, the
peasant male activists argued: 'What difference does it make in whose name
the land is registered?' The women responded: Tf it doesn't make a
difference, then put it down in the woman's name. Why argue over it? And,
secondly, if it makes no difference who owns the land, then why not let it
continue to be owned by the Mahant?'
To the suggestion that women's demand would weaken class solidarity
and unity, the women replied: 'Equality can only strengthen, not weaken an
organization, but if it does weaken our unity, that will mean that our real
commitment is not to equality or justice but to transfer of power, both
economic and social, from the hands of one set of men to the hands of
another set of men.'
To the argument that since women marry and go to their in-laws' homes,
it is not possible for the land to be put in their names, the women replied: 'If
we do not acknowledge the legitimacy of a man-woman relationship
founded on inequality, why should we assume that a woman must leave her
home and go to her husband's home to provide heirs for his family and
continue his line?'
When the men in Persa village asked: 'How can you cultivate the land on
your own? Who will plough it for you?' they replied: 'Well, who will harvest
your crop in that case? We are ready to cultivate the land with hoes instead
of ploughs, but we want it in our names.'
In Piparghati village, women declared that they would not allow any
distribution to take place if the land was given only to men. They considered
and then rejected the idea that land should be registered jointly in the names
of both spouses, since that would tie women to their husbands by tying
them to the same plot of land.
These arguments carried weight within the movement because of the
crucial and committed nature of women's participation in the struggle and
the solidarity among them. But equally, the process of debate itself deserves
attention. Indeed the significance of the Bodhgaya struggle from the
women's point of view lies not just in the fact that this was probably the first
land struggle in South Asia in which women's land interests were explicitly
taken into account and carried forward with some success. It lies also in the
process by which this was achieved, which appears to have had a note-
worthy effect in terms of raising gender-progressive consciousness in the
region. The process was one in which a number of hitherto undiscussed
questions and prejudices concerning gender relations were openly debated,
providing scope for a change in attitudes. It is not unremarkable that issues
such as women's independent rights in economic resources, domestic
violence, women's needs, roles and abilities, female education, post-marital
residence, and so on, were discussed at length in a largely illiterate peasant
community, and were on several counts resolved in women's favour.
Although the debates were often long-drawn out and arduous, there were
significant rewards in the noticeable shifts in perceptions, and the question
of gender equality began to be seen by many not as divisive but as integral to
the movement's success. For instance, the refusal by male peasants to
accept land in their own names in the villages where, as noted, it had been
decided that land should be in women's names, and the inability of the
government administration to break the community's solidarity on this
count, clearly suggest that these men were convinced of the justness of
women's claims.
The impact of the ideological debates is also apparent in the differences
between the early and late phases of the movement. After the first phase (I
am told) as male biases on a variety of counts began to be challenged by the
women and debated within .the organization, there were perceptible
changes: women's participation in decision-making grew substantially, the
importance of sending girl children to school began to be more widely
accepted, wife-beating and verbal abuse against women were increasingly
considered matters of shame, the village male activists began to take care of
cooking and childcare arrangements in the women's shivirs, while the
women participated in discussions, and so on. Although this does not mean
that all families now send girl children to school, or that all men have
stopped beating their wives, it does appear that the social norms and
expectations concerning these issues have changed in important ways
among many villagers. A song on the need to educate girls, composed in
1992 by an illiterate male peasant from Bodhgaya, from which two verses
are reproduced below, is illustrative:
You send your sons to school father.
Why is making dung cakes the daughter's lot?
Why is lighting the stove the daughter's lot?
Awaken father, send us, your daughters, to school.
We too can be scholars one day.
We too can bring honour to your family name.43
As Manimala, after reciting this song to me, stressed: 'only when dreams
awaken are such songs composed'. The movement's impact on the ideologi-
cal front should thus count as of no little importance, even if its impact on
the material front, in enabling women to gain rights in land, was only
partially successful.
The Bodhgaya movement also needs to be set against the favourable
ideological climate created by a growing women's movement and spreading
feminist consciousness in the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s,
when issues concerning women's rights were being raised in an increasing
number of forums: women's organizations, parts of the bureaucracy,
academic gatherings, and international organizations and conferences.
This contextualization of the success (even if partial from women's
perspective) of the Bodhgaya struggle helps to highlight some of the factors
which must have constrained women from raising the question of their
independent rights in land in the peasant struggles of the late 1940s. These
factors would include the absence of: (a) solidarity among the women
peasants on gender questions; (b) women in the struggles who could
articulate a feminist theoretical perspective; (c) an active debate around
gender concerns in the course of the struggles; and (d) a widespread
women's movement in the country at that time. During the Bodhgaya
struggle, however, women articulated both their gender and class interests
in a group-overt form.
43
Recited to me by Manimala in 1993, in the original local Bihari dialect of Hindi; my
translation.
Similar lessons may be drawn from some other land-related struggles in
India in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Of particular note are the efforts of
the Mahila Aghadi, the women's front of the Shetkari Sanghatana. 44 This
farmers' organization was formed in 1980 under the leadership of Sharad
Joshi, an urban middle-class activist who mobilized small and medium
farmers across Maharashtra to agitate for more remunerative prices for
their produce. Gender issues were raised in the course of the movement, and
a set of resolutions was formulated in November 1986 at a women's meeting
held at Chandwad (Nasik district, Maharashtra) which some 10,000
peasant women attended. Among the resolutions was one to the effect that
women should have equal rights in property and another that women
should seek greater control over panchayat bodies. 45 Little practical
progress was made, however, until the Amravati meeting in November
1989, when the resolutions were reiterated by the now active Mahila
Aghadi of the Sanghatana. In this meeting an appeal was made to all male
Sanghatana followers to give a small part of their land to their wives.
Investment in the land was to be made by the male farmers, but the income
from the land would belong exclusively to the women. It was also resolved
to wage a sustained agitation to secure equal property rights for women,
and for women to stand for election to the Panchayati Raj institutions for
local self-governance. The Amravati resolutions were passed by some 4,000
peasant women and subsequently endorsed by a huge rally of farmers.
A practical fall-out of the Amravati resolutions followed in Jalgaon
district of the state. Here, in Vitner village, there were two significant
breakthroughs in 1989-90 through the efforts of the Mahila Aghadi: one,
an all-women panel was elected to the gram panchayat, and two, 127 women
received shares from their husbands in the latter's landed property, the
amounts received ranging from a half acre to seven acres (Gala 1990,
Omvedt 1990). When the women were asked what difference receiving land
had made to their lives, they mentioned a gain in self-confidence and better
treatment from their in-laws: 'We feel more secure, we can play a greater
part in family decision-making.' 'We ... always fear whether we have any
right in our parents' house or not. This used to make us feel helpless.
Having got land, we do not feel helpless now before husband or son' (Gala
1990: 32). The Vitner village women panchayat members, after being
elected, gave priority to long-neglected projects benefiting women, includ-
ing installing pumps in village wells. The woman sarpanch (panchayat head)
said that after she was elected her husband stopped drinking and beating
44
See Gala (1990) and Omvedt (1990) for details.
45
These resolutions and the action that followed them are noteworthy even though the role of
Sharad Joshi, w h o spearheaded the C h a n d w a d meeting, remains controversial (see e.g.
Sharma 1986).
her. When asked the reason for his forbearance, he said: 'When she is so
respected, how can I beat her?' (Gala 1990: 31). 46
These examples highlight the catalytic role often played by middle-class

activists with gender-progressive views in giving shape and direction to
peasant women's demands, and in group mobilization. 47 But most of all
these experiences underscore what are likely to be necessary (although not
sufficient) conditions for significantly changing women's situation: group
consciousness and group organization. This observation may not be news
to those involved in grassroots activism. Nevertheless, the point needs
emphasis in relation to gender concerns, for at least two reasons. First,
while the importance of group solidarity and consciousness along class lines
has long been central in left-wing discourse and practice, the importance of
solidarity along gender lines continues to be contested: the orthodox left
position still holds that the issue is divisive. Hence questions such as what
form should organized resistance based on gender (as also on caste, race,
ethnicity, etc.) take, and what should be its relationship with class resis-
tance, are by no means settled. 48 Second, in the context of gender, the close
and dialectical interconnections between the economic and the social
extends the struggle into many new arenas, including gender politics in the
home, the community, and the organization itself. It also necessitates
addressing hitherto-ignored issues such as domestic violence, sexuality, and
the social construction of gender roles and behaviour.
Moreover, group consciousness among, say, poor peasant women might
need to encompass more than just recognizing common sources and forms
of oppression and the advantages of organized struggle for individual gain.
It may need group cooperation also in terms of pooling land and resources
or accepting land under group ownership. This becomes important
especially in light of some of the structural problems connected with the
distribution of land to individual women that are revealed by the Bodhgaya
and related experiences. A significant problem stems from the practice of
patrilocality and village exogamy. Some of the married women of Bodh-
gaya and of Vitner village who received land, when asked to whom they
would confer the inheritance of their plots, answered 'our daughters-in-
46
In 1989, out of nine village gram panchayat elections fought by the Mahila Aghadi with all-
women panels, in seven the entire panels were elected {Times of India 1990).
47
For instance, C h e t n a Gala has played an important role in both the Bodhgaya and Shetkari
S a n g h a t a n a struggles in helping to shape the d e m a n d for women's land rights.
48
Indeed, the cases described of recent land struggles, in which the issue of women's rights in
land has been explicitly addressed, still remain exceptional. O t h e r land struggles and land
reforms of the 1970s and 1980s remained oblivious of the issue: for instance, it received no
consideration in the Bhoomi Sena (land army) movement of tenants and landless labourers
in M a h a r a s h t r a , spearheaded by the Praja Socialist Party in 1970 (Silva et al. 1979), or in
the C P I ( M ) ' s Operation Barga p r o g r a m m e for registering sharecroppers in West Bengal in
the late 1970s and early 1980s.
law', rather than their daughters who would leave the village on marriage.
But some other Bodhgaya women said they would leave the land to their
sons, in which case the land would pass out of women's hands in the next
generation. Unmarried adult daughters who received land in Bodhgaya
and subsequently married, appear to have sharecropped out the land to
their parents or brothers.49 The question - whom should women leave their
land to? - also surfaced in East Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu when the
organization LAFTI (Land for the Tillers' Freedom) raised funds to help
women purchase small plots of land in their own names (Winters 1988). The
reluctance to endow daughters with land because of the norms of patriloca-
lity and village exogamy, and the difficulties of management that women
face when they own land in one village and are married into another, are not
easy problems to resolve, especially if land is distributed in the names of
individual women.
A second problem arises from the lack of adequate funds in the hands of
marginal farmers, and especially women, for individually investing in
irrigation and other inputs that would enable profitable cultivation. This
has been one of the reasons (I was told) why a number of persons who
received land after the Bodhgaya struggle have subsequently had to
mortgage their holdings. In this context, more thought clearly needs to be
given to alternative institutional arrangements for holding and cultivating
land (to be discussed further in chapter 10), such as women forming
production/investment cooperatives, or groups of women receiving land as
joint rather than individual owners, whether or not they also jointly
cultivate it. In Bodhgaya, I understand, the government has recently
initiated a scheme for giving funds to groups offivefarmers each, to invest
in pumpsets. The scheme is said to be working better among some groups
than others; two of the groups are constituted only by women, and it
remains to be seen how well they are able to function.50 There is some room
for optimism on this count since there are several existing cases of women in
India and Bangladesh successfully managing land (private and public) on a
joint basis (as discussed below and in chapter 10).
Collective struggles to gain rights in privatized land in fact constitute
only one form of organized land struggles. There are also recent examples
of women seeking to claim rights in public land.
III. Group resistance: claiming rights in public land
In South Asia today, three types of public land are especially under
contestation: (a) forests under State control; (b) village commons in the
49
This was the impression of P r a b h a t (former Vahini activist) based on his recent visits to the
area, although he had not examined the m a t t e r systematically.
50
Personal c o m m u n i c a t i o n , P r a b h a t (Patna) and M a n i m a l a (Delhi), 1993.
form of pastures, local woodlands, and so on, typically located on the
boundaries of settlements; and (c) public spaces within the village
settlements.
The area under forests and village commons and the extent of people's
access to them have declined steadily and significantly, particularly over the
past four decades, for a variety of reasons mentioned in chapter 1, but
especially due to the appropriation and exploitation of forest lands by the
State and the privatization of the commons. Given their high dependency
on such land for fodder, fuel, supplementary food, and other basic items,
this decline has substantially weakened the livelihood security systems of
poor rural households. But women are the ones most immediately and
directly affected, both because of their primary responsibility in most parts
of South Asia for the collection of fuel, fodder, etc., and because of their
limited access to private land. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, in several
recent grassroots initiatives relating to both forests and village commons,
women have been significant actors. However, in the examples given below
one distinction is important to recognize: the initiatives relating to village
commons constitute attempts by women to claim separate rights in
communal land, while the forest-related movements have usually involved
both men and women of a community claiming rights in forest resources. In
the latter initiatives women are not necessarily seeking rights separate from
those of the community, but their interest in those rights is, in a number of
ways, still distinct from that of men, in that (as noted above) they are
particularly adversely affected by deforestation.
The best known of recent forest-related struggles in South Asia is the
Chipko movement (mentioned in chapter 1) which emerged in the Garhwal
Hills of northwest India. 51 Chipko (literally meaning to cling or hug) has
been a novel, non-violent way by which the people of this region have
sought to prevent the cutting of trees. The movement began as an attempt
by the local people to prevent indiscriminate commercial exploitation of the
region's forests, 95 per cent of which are owned by the government and
managed by the forest department. 52 Since its inception in 1973, the
movement has not only spread within the region, but its methods and
message have also reached other parts of the country. Women's active
Resistance struggles by forest dwellers and rural populations dependent directly on forests
for their livelihoods, against the encroachment of their traditional rights in forest land,
have a long history (Guha 1989). But in some recent struggles, the scale and nature of
women's involvement is especially noteworthy.
The specific incident which sparked off the movement was the successful resistance by the
people in Chamoli district against the auctioning of 300 ash trees to a sports goods
manufacturer, while the local labour cooperative was refused permission by the govern-
ment to cut even a few trees to make agricultural implements for the community. For a
more detailed discussion of Chipko, especially from the gender perspective, see Agarwal
(1992) and Shiva (1988).
involvement in the Chipko movement has several noteworthy features.
First, their protest against the commercial exploitation of the forests has
been not only jointly with the men of their community when they were
confronting non-local forest contractors, but also, in some subsequent
instances, in opposition to the village men due to differences in priorities
about resource use. For instance, in one village women successfully resisted
the logging of a tract of oak forest for the setting up of a potato-seed farm -
a scheme which many men supported because of its potential cash benefits,
but which the women opposed because it would take away their only local
source of fuel and fodder and add five kilometres to their firewood-
collection journeys, while cash in the men's hands would not necessarily
benefit them or their children. Second, in some places, as in Gopeshwar
town, women have been active in stopping tree auctions and forming
vigilance groups against illegal felling. Third, in their choice of trees for
replanting (which is a significant dimension of the movement), the priorities
of women and men have not always coincided - women have typically
preferred trees that provide fuel, fodder, and daily needs, while men have
often preferred commercially profitable ones. 53 Fourth, alongside the
movement to protect the forests has been large-scale mobilization against
male alcoholism and associated domestic violence and wasteful expendi-
ture. Women have also gained in self-confidence, and many are now more
vocal in presenting their views in village meetings. Hence, as with several
other examples noted earlier, women's involvement in the movement has
created an opportunity for them to also challenge some aspects of unequal
gender relations.
Struggles relating to public land that have taken a somewhat different
form are of importance as well, although they are on more modest a scale:
these are the efforts by women in several regions of South Asia to claim
parts of the village commons, especially for planting trees, herbs, or other
vegetation to supplement their incomes. For instance, in the Sewa Mandir
project in Rajasthan, in the early 1980s, a group of village women
successfully struggled to gain allotment of a part of the village wasteland on
which they then collectively planted herbs and trees. This involved (as noted
in chapter 6) overcoming stiff opposition from the local government official
in charge of land registration, on the ground that there was no precedent for
allotting land to women (Lai 1986). In West Bengal, again, in Bankura
district, village women have formed samitis (societies) and reclaimed
degraded wasteland to plant trees to develop sericulture. The Bankura
project was initiated in 1980 by one women's samiti and by 1988 some 1,500
women in thirty-six villages were members of such groups (N. Singh 1988,
53
As noted in chapter 1, this gender divergence has also been observed in some other tree-
planting schemes.
and Mazumdar 1989). Although much of the degraded land the women
have claimed was privately donated by villagers who lacked the resources to
develop it, in a few cases women have claimed public land for this purpose
(personal communication, Vina Mazumdar, 1993). There are also several
recent examples of village women in India collectively managing degraded
forest land (Burra 1991); as there are of landless women in Bangladesh
jointly cultivating crops on small amounts of public land (Chen 1983).
Rather more unusual, however, is women's struggle in a Nepali village to
gain use rights in public space within the village settlement, for holding
meetings (Enslin 1990). In Nepal, there are no explicit strictures on women
of virtually any community from moving around in public relatively freely.
Nevertheless, in the village Enslin (1990) studied in the late 1980s, an
implicit gender segregation of public space was apparent: women were
fearful of gathering or holding meetings in spaces where men congregated,
such as the village teashop, the panchayat grounds, and the market place.
They increasingly found themselves subjected to sexual harassment in such
spaces. At the same time, some of their usual meeting grounds, such as
grazing lands and forests, had been shrinking with deforestation and the
privatization of the commons. Ritual spaces such as those in temples, where
women could hitherto dance freely on festive occasions, and especially on
the festival of teej, had also lately been intruded upon by drunken men. In
addition, there was an incident of some men barging in and beating up
women during ratauli-a woman's ritual held at orthodox Hindu weddings
in Nepal after the groom's party departs to fetch the bride: the ritual,
practised (as noted earlier) in similar form in northwest India, involves
women impersonating men and generally parodying male behaviour.
Matters came to a head in 1987 when women's attempts to run a women's
literacy class in a space near the village teashop was obstructed by sexual
harassment from both drunk and sober men, as women walked to their
classes at night. Some men taunted them for attempting to study. Some
disturbed the classes, dictating what women should or should not discuss.
To deal with this, the women organized as a group and demanded that the
panchayat allot them space in the village where they could meet unrestric-
tedly. Eventually, in 1988, they were allotted a small plot of land for
establishing a women's meeting centre.
Men's opposition in this case appears to have stemmed only in part from
a conflict over space. Equally it appears to have been a reaction against the
idea of women being literate, the greater control over their own lives that
this would give women, and the possible resulting changes in intra-family
gender relations. In this context, women dancing at the teej festival or
celebrating ratauli may also have acquired a new (and possibly threatening)
dimension for the men, who may see these as having become conscious
expressions of women's freedom, and no longer only traditional rituals. In

effect women's struggle for use rights in community resources (village
space) represented simultaneously a struggle over meanings (women's
public roles and freedom to express themselves).
Indeed, highlighted in the experience of the grassroots peasant struggles

described here, and noted repeatedly throughout this book, is the close and
dialectical link between women's ability to claim and control land (and
other economic resources) and the social construction of gender roles and
modes of behaviour. Even to participate in group meetings requires
negotiation over the household division of tasks and a questioning of
female seclusion norms and practices (especially in communities where
these are deeply embedded). To speak out in group meetings, especially in
the presence of men but also in the presence of other women, requires
overcoming learned behaviour patterns that emphasize the virtue of
women's silence and soft-spokenness. Notions about women's capabilities
and appropriate roles permeate male-female interactions even in class-
homogeneous organizations. Struggles over meanings are thus centrally
linked with women's struggles over resources.
In fact the necessary simultaneity of the two dimensions of struggle is
manifest in every example given above. In this context, what may appear to
be largely symbolic or ideological struggles (such as those challenging
purdah practices) also have enormous material consequences. And here
again the significance of group action emerges with sharp clarity, as
described below.
IV. Further observations on gender construction and group

contestation
We noted in chapter 2 that a good deal of what is socially passed off as

natural and indisputable is in fact a result of ideological struggles between
contesting parties. Women's needs, roles, and modes of behaviour are no
exception. To shift what has long been taken for granted by a community or
society into the arena of contestation and discourse (from 'doxa' to
'heterodoxy') therefore itself requires struggle. Gaining acceptance for the
idea that the inequities women suffer are not biologically rooted but socially
constructed is a part of this process. But this is only a first step. Seeking
answers to how gender can be differently constructed is the next one.
The social and ideological construction of gender is an extremely
complex process involving many types of institutions: the family, schools,
the media, religious bodies, and so on. It both shapes and is shaped by
women's material circumstances. That the ideological construction of
gender affects women's material context has already been amply demon-
strated in our discussion on how such constructs become obstacles to
women's ability to own and control land or even to participate in the labour
force or in public decision-making bodies. But women's material context in
turn defines how they are ideologically represented and expected to behave:
expected norms of behaviour can vary by class and social grouping. In fact,
a woman's class position may affect norms in complex and contradictory
ways. Upper-class and upper-caste women, for instance, may on the one
hand be bound more strictly by the dictates of certain representations and
cultural practices, such as stricter purdah, strong disapproval of divorce
and widow remarriage, and so on. On the other hand, their class position
and/or higher education may enable them at the individual level to
challenge these dictates, and by-pass conventions from which women living
under poverty conditions may have no easy escape. Again deviations by
poor women from conventions accepted and practised by the better-off
may reflect either an alternative cultural tradition (as found, for instance,
among tribal societies) or economic necessity. Typically, however, ideologi-
cal representations stemming from the dominant classes/groups become
the norms governing all classes and groups, or are given a superior position
within a range of representations and practices.
There are two points of particular note here. First, ideological construc-
tions of gender can be the result of ongoing processes of negotiation and
struggle between multiple actors. What is seen as 'undisputed tradition' and
'natural' was not necessarily always so and may again be subject to
challenge and change. Second, although examples of individual women
resisting are by no means rare, to alter significantly that which they are
resisting depends considerably on women acting overtly and as a group.
Both these aspects are revealed when we examine the issue of purdah. The
origins of purdah practices in India are somewhat obscure. Altekar's (1956)
analysis of classical Hindu texts suggests that in India purdah was unknown
up to the end of the first century BC and remained confined to a very small
section of the ruling classes in north India till the end of the tenth century
AD, only becoming widespread (again essentially in north India) in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries after the advent of Muslim rule. 54 How-
ever, he suggests that initial attempts to introduce purdah practices did not
Purdah, as noted in chapter 7, is defined here in terms of explicit norms regarding the
physical seclusion or segregation of women, and not in terms of a generalized emphasis on
female chastity or wifely devotion which is how the historian Chakravarti (1986) defines
'purdah culture', the advent of which she no doubt rightly dates to a much earlier period.
Also, as discussed in chapter 7, widening the notion of purdah to include various forms of
ideological control exercised over female sexuality is not especially helpful, since it tends to
label as 'purdah' what is in fact the social construction of gender that has characterized
many cultures, including that of Victorian England! It is also necessary to separate the
actual practice of purdah among different castes and classes in India from norms prescribed
by the upper-castes and classes.
go unchallenged by women. For instance, in Lalitavistara (written in 300
BC), Gopa, the bride-elect of the Buddha, refuses to follow the advice that
she should wear a veil, on the grounds that the pure in thought require no
such artificial protection (Altekar 1956: 170-1). As a result of women's
opposition, Altekar argues, female seclusion did not become popular for
several centuries. Even in the eleventh century, when it is believed purdah
was beginning to spread among rich Hindu families in north India, women
contested the idea. The heroine of Ratnaprabha, a novel written in the late
eleventh century, protests her husband's view that even his own friends
should not enter her apartments with the words: 'I consider ... that the
strict seclusion of women is a folly produced by jealousy. It is of no use
whatsoever. Women of good character are guarded only by their own virtue
and nothing else' (quoted in Altekar 1956: 174). During Mughal rule,
however, the practice is believed to have become common among rich
Hindu families in north India; and in parts of northwest India, such as
Rajasthan, it also gradually permeated the lower castes and classes. The
historical material does not lend itself to reconstructing the extent of
women's resistance to purdah at that time, or the complex process by which
such resistance may have been suppressed. There is little to suggest that this
resistance was anything more than protests by individual women. At the
same time, it is significant that some women (even if individually) appear to
have resisted the practice and that initially it was adopted only by the upper
classes.
In the 1920s and 1930s, purdah came under attack from many educated
individuals and a number of organizations, including women's groups
(Basu and Ray 1990; Forbes 1981). The AIWC and WIA opposed it on the
grounds that it constrained girls' education and made it difficult to contact
women. Women's participation in the Freedom Movement, which brought
them increasingly into the public arena, also made the general climate
favourable to reform.5 5 Although no attempt was made in India to push for
legislation against the veil (as occurred in Turkey), resolutions were passed
condemning the practice and a propaganda campaign was launched. Anti-
purdah days were planned by women in Bihar and West Bengal. In Calcutta
the observation of an anti-purdah day became an annual event in the 1930s,
organized by women of the Marwari business community (which pres-
cribed strict purdah). An anti-purdah conference in 1940 is said to have
55
Mahatma Gandhi spoke out against purdah on several occasions, calling the custom
'barbarous' and outdated which 'was doing incalculable harm to the country1 (Gandhi
1927: 37). He also attacked the double standards in the prevailing emphasis on female
purity:
Why is there all this morbid anxiety about female purity? Have women any say in the
matter of male purity?... Why should men arrogate to themselves the right to regulate
female purity? It cannot be superimposed from without. It is a matter of evolution from
within and therefore of individual self-effort. (Gandhi 1926: 415)
attracted 5,000 women. The woman President of the conference arrived in a
car driven through the city streets by a Marwari woman and followed by a
procession of Marwari women on foot led by girls riding on horseback!
(Forbes 1981).
A number of Muslim women (and men) also spoke out against excessive
purdah in the 1920s and 1930s, especially as an obstacle to women's
education. Moreover, as Muslim women's participation in political acti-
vism grew during this period, an increasing number of them began to regard
purdah as a burden. 56 In overall terms, though, protest against the practice
was relatively muted among the Muslims (Minault 1981).
Today, however, the dialectic of contestation over purdah is revealed
with particular starkness in women's attempts to negotiate its constraints in
the predominantly Muslim societies of Bangladesh and Pakistan. In
particular, the process reveals (a) how ideological contestations both shape
and are shaped by women's material circumstances; and (b) the strength of
collective action as opposed to individual resistance. In these societies, as
indeed in many other parts of South Asia, women caught in the poverty
trap face conflicting choices between survival needs and social status within
the community. They resolve this dilemma in different ways. Although
many take up income-generating work, some do so within the home
confines and others outside; and the implications vary accordingly, depend-
ing on whether women are working in individual isolation, or in work
spaces that bring them together outside the home, or as part of organized
groups. For instance, Shaheed (1988) describes how in Lahore city (Pakis-
tan), the conflict between economic necessity and social disapproval is
resolved by women taking up home-based piecework (through middlemen
who supply the raw materials and purchase the finished products), in effect
rendering the fact of their working invisible to the outside world. Isolated
from one another, and lacking any formal organizational structures and
few possibilities of solidarity, they are vulnerable to economic exploitation
and are not in a position to question the social mores that confine them.
In contrast, Bangladeshi women working in urban factories or as part of
organized groups in the villages are beginning to redefine the norms of
purdah in various ways. Consider the women garment workers from
Kabeer's (1991b) study in Dhaka city. Some of them draw legitimacy from
the Koran itself:
According to the Koran, one has to keep one's purdah. But it also says that you are
responsible for your own survival. This is difaraz [duty], a must. If I don't work, I
will die and then God will ask me why I did not take more care of my family and my
husband. (Hanufa, in Kabeer 1991b: 16)
56
Also see the writings of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, published in a Bengali periodical in
1929 (and translated into English by Jahan 1981), which caustically describe the ways in
which purdah incapacitated women of her time.
Some others reinterpret purdah as of the mind:
The best purdah is the burkah within oneself, the burkah of the mind. People only say
that working violates purdah in order to keep women down. (Rahela, in Kabeer
1991b: 18)
Kabeer (1991b: 13) observes: 'Paradoxically ... through their attempts to
reconcile their practice with prevailing norms, it became clear that the
workers were, often unintentionally, helping to transform the very norms
they invoked to justify their practice'; and she argues that the urban setting,
where the local community is less tightly knit than in a village, facilitates
women's ability to redefine purdah.
However, a similar redefinition of purdah is taking place in some villages
as well, sometimes in more self-conscious and confrontationist terms,
facilitated especially by group organization. Indeed women in groups speak
'in a different voice'. Cases in point are the poor rural women in Bangladesh
who have become members of BRAC (the Bangladesh Rural Advancement
Committee), a non-governmental organization set up by Bangladeshis in
the early 1970s to improve the economic and social position of the
disadvantaged through group schemes for credit and a variety of income-
generating projects. Here, as vividly illustrated by the quotes in Chen (1983)
and Hunt (1983), women are beginning to question the legitimacy of
purdah itself. Equally important, they are beginning to locate the constrict-
ing social mores in the arena of political struggle rather than in the personal
sphere.
For instance, some see purdah as an instrument in the hands of the rich to
economically exploit the poor:
It is the strategy of the village leaders to keep us working at low wages in their
homes. If we work outside, without purdah, then the rich people will not be able to
advance credit to us poor women at exorbitant rates of interest. If we women work
outside, we might be economically better off. (A BRAC woman, in Chen 1983: 59)
They also explicitly see purdah not as a static social norm that has been
given to society, but something which is ideologically defined and con-
structed by the elite:
When the women from rich households need to go to the town to appear in court,
even to remain in town for 3^4 days at a time, this is sanctioned as [within the norms
of]purdah. When women from a BRAC-organized group want to go to town for one
night, or even for a day, to attend a workshop or meeting, they pay a tremendous
social price when they return home. Their action is condemned as bepurdah. The
norms of purdah that may be relaxed for the wives of the rich can just as easily and
quickly, be clamped down on the women of other households. (A BRAC woman, in
Chen 1983:73)
Further:
The mullahs [muslim clergy] have some say about religious norms, but the elders
have the final say about them. The mullahs, upon request from the elders, will start
the rumour that such-and-such action or behaviour is bepurdah . . . In this way, the
rich and elders (through the religious leaders) can determine what work is suitable
or not suitable for women to perform. (A BRAC woman, in Chen 1983: 73)
Group solidarity within BRAC has clearly served the critical function of
enabling women to deal with these rumours and, more generally, given
them the strength to challenge patriarchal attitudes, as apparent from their
following statements in Chen (1983: 175-6):
Everybody used to bad-mouth against me. I did not listen to them. They are the rich.
Why should we listen to the rich? They walked on our bodies. We should not listen
to them.
Yes, they say many things. They say that what we do is shameful, carries no dignity,
no respect or honor, and, above all, it is not good to talk and work with men. I say:
What is wrong in working with men, in talking with men? We also have brothers, we
treat them as our brothers and fathers. What is the shame? We went to them. They
gave us 1,500 taka. We bought cows and we made profit. Those who say all these
things, do they give us any money? If we die of starvation they will not give us
anything. Would it be good to sit without work and food abiding by what they say?
We do not listen to the mullahs anymore. They did not give us even a quarter kilo of
rice.
This process of contestation appears to have made some headway. Some
BRAC women narrate their experiences as follows (cited in Chen 1983: 177,
165):
Now nobody talks ill of us. They say: They have formed a group and now they earn
money. It is good . . . ' Many say: 'You have formed a group. Please allow us to join
you.'
Before the village elders and union-council members abused and threatened us for
joining the group, now they are silent... Before we did not understand our wages,
now we understand profit and loss . . . Before we did not know our rights to rations
or medical services, now we are conscious and exert pressure to receive our due . . .
Before we did not go outside our homes, but now we work in thefieldsand go to the
town . . . Before our minds were rusty, now they shine . . .
The attitudes of husbands appear to be changing as well. Women report

that husbands are less opposed to wives joining the group, especially as this
brings economic benefit. They are also more courteous, less physically and
verbally abusive, more willing to allow wives freedom of mobility, and
more tolerant toward their interaction with male strangers in work
contexts.
In the public arena too, BRAC women, organized into groups, are better
able to assert their rights. For instance, when one woman of a group was
denied the free medical attention to which she was entitled from a local
clinic, ten women marched to the clinic and demanded that she be given
treatment. She was. Now BRAC women are also more willing to question
the judgements delivered by village councils and better able to negotiate
with their husbands for more freedom of movement outside the home
(Chen 1983: 165-8).
The connection the BRAC women draw between the dominant position
occupied by the rich and the mullahs in the village and their ability to define
purdah norms is also striking. It links economic power with the ability of
the powerful to bend religious ideologies to their own purpose, and
highlights how material relations of power can get transformed into control
over ideological constructions. 57
These by-products of solidarity among women's groups, initiated for the
better delivery of economic programmes, are not unique to BRAC. The
experience of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the Self-Employed
Women's Association (SEWA) in west India, and of several other groups,
support this conclusion. 58 Indeed, women's voices from many different
organizations across South Asia affirm the significance of group strength in
improving women's fall-back position and empowering them in a number
of ways: in negotiating better treatment within and outside the family; in
more firmly resisting family pressure, especially from husbands; in pressur-
ing the government for improvements in laws and their implementation;
and in standing up to community censure, especially in ideological terms,
and so bringing about changes in how they are perceived by others and how
they perceive themselves and their capabilities. As a woman from BRAC
put it:
The most important thing I learned from the Samity is that we are strong as a group.
We can withstand pressure but alone we are nothing. A house cannot stand on one
post. Put a post in each corner and it is strong! With the Samity behind me, people
57
In this context, I feel that writers such as Moore (1991), while recognizing that social norms
can be contested, locate the contestation perhaps too much in the realm of ideology and do
not give sufficient weight to the dialectical interlinks between economic inequalities and
gender ideologies, or to economic inequalities as a significant (although by no means sole)
determinant of relative male-female power within the household. Moore (1991: 8-9) notes,
for instance: '[T]he relations of domination and subordination which are at the base of
gender inequalities within the household cannot be explained as a simple outcome of
economic inequalities', a point with which I concur. But she goes on to say: 'Bargaining and
negotiations between women and men . . . are often about definitions and interpretations,
and it is for this reason that gender relations are always involved with power. Power is an
aspect of gender relations.' True, but if power is not to be seen as a thing in itself, we do need
to ask: of what is this power constituted, and what is its source? And the answer, in my view,
cannot be provided without reference to the critical importance of economic inequalities in
structuring power relations between people, both directly and indirectly, by giving some
people greater authority over definitions and interpretations than others.
58
For the Grameen Bank, see Rahman (1986) and for SEWA, see Sebstad (1982) and Rose
(1992). Also see the discussion on this point in Agarwal (1990a).
think twice before harming me. If I had a brother, people wouldn't bother me. Well
the Samity is my 'brother'. (Hunt 1983: 38, emphasis mine)
Group organization empowers women to confront existing sources of
oppression. The struggle over representations is also a power struggle. As
Fraser(1989: 166) notes:
[NJeeds talk appears as a site of struggle where groups with unequal discursive (and
nondiscursive) resources compete to establish as hegemonic their respective inter-
pretations of legitimate social needs.
It is a struggle of the dominated groups to question what has so far been
seen as 'natural' and 'traditional', and to bring issues hitherto seen as
'private' into public debate - or, in Bourdieu's terms, to redefine the
boundaries of 'doxa'. But meanings are created at many different levels,
through a variety of institutions. Feminist critiques of school and university
curriculum and texts, of the images and messages of modern media (radio,
TV, film), of religious myths and mythologies, and so on, are all part of this
struggle to redefine how women's capabilities, needs, and rights are
represented. 59
In this context, women's groups are today also putting traditional means
of protest such as songs and parody to new uses. Over the past decade,
women activists (including tribal, peasant, and working-class women in
India) have written numerous songs, often using familiar folk tunes but
substituting feminist verses for women's traditional lyrics.60 These songs
are being used in South Asia both as expressions of gender resistance and to
mobilize women for protest demonstrations. In Pakistan, members of the
Women's Action Forum created skits to parody the Hudood Ordinance of
1979, which (among other changes) reduced the weight of a woman's
testimony in a court of law to half that of a male. In India, over the past two
decades, the older left-wing tradition of radical street theatre is being used
increasingly by women's groups, both as an expression of resistance and as
a means of raising public awareness about issues such as persistent gender
injustices in social practices, domestic violence, women's legal rights, and so
on. In Nepal, in 1988, village women in a theatre workshop worked in teams
to compose and perform skits which portrayed how men and women in
positions of power (e.g. men as fathers and landlords, women as mothers-
in-law) mistreat women in vulnerable positions. Each skit ended with the
woman triumphing over her oppressors. The following enactment des-
cribed by Enslin (1990: 185-6) is illustrative:
59
See e.g. Kalia (1979), Bhasin and Agarwal (1983), C h a k r a v a r t i (1983), K r i s h n a n and Dighe
(1990), and Agarwal (1985c).
60
F o r examples, see Patel (1983) and the songbooks and cassettes produced by Jagori, a
women's d o c u m e n t a t i o n and training centre in Delhi.
In a simple, but striking drama, women and a young man represented three images
of domination and resistance. In thefirstscene, they showed a man sitting proudly
on a chair under an umbrella (symbols of power), slowly twisting his moustache,
while his women subordinates prostrated before him, folding their hands in
supplication. In the next scene, the women had risen up, grabbed the man's ears (a
symbol of punishment) and threatened him with pointed fingers and menacing
looks. In the final scene, the women inverted the relations of the first scene. They
stood with the man prostrated before them as they had been in the first scene.
Although the shift from such depictions to examining the underlying
material basis of patriarchal power in the countryside, especially as it is
embedded in control over landed property, will probably take time, some
women have already made this connection. One of the members of the
women's group in Enslin's study village questioned exclusive male control
over land in a poem, some parts of which are reproduced below (Enslin
1990: 188-9):
For my father's house I worked hard,
So I should get half of the property.
But father says,
'If I give you land, we will not have enough;
Perhaps I could give you unirrigated land.'
But my brother says,

'No, I will not even give you dry land.'
These forms of public expression are explicit protests against experiences
to which women had earlier responded mostly covertly and/or individually.
Such expressions are both an essential part of the struggle to establish the
legitimacy of women's demands for equality and justice, including greater
rights in land, and a necessary first step in the tortuous journey to ensure the
satisfaction of those demands. To reiterate Fraser's (1989) formulation,
there are three interrelated struggles involved here: those to establish the
legitimacy of a need, those to interpret how that need should be satisfied,
and those to secure satisfaction of the need. In South Asia today we see the
beginnings of struggles at all three levels.
10 The long march ahead
My bangles are broken,

my days of shame are gone.
I have one small son, one calf, one field.
A calf to feed, a son to nurture,
but the land, baiji, this half acre of earth
to feed me, to rest my head.1
(Malli, a Rajasthani widow I interviewed in 1987)
What are the macro-scenarios that South Asian village women, such as
Malli, have to contend with in their attempts to claim a field that they can
call their own? Which organizational forms of landownership and control
and institutional support structures could help establish women's effective
command over the land they claim? What legal reforms are still necessary?
Would a greater female presence in public decision-making bodies help
promote rural women's concerns? What would strengthen women's ability
to bargain with the community and the State and within the household? Is
collective action by women across class/caste lines possible? How might
local struggles link with national ones? Many such questions will need to be
addressed in the course of women's journey to gain effective land rights.
This concluding chapter examines these and related questions in the light of
the central arguments made earlier. The chapter is divided into three
sections. Section I will recapitulate the main arguments on why women
need independent land rights, and the nature of existing legal, social and
institutional obstacles to their realizing these rights. Section II will discuss,
in broad terms, issues that are likely to need particular attention in the
process of change and outline some ideas on how these issues could be
approached; and section III will focus on the macro-scenarios impinging on
women's struggles for land rights.
Broken bangles signify widowhood. Baiji: respected sister.
467
I. Recapitulation 2
Almost four decades have passed since the Hindu Succession Act of 1956
granted Hindu women in India considerable legal rights to inherit immov-
able property. And three decades ago, the West Pakistan Shariat Act of
1962 superseded custom and gave Muslim women across Pakistan inheri-
tance rights in agricultural land. Yet in both countries, and indeed in large
parts of the subcontinent, most women do not own land, and few among
those who do are able to exercise full control over it. The history of women's
land rights in South Asia has been and will continue to be a history of
contestation and struggle at every level - legal, administrative, social, and
ideological. Each stage of the journey - towards legal reform, from law to
the realization of claims, and from ownership to effective control - is
barricaded by multiple obstacles. This is true in significant degree, although
not in equal measure everywhere, for most of the subcontinent.
Yet this is a struggle that is crucial to wage, since arable land will continue
through the foreseeable future to be the most significant form of property in
rural South Asia: the primary source of economic security, social status,
and political power. In particular, land is likely to be a pivotal factor in
defining gender relations both within and outside the rural family. Indeed
the very resistance encountered by women, even in their demand for legal
reform, is a measure of how central landed property is in maintaining
positions of privilege, including gender privilege. It is thus time to move
beyond a single-minded emphasis on women's employment, which has
preoccupied planners and most grassroots groups as the means of improv-
ing women's economic position, toward giving centrality to women's
ownership and control of land - the means of production itself.
By women's rights in land (as noted in chapter 1) is meant rights not only
in law but in practice, and not only of ownership but of control, independent
of male ownership and control. However, the form in which ownership and
control rights could accrue to women (that is, whether as individuals or as
groups) in particular contexts, is a matter warranting further discussion (as
taken up later).
The case for women having ownership and control of land in their own
right, rather than mediated through male relatives, rests (as elaborated in
chapter 1) on four pillars: welfare, efficiency, equality, and empowerment.
The welfare argument is that independent land rights for women, especially
in poor rural households, can better serve to reduce their and their
2
This section is not a comprehensive summary of the complexity of issues discussed in the
preceding chapters; it is merely meant to provide a broad (and inevitably simplified)
overview of some major arguments that were made earlier, to help lead into a more general
discussion about processes of change and future scenarios.
The long march ahead 469
children's risk of poverty, than rights granted only to men. The argument is
three-fold. First, the assumption that the household is a unit of congruent
interests among whose members the benefits of available resources are
shared equitably is refuted by mounting evidence to the contrary. This
evidence shows a systematic (although regionally variable) bias in favour of
male household members in intra-household resource allocation, and
underlines the need for women's independent access to economic resources
for closing this gender gap. Second, in poor rural households, resources
under women's control tend to be used in greater measure for the family's,
especially the children's, basic needs, than do resources under men's
control. Third, an increasing percentage of households are now headed by
women with the prime or sole responsibility for family welfare: as noted in
chapter 1, an estimated 20 per cent of households in India and Bangladesh
are de facto female-headed, and their incidence in general and within the
agricultural sector in particular is likely to increase over time (the latter
because of the larger proportionate absorption of male labour in non-
agricultural occupations). Moreover, as kinship support systems erode and
the incidence of marital breakdown rises, an increasing number of women,
even those born or married into affluent rural households, would be
vulnerable to poverty and destitution. Given this backdrop, the overall
objectives of poverty-alleviation could also be better served in many
instances by directing economic resources to women, than only to male
household heads.
Among economic resources, land occupies a special place as a productive
asset and a potential income stream. It provides a source of economic
security in a number of ways: through the direct production possibilities it
offers, by serving (if owned) as a mortgageable or saleable asset during a
crisis, helping agricultural labour maintain its reserve price, serving as
collateral for credit, and so on. Landowning widows and elderly women
(and men) also tend to have greater bargaining power with kin and are
likely to be better looked after than landless ones.
Opponents of land reforms and/or women's land rights often argue that
there is not enough land to go around to provide a livelihood for the rural
population. However (as elaborated in chapter 1) the welfare case for
providing land to women need not rest on land being their sole source of
earnings. The emphasis in land reform programmes on a 'viable' size of
landholding stems from the assumption that this is the household's only
income source and so should be adequate for basic sustenance. In fact, for
poor rural households, a small plot of land is often likely to be just one
element, but a critical one, in a diversified livelihood system. For instance, it
can provide an important supplement to wage earnings by enabling the
person to raise some vegetables, trees or fodder, or to keep cattle or poultry,
or even to undertake some non-farm activity. A small plot, unless totally

barren, can thus significantly reduce a person's risk of poverty.
Welfare considerations apart, there are several contexts described in
chapter 1 in which providing land titles to women can clearly increase
productive efficiency. For instance, the granting of titles to women cur-
rently operating farms as de facto female heads (due to say male incapacity
or outmigration), or as widows cultivating the deceased husband's lands
without a formal transfer in their names, would raise output by increasing
women's access to credit and other inputs, as well as increasing their
incentive and ability to make long-term land improvements.
Efficiency questions arising in relation to women inheriting land are more
contentious. Women's inheritance claims in land are often opposed on the
ground that recognizing their claims would decrease agricultural output by
reducing farm size and increasing land fragmentation. In fact, existing
evidence (reviewed in chapter 1) shows that small-sized farms in South Asia
continue to have a higher productivity per sown acre than large-sized ones,
even after the green revolution. There appears little reason to expect a fall in
productivity simply on account of size if women inherit land. And the
problems of small size and fragmentation are not unique to female
ownership but can arise equally with male inheritance. Fragmentation in
either case calls for a land consolidation programme. There could of course
be a negative output effect of female inheritance through what I have
termed the gender-transfer effect, in so far as women usually face specific
gender-related disadvantages as managers of farms, such as when operating
in factor and product markets. But again the answer lies in easing these
constraints by providing institutional and technical support to women
farmers, rather than in disinheriting women.
Indeed, the experience of non-governmental credit institutions such as
the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh suggests that women are often better
credit risks than men. Supporting women as farm managers could also
enlarge the talent pool and information base of farming: as noted in chapter
1, women in many South Asian communities have an extensive knowledge
of indigenous crop varieties and cultivation techniques. And in very poor
households allocating resources to women could increase their and their
children's productivity by improving their nutrition.
Equality and empowerment concerns, unlike welfare and efficiency
considerations, stem less from the implications of land access or depriva-
tion in absolute terms, and more from the implications of men's and
women's relative access to land. Apart from the importance of gender
equality as a measure of a just society, unequal rights to property affect
relations between people, not only in well-recognized class terms but also in
terms of gender, within and outside the household. A woman's bargaining
power vis-a-vis her husband, for instance, is linked, among other things, to
the strength of her fall-back position, and greater gender equality in land-
ownership would be a critical factor in strengthening that position.
Women's relationship with the community is likewise mediated by
property, not only that owned by their families but also by themselves.
Women owning even small plots of land in their own names, in contrast to
those who are landless, are found to feel more respected within the village
and to be able to deal with employers from a stronger bargaining position.
Of course, as the countries of South Asia develop and the industrial and
service sectors expand, arable land would become less significant as a
source of livelihood and a form of property. This transformation is also
necessary to relieve the pressure of population on land in the long run. But,
as noted in chapter 1, today the majority of South Asia's population is still
dependent on agriculture as either a primary or an important supplemen-
tary source of sustenance. To this may be added the dependence on village
common land and forests for fuel and other basic necessities, even among
villagers whose income derives mainly from the non-farm sector. In none of
the South Asian countries do projections predict a rapid absorption of
labour (especially female labour) into formal industry in the foreseeable
future. Furthermore, since it is predominantly male workers who migrate
from rural to urban areas, women's dependence on the rural/agricultural
sector remains greater than men's. 3 Although the rural non-farm sector
holds potential, its record in providing viable livelihoods has been mixed:
there are some regions and segments of high returns/high wages (such as the
Indian Punjab), but the bulk of this sector appears to be characterized by
low returns and low wages. In particular, women's non-farm earnings (to
the limited extent they have been studied) typically appear low and
uncertain. There is clearly a need to strengthen women's earning opportuni-
ties in the non-farm sector, especially by ensuring their entry into its more
productive segments. But for most women, non-farm employment cannot
substitute for land-based livelihoods, although it could complement them.
Effectively, therefore, land will continue to occupy a place of primacy in
South Asian livelihood systems in general, and female livelihood systems in
particular, for quite some time to come.
Moreover, with sectoral shifts, although the importance of land as
property may decline, income-generating property per se is likely to remain
a significant mediator of social relations and an important determinant of
social status and political power. Who owns and/or controls property
would therefore still be a relevant consideration; and many of the argu-
ments in favour of gender equality in ownership and control of landed
property could be extended to other forms of property as well.
The case for women's land rights notwithstanding, the issue has received
3
On the sex and age composition of rural-urban migration, see Bardhan (1977).
little systematic or serious attention. And the obstacles to women realizing
these rights in practice are numerous, although the nature of these
obstructions is somewhat different for private land under individual
ownership or control from that for public land held by the State or by a
community. Much of arable land in South Asia is in private hands.4 Access
to this land is mainly through systems of inheritance. As we saw in chapter
3, traditionally these systems were highly gender-unequal in South Asia.
Under customary law, women had well-recognized inheritance rights in
landed property only in parts of northeast and southwest India and in Sri
Lanka, where communities practising matrilineal or bilateral inheritance
were located. The rest of undivided India and all of Nepal practised
patrilineal inheritance. Within patrilineal Hindu communities in India, the
classical Mitakshara and Dayabhaga systems recognized a widow's inheri-
tance rights only in the absence of sons, sons' sons, and sons' sons' sons,
and a daughter came after the widow: under both systems women could
hold only a limited interest. Moreover, while Dayabhaga allowed a widow
and daughter these restricted rights in a man's entire property, Mitakshara
limited women's inheritance claims to a man's separate property. In
practice these rights were greater in some regions, notably in south and west
India, where customs were somewhat more favourable to women than the
classical prescriptions, but everywhere gender inequalities were marked.
Similar inequalities prevailed in the inheritance systems followed by the
Hindu and Tibeto-Burman communities of Nepal. Among patrilineal
Muslims in South Asia, although Islamic law better recognized the rights of
daughters and widows in immovable property (even if unequally to those of
sons), in practice, excepting occasional cases of women from wealthy
families inheriting landed property, in large measure local customs (usually
similar to those prevailing among Hindus in the region, and which gave
women very restricted rights) appear to have been followed, rather than the
Shariat.
In matrilineal and bilateral communities, women's land rights were much
greater but still circumscribed. First, in most instances, the rights were
structurally linked to women residing after marriage in the natal village and
often in the parental home itself. Second, in some communities, individual
alienation of the land was not allowed: the property was held collectively
either by the clan, with individuals holding usufructuary rights (as among
the Garos), or by the joint family (as among the Nayars). Marriage between
close-kin was also a common (although not universal) preference of these
groups. Through such structural linkages, families or communities sought
to ensure that the land would remain within their overall purview. Third,
4
For instance, in India (as noted in chapter 1), by a very rough estimate some 85.6 per cent of
arable land would be in private hands.
among a number of the matrilineally inheriting groups, although inheri-
tance was through the female line, the overall management and control of
the land, especially where large joint family estates were involved, was in the
hands of the family men (brothers, uncles, etc.). Hence although some
structural constraints, such as the inalienability of ancestral land, also
applied to men, they (unlike women) still had wide-ranging control rights
over land. Fourth, despite being vested with property, women had little
jural authority in the community.
Of course, in comparison with patrilineal communities, women in
matrilineal and bilateral ones were (and still are) distinctly better-off. They
were more economically secure; they were not subject (even among the
matrilineal Muslims) to the strictures of seclusion; residence in or near their
parental homes gave them a strong bargaining position in marital relations,
and these relations were more egalitarian. But the typical exclusion of
women from jural authority and participation in public decision-making
forums meant that they enjoyed few of the social and political advantages
of property control; and their ability to influence the ways in which colonial
and post-colonial State interventions subsequently affected their lives, was
severely limited. This factor, and the marked limitations on women's
control over the management of landed property among a number of
matrilineal communities, also mean that the full potential advantages of
land rights for women today cannot be inferred merely by examining
women's position historically in matrilineal or bilateral communities.
More generally, though, a considerable amount of land (forests, wood-
lots, pastures, and other multiple-use land) in the pre-colonial and early
colonial period was not in the hands of individuals or households; and a
good deal of such land was available for use to members of village
communities, through a complex variety of customary rights. Even where it
was not available for cultivation, the usually public nature of such land
meant that women of all classes and social groups within the village had
some form of access to it, and could gather from it a range of products basic
for survival, such as firewood, fodder, house-building materials, some food
items, medicinal herbs, and so on. Hence, although prevailing inheritance
systems in large measure disinherited women from private land in large
parts of the subcontinent, this was compensated in some limited degree by
their access to public land.
As we have seen, the situation has changed, especially since the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in at least two ways. On the
negative side, an increasing proportion of communal land has been
appropriated by individuals or by the State, that is, there has been a
growing privatization and Statization of the ownership and control of
public land. This has meant that women's (and men's) access to land has
come to depend increasingly on inheritance rights in what is privately
owned.
On the positive side, to the majority of women belonging to traditionally
patrilineal communities, gender-progressive legislation has given much
greater inheritance rights as daughters, widows, and in other capacities,
even though (as elaborated in chapter 5) gender inequalities remain on
several counts.5 For women in traditionally matrilineal communities, the
effects of legal changes have been mixed. They have been unfavourable
among Muslim groups since Islamic law gives them fewer rights than
matrilineal custom. But among non-Muslim matrilineal groups women
have gained in some respects and lost in others. On the one hand,
contemporary laws have granted women rights to own and control land as
individuals, where earlier in some communities their rights were in joint
family or joint clan holdings which could not be used freely or disposed of
by any one individual, and control of which (as noted above) was largely
vested in male kin. On the other hand, many women whose economic needs
were taken care of by the joint estates, which also provided social security,
have been left without such support. Among the tribal matrilineal groups,
although personal laws await codification, women's land claims have been
systematically eroded (as noted in chapter 4) due to an intermix of factors
such as the State's land use and control policies, technological changes, the
penetration of market forces, and ideological shifts.
Also, in practice, women's ability to benefit from legal changes where
these have been favourable is constrained by a complex set of interlinked
factors which leave gender gaps in both ownership and control. Social,
administrative and ideological barriers severely restrict effective implemen-
tation of the laws (as discussed in chapters 6 to 8). First, in many of the
traditionally patrilineal communities, there is today a structural mismatch
between contemporary laws under which women are granted greater
inheritance rights as daughters than they enjoyed earlier, and the custom-
ary norms and practices governing choice of marriage partners and
residence which emphasize patrilocal marriages with strangers outside the
village. In India this mismatch is greatest among upper-caste Hindus of the
northwest, who forbid marriages with close-kin and practise village exo-
gamy. It is least in the south and northeast, where marriages within the
village and with close-kin are allowed and sought. Moreover, in many
Hindu communities of northern India there are social taboos against
5
These inequalities are of various kinds: some legal systems prescribe lower shares for
women; some others restrict the conditions under which women can inherit and retain that
inheritance, or place restrictions on women's freedom to dispose of inherited land;
inequalities also stem from gender-discriminatory land reform enactments which specifi-
cally affect women's rights in agricultural land, and so on.
parents drawing economic support from married daughters. Hence, in the
northern states (and especially the northwestern ones) endowing daughters
may be seen by Hindu parents as bringing no reciprocal economic benefit,
while increasing the risk of the land passing out of the hands of the extended
family: resistance to entitling daughters tends to be greatest here. Second,
given the growing scarcity and escalating value of land, male relatives
everywhere can be expected to be less and less willing to part with it
voluntarily. Third, women tend to forego their shares in parental land for
the sake of potential economic and social support from brothers. Fourth,
the logistics of dealing with legal, economic, and bureaucratic institutions is
often formidable and works against women staking their claims; and they
may only decide to do so if they have male relatives who can mediate. This
problem is especially acute in communities with high degrees of female
seclusion, but it is not entirely absent even where seclusion is not prescribed,
since women generally do not have the same social access to public spaces
and institutions as men do. Fifth, male relatives often resort to various
forms of intimidation, fraud, and even violence to prevent women from
exercising their claims. Sixth, local-level (largely male) government func-
tionaries, responsible for overseeing the recording of inheritance shares,
bring their own prejudices to bear on the situation and often obstruct the
implementation of laws in women's favour. Social and official prejudice
tends to be particularly acute against inheritance by daughters; widows'
claims are somewhat better accepted in principle, although often violated in
practice. Indeed male bias on these counts is not confined to village-level
officials but may be found in greater or lesser degree at all levels in the
functioning of administrative and legal institutions.
The gap between legal ownership rights and actual ownership is only one
part of the story. The other part relates to the gap between ownership and
effective control, again attributable to a mix of factors. Patrilocal marriages
in other villages make direct supervision of cultivation by women difficult.
This is compounded in many areas by the practice of purdah or the more
general (implicit or explicit) gender segregation of public space and social
interaction; high rates of female illiteracy; and high fertility (which
increases women's childbearing and childcare responsibilities). Moreover,
male control over agricultural technology, especially the plough, and male
bias in the dissemination of information and technological inputs disad-
vantage women farmers and increase their dependence on male mediation.
Added to this is often the threat and practice of violence by male relatives
and others interested in acquiring women's land. Some of these factors,
such as unequal access to production inputs and information, adversely
affect women farmers even in traditionally bilateral and matrilineal
contexts.
However, the strength of these constraints varies considerably by region.
As we saw in chapter 8, there are regional differences in the social
acceptance of women's land claims (stemming in part from differences in
traditional inheritance rights); in prevailing marriage practices; in the
emphasis on female seclusion and control over female sexuality; in women's
freedom of movement and labour force participation; in women's literacy
and fertility rates; and in the extent of land scarcity. Obstacles stemming
from these factors are greatest in northwest India, Bangladesh and Pakis-
tan, and least in south India and Sri Lanka. In fact four geographic zones
can broadly be demarcated, ordered in terms of the strength of opposition
women are likely to face in exercising their legal rights: Pakistan, northwest
India and Bangladesh fall at the high opposition end of the spectrum, and
south India and Sri Lanka at the low end; while western, central and eastern
India, and Nepal and northeast India, come in-between.
Over time, there is likely to be an increase in gender conflict over private
land, with its growing scarcity and skewedness in distribution. On the one
hand male family members will be increasingly reluctant to part with this
land. On the other hand, the importance for women of asserting their
inheritance rights will grow for several reasons, including the limited
expansion of economic opportunities for non-land-related earnings, and
the erosion of kin-support systems as brothers and other relatives become
less able and willing to economically provide for female kin. Bangladeshi
evidence suggests that gender conflict over land is indeed increasing, and we
can expect this also in other acutely land-scarce parts of South Asia.
In the case of public land, that is land which is under government or
community jurisdiction, the obstacles are of a somewhat different nature.
Here the struggle is more directly against the consistent male bias in the
distribution of land under land reform programmes, resettlement schemes,
and various land development schemes, and only indirectly against indivi-
dual family members who may be rival potential beneficiaries. This bias, as
noted, is found not only in government programmes which affect patrilineal
groups, but even when land titles are distributed in traditionally matrilineal
and bilateral communities. And it is found in the policies and programmes
of all the political regimes in the subcontinent, including communist ones.
Since privatized (especially ancestral) land is often enmeshed in multiple
vested interests, a government wishing to redress gender inequalities in land
distribution, at least vis-a-vis women of landless households, is in a better
position to do so for land under State control. It is also in a better position,
with the land it controls, to encourage group rather than individual
ownership (as further discussed below). However, given the little recogni-
tion these concerns have received from South Asian governments in their
current programmes, progress appears unlikely without strong collective
pressure from the women affected. Indeed, whether in relation to private or
public land, change will not be easy, given the formidable nature of the
obstacles. Land rights are unlikely to be granted to women by most
communities, on any significant scale, without women collectively demand-
ing and agitating for them.
Indeed the central theoretical premise of this book, as noted in chapter 2,
is that gender relations and women's economic, political, and social
positions are the outcome of processes of contestation and bargaining.
These processes may not always be explicit or discernible but are nonethe-
less revealed in final outcomes. They involve elements of both cooperation
and conflict and take place in different arenas, especially the household, the
market, the community, and the State; and these arenas are interlinked in
that change in one arena impinges on the other arenas. A strengthening of
women's bargaining power in the community, for instance, would also give
them greater bargaining power within the household. Women's ability to
improve their positions has, however, been seriously circumscribed by a
historical process that has entrenched inequalities in the distribution of
property, in the cultural construction of gender, and in the exclusion of
women from processes of public decision-making, thereby relegating them
to the role of takers and not makers of laws, social norms, and rules.6
The present analysis indicates that today change will require simulta-
neous struggles over property, over the norms governing gender roles and
behaviour, and over public decision-making authority. It will mean con-
testing the existing hierarchical character of gender relations, within and
outside the household, based on highly unequal access of women and men
to economic, political and social power. In the countryside, the distribution
of landed property is both a crucial contributor to these dimensions of
power and an outcome of the initial distribution of such power. This
interactive effect of landed property and rural power makes for a deadlock
which is often difficult to break. At the same time, the very breadth and
depth of the obstacles make land rights a critical entry point for challenging
unequal gender relations and power structures at many levels. The struggle
for land is thus important in terms of not just the end result, but the very
process necessary for the realization of that result, which can be (and indeed
would need to be) one of women's empowerment at multiple levels along
the way.
How this struggle (in its many facets) would need to be conducted is a
6
By extension, an understanding of the historical construction of patriarchy would
necessitate an examination of the interactive effects of gender contestation over time,
especially within the mentioned arenas.
complex question with no easy answers, nor can most dimensions of it be
resolved outside the context of praxis. But some critical aspects that will
warrant specific focus are discussed below.
II. Some suggestions, some dilemmas

To establish women's effective land rights will require not only removing
existing gender inequalities in the law, but also ensuring that the laws are
implemented. It will need strengthening women's ability to claim and retain
their rights in land, as well as their ability to exercise effective control over it.
The complexity of the noted obstacles, and their regional variability,
preclude any simple prescriptions, and specific strategies to overcome them
can probably evolve only through the process of localized campaigns. This
section, therefore, does not attempt to outline strategy, but highlights some
of the issues that will need particular attention from gender-progressive
groups and individuals.
(1) Reforming the laws

Today legal inequalities in relation to women's land rights in South Asia
stem broadly from two sources: (a) inheritance laws, and (b) land reform
related legislation. Determining the exact content and form of reforms
required on both these counts calls for legal expertise and debate and is not
attempted here, but some dimensions that warrant attention are indicated.
In India, for instance, among the major changes needed to achieve gender
equality in property laws are the following: one, an abolition of the
advantages that males in several states enjoy under the Hindu Succession
Act (HSA) of 1956 due to the remaining vestiges of the Mitakashara
coparcenary system which give sons certain property rights that daughters
do not have. There is already a precedent for change in this direction:
Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have sought to establish gender equality
by making women equal coparceners with men in the joint family estate,
with rights by survivorship, and Kerala has abolished the joint property
system altogether.7 Two, there is a case for restricting the power of testation
under the HSA to safeguard the interests of daughters who may otherwise
be disinherited by parents through wills. There is again a precedent for such
restriction to be found in the legal systems of some European countries and
in Islamic law, as noted in chapter 5. Three, all agricultural land (including
that under tenancy) needs to be brought under the purview of personal laws
7
The relative merits of these and other possible ways of eliminating the gender inequalities
associated with Mitakshara law as incorporated in the 1956 Act, would of course need to be
specifically examined (see Sivaramayya, 1988, for an interesting discussion on this).
so that such land devolves in the same way as other property, rather than
according to prevailing rules which favour male heirs: again some states
have already done this while others (mostly in northwest India) have not.
Four, the unequal treatment meted out to adult daughters in the land
ceiling laws of many states is unwarranted: adult daughters and sons should
be placed on par by giving them both (and not sons alone) special
consideration. Five, in assessing and confiscating ceiling surplus land, there
is a case for recognizing the wife as an owner in her own capacity so that she
does not end up disproportionately losing land, as was noted to have
happened in a number of cases when the wife's land was aggregated with
that of her husband and her portion declared surplus. Six, when laws
governing the tribal communities of India are codified, it is necessary to
ensure gender equality and guard against the entrenchment of customary
practices that are biased against women. Seven, in the absence of a concept
of community of property, divorced women get nothing for their economic
contribution to the marital estate, and some legal measures to rectify this
situation are necessary. Gender inequalities embedded in the laws of non-
Hindu groups in India similarly call for reform on a variety of counts. This
also raises the larger, highly contentious question of enacting a uniform
civil code, a question embroiled in a complex political and legal debate
which cannot be detailed here;8 but should such codification be under-
taken, the importance of ensuring gender equality needs emphasis.
Diverse personal laws, which are gender-unequal in varying degree, are
also a characteristic of Sri Lanka's legal system: here, as noted, the General
Law is the most egalitarian, but there are notable inequalities in laws
governing specific groups, such as the exclusion of d/ga-married daughters
from the patrimony among the Kandyan Sinhalese, the control exercised
by the husband over the wife's immovable property among the Jaffna
Tamils, and the inequality in male and female shares under Islamic law.
Similarly, in Nepal, a move toward legal equality for women in property
rights would require making women's rights in inheritance independent of
their age, marital status, and sexual conduct, as is the case with men's rights
under the Maluki Ain.
A demand for gender equality in inheritance laws, however, is likely to
encounter particular difficulties in relation to Islamic law governing
Muslims in South Asia. Since Islamic law derives from the Shariat (which
prescribes that a woman gets a smaller share than a man related to the
deceased in equal degree), asking for gender equality in this law is likely to
encounter thorny questions of religious faith and identity to which there are
no easy answers. It is notable, nonetheless, that in Bangladesh a number of
Muslim women's groups and women lawyers have been asking for legal
8
For an interesting discussion on this, see Parashar (1992).
reform to bring about gender equality in inheritance law, emphasizing that

their constitution promises equal rights to men and women, and that legal
amendments to this effect have been undertaken in some other Islamic
countries.9
Moreover, the gender inequalities inherent in land reform legislation,
although detailed here in the Indian context, are not confined to India (e.g.
some categories of adult sons get a special consideration in Bangladesh's
ceiling legislation), and need to be challenged in other parts of South Asia as
well.
Legal reform is of course only one aspect of change. There is, as noted (a)
a chasm between existing laws and actual practice in relation to the
inheritance of private arable land, which constitutes the bulk of such land in
South Asia; and (b) a severe male bias in government policies regarding
granting rights in public land. But before examining some specific issues
arising out of these, an aspect which has been the subject of recent debate
and impinges on the question of inheritance, needs consideration, namely
that of dowry.
(2) Dowry v. inheritance

A popular argument against giving daughters inheritance shares has been
that they get dowries instead, which represent their 'fair share' in parental
property. However, as spelt out in chapter 3, dowry and inheritance cannot
be seen as equivalent, except among a few communities such as the Nangudi
Vellalars, Jaffna Tamils, and matrilineal Moors for whom dowry has, in
formal terms, been a form of pre-mortem inheritance. Indeed there has
been a general condemnation of dowry across the subcontinent over the
past two decades, not only in India but also in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and
Bangladesh. (In Pakistan and Bangladesh, dowry was not customary but its
incidence has been increasing in recent years.)10 Underlying this con-
demnation are a variety of factors, but particularly the increasingly
coercive character the practice has acquired over the years. Today,
especially but not only in northern India, dowry is frequently extorted by
the groom and his family from the bride's family; the extortions may
continue well after marriage, and may end in the woman's murder or
suicide. The taking and giving of dowry were declared illegal in India under
9
See e.g. Rahman, ed. (1981) which contains the proceedings of a seminar on the legal status
of women in Bangladesh held in Dhaka in 1977. Also see Mahmood (1987:300) for a review
of personal laws and their reform in Islamic countries: he notes that in Turkey and Somalia
male and female heirs have equal inheritance shares.
10
For Pakistan, see K. Merry (1983) and Donnan (1985). For Bangladesh, see Abdullah and
Zeidenstein (1982), Ahmed and Naher (1986), Gardner (1990), Hunt (1983), Jahan (1988),
Karim (1988), Lindenbaum (1981), Prindle (1982), and White (1992).
the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, and amendments since then in 1984 and
1986, as a result of widespread demands by women's groups, plugged some
(though not all) of the loopholes in the law.11 In Bangladesh, similarly, a
Dowry Prohibition Act was passed in 1980 (amended in 1982), making the
demanding, taking, and giving of dowry a cognizable offence.
The general condemnation of dowry has not, however, gone hand in
hand with a campaign to strengthen women's rights in inheritance. Nor has
a distinction been made between contexts where women are given land in
dowry and keep control over what they receive, and contexts where women
get only movables which in large part pass out of their control. Recently,
Kishwar (1988,1989a-c), while emphasizing the importance of inheritance,
has argued (rethinking her earlier strongly anti-dowry stand) that until
women are able to realize their claims in a share of the inheritance, it is
better that they at least receive dowries than that they receive neither a
dowry nor an inheritance share. Otherwise: '[The woman] loses the little she
would get and gains literally nothing' (Kishwar 1988: 10).
I shall not dwell in detail on Kishwar's arguments or the dissenting
responses to them.12 Despite differences in the stands taken by the
protagonists in that debate, the basic concerns of all were similar: how
should women be empowered to live a life of dignity and independence, and
how should gender relations be made more egalitarian both within and
outside the household. Arising from these concerns, two questions are of
particular relevance: (a) Would receiving a dowry improve women's
bargaining position within the (marital) household? and (b) Is this the most
effective way of improving women's bargaining position within the marital
household and outside it?
If we take a cross-regional and historical view, dowry cannot of course be
condemned as having had negative implications for women everywhere and
in all contexts. In some (bilateral and matrilineal) South Asian communi-
ties, as noted, dowry was (and to a large extent still is) a specific form of pre-
mortem inheritance transfer, which endowed women with significant
amounts of property, including land, strengthening their fall-back position
and bargaining power, and having the additional advantage of the property
being received before rather than after the parents' deaths. However, even
where dowry did not take this form, but where women had control over
what they received, dowry would have strengthened women's fall-back
11
In India in 1982-83, women's organizations of widely differing ideological persuasions
came together under the banner of the Dahej Virodhi Chetna Manch (Anti-Dowry
Platform) to push for amendment of the 1961 Dowry Act and for wide-ranging legal
reform, including recognizing women's rights in parental property and an equal share of
matrimonial property. For a discussion on the shortcomings of the 1984 amendments, see
V.Kumar (1984).
12
See e.g. Palriwala (1989) and Laxmi (1989a, 1989b).
position in the absence of inheritance shares. This appears to have been the
case among many communities in south India, and among the Meitei in
Manipur (northeast India), the Kandyan Sinhalese in Sri Lanka (for diga-
married daughters), and the Kham Magar and Chumiks in Nepal. At the
same time, women's ability to exercise control over dowry transfers in such
communities cannot be separated from other elements of strength in
women's situation there, including the prevalence of in-village post-marital
residence, close-kin marriages (except among the Meitei) and, among
several of these groups (e.g. the Meitei, Sinhalese, Kham Magar, and
Chumiks), women's freedom to choose their partners (which also implies a
later age of marriage). In northwest India, however, where dowry takes its
most coercive form, women in many communities are married off to
strangers in other villages often at very young ages, a situation which
divests them of control over most aspects of their lives. Theoretically a case
could of course be made in support of dowry as a means of transferring
some economic resources into a woman's hands and so improving her
bargaining power, provided her control over it could be assured and a curb
be put on the coercive character of the practice. But would such an
assurance be possible? Drawing up a legal deed of the items given could, in a
formal sense, establish a woman's right over the property (as is done among
the Kham Magar), but that in practice this alone would ensure her effective
control (especially in the north Indian context) is doubtful.
Existing trends also do not leave much room for optimism that the
coercive character of dowry can be curbed. Reports from many parts of the
subcontinent, including South India and Bangladesh, indicate that dowry
demands from the groom's family have been increasing and acquiring a
character similar to that in north India. In South India too, dowries are
becoming a condition for marriage, 13 and among Muslims in Bangladesh
the non-payment or inadequate payment of dowry has become a cause for
harassing the woman and even for divorcing her. 14 Moreover, many poor,
low caste, and tribal communities across India (including in the northeast),
which earlier practised brideprice, are now shifting to dowry. 15 It appears
13
See e.g. Epstein (1973).
14
Several authors mention cases in Bangladesh of marriage negotiations breaking down if the
dowry amount cannot be agreed upon (Jahan 1988; Prindle 1982), and of women being
harassed by in-laws for not bringing enough (Jahan 1988; White 1992). Inadequate dowry
has now become a cause for divorce (Abdullah and Zeidenstein 1982), and has even pushed
some women to suicide: in Pabna district in 1981-82, 182 out of 204 female suicides are
reported to have been caused by domestic quarrels or the non-payment of dowry (Jahan
1988:217).
15
See e.g. Epstein (1973) and Ishwaran (1968) for south India; U. Sharma (1980), Singh
(1970), and personal observation in Alwar district (Rajasthan) in 1987, for northwest
India; Veen (1973) for central India; and Standing (1987) for east India. Also see Miller
(1981) for additional examples.
unrealistic to expect that these trends can easily be contained or reversed so
as to make dowry transfers a positive feature in most women's lives,
something that would increase their bargaining position rather than being
symptomatic of the weakness of that position. At a practical level, any
argument for the continuation of dowry would also have to contend with
the fact that it is illegal in India and Bangladesh today.
In any case, dowry is clearly not, in most contexts, the most effective way
of increasing women's bargaining power and cannot substitute for effective
rights in inheritance. While Kishwar herself emphasizes this strongly, the
argument that dowry is preferable to getting nothing, until such time that
inheritance rights become a reality, is problematic. Strategically, if the
demand for equal inheritance rights for daughters is to gain momentum,
then making a claim also for dowry in the interim can only be diversionary.
Parents who have once given a daughter dowry will be unlikely to concede
her demand for inheritance as well. In my view, for the inheritance demand
to gather strength will necessitate a refusal by large numbers of women to
accept dowry as a substitute, even in the interim. Of course whether or not
individual women should take such a stand, and sacrifice possible imme-
diate interests for an uncertain future gain, is not something that others can
decide on their behalf.
Consider now the issue of strengthening women's ability to claim their
inheritance shares.
(3) Establishing de facto inheritance rights in land

Since most arable land in South Asia is privatized, ownership rights in
which are established largely through inheritance, enhancing women's
ability to claim and keep control over their rightful inheritance shares is
vitally important. There are many different issues (noted in chapter 6) that
impinge on this: establishing the social legitimacy of the claim; reducing the
gender bias in village land registration practices and in gram panchayat
rulings; enhancing women's education and legal knowledge; improving
women's fall-back position so that they are better able to deal with the
ensuing intra-family conflict, including providing external support struc-
tures that would reduce women's dependence on brothers and close kin;
and so on.
The ideological struggle to establish the social legitimacy of women's
claims, so that there is greater acceptance of the idea that women need
independent rights over resources, especially land, is likely to be a complex
one which, as noted in chapter 9, will have to be conducted at many
different levels. It is part of an overall struggle to change perceptions about
women's needs and roles in society, in which women's movements (both
local and national), even when not focusing on the specific question of land
rights, have a critical role to play (as will be discussed later). This
contestation over meanings could take diverse forms: countering popular
arguments against giving women land, such as those relating to farm size
and fragmentation, or the claim that dowry is equivalent to inheritance;
promoting women's educational programmes with an empowerment
perspective; questioning the validity of purdah restrictions on women's
economic and social participation outside the home; contesting the ways in
which educational texts and popular media depict women and gender
relations; and so on.
It is also important to ensure (a) that women's legal property shares are
registered in their names in the land records; and (b) that women are able to
retain control over those shares. Here it is necessary to reiterate a point
made in chapter 6, namely the critical importance of ensuring the inheri-
tance rights of daughters and not just of widows. Even if the existing
somewhat greater social and official acceptance of widows' claims is further
strengthened, it would still leave the majority of women severely disadvan-
taged in relation to men (who inherit as sons) for the greater part of their
lives: widows, as noted, constitute only 10-12 per cent of the rural female
populations of South Asia, and most of them are overfiftyyears of age.16
Individual women's ability to stake their claims in family land (whether
as daughters, widows, or in any other capacity) would be considerably
strengthened if women collectively pressured the local bureaucracy (e.g. the
tehsildar and the patwari) into accurately registering their claims. Also of
great importance would be organizations of village women that could build
up economic and social support networks and programmes, thereby
reducing women's dependence on male relatives, especially on brothers in
whose favour women often forfeit their rights. As a woman member of
BRAC in Bangladesh (cited in chapter 9) tellingly asserted: 'Well the
Samity is my "brother".' Gender-progressive organizations, especially
women's organizations, which are based outside the village could similarly
play a vital supportive role, such as by providing information on the laws
and locating gender-sympathetic experts, should legal action be necessary.
Although some NGOs are already extending legal information and support
to rural communities in parts of South Asia, this needs to become part of a
systematic country-wide campaign to promote women's property rights.
It may be expected too that a significant female presence in local decision-
16
There is a mistaken view, commonly voiced by those opposing a Hindu daughter's
inheritance rights in the patrimony, that contemporary laws allow women to inherit twice,
namely from fathers (as daughters) as well as from husbands (as widows), whereas men,
they imply, inherit only once, namely from fathers. In fact, in South Asian legal systems
men too are entitled to inherit from both fathers and wives (as sons and widowers).
making bodies such as village panchayats and the local bureaucracy would
strengthen the hands of rural women. For instance, gram panchayats which
have elected all-women panels in recent years, as in parts of Maharashtra
and Madhya Pradesh in India, are found to differ from all-male panchayats
in the priorities they give to women's concerns. An all-women gram
panchayat in Madhya Pradesh initiated several women-oriented schemes
such as the provision of taps and covered toilets (Gandhi and Shah 1991).
Similarly (as noted in chapter 9) the all-women gram panchayat in Vitner
village (Maharashtra) gave priority to installing pumps in village wells
(which saved women's water-fetching time), building toilets in scheduled
caste hamlets, filling vacancies for school teachers, and ensuring that male
farmers of the Shetkari Sanghatana honoured their pledge to transfer some
part of their land to their wives.
Goetz's (1990) research in Bangladesh (as noted) likewise suggests that
the gender of local bureaucrats can make an important difference to how
women's needs are dealt with. She interviewed twenty-four men and fifty-
one women field-level development administrators about the legitimacy of
the 'Women in Development (WID)' policy. The men typically denied the
existence, importance, and value of women's work outside the home,
arguing that 'nature did not make women for the land'. Evidence from a
survey of a nearby village that nearly 50 per cent of women did some work
on their family plots was dismissed as 'not possible'. As Goetz (1990: 26-7)
notes: 'They thus help reproduce relations of gender dominance which rely
upon arguments of women's peripherality and dependence to justify the
denial to women of rights in the material products of their labour.' The
women bureaucrats, by contrast, recognized the many different types of
work women did and its importance for household subsistence. They were
also less likely to be coopted by local power interests, not because they were
immune by nature but because gender norms limited 'the degree of contact
possible with powerful bureaucrats and local male elite' which made them
'somewhat less susceptible to elite capture''(Goetz 1990: 42). Literally,
purdah norms served as a protection against corruption!
However, one rarely hears of a woman tehsildar or patwari being
appointed for land record keeping and revenue collection. Although the
appointment of a woman official may not be a sufficient condition for
ensuring that women's land claims are recorded, the experiences noted
above certainly leave room for optimism that there would be a reduction in
male bias as a result. Greater female representation could also make local
decision-making institutions more accessible to village women, increase the
likelihood of women getting support for their cause in local property
disputes, and enlarge women's participation in public meetings held by
such bodies. In addition it would increase the likelihood that decisions
taken by such panchayats are less gender-biased. It appears unlikely, for
instance, that an all-women panchayat would have meted out the inhuman
punishment (noted in chapter 7) that was given by an all-male village
council in Bihar to a woman who was forced by circumstance to break the
taboo against operating the plough. In this context, the local effectiveness
of women in official positions is likely to be enhanced by the presence of
gender-progressive groups with wider geographic links. In Maharashtra,
the backing of the Shetkari Sanghatana's Mahila Aghadi appears to have
been important not just in the election of all- women panchayats in a number
of villages, but also in strengthening the ability of these panchayats to
function effectively.
Indeed it appears to be critically important that there be a much greater
proportion of women occupying positions of jural authority and power at
all tiers of public decision-making bodies, positions from which they were
largely excluded by custom and which even today they occupy in very small
numbers (as discussed further in section III of this chapter).
It is less apparent how the obstacle posed by the practice of patrilocality-
cum-village exogamy to women claiming, retaining their claims, and self-
managing land, can be overcome. Social norms, and the ideologies justify-
ing them, don't easily lend themselves to change. We might expect,
however, that if some success is achieved in establishing daughters'
inheritance rights on a systematic basis, post-marital residence patterns
could become more flexible.17 We noted this flexibility among Sri Lanka's
bilateral communities, particularly the Jaffna Tamils among whom women
own significant amounts of land. And uxorilocal residence by the son-in-
law is an accepted practice among patrilineal communities where a
brotherless daughter inherits the estate. Nevertheless, especially in north-
west India (where village exogamy is often the rule), this could continue to
prove a serious liability. (It is in telling recognition of the problems posed
for women by patrilocality and village exogamy that, in the mid-1970s in
China, the promotion of uxorilocal marriages was raised as one of the
major issues in a campaign against gender discrimination: see Kelkar 1988.)
(4) Strengthening land claims through channels other than inheritance

Apart from asserting their inheritance rights in private land, the most
important other means of land acquisition for women (especially of poor
17
In this context, a more gender-progressive approach by the State in recognizing the land
rights of women, irrespective of their marital status, at least in the distribution of public
land, could be a step forward. As noted in the last chapter, this was attempted in the
Bodhgaya struggle, as a result of which some adult unmarried daughters received land, but
a more systematic shift in this direction would clearly be necessary before one might expect
it to have any effect on post-marital residence patterns.
rural households) in South Asia today is through the State. State interven-
tions on this count can take a range of forms: some of the significant ones in
the post-colonial period have been the distribution of individual land titles
under various land reform and resettlement schemes, the leasing out of
government land under wasteland development and reforestation schemes,
and legalizing the distribution of land claimed by a peasant group through a
land struggle, such as in the Bodhgaya case described in chapter 9.
However, in each one of these contexts we have noted a systematic male
bias in government land allocations. Collective action by women is clearly
critical for challenging these biases and asserting women's claims to such
land.
It is also important to consider what institutional form of land ownership
and management would be most desirable in any such distribution. For
instance, should land be owned and managed individually or in some
collective way? Consider first the issue of ownership. Typically where the
question of women's land titles has arisen in a land struggle, as in
Bodhgaya, women's demand has been for individual titles. Of course
individual titles have a number of advantages, such as allowing greater
control over land use and the freedom to bequeath and (if necessary)
mortgage or sell the land. But individual ownership by women also carries
the risk that the land may get appropriated by a rapacious moneylender (in
situations of poverty) or by male relatives. In addition, there is the dilemma
of who would inherit the land from the women. We noted that north Indian
women who received such land usually said they would bequeath it to sons
or daughters-in-law rather than to daughters, since the latter would leave
the village on marriage.
An alternative arrangement to individual titles in the transfer of State
land, or of land acquired by a peasant organization through a struggle,
could be for poor peasant women belonging to a set of households to seek
rights in land as a group - women of each participating household having
use rights but not the right to individually dispose of the land. The
daughters-in-law and daughters of such households who are resident in the
village would share these usufructuary rights; daughters leaving the village
on marriage would lose them, but could re-establish their rights should they
need to return to their parental homes due to marital break-up or widow-
hood. In other words, land access could be linked formally to residence, as
was the case under some traditional land-use systems (the Garo example
may be recalled), the difference being that here the land would belong not to
a joint family or a clan, but to a group of poor peasant women. This would
strengthen women's ability to retain control over the land. Collective
ownership would also be a means of creating, or (as in some tribal contexts)
preserving, a more communal and egalitarian basis of land access. More
generally, containing the trend toward the individual privatization of what
is currently communal land, especially village common land, would help
protect the welfare interests of poor households, and especially of women in
these households.
(5) Exploring joint management and promoting infrastructural

support
Group ownership of land need not of course imply joint management, just
as individual ownership need not preclude joint management. For instance,
women jointly holding ownership rights in land could cultivate the land
either in separate plots allocated on a household basis or cooperatively as a
group, with each woman putting in labour time and sharing the returns. Or
there could be some combination of individual and group management,
such as family-based female cultivation along with joint investment by the
women's group in capital equipment, and cooperation in terms of labour-
sharing, product marketing, etc.
Group investment could be advantageous even when women individu-
ally inherit land from parents or husbands, or receive titles in government
land on an individual basis. There are many examples of groups of male
farmers jointly investing in, say, an irrigation well. In women's case, group
investment may be especially beneficial since individual women would
usually not have enough financial resources for investing in irrigation and
other inputs to make the land more productive. Women functioning in
groups would be in a better position to mobilize resources either from
among themselves, or through available governmental or non-governmen-
tal schemes. Group investment when linked with group management could
further strengthen women's hands in this respect.
Some cases of joint land management by groups of women already exist
in South Asia. A few relating to the management of public land were
mentioned in the last chapter. For instance, in the Bankura project in West
Bengal and the Sewa Mandir project in Rajasthan, poor women's groups
are jointly managing village wastelands, in the former case to grow
Arjun trees for sericulture and in the latter to grow herbs and medicinal
plants. But there are also some noteworthy examples of joint crop
cultivation on private land. For instance, in Bangladesh, a number of
landless women's groups organized by BRAC in the 1970s leased in small
plots for cultivating crops (Chen 1983: 135-7). In Pachbarol village, a
BRAC-organized women's group cultivated potatoes and sugarcane on
two acres of leased-in land, using seeds and fertilizers purchased from their
savings. Some of the earnings were reinvested for agricultural equipment,
etc., and the rest were saved. Again in Patrail village a BRAC-group of
twenty women cultivated paddy on an acre of leased-in land. In several such
cases, women's involvement in outdoor work in the fields was objected to
by the orthodox members of the villages. For example, in Patrail village,
when the women tried to transplant paddy they were stopped by some
elderly men from the neighbouring village who demanded to know why
they were working in the fields: 'Don't you know that to do so is against
Islam?' (Chen 1983: 136). The women argued that there had been no
objection when earlier they had worked at construction sites, so what was
so different about working in the fields? With the support of the BRAC-
organized landless male groups in the area, the women were able to
complete their transplanting.
In initiatives like these, the economic and social homogeneity of the
groups and the fact that they involve those who have little or no land to start
with, would help guard against some of the pitfalls encountered, for
instance, in attempts to promote cooperative farming in India in the 1950s:
in that experiment the cooperatives were class- and caste-heterogeneous
and mostly involved farmers long used to individual cultivation. Certainly,
the above examples of successful joint land management by groups of poor
peasant women give scope for some optimism that this could be a feasible
alternative to individual management, at least for this class of women,
especially if infrastructural support from the government or from NGOs is
forthcoming.
In general too, infrastructural support for women is critical for increas-
ing their ability to function as independent farmers. In chapter 7 we noted
that there are significant gender (in addition to class) inequalities associated
with access to credit, labour, other production inputs, and information on
new agricultural technologies. The cultural constructions of gender roles
and behaviour also reduce women's ability to function effectively in factor
and product markets, and more generally in the market place. A greater
female presence in agricultural input and information delivery systems
(women extension agents are often recommended for the latter) would no
doubt be helpful in reducing some of the gender bias, but it appears equally
necessary to reorient these systems so that even male functionaries recog-
nize the importance of contacting and assisting women farmers. Also,
dependence on the State alone would not be enough, nor probably have as
much potential for success in reaching women as non-governmental
initiatives. Certainly in the delivery of credit to poor women, a number of
NGOs mentioned earlier (such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and
SEWA in India) have been markedly more successful than have govern-
ment agencies. The role of NGOs could similarly be important in providing
technical information, production inputs, and marketing facilities to
groups of women farmers. BRAC in Bangladesh is a case in point: although
it does not focus specifically on women farmers, it provides a range of
relevant technical, informational, and market support services to its
members. A systematic promotion of women's cooperatives for production
inputs and marketing would also be important.
Such collective ventures apart, building group support among women
and for women, both locally and nationally, appears to be crucial for an
effective struggle for land rights (as also highlighted in chapter 9). At the
same time, achieving group solidarity for collective action is likely to pose
specific difficulties, as discussed below.
(6) Building group support among and for women

Group support can take at least two forms: one, through separately
constituted groups which provide specialized services to village women,
and two, through organizations comprised of the village women them-
selves. As indicated by the analysis in chapter 9, initiatives of both kinds are
likely to be important not only in the struggle by women from landed
households to assert their inheritance claims, but also in the struggles by
landless or near-landless women seeking rights, say, in public land.
Moreover, to take the campaign to the national level will need mass
mobilization beyond localized boundaries.
How and under what conditions solidarity for collective action (the shift
from individual-covert to group-overt resistance) may emerge among
women is too large a question to be answered here adequately, but let us
consider some of the complexities (mentioned at various points in the book)
likely to be associated with attempts in this direction. A particularly
contentious issue relates to class (and caste) differences and associated
conflicts of interest.18 For instance, women of middle and rich peasant
households are likely to enjoy several class-related advantages over women
of poor peasant households in exercising their inheritance rights. We might
expect them to be better informed of their legal rights due to higher literacy
levels; to have greater access to the judiciary, bureaucracy and local
decision-making bodies; and to have more economic resources at their
command (for instance, in the form of gifts received). Such women may
thus need less support in exercising their inheritance claims than would
poor peasant women, and their incentive to cooperate with poorer women
may consequently be weaker.
Also certain types of legal changes, such as redistributive land reform
enactments, which benefit tenant or agricultural labourer households at the
cost of landowning households, are likely to be associated with conflicts in
18
With rising ethnic and religious strife across South Asia today, religious and ethnic
differences are also increasingly becoming sources of divisiveness.
interests (stemming from class, sometimes overlapping with caste, differ-
ences) between the women of these households. This would impinge
adversely on the possibility of cross-class/caste solidarity between women.
An associated problem is that of attitudes: in class (and caste)-heteroge-
neous cooperative ventures, upper-caste middle peasant and rich peasant
women have been known to dominate discussions and decision-making
positions. 19
These and other conflicts of interests among women, stemming from the
class/caste of the households to which they belong, cannot be ignored. They
suggest that women's organizations which are class (and caste) homo-
geneous and cater to poor, low caste women have a greater chance of
ensuring the latter's participation. The experience of grassroots organizing
across South Asia also bears this out. Forging cross-class/caste solidarity
appears to have more promise around issues such as domestic violence, but
even here experience suggests that social and economic homogeneity is
helpful. The dilemma is that in order to overcome the obstacles in women's
path for realizing rights in land, both cross-class and cross-regional
mobilization is likely to be necessary.
Here I would like to argue that despite the noted sources of conflict, there
are significant areas of mutual benefit which could yet motivate collective
action by women across class/caste lines. One is legal reform. Women of all
classes with a stake in family land (or more generally in family property),
whatever its size, stand to gain from more gender-egalitarian personal laws
governing the inheritance of landed property. And the percentage of such
women in South Asia is not small: despite the highly skewed distribution of
land in the region, the large majority of rural households do own some land.
For instance, only 11 per cent of rural households in India are totally
landless. Hence the popular view among many grassroots (including
women's) groups that the issue of landed property would be of concern only
to a small percentage of women needs rethinking. Similarly, a wide
spectrum of peasant women belonging to large and small farmer as well as
tenant households (even if not to agricutural labour households) would
benefit from certain changes in land reform legislation. These include (in
India) bringing tenancy land also under the purview of contemporary
inheritance laws, and changing land ceiling laws such that adult daughters
are treated on a par with adult sons, and the wife is recognized as an owner
in her own right in the assessment of ceiling surplus land. Such legal reforms
could form the basis of a joint struggle. That women with divergent
concerns can cooperate strategically for legal change is also borne out by
19
See e.g. Dixon (1978) and Chen (1983). There is something of a paradox here because in
terms of gender relations upper-caste middle peasant women are often more docile and less
forthcoming than lower-caste poor peasant women.
campaigns in recent years to amend dowry and rape laws in South Asia, for
which women's groups successfully came together to form common fronts,
despite significant differences in their ideologies, agendas, and class/caste
compositions.
In this context, it appears useful to distinguish between 'agitational'
collective action and 'cooperative' collective action. Group mobilization to
agitate for a change in government policy or for legal reform (that is, where
the antagonism is directed against the State) would be an example of the
former, and a credit or production cooperative an example of the latter. I
would hypothesize that class/caste differences between women are less
likely to be barriers to agitational collective action than to collective action
which involves the day-to-day functioning of, say, a women's cooperative
venture. But even on the latter count, the relatively vicarious character of
women's class position (noted in chapter 1) could make economic and
social differentiation among them less divisive than among men.
Some optimism on the possibilities of cross-class/caste links is also
generated when we consider the important role played by many urban
middle-class women activists in promoting issues affecting poor rural
women. Many women's organizations in South Asia which are constituted
of working class or poor peasant women have been spearheaded by middle
class activists. The latter's role has also been critical in catalysing a focus on
women's needs within mass peasant struggles and organizations, such as
the Bodhgaya movement in Bihar and the Shetkari Sanghatana in Mahar-
astra. More generally, understandings forged through debates conducted
in academic and other middle-class forums have helped to legitimize and
promote gender-progressive ideas and movements.
Moreover, whatever their class/caste, intimately connected with
women's ability to gain effective rights in economic resources, especially
land, is contestation at the ideological level, for establishing the social
legitimacy of their claims and for changing norms regarding women's needs
and appropriate roles. These concerns affect women across classes and
caste groups. Indeed it is the upper-caste, rich peasant women who are often
the most constrained by social strictures on their roles and behaviour. The
contestation over meanings will thus need to and could cut across economic
and social divides. The issue of purdah is a case in point. As described in the
last chapter, protests against the practice have come both from well-off
upper-caste Hindu women (including those who actively campaigned
against it in the undivided India of the 1930s), and from poor Muslim
women in contemporary Bangladesh. Indeed, ideological contestation
against existing social constructions of gender offer potential benefits to the
broadest range of women.
In other words, although it would be grossly unrealistic and romantic to
suggest that economic and social differences will not be barriers to
collective action across class and caste lines, it would be unduly pessimistic,
given known experience, to argue that no joint action is possible by women
divided along those lines. The strategic question is that of identifying those
issues on which there would clearly be gain (from agitation or cooperation)
for women of diverse socio-economic backgrounds, and those on which a
conflict of interest is likely to dominate.
Also of strategic importance is the linking of the particular with the
general and the local with the national. We noted in the previous chapter
how locationally separated efforts can gain (and have gained) from the
larger climate of contestation for gender justice prevailing in a country and
the emergence of a country-wide women's movement. In other words, the
issue of land rights cannot be viewed in isolation from women's multiple
struggles over both resources and meanings in the subcontinent that have
emerged especially over the last decade and a half, as sketched below.
III. The macro-scenario
(1) Interlinking diverse concerns

A macro-view of South Asia today would reveal an intricate network of
what comprises the 'women's movement': the many autonomous women's
groups that were formed in the 1980s in the larger cities, some (especially in
India and Bangladesh) also with rural links;20 women's fronts of political
parties; women's committees in mass-based mixed-sex organizations
(including working-class and poor peasant organizations); groups imple-
menting various types of projects for women (income-generating, educa-
tional, health, etc.), using a variety of approaches; women's journalistic and
publishing ventures; academic women's associations; and the thousands of
individual women struggling for gender equality in diverse ways in different
arenas.21 In other words, within the fold of the 'women's movement' could
be included individuals, groups composed essentially of women whose
primary concern is gender, and some mixed-sex organizations which focus
on a number of issues and are beginning to include women's concerns as
20
'Autonomous' groups is usually understood to mean groups that are autonomous of
political parties in their functioning, although they may be sympathetic to the ideologies of
one or more political parties. Also see Omvedt (1986: 20) on this.
21
There is a substantial literature on women's movements in South Asia: some studies deal
with individual organizations, others with aspects of the movements as a whole. For
Pakistan, see Mumtaz and Shaheed (1987) and Jalal (1991). For India, see especially
Dietrich (1988), Kumar (1989, 1993), Katzenstein (1989), Gandhi and Shah (1991), and
various issues of the journal Manushi. For Bangladesh, see R. Ahmed (1985) and Kabeer
(1991c). For Sri Lanka, see Risseeuw (1988) and various issues of Voice of Women
(Colombo). For Nepal, see various issues of Ideas and Action.
part of their agendas. The change toward a more gender-sensitive approach

among some mixed-sex groups is apparent particularly since the early
1980s, alongside a more general spread of awareness among activist,
academic, and government circles regarding gender inequities. Although
the number and reach of gender-progressive organizations and individuals
vary across South Asia, they constitute a noticeable presence in all
countries of the region.
These diverse groups embody many different ideological positions and
histories. Not surprisingly, therefore, there is no necessary agreement
among them, either within or across countries, on priorities, perspectives,
or strategies. To begin with, the issues they have taken up cover a wide
range. In India, for instance, among the aspects on which different groups
have focused are one or more of the following: women's employment in the
formal and informal sectors, equal wages, access to credit, protection
against sexual and other forms of violence in the home and outside, health
care, literacy, control over sexual and reproductive choices, participation in
political decision-making, male alcoholism, negative portrayals of women
in the media, and dowry practices. In this context it is encouraging that
issues which were not even talked about earlier, such as marital violence,
are now being named and overtly contested. Very little attention, however,
has been paid to the question of women's independent and equal rights in
landed property. In other parts of South Asia too many of the above issues
have received attention, again with the land/property question being
largely neglected.
The approaches used in relation to a given issue also vary widely among
groups, both within a country and between countries. Consider, for
instance, the issue of enhancing women's economic status. At one end of the
spectrum are groups whose perspective on this is primarily welfarist, and
who seek to deliver a variety of (typically small-scale) income-generating
programmes in a top-down manner; such groups mostly date back to the
pre-1970s. At the other end are groups which interlink economic and
political demands and see mass organizing as a pre-condition for improve-
ment: e.g. peasant organizations. In-between are organizations which are
now using the channel of economic programmes to also 'empower' women
socially. The formation of women's groups is an important part of this
approach, in which the emergence of group solidarity and the raising of a
variety of additional gender-related concerns are significant by-products:
the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee and the Self Employed
Women's Association in India, are cases in point.
The shift in approach from welfare-oriented to empowerment-oriented,
from top-down to participative, and from individual-focused to group-
focused, apparent in the working of many NGOs (including women's
groups), in the 1980s, is an important step forward. Moreover, the success
of this alternative approach, in contrast to the traditional one, has had a

positive demonstration effect and contributed to the emerging recognition
by governments in several South Asian countries that the so-called
'practical' gender needs, such as health and education, cannot always be
separated from the so-called 'strategic' needs of transforming gender
relations. Some of the programmes initiated by the Indian government in
recent years, especially the Mahila Samakhya educational programme
(described later), in the implementation of which the collaboration of
gender-progressive NGOs, including women's organizations, has been
actively sought, are clearly a result of this recognition.
Women's grassroots initiatives, especially in the rural areas, have also
effectively brought out the close interconnections women themselves make
between the economic and the social in their experience of gender subordi-
nation, both within and outside the family. For instance, it is no accident
that in India many poor rural women's campaigns for better wages either
have followed in the wake of an anti-alcoholism campaign, or this latter
issue has arisen as a major one in the course of other agitations: male
alcoholism has been associated both with violence within the family and
with a substantial drain on the family's meagre income in poor households.
Likewise, the case studies in chapter 9 revealed that even to participate in
an organized struggle for economic betterment, women typically have had
to overcome obstructionist attitudes from within their own homes and
communities. Outside the family arena, social and economic oppression
have always been intertwined for low caste, poor women. For instance (as
we noted in the context of the Telangana and Tebhaga struggles) sexual
harassment and rape have been significant weapons used by landlords to
subordinate low caste tenants and agricultural labourers and to curb both
female militancy and the militancy of the men 'dishonoured' by the
violation of 'their' women. In this context, Maria Mies' insight, derived
from her fieldwork in 1978 among low caste, landless women in Andhra
Pradesh (India), has general validity. She points out (1983: 14) that the
women 'saw clearly the connection between the landlords' contemptuous
and highhanded behaviour and their own lack of bargaining power', and
observes:
It is often argued that poor women need 'bread' first, only then can they think of
'emancipation'. This view ignores the fact that these poor women will not even get
bread if they do not fight for their emancipation. The Bhongir women have shown
that their struggle for better economic conditions is linked inseparably to their
struggle for human dignity and self respect. (Mies et al. 1983: 19; emphasis mine) 22
22
This sentiment resonates across time and country: eight decades ago, in the now famous
song 'Bread and Roses', American working class women had asserted: 'Yes it is bread we
fight for... but we fight for roses too!' The song was written by James Oppenheimer, who
was inspired by banners carried by young mill girls in the 1912 Lawrence (Massachusetts)
textile strike.
These insights and the noted developments over the last fifteen years, in
terms of growth in public awareness about gender concerns, could be seen
as fertilizing the soil on which the struggle for land rights can grow. Indeed,
in India, these developments have enabled the questions of women's land
needs and rights to be placed in the arena of public debate - something
which was not easy to do a mere two decades ago. At the same time, the
diversity in preoccupations, approaches, and strategies that characterize
existing gender-progressive groups and organizations within each country,
could confound attempts at a unified struggle on the land question. So far,
the agitations that have transcended local contexts and developed into
national campaigns have tended to be mainly on the legal dimensions of
issues, such as campaigns in India to reform rape and dowry laws, and in
Pakistan against gender-discriminatory Islamic injunctions and legisla-
tion.23 However, the issue of gender equality in land rights - in law and in
practice - calls for a much more multi-pronged and sustained effort than
has been attempted so far on any gender-related issue in South Asia (a point
to which I will return).
Also, grassroots groups, including women's groups, act in the context of
pre-existing State, community, and family structures. Indeed, as noted in
chapter 2, the State, the community, and the household can be seen as
interacting structures which sometimes converge in their ideological thrust
and at other times move in contradictory directions. In the latter case they
provide the interstices within which countervailing grassroots resistances
can be built. We have already seen the diverse ways in which local
communities (religious, caste-related, etc.) and the local government
apparatus have constrained women's ability to exercise their rights in land.
At this juncture, it would be useful to briefly examine the role of the State
from a macro-perspective in the context of emerging issues of gender
contestation.
(2) Bargaining with the State

In broad terms, the relationship between the State and the women's
movement has been one of both cooperation and conflict; and the State's
record in dealing with gender concerns has been a mixed and ambivalent
one, a record of progression and retrogression as well as regional diver-
gence. The State has been relatively progressive in terms of legal changes,
but largely ineffective and often obstructionist in the implementation of
legislation; and it has frequently been repressive in its response to peasant
struggles where these challenged village power structures with which the
23
One of the major organizations in Pakistan that has carried out such campaigns is the
Women's Action Forum (WAF), formed in 1981, with branches today in four major cities
of the country (Mumtaz and Shaheed 1987).
local arms of the State apparatus were complicit. At the level of policy (as
noted in chapter 1), until recently the assumption of a unitary household
composed of members with congruent interests was implicit in all land-
associated initiatives of the State: the distribution of plots to the landless,
granting security of tenure to tenants, the privatization of village common
land, and resettlement schemes. In all such initiatives titles were generally
granted to the male heads of households, except where there were no male
heads, as in the case of widow-headed households. Growing evidence that
both welfare and efficiency concerns are sometimes better served by
focusing programmes on women, along with pressure from individual
women, women's groups and international aid agencies, have increased the
gender responsiveness of government officials to some degree. There has
also been some governmental recognition (especially in India) of the need to
work with NGOs to achieve some of the stated welfare objectives of
development. 24 In some cases this has led to fruitful collaboration. Adult
education is a case in point.
Departing from traditional literacy campaigns which tended to be
delivered to individuals in a formal setting and which had very limited
success, the Mahila Samakhya (Education for Women's Equality) pro-
gramme focuses on women's empowerment. This is an innovative scheme
for women's education launched by the Indian government in 1989,
initially in three states (Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarat), with
N G O collaboration. It draws upon the National Policy on Education
formulated in 1986, which emphasized the need for a 'positive intervention-
ist role [on the part of the Government] in the empowerment of women'.
Under the programme, village women come together in groups to discuss
their economic and social problems. 25 The literacy component is intro-
duced only when the women themselves demand it, which they have done in
many instances on recognizing the power conferred by literacy in dealing
with everyday problems and with the local administration. By all accounts
the programme is doing well in most regions. 26
The Total Literacy Programme, launched by the Indian government in
24
However, not all NGOs are seen in a positive light by the State. Those which directly
challenge the State's power are viewed with considerable antagonism. Also the relationship
between NGOs and the State varies considerably across South Asia: in Bangladesh it
appears to have become one of growing antagonism in recent years (see e.g. Sanyal 1991).
25
A village-level woman worker (sakhi) serves as a catalyst in forming the women's collective.
At a higher level, another woman provides guidance and support to about ten sakhis. In
structure this is very similar to the Women's Development Programme (WDP) launched in
1984 in Rajasthan by the progressive Development Commissioner of the state, who later as
Secretary of Education, spearheaded the Mahila Samakhya Programme. WDP aimed at
women's empowerment as a necessary condition for women's development. For a
summary discussion on the WDP, see Das (1990).
26
See various evaluation reports including Mahila Samakhya Karnataka (1991), Mahila
Samakhya Uttar Pradesh (1991), and GOI (1991c).
1990, with a special focus on women, again uses an innovative approach,
linking the content of teaching with women's immediate environment and
using local teachers. This too is noted to have had encouraging results in
several regions. As Vina Mazumdar, a long-time researcher-activist in the
Indian women's movement, related to me after visiting a programme site in
West Bengal: They now come because they enjoy the classes, sometimes in
the pouring rain after a whole day's labour in the fields.'
In this context, how should one interpret the State adopting the radical
language of women's organizations and incorporating words such as
'empowerment' in its rhetoric? Should this be seen as cooptation, as is the
interpretation of some women's groups? Without denying that possibility, I
believe in many cases there could be another, more positive, interpretation
as well, namely that when the language of women's rights is widely adopted,
including by the State, this could symbolize the emergence of the issue from
the realm of 'doxa' into that of public discourse, and contribute to
establishing it as a matter of legitimate political concern. In this sense it can
be seen as a positive result of the women's movement, rather than as a
phenomenon undermining it. This is not to underplay the continuing gap
between such State rhetoric and actual public policy, but the closing of that
gap requires a further struggle.
The leverage that gender-progressive groups have in 'bargaining' with
the State can depend on a variety of factors (as detailed in chapter 2): their
ability to sway public opinion or to disrupt administrative functioning
(through agitations); the political pressure they can build up in various
ways, with implications for voting patterns; the attention they can get for
their cause through the media; their ability to deliver programmes which
State agencies are unable to deliver by themselves; the existence of pressure
for gender-sensitivity from international aid agencies; and so on. Of course
the State would be more likely to cooperate with gender-progressive groups
where the demands can be accommodated without challenging the power
of constituencies on whose support the State depends. Land reform is often
a casualty of this latter concern.
However, it is noteworthy that programmes initiated to promote objec-
tives that the State may consider relatively non-controversial, such as
female literacy, can have additional pay-offs. For instance, in India's
Mahila Samakhya programme in Karnataka, the self-confidence of women
participants has increased enormously. They have not only promoted
welfare services (e.g. set up creches and nurseries for children in several
villages), but have also organized public protest against a rape case and
taken the initiative in some land disputes. In one case they prevailed upon
the Assistant Commissioner's office to settle a decade-old dispute. As the
women put it: Tor the last ten years we left it to you men to solve the
problem. Now that we have taken over, we have achieved more in ten days
than you did in ten years' (Mahila Samakhya Karnataka 1991: 10). In
another village a tribal women's collective is fighting to reclaim land
originally allotted to them and subsequently appropriated by non-tribal
occupants. Women in many villages are now eager to learn to read and
write as well.
Here it is relevant to repeat a point made in chapter 2, namely that the
State itself can be seen as an arena of contestation, with cooperation and
conflict taking place at multiple levels, and between individuals and groups
with varying attitudes and commitment towards reducing gender (and
other socio-economic) inequalities. These contestations may be between
officials of a given State department, or between different tiers of the State
machinery, or between different regional arms of the State apparatus (e.g.
the judiciary in the south Indian states has been more gender-progressive in
reforming property laws than that in north India). In other words, the State
needs to be conceptualized not as a monolithic, uniformly 'patriarchal'
structure, but as one that is differentiated and within which also issues of
gender relations get resolved through processes of contestation. Such a
conceptualization helps explain the 'now a step forward, now a step back'
history of gender-related State policies and programmes in the subconti-
nent. It also points to the necessity of building links with progressive
elements within the State apparatus. Initiatives such as the Mahila Samak-
hya programme, the incorporation of women's concerns in planning and
policy, and even the talk of women's empowerment, may usually be traced
to the positive responses of gender-progressive individuals within the State,
and are not as yet a characteristic feature of government programmes in
India or elsewhere in South Asia.
A question which arises in this context is whether the presence of women
in public bodies would make a difference to the State's response to gender
concerns.
(3) Increasing women's presence in public decision-making forums

In South Asia, women (as noted earlier) have largely been the takers and
not the makers of public decisions that affect their lives. Although they are
no longer formally barred from public decision-making bodies (as they
typically were from traditional forums such as caste councils), there is a vast
gender gap in such bodies at all levels, from the villages to the upper
echelons of the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the legislature. In India, for
instance, this is apparent in the judiciary (where women constituted only 3.6
per cent of advocates registered with the state bar councils in 1985, and 2.8
per cent of High Court and Supreme Court judges), the administration (in
1987 only 7.4 per cent of the Indian Administrative Service Officers, and 5.8
per cent of officers of all central government services taken together, were
women), and the legislature (in 1984 only 8 per cent of elected candidates in
the Lok Sabha were women). 27 In formal terms, reservations have been one
method by which the Indian State has attempted to reduce the gender gap in
the Panchayati Raj institutions, the district, block and village-level bodies
for local self-governance. The most recent step in this direction, as noted in
chapter 6, is the passing of the Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment)
Act, 1992, which provides for the reservation for women of a third of all
seats in the Panchayati Raj institutions. In most states, in fact, some extent
of reservation for women has existed for a number of years (Manikymba
1989). However, the effectiveness and commitment of the women who
occupy these seats depends in significant degree on whether or not they have
come in through open elections. There is a danger of reserved seats being
filled by 'token' women who represent the interests of powerful men,
especially since places not filled by election can be rilled by nomination. And
many states have in fact ended up filling the reserved seats largely by
coopting women members. But in the presence of progressive women's
organizations, reservations can serve as an empowering tool for promoting
greater female participation (including that of lower caste women) in such
bodies. Also, over time, in several states the proportion of elected women
members (including women elected to the position of sarpanch) has been
increasing (Manikymba 1989); and in some states (as noted earlier) a few
villages have even elected all-women panchayats.
Of course, as is widely recognized, women's presence need not in itselflead
to more gender-progressive programmes. For instance, women heads of
State in South Asia have not, during their tenures, initiated dramatic shifts in
policies affecting women. However, as noted earlier in this chapter, there is
also evidence to suggest that women's presence in public bodies can make an
important difference to the orientation of policies and programmes. In any
case, the presence of women in decision-making roles and positions of
authority has a wider ideological impact; and South Asian women,
especially but not only in purdah-practising communities, are more likely to
take their grievances to women representatives than to all-male bodies.
At the same time, women representatives at all levels face gender-related
constraints when functioning in largely male public forums, partly as a
result of their social conditioning and partly due to male responses to their
presence in these bodies. In her study of women representatives in the
Panchayati Raj institutions in the 1980s, Manikymba (1989) found that
some states have performed better than others (also see CWDS 1989). For
27
All figures are taken from GOI (1988b: 119, 126-7, 173).
instance, in Maharashtra, the women members usually attended meetings
and were active and assertive; in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, by contrast,
the representatives (nominated in large measure) were mostly passive, and
tended to replicate the gendered behaviour patterns prevailing socially
within the villages. As one woman member of the gram panchayat in
Andhra Pradesh asked the researcher: 'Does it not mean showing disrespect
to the [male] sarpanch if I speak in the meetings?' (Manikymba 1989: 81). In
Punjab, in many cases male members were found to resent any form of
opposition from women members, and some countered opposition by
spreading adverse rumours about the woman's character.
These problems have also been observed at the level of state legislatures.
For instance, in 1978 women constituted only 3 per cent of total legislative
assembly members in Andhra Pradesh, and their presence was not readily
accepted: many were subject to derogatory personal comments; they had to
struggle constantly to prove themselves; and 'disguised or overt hostility
[was] endemic and [followed] divisions of caste, class and gender' (Wolko-
witz 1984: 192-3). Increasing women's representation in decision-making
forums and overcoming the prejudices that undermine their effectiveness
would be important both in itself and for realizing gains for women on
other fronts, especially in their struggle for land rights.
The presence or absence of women (and more generally of gender-
progressive individuals) within the State apparatus is of course only one
dimension, although probably a significant one, affecting the State's
response to gender concerns. At any point in time, many other factors can
affect those responses, including the (class, religious, and social) character
of the ruling political parties, 28 local community responses, and the overall
climate of progressiveness or conservatism prevailing in the country.
Although today all five South Asian countries under study have some form
of parliamentary democracy, so far there is little indication that the recent
shifts from monarchy in Nepal or from military dictatorships in Pakistan
and Bangladesh have led to a fresh look at the question of gender inequities.
In Pakistan, for instance, although democratic rule was restored in 1987,
the gender-retrogressive enactments passed under the military dictatorship
of Zia-ul-Huq, which reduced many of women's existing rights, have not
been revoked; and women's protests usually continue to be dealt with by
severe repression. 29 In both Pakistan and Bangladesh, the politics of the
State and of the conservative religious communities have tended to
28
Even w o m e n candidates elected to the Panchayati Raj institutions tend to come largely
from intermediary or upper castes a n d from landowning families: in M a h a r a s h t r a in the
early 1980s, 81.2 per cent of women members came from landed households (D'lima 1983).
29
Personal c o m m u n i c a t i o n , F a r i d a Shaheed, Shirkatgah W o m e n ' s Resource Centre,
Lahore, 1992.
converge,30 reducing women's ability to bargain for enhancing their rights,
while in countries such as India and Sri Lanka, the greater plurality of
religious and regional traditions has provided more space for the growth
and survival of grassroots initiatives and countervailing pressures. But
everywhere in South Asia, the past decade has been a period of growing
political instability, ethnic strife, and regional, social, and religious divisive-
ness. The last is especially apparent in the rising influence of fundamenta-
lism among all religious groups, and the penetration of religion into
politics, even in countries such as India and Sri Lanka which claim to have
secular constitutions and politics. This has had negative fall-outs for
women.31
Within countries, local and regional differences have conditioned the
State's approach. For instance, there is notable regional variation in the
approaches of individual state governments in India to the question of
women's land rights. In general, the southern states have been more gender-
progressive, at least in legal terms: as noted, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu
and Kerala have all amended the Hindu Succession Act (HSA) of 1956 in
the direction of gender equality; and a few years ago the Andhra Pradesh
government also initiated a programme to distribute land to low-income
families in women's names (Robinson 1988). In contrast, many north-
western states continue to support gender-unequal land laws, and some
have even sought (so far unsuccessfully) to further restrict women's land
rights. For instance, the legislatures in both Punjab and Haryana have
made attempts to amend the HSA, so as to deprive daughters of the right to
inherit agricultural property; some political groups in Punjab have also
wanted to make levirate mandatory. In terms of women's representation in
public decision-making bodies, however, all regions have done poorly.
(4) Some recent developments and the road ahead

Especially since the mid-1980s, women's resistance in South Asia has been
characterized by at least three features of particular note. First, there has
been a forging of links between academia and activism through the
interactions of feminist academics and (rural and urban) women activists in
a variety of ways, and in different forums: annual conferences, conventions,
joint demonstrations on specific issues, and so on. A number of full-time
women activists have also contributed to research and analysis, and many
women academics have been involved in activism. All this has strengthened
the dialectical interlinks between theory and practice. Second, there is an
30
F o r Pakistan see M u m t a z a n d Shaheed (1987) and Jalal (1991); and for Bangladesh see
K a b e e r (1991c).
31
See especially the discussion in C h h a c h h i (1991).
emerging recognition among many women's groups that the struggle
against gender inequalities cannot be waged in isolation from struggles on
many other fronts, including those for democratic rights, against commu-
nalism, and for development policies that are environmentally sustainable,
egalitarian, and politically participative. One outgrowth of this recognition
has been attempts by women's groups to forge links with other progressive
groups to provide a wide-ranging critique of the economic and political
system and a broader base for agitation. In India, for instance, several
(especially left-oriented) women's groups have participated actively in
campaigns for civil and democratic rights, for environmental protection
and regeneration, and against communalism, along with mixed-sex groups
formed primarily around these concerns. In Pakistan, the Women's Action
Forum was also a part of the movement for the restoration of democracy in
the 1980s. In Sri Lanka, a number of women's organizations have been
working for peace and secularism in a society torn by ethnic strife; and so
on. In this context, also of note are ongoing attempts by a number of South
Asians to produce gender-progressive interpretations of religious texts,
including the Koran, 32 and explore their potential for consciousness-
raising, although some feminists point to the inherent limitations of such
efforts (especially where the texts can be read as endorsing gender inequali-
ties), and argue that religion needs to be delinked from politics. Third, there
is an increasing interaction between women's groups internationally across
•Asia, which has the potential (as yet largely untapped) for catalysing the
formation of regional pressure groups around common concerns.
Yet for rural women in South Asia to acquire independent land rights on
any significant scale, all this is clearly not enough. The recognition women
were able to get for their land claims in some of the peasant struggles in
India, especially that in Bodhgaya, suggests the possibility of progress. But
such initiatives remain highly localized and small in scale. We have yet to
see a female counterpart to the show of strength in recent years by
thousands of north Indian male farmers, agitating for higher agricultural
prices and other concessions, such as in the mobilizations spearheaded by
M.S. Tikaitin 1988 and 1990.33 Women peasants have a long way to travel
to gain anything near the political bargaining power of South Asia's male
capitalist farmers, and to attain equality in land rights. But several
indicators suggest that conditions are ripening for enabling movement
toward that goal: the passionate and clear-headed statements of village
women that they have a right to a fairer deal, each time a rural camp is held
32
On the K o r a n , a m o n g such attempts are recent writings by Riffat Hassan (Professor of
Religious Studies, University of Louisville, Kentucky), a n d by Engineer (1993).
33
In Meerut ( U t t a r Pradesh), for instance, some 82,000 male farmers were reported to have
gathered to press their d e m a n d s in F e b r u a r y 1988 (see Pachauri's (1988) report in India
Today). In 1990 there was a similar gathering in Delhi.
to discuss their economic and social problems; the growing numbers of
peasant women demanding land when asked what their major needs are;
the coming together of several thousand Maharashtrian women in Chand-
wad in 1986 and Amravati in 1989 to support resolutions asserting their
rights to a share in land and in political decision-making authority; and so
on. Such responses can form the basis for spearheading shifts from
individual-covert to group-overt resistance, in many localized contexts. At
the same time, to bring about a radical shift in State policy and implemen-
tation, to have women's land rights become an objective that is actively
pursued by political parties as well as non-party groups, and to give the
movement for women's land rights in South Asia force and momentum,
will necessitate country-wide mobilization. It will require widespread
discussion of strategies and demands, a strong determination to prioritize
the issue, the coming together of numerous local initiatives, and the
merging of many individual streams of dissent and assertion to generate a
tumultuous, unstoppable flow.
To assess the necessary and sufficient conditions for such mobilization is
beyond the scope of this book. Yet if academic economists are allowed to
have a vision, unconstrained by the need to quantify the probability of its
realization, then mine is of hundreds of thousands of women peasants on a
long march across the countryside. As they walk from village to village they
gather new numbers to their cause: independent rights in the fields they
have nurtured. And as they march they sing:
Why do they want to stop our song?
Break your silence, the time has come!34
34
Taken from a song sung by both rural and urban activists across India which, over the
years, has been translated and adapted into several languages. I have translated these lines
from the version in Hindi, the language in which I originally heard the song.
Definitions
Cross-cousins: These are children of opposite-sex siblings. The ego's

mother's brother's son or daughter is a matrilateral cross-cousin; and a
father's sister's son or daughter is a patrilateral cross-cousin. When the kin
term for mother's brother or father's sister is extended to certain more
distant kin, according to specified rules, their children are the ego's
classificatory cross-cousins. The ego is assumed to be male by anthropologi-
cal tradition, and although I do not endorse this assumption I have retained
it in these definitions to avoid confusion.
Dowry and brideprice: In broad terms a dowry transaction involves a

transfer (of movables or immovables) from the girl's natal family to the girl,
her husband or his kin, at the time of her marriage. Brideprice, by contrast,
' involves such a transfer from the boy or his family to the girl's family at the
time of marriage. These terms may acquire more complex meanings in
particular contexts.
Parallel cousins: These are children of same sex siblings, such as the ego's
father's brother's son or daughter, or mother's sister's son or daughter.
Post-marital residence forms:

(1) Ambilocal: where residence is established optionally with or near the
parents of either husband or wife depending on circumstances or personal
choice.
(2) Avunculocal: where normal residence is with or near the maternal uncle
or other male matrilineal kin of the husband.
(3) Duolocal: where the wife's normal residence is with her kin and of the
husband with his or elsewhere, with the husband maintaining a visiting
relationship with the wife.
(4) Matrilocal: see uxorilocal (c).
505
(5) Neolocal: where residence is established in a location other than where

the kin of either spouse reside.
(6) Patrilocal: see virilocal.
(7) Uxorilocal: where the husband takes up residence with the wife and
(with or near) her parental family. Uxorilocal residence can take various
forms:
(a) as a temporary phase in the marriage: for instance, a newly married
husband may be obliged to reside with the wife and her parents and
contribute his labour ('bridegroom service') for some time before being
granted the right to take her to live with him virilocally or patrilocally.
(b) as a frequent but not dominant practice: this is found especially in
bilateral systems: e.g. binna marriage among the Kandyan Sinhalese.
(c) as a regular practice dictated by a preferred or prescribed custom. This
results in institutionalized matrilocal residence, where the normal
residence for most husbands is with or near the matrilineal kin of the
wives. Such systems usually have localized groupings of matrilineal kin
(matrilineages) and observe matrilineal descent.
In addition, uxorilocal residence can be a special or exceptional practice
among communities which as a rule practise patrilineal descent and
patrilocal or virilocal residence. For instance among north Indian Hindu
families in the absence of male heirs the man marrying one of the daughters
may take up residence with his wife's parental family (the so-called
uxorilocal son-in-law).
(8) Virilocal: where the wife takes up residence with the husband and (with
or near) his parental family. When virilocality is the preferred or prescribed
custom, institutionalized patrilocal residence results, where the normal
residence of all or most wives is with or near the patrilineal kin of their
husbands. Such systems usually have localized groupings of patrilineal kin
(patrilineages).
Glossary
Words that occur only once in the text, and are explained at the point of
occurrence, are not listed here.
a king'. Garo village settlement consisting ofjhum and homestead land
a'king-nokma: husband of the heiress of the a 'king- founding household
Aliyasantana: traditional system of matrilineal inheritance followed by the
Bants of south Canara (now in Karnataka state, south India)
barv. homestead, home compound
binna: uxorilocal form of marriage among the Sinhalese
borjela: eldest male in the family among the matrilineal Lalungs
chena: slash and burn cultivation in Sri Lanka
chidenam: hereditary property brought as dowry by the wife among the
Jaffna Tamils
daijo: dowry property of Nepalese women
Dayabhaga: Hindu legal doctrine dated around twelfth century AD which
held sway in Bengal and Assam
Dharmashastras (or shastras): ancient treatises of Hindu law
diga: virilocal form of marriage among the Sinhalese
dupatta: an oblong piece of cloth covering the bosom which can also be used
as a veil
gotra: exogamous patrilineal clans
gram panchayat: village council
iing: segment of a Khasi clan
jhum: slash and burn agriculture
507
508 Glossary
karanavan: head of the taravad and manager of the matrilineal joint family
estate; he was usually the seniormost male member of the taravad
karewa: local name for levirate in the Punjab
karnar. similar to the karanavan
mahari: matrilineal kin group among the Garos
Maluki Ain: Nepal's legal code dated at 1854
Marumakkatayam: the customary system of inheritance practised by the
matrilineal communities of Kerala and the Lakshadweep Islands
mehr. sum of money or property normally promised to the bride by the
groom as part of the marriage contract among Muslims, the actual
payment of which is usually deferred
Mitakshara: Hindu legal doctrine dated around twelfth century AD which
held sway in most parts of India
mudisam: hereditary property brought by the husband among the Jaffna
Tamils
nokrom: Garo heiress's husband
panchayat: council; caste-panchayat. traditional council constituted of
members of a caste group drawn from one or more villages, which decided
disputes involving its caste members
Panchayati Raj: A system of local-level governance instituted in rural India
in the 1950s and constituted of councils at the district, block and village
levels
praveni: ancestral estate among the Sinhalese
patta: land title; document given by revenue collector to the revenue payer
stating the terms on which the land is held and the amount payable
patwari: village land records official
pewa: woman's own property among the Nepalese
Ri Kynti: Land held by members of a Khasi clan either jointly or separately
Ri Raid: Communal land belonging to all clans resident in a Khasi village
samiti: group or committee
sarpanch: village council head
smarthavicharam: a special trial held in cases of alleged illicit sexual
relations by Nambudiri women
Glossary 509
smritis: ancient texts based on that which the renowned sages remembered
from what was explained to them by the 'Self-Existent' one; the Dharmas-
hastras are a part of the smriti literature
stridhan: woman's property; see chapter 3 for a discussion on the complex
and changing interpretations of what this constituted
tali: threaded ornament ceremoniously tied around the bride's neck
taravad: matrilineal joint family, holding property in common and often
sharing a residence. The term is also associated with the house in which the
joint family resided. Taravads were traditionally characteristic of the
matrilineal communities of Kerala and the Lakshadweep Islands
tarwar: similar to the taravad
tavazhi or tavari: a branch or segment of a taravad
tehsih administrative sub-subdivision of a district in India; a state is divided
into several districts, each district into several subdivisions and each
subdivision into a number of tehsih
tehsildar. revenue official in charge of a tehsil
thediathetam: property acquired after marriage by either spouse, among the
Jaffna Tamils
Thesawalamv. The customary law of inheritance and marriage followed by
the Jaffna Tamils of Sri Lanka
waqf: Muslim endowment
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Index
Abdullah, T., 283, 293, 300, 304-6, 425-6, surplus, women's control of, 148, 154
482n see also marketed surplus
access to land technology
as vs. rights in land, 19 adoption of new, and land titles, 34-5
women's, 5, 6, 30, 31, 45n, 69n, 75, 138n, male control over, 310-15, 475
162, 182, 184, 246, 455, 470, 473 male bias in transfer of, 34, 167-8
Acharya, M., 37n, 68, 312, 345-6, 386, 399 women's access to information on,
adultery, 104, 107, 114, 141, 164, 183, 271, 3 3 ^ , 36, 319, 475, 489
273n, 317, 349, 350-2, 370, 403-6 wages, 31n, 158, 441
regional variations in tolerance of, 350-2, work, by women, see under women, land
370, 403-6 management by, and women, land
Agarwal, B., 22n, 23n, 24, 30n, 34n, 35n, cultivation by
37n, 41n, 64n, 70, 165, 357, 394, 439, see also land
455n Ahmad, S., 387
Agarwala, S. N., 354 Ahmed, A. S., 232n, 258n, 273n, 274, 302,
agnate(s), 86, 123, 266, 271, 273, 297 345, 348-9
adoption of son of, by sonless widow, Ahmed, M., 68
250, 258, 295 Ahmed, S., 227n
pressure on women from, to lease out Alaka, 37, 40
their land, 297 Alamgir, S. F., 263, 269n
definition of, 86n, 212n Alavi, H., 41n, 273, 342, 400
as heirs, 86, 124, 206, 212, 213, 217, 218, Albrecht, H., 265
228, 234, 235, 243, 247, 258 Ali, I., 31n
agnatic theory, 228, 229 Ali, T., 267
Agnihotri, A. K., 24n Aliyasantana, 116, 211, 213
Agrarian Reform Law of 1947, China, 40, and the Hindu Succession Act of 1956,
436 211,213
agricultural Allaby, M., 313
census, 3In, 35n, 46, 324 All India Women's Conference (AIWC),
extension services 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 222,
class bias in, 34n 231, 460
gender bias in, 34n, 372 All Pakistan Women's Association, 232
inputs, 34, 35n, 73 Altekar, A. S., 85n, 87, 89-90, 93n, 94-5,
labour(er), 1, 30, 31n, 32, 65, 117, 158, 137, 310n, 353, 459-60
431, 432, 434, 437, 445, 469, 490, altruism, 51, 53, 55, 58, 72, 433, 434-5
491, 495 Ambedkar, Dr. B.R., 210
see also labour force ambilocal residence (ambilocality), post-
output/production, 34, 35, 67, 470 marital, 134, 140, 141, 143, 325
productivity, 9, 343 definition of, 505
practices, 34, 158, 306 Andors, E. B., 331, 386, 399
prices, 503 'appointed daughter', 251
sector, women's dependence on, 469, see also putrikaputra
All Archer, W.G., 275-6, 281
553
554 Index
Arefeen, H. K. S., 385, 398 bari, 300, 432

Arens, J., 260, 293 off-bari, 304, 307
Armour, J. A., 123 Barrett, M , 16, 72n
Arunima, G., 113n, 170n, 172n, 205n Barrier, N. G., 18n, 228
Aschenbrenner, J. C , 252n, 273n, 337, 388, Barkataky, M., 157
401 Barth,F., 300-1,388
avunculocal residence (avunculocality), basic needs, approach to development, 4, 78
post-marital, 114, 116, 117, 118, 140, Basu, A., 460
141, 142, 143,325 Baxi, U., 278n
definition of, 505 Beals, A. R., 395
Ayyangar, M. A., 198 Beck, B. E. F., 271, 295, 383, 396
Aziz, K. M. A., 259, 283, 331, 384^5, 398 Begum, S., 268
Bennett, L., 37n, 68, 245n, 267, 312, 399,
Baden-Powell, B. H., 21n, 22n, 1 lOn, 200 429n
Bahuguna, S., 2 Berreman, G. D., 273n, 330, 380
Baig, Tara A., 222 Berry, R. A., 35n
Bailey, F. G., 266 Bertocci, P. J., 293, 337
Bandyopadhyaya, N., 280n Beteille, A., 38
Bangladesh Rural Advancement Beurden, J. Van., 260, 293
Committee (BRAC), 43, 68, 297, Bhalla, S., 35n
462-4, 484, 488, 489, 494 Bhandari, J. S., 381,390
Banks, M. Y., 127, 129, 144, 239, 287, 389, Bhatt, B. L., 316
402 Bhatty, Z., 68
Bankura project, 456-7, 488 bilateral communities/groups, 8, 45, 48, 81,
Bano, Shah, 260n 83, 100, 132, 134, 136, 139, 140, 141,
Bants, 84, 109, 116-17, 141, 142 142, 146, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154,
Barbosa, D., 82, 111-12 180, 193, 249, 285, 289, 290,368,
Bardhan, K., 471n 377, 433n, 472, 473, 475, 476, 481,
Bardhan, P. K., 65 486
bargaining bilateral inheritance, 9, 48, 69, 83, 84, 97,
and the community, 73-7 99, 119, 123, 140, 141, 153, 185, 190,
extra-household, 57, 61, 67, 75 241,246,290,317,472
for family land, 66-7 definition of, 8n
intra-household, 55n, 56, 61, 65, 67, 75, Bilgrami, R., 99
77 binna marriage, 122, 123, 124, 137, 143,
and the market, 72-3 147, 184, 188, 190, 191, 192, 238, 317
and the state, 77-80, 496 Binswanger, H. P., 18n
for subsistence in the family, 61-6 Blumberg, R. L., 29n
bargaining approach/framework, 46, 48, Bodhgaya movement/struggle, 1-2, 9n, 39,
54-60,70,71,73 40, 69n, 279-80, 438, 444^51, 453,
bargaining models, 55n, 56 454, 486n, 487, 492, 503
bargaining power/strength/position, 32, Bookman, A., 39n
40n, 54, 55n, 57, 58, 59, 67, 69n, 72, Borah, D., 157-8, 161
81, 148, 171, 174, 260, 268, 319, 377, Borthwick, M., 96
434n, 469, 470, 471, 473, 477, 481, Bose,J.K., 161-2
482, 483, 495, 503 Boserup, E., 154, 165, 179
defined by, 54, 59 Bourdieu, P., 14n, 58-9
empirical evidence of, intra-family, 67-71 Boyce, J. K., 35n, 249n, 261, 268, 293
factors affecting, women's, in Bradford, N. J., 395
community, 75-7 Brara, R., 37n
factors affecting, women's, in family, bridegroom capture, 103^4
60-7, 71 brideprice/bridewealth, 103, 116, 117,482
factors affecting, women's, with the definition of, 505
State, 80 shifts in dowry, 482
and NGO interventions, 66 brothers
and women's reproductive as authority figures, 264
responsibilities, 63n beating up of sisters by, 448
Index 555
women dispossessed/duped by, 1, 272-3, in sexual/social control over women, 75n,

282,292,293, 297 299, 349, 350, 355
women forfeit inheritance share for, 19, in stigma of divorce/widowhood, 267
260-68, 283, 294, 434, 435, 475 in village endogamy, 325, 329, 474
women helped by, 266 in widow remarriage practices, 201, 202,
women lease out land to, 296-7 353-5
women's relationship with, 260-70, 282, in women's labour force participation,
344, 434n, 435, 483 355,357
women working for, 30 ceiling on land ownership, legal fixation of,
Brow, J., 389, 402 215,216,218-22,247
Buchanan, F., 112n gender inequities in laws, 219-20, 236-7,
Burkhart, G., 266 479,480,491
Burling, R., 37n, 103, 104n, 156-8, 160, surplus land from, 7, 175, 247, 447, 479,
162, 164 491
Burman, R., 343n violation of laws, 252, 445
burqa, 269, 300, 304 Cernea, M. M., 24
Burra, N., 457 Chadha, G. K., 26n
Byres, T. J., 34n Chaki-Sircar, M., 382, 394
Chakravarti, U., 459n
Cain, M. T., In, 63n, 281, 297, 314, 398, Chakravartty, R., 438n, 439n, 440
434n Chapekar, L. N., 392
Caldwell, J. C , 32, 266 Charleston, N., 18n
Camerini, M., 260, 346 chastity, women's
Cantlie, A., 330, 336, 35On, 382, 394 and condition for property claims,
Cantlie, Sir K., 106 200-202, 246, 247
Carroll, L., 199-200, 201n, 202, 234n, 235, and family honour, 299, 303
236n varying emphasis on, 144-5, 349, 351
caste importance given to, 125, 130, 308, 310,
covert resistance by lower-castes, 426 345, 459n
data on, 168n and the Malabar Marriage Commission,
ostracization from, 430 170
purity of, 144, 145 and purdah norms, 301
reservations and women's representation Chatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini (the
in panchayats, 500 Vahini), 9n, 445-9
'sanskritization', 74 Chaudhuri, A. B., 275
sexual exploitation/harrasment by upper- Chauhan, B. R., 379
caste, 439, 495 Chen, M. A., 68, 252-3, 254n, 256^7, 268,
and village councils, 41 457, 462-4, 488-9
and women's bargaining power, 76 chena, 120, 127, 132, 192
caste coundls/panchayat Chettis,84, 117, 118, 133, 141,142
male domination of, 13, 75, 151, 193, chidenam, 127-30, 2 3 9 ^ 0
277, 499 Childe,G., 3 1 3 ^
and trials of Nambudiri women, 429-30 Chipko movement, 2, 37-8, 455—6
caste differentials, and possibilities of Chowdhry, P., 2 0 3 ^
collective action by women, 41, 467, Chowdhury, D., 382, 393
490-3 clan council, 13
Caste Disabilities Removal Act of 1850, class
235, 236 and bias in dispute settlement, 281
caste-related variations and bias in extension services, 312
in close-kin marriage, 336, 474 'class-in-itself, 437n
in divorcee remarriage, 352, 355 'class-for-itself, 437n
in influence of shastras, 93, 199 concept of, 14n
in inheritance customs, 82, 200, 201 problems in defining women's, 14-5, 492
upper-caste bias in recording, 92 'sex-class', 14n
in marriage distance, 331 and women's bargaining power, 76
in purdah practice, 269, 301, 304, 345, working class, 12, 17, 39n, 439n, 465,
459, 460 492, 493, 495n
556 Index
class differences, possibilities of collective marital, 20

action among women, 15, 41, 467, over land, 3, 283, 284, 290, 292, 294, 297,
490-3 320, 369, 476
class differentiation, among peasantry, 24, see also land, disputes over
165 over property, 18, 53, 101, 187
class struggle, Brechtian forms of, 423 over space, 457
class variations Conklin, G. H., 337, 395
in purdah norms, 307, 459 Connell, R. W., 79n
in rural women's labour force Constitution the, of India, 6, 38, 210, 211,
participation, 355 216, 220-1, 224, 248, 278
in sexual control over women, 299, 459 Ninth Schedule, 220-1, 226
in widow and divorcee remarriage norms, Seventy-third Amendment Act 1992 500
459 Cooper, A., 439
Claus, P. J., 395 cooperation and conflict (cooperative-
Cline, W. R., 35n conflict), 52, 54, 73, 74, 77, 78, 477,
Cochin Christian Succession Act 1921, 223 496, 499
Cohn, B. S., 200-1 cooperative(s), 168, 489, 491, 492
close-kin marriage, 82, 83, 134, 135, 138, women's, 41n, 454, 492
139, 140, 144, 146, 152, 229n, 252, cooperative farming, 489
317,318, 320, 322, 324, 330, 336-^4, cooperative labour, 312
350, 354, 358, 368, 369, 370, 373, coparcener/coparcenary, 86, 88n, 206, 212,
390-402, 472, 474, 482 213, 214, 215, 243, 244, 245, 246, 478
regional variations in, 336-44, 368-70, Cousins, M., 205n
373, 390^02 Croll, E., 40
and women's land rights, 82, 134, 139, cross-cousins
144, 146, 229, 288, 318, 344 definition of, 505
cognate(s), 212, 213, 235 marriages between, 93, 103, 107, 108,
definition of, 212n 111, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 125,
collective 126, 129, 134, 139, 141, 144, 163,
action/resistance/struggle, 15, 41, 42, 48, 177, 252, 288, 317, 318, 322, 336,
422, 442, 454, 461, 467, 487, 490, 337, 391-402
491, 492, 493 cultivation, types of
farming, 33 joint, 24, 454, 457, 488-9
management of land, 456, 457 swidden, 64n, 120, 154, 165, 192
ownership of land, 487 wet rice, settled, 155-6
communal land implication of shifting to, 155-60
access to, 21-4 see also jhum and chena
among the Garos, 102, 107, 132, 154, Custers, P., 439n, 440-1,442
165, 168 customary law, of inheritance, see
and privatization of/decline in, 159, customary practices, and under law
161, 164, 165 customary practices/rights/rules, 83, 84, 91,
women claim rights in, 455 93, 95n, 97n, 98, 100, 101, 108, 109,
women cultivating, 33 127, 131, 153, 155n, 167, 191, 241,
women's reduced rights in, 286 242, 275, 473
see also land, privatization of communal and Muslims, 98-9
communal resources, and the shastras, 91-7
traditional rights in, 62 CWDS, 5
sharing of, and women's class/caste, 76
joint management of, 73, 75 daijo, 243-5, 246
Communist Party of India, 45n, 175, 439, Dak, T. M., 70
440, 441 Dandekar, K., 349n, 354
attitude towards women, 442-3, 444 Daniels, C , 77n
Communist Party of India (Marxist) Das, A. K., 393
[CPI(M)], 9n, 45n, 453n Das, M. M., 108, 286
conflict Das, V., In
in family, 267, 273, 483 Dasgupta, B., 34n, 281
Index 557
Dasgupta, S., 313 142, 145, 407-13

Dasgupta, P., 70n initiated by women, 147, 178, 353
David, K., 287-8, 389 legislation on, 181, 185, 206, 209, 271
Dayabhaga, 84-5, 88-91, 206, 212, 227n, effect of, 164, 183-4, 208, 209
256, 472 and maintenance claims, 244, 260, 26In
De, P. J., 393 and natal home, women's rights to return
decision-making, women's participation in, to, 115, 116, 117, 118, 123, 143, 317
13n, 41, 43, 44, 59, 67, 68, 69, 71, 75, norms, cross-community, 370, 407-13
81, 115, 148, 151, 192, 377, 438, 441, reduced threats of, and Grameen Bank,
444, 448, 452, 459, 467, 473, 477, 68
484-5, 486, 491, 494, 499-501, 502, Dixon, R., 41n
504 Djurfeldt, G., 397
Deliege, R., 353n D'lima, H., 501n
Delphy, C , 14n Donnan, H., 388, 401
Deolalikar, A. B., 37n dowry
Derrett, J. D. M., 84, 93, 96, 199-200, 233, absence of practice
238 among Garos, 103
descent, line of/system of, 8n, 86n, 106, 118, among Nayars, 116, 177
131, 144, 161, 206n, 217, 233 among Tiyyars, 116
matrilineal, 8n, 111, 119, 131, 143, 160, and bargaining power, women's, 481-3
177 campaign against, 481, 492, 494, 496
patrilineal, 113, 143, 273 cause of divorce and harrassment, 482
desertion, of women, 1, 30, 125, 183, 191, control over, women's, 18
215, 228n, 260, 264, 284, 353 regional variation in, 135-7, 481-2
Dewan, S., 434 definition of, 505
devadasis, 94 extortion of, 480
Dey, J., 36n increasing incidence of, 177, 482
Dharmashastras, 84, 85n as inheritance, 119, 127-32, 2 3 9 ^ 0
see also shastras vs. inheritance, 122, 209, 222, 251,
diga marriage, 122, 123, 124, 125, 136, 137, 480-83, 484
143, 184, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, land given in, 18n, 119, 122, 127-32, 143,
238, 241, 247, 317, 479, 482 225n, 239^0, 254, 257, 287-9
Dillon, H. S., 382 legal prohibition of, 136, 481
disputes, 161, 277, 282 as pre-mortem inheritance, problems in
see also under land such characterization, 83, 135-8
divorce see also stridhan
cause of, barrenness, 63n doxa, Bourdieu's notion of, 58-9, 458, 498
divorced women and land management, challenging/counteracting of, 77, 437,
127, 130 465
divorced women, property rights/claims Dreze, J., 28n, 37n, 40, 202n, 255n, 256,
of, 215, 228n, 244, 246, 247, 248, 257n, 267-8, 295, 305
345, 352, 479 Dube, L., 289, 409
divorcee remarriage, of women, 93, 114, Dube, S. C , 397
117, 142, 145, 267, 317, 319, 322, Dubey, B. R., 349n, 354
349, 352-3, 355, 407-13 Dumont, L., 119
regional variations in, 407-13 duolocal residence (duolocality), post-
and Draft Hindu Code, 209 marital, 107, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119,
freedom to initiate, women's, 116, 119, 140, 141, 143, 288, 289, 317
147, 149, 319, 349, 352 definition of, 505
implications of, for women, 1, 14, 30, 40, Dyson, T., 376n
115, 116, 117,260,290
incidence of, economic theories, 53, 435n
commonly practiced, 93, 107, 178, 260 education, 4, 14n, 29, 44, 163, 164, 310n
limited information on, 322 educational programme, 78, 484, 493
rarely practiced, 119, 125, 169, 352 gender gap/bias in, 72, 77
variation, by community and region, and women, 5, 8, 29, 43, 44, 45n, 76, 112,
558 Index
education, village, 123, 152, 261, 262, 263, 272, 290,

and women, (cont.) 291,311,317,318,325,328,330,
174, 196, 205n, 207, 23In,269, 282, 331,343,453,454,474,486
291, 304, 358, 359, 450, 459, 460,
461,483,493,497 fall-back position, 41, 54, 56, 57, 72, 74n,
see also literacy, and Mahila Samakhya 81, 107, 147, 178, 261, 295, 296, 323,
(Education for Women's Equality) 435,464,471,481,483
Programme factors affecting, in family, 60, 61, 62-5
efficiency, 34, 54, 72, 309, 470 factors affecting, in community, 76-7
argument for women's land rights, 33-8, and famines, 70
42, 43, 207, 470 notion of, 54-5
in resource use, 37, 53n false consciousness/perception, 57, 58,
election manifestos, of political parties, and 422-4, 433, 435, 437
policies on women, 45n 'family' needs, women's notion of, 433-4
Elgar, Z., 265, 267, 271, 272, 273, 282 famine(s), 63, 70, 259
Ellickson, J., 228, 258n, 260n, 283, 385, 398 and bargaining approach, 70
employment Bengal 1943, 18n, 70,438,439
and farm size, 26n entitlement approach to, 61
in non-farm sector, 25-7 and the landless, 31
in organized sector, 25 and women, 63
self-employment, 25n, 26 FAO, 5
and women, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11,13, 25, 26, farm size
29n, 30, 33, 40, 43, 44, 45n, 63, 65, and adoption of new technology, 34-5
69, 70, 174, 183, 265, 304, 305, 432, and agricultural productivity, 9, 34-5, 36,
436, 437, 468, 494 470
see also labour force and non-farm earnings, 26n
empowerment, of women, 2, 39, 43, 44, 465, farm-size effect, 34
497, 498, 499 Fatima, G., 401
definition of, 39, 41-2 Feldman, S., 277n
argument for women's land rights, 38-42, female-headed households, 2, 8n, 27, 30, 33,
470 191,312,313,469,470
endogamy incidence of, 30n
caste, 138 female seclusion, see seclusion, of women
clan, 138 Femia, J. V., 59n, 60n
village, 83, 107, 108, 124, 152, 286, 289, Fernandes, W., 64n
311, 324, 325-30, 331, 336, 337, 368, fertility, 475
369, 370, 372, 379-89 decisions about, 68, 69, 148, 319
regional variations in, 325-8, 368-70, rate, 310,476
372 total fertility rate (TFR), 317, 320, 321,
Engels, F. A., 12-13, 146 323,359-61,368,370-1
Enslin, E. M. W., 310, 426, 427n, 457, definition of, 317n
465-6 regional variation in, 359-61, 368-70
entitlement, 61, 62, 283 Firestone, S., 14n
Epstein, S., 383, 395 Fisher, W. F., 399
Everett, J., 210, 231n Folbre, R , 51,53, 435n
environment Forbes, G., 205, 208, 460, 461
movements, 41 n forest(s), 2, 21-3, 25, 37-8, 49, 62, 63, 102,
protection of, 503 114, 154, 155, 156, 157,158, 181,
and women, 37n, 38 317, 320, 324, 365-7, 368, 426, 442,
see also Chipko movement 454-6,457,471,473
equality area under, 23n, 362-3, 365-6, 367-9,
argument for women's land rights, 38-9, 371
470 regional variation in, 362-3, 366,
exogamy 367-9,371,375
caste, 330 deforestation/decline in, 23n, 64, 158, 457
clan, 103, 107, 162 produce of, 21, 37, 63, 69n, 102, 104, 117,
Index 559
156, 157 division/segregation of space, 268, 269,

reforestation, 25, 156, 487 298, 300, 310, 378, 457, 475
struggles relating to, and women, gap, in development, 3, 4
455-6 ideology, 11, 14, 15-16, 72, 73, 81, 179,
see also Chipko movement 285, 464n
food, intra-household allocation of, 28, and property, 15-16
426, 433 interests, 221, 437-8, 449, 451
Fortes, M., 212n needs
Fox, R., 212n strategic, 42-3, 495
fragmentation, of land, 9, 34-5, 36, 160, practical, 42-3, 495
182,215,216, 222, 225, 470, 484 gender, cultural/social construction of, 51,
distinguished from farm size, 34n 52, 265, 278, 299, 307, 308, 378, 422,
Frankel, F., lOn, 277n 453, 458, 459n, 477, 489, 492
Fraser, N., 59n, 421, 465-6 see also gendering, of behaviour, and
Freed, R. S., 271 under ideology
Freed, S. A., 271 gender differentiation, among peasantry,
Fukutake, T., 391, 393 24, 165
Fuller, C. J., HOn, 149, 169, 173, 176-7, 'gender-in-itself, 437n
179, 180, 429-30 'gender-for-itself, 437n
Furer-Haimendorf, C. Von., 117, 257n, gender progressive/retrogressive, definition
279n, 394 of, 9n
Furer-Haimendorf, E. Von., 394 gender relations
Fyzee, A. A. A., 212n, 234 term, as used here, 51-2
and bargaining
Gaiha, R., 31 n in household/family, 53-71
Gala, C./Chetna, 37, 40, 445n, 452-3 outside household/family, 71-81
Galanter, M., 199, 278n gendering, of behaviour, 269, 298-9, 307,
Gandhi, Mahatma, M. K., 460n 308, 319
Gandhi, N., 225, 260n, 485 gender-transfer effect, 34, 36, 470
game theory, 55 geographic area, 50
Gardner, K., 385, 432 Ghodake, R. D., 65n
Garos, 37n, 64n, 69, 83, 84, 1 0 1 ^ , 105, Gilbert, K., 242-3, 245n
106, 107, 108, 109, 132, 133, 139, Gill, R., 262, 346
140, 141, 142, 146, 148, 153, 154-68, Gilmartin, D., 92n, 229, 230n
179, 180, 194-7, 285, 286, 290, 312, gini coefficient, 31n, 320, 324, 362, 363, 365,
336, 337, 394, 404, 409, 433, 472, 487 371
and code of conduct towards women, Goetz, A. M., 34n, 63n, 79n, 312, 485
104n Goldstein, M. C , 399
cultivation practices Good, A., 397
traditional, 102, 104 Goody, J., 17, 133-5, 137, 138-9, 251, 343
changes in, 155-7 Goonesekere, S., 125, 132, 185, 237n,
and food surplus for sale, 104 238-42
inheritance practices Goswami, M. C , 162
traditional, 102-3 gotra, 330, 336
changes in, 159-62 definition of, 89n
marriage practices Gough, K., 98, 109n, 110, 11 In, 112, 113n,
traditional, 1 0 3 ^ 115-9, 149, 170, 176, 178-9, 257-8,
changes in, 162-4 288, 295n, 396-7, 426
women's role in economy Gould, H. A., 330, 380, 391
traditional, 104 Government of Bangladesh (GOB), 7, 259n
changes in, 158-9, 168 Government of India (GOI), 6-7, 24n, 25,
gender 31, 43, 49n, 154, 157-8, 160, 208-10,
bias, in agricultural extension, 312 212n, 220n, 226, 259, 277n, 286,
differentials, in spending, 29 377n, 500n
division of labour, 4, 37n, 42, 51n, 59, Government of India Act of 1935, 206, 216
107, 120, 122, 150, 158, 167, 443, 448 Government of Kerala, 168n
560 Index
Government of Madras, 170-1 Hindu Code Bill (HCB), 193, 198, 210-11,
Government of Nepal, 259n 230,231,421
Government of Pakistan, 8, 259n Draft Hindu Code, 208-10
Government of Sri Lanka, 3 In Hindu law, 84, 85, 227n, 231, 246, 248, 255
Goyal, R. P., 349n formulation of, contemporary, 199-211
gram panchayat, see panchayat and property rights under, 211-5
Grameen Bank, 36, 43, 66, 68, 464, 470, 489 see also Dayabhaga, Mitakshara, and
Gramsci, A., 59 shastras,
grassroots activists/groups/initiatives/ Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, 210n
movements, 43n, 48, 319, 368, 434, Hindu Succession Act (HSA) of 1956, 6n,
437,453,455,458,468,491,495, 175, 210, 211-8, 222, 223, 226, 247,
496,502 265, 269, 468, 478, 502
relating to forests and village commons, gender inequities in, 214-5
455 men's responses to, 271-2
and women's land rights, 2, 368, 491 women's knowledge of, 269
women's ability to join, 319, 491 women's responses to, 265, 311
Greeley, M., 268 Hindu undivided family, 214
green revolution, 34n, 312, 470 Hindu Widow's Marriage Act of 1856, 202
pre-, 34, 35 Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act of
Greenough, P. R., 62 1937,206,208,216
Gross National Product (GNP), 50 Hinton, W., 40
Grossholtz, J., 183 Hirschman, A. O., 74n
group consciousness, among women, Hitchcock, J. T., 262n, 272, 297, 301, 305,
437-8, 453 386,391,399
group organization, among women, Hoddinott, J., 55n
importance of, 42-3, 453, 462, 465 Hoefer, A., 242
Guha, R., 23n, 455n Holcombe, L., 187n
Gulati, L., 29 Holmberg, D. H., 387, 399
Gunawardena, A. N., 36n, 69, 148, 401, Hoque, K. S., 283, 293, 294n, 385, 398
430n Horowitz. B., 431, 432
Gupta, G. R., 379 Hossain, M., 36, 37n
Gurdon, P. R. T., 105n Hossain, Rokeya S., 46In
Guyer, J. I., 434n household(s)
assumptions regarding, 3, 5, 54n, 497
Haekel,J., 391,392 economic models, 8, 55
Haggblade, S., 26n Hu, C. T., 391
Hanafi School of Sunni law, 99n, 131, 199, Hunt, H. I., 304, 462, 465
233-6,241 Hunter, W. W., 107
see also Islamic law, and Muslim law Huq, F., 397
Hanger, J., 69n
Hara, T., 398 ideology, 11, 13n, 15, 16, 39, 41, 51, 62n,
Harbison, S. F., 385, 398 78, 164, 169, 173, 184, 193, 248, 266,
Harder, G. M., 306, 385, 398 276, 277, 285, 289, 303, 307, 310n,
Harper, J. W., 354, 383 313, 314, 369, 421, 422, 423, 432,
Harriss, B., 28n, 29n 443, 444, 450, 451, 458, 459, 461,
Harriss, J., 27 462, 464, 468, 474, 48In, 483, 492,
Hart, G., 53, 424n, 436n 494, 496, 500
Hartmann, B., 249n, 261, 268, 293 ideological constructions of gender, 16,
Hartmann, H., 435n 48, 458, 459, 462
Hastings, Warren, 199 ideological contestations/struggles, 16,
Hayley, F. A., 122-3, 124, 182-3 60,444,461,464,483,492
Hazell, P. B., 26n see also gender ideology
hegemony, Gramsci's notion of, 59, 60n illegitimacy, and wedlock, varying notions
Hensman, R., 72n of, 17n, 145
Hershman, P., 266, 311, 350-51 Indian Succession Act (ISA) 1925, 224, 225,
Hill, P., 383, 395 226,235
Index 561
Indian Succession (Amendment) Act 1991, Jones, S. K., 331

226 Joshi, P. C , lOn
Indrapala, K., 127n Joshi, P. K., 24n
inheritance, types Joshi, Sharad, 452
definition of, 8n Joshi, V. V., 207
traditional, regional mapping of, 100, 372 juini, 245-6
see also bilateral inheritance, matrilineal joint titles to land, see under land titles
inheritance, patrilineal inheritance,
and women inheriting land in Kabeer, N., 265, 284, 292, 294, 296, 384,
practice 461-2
infrastructural/institutional support, for Kala, C. V., 177
women farmers, 33, 315, 488-90 Kandiyoti, D., 436n
inscriptions, in temples Kane, P. V., 85n, 86-8, 90, 91n, 93n, 200
and evidence of women's land rights, Kandyan(s), 126, 132, 185, 238
94-7 see also Sinhalese
and land donations by women, 94-6 Kapadia, K., 344, 397, 410, 418
International Decade for women, 77 K a r , P . C , 102, 156, 158-60, 163
International Women's Year, 243n karanavan/karnar, 112-3, 114, 116, 117,
Ishwaran,K.,271,395 118, 148, 150, 151, 170, 171-2, 174,
Islam, A. A. K. M., 384 178,295,317
Islam, R., 26n, 27 karewa, 202-3
Islam, S., 293 Karim, A. H. M. Z., 273n, 384
Islamic law, 99n, 131, 212n, 227-37, 232, Karve, I., 273n, 316, 336, 343, 376
238, 240-1, 242n, 246, 247, 248, 283, Kaul, M., 22
474,478, 479 Kazmi, N. A., 3In
and British court rulings, 227-30 Kelkar, G., 275-6, 486
and customary practice, 227-9, 472 Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill of 1957, 175
devolution under, 233-7 Kerala Agrarian Relations Act (KARA)
and matrilineal Mappilas, 288-9 1960, 175
and matrilineal Moors, 240-1 Kerala Joint Hindu Family System
see also Hanafi School of Sunni law, and (Abolition) Act 1976, 176, 214
Ithna Ashari School of Shia law, Kerala Land Reforms Act 1963, 175
Muslim law, and the Shariat Khaleque, K., 154n
Ithna Ashari School of Shia law, 99n, 233 Khan, S., 427
Iyer, Justice Krishna, 221 Khandwalla, K., 207-8
Iyer,K. V. K., 112 Khasis, 83, 101, 105-7, 108, 133, 140, 141,
142, 144, 146-8, 149, 150, 151, 165,
Jaffna Matrimonial Rights and Inheritance 286, 394, 409
Ordinance of 1911,239 cultivation practices, traditional, 107
Jaffna Tamils, see Tamils, of Jaffna inheritance practices
Jahan, Roushan, 482n traditional, 105-6
Jahangir, B. K., 3O3n, 385 now, 286
Jain, S., 33n marriage practices
Jalal,A., 231n, 232 traditional, 107
Jannuzi, F. T., 31 now, 286
Jansen, E. G., 272, 283, 294n, 385 women's role in economy, traditional,
Jats, 202, 203n, 228-9, 273n, 274, 305, 329, 107
351,352n Khatry, P. K., 387
Jay, E. J., 381,392 Kilkelly, K., 34n, 312
Jayawardena, K., 204n kinship, 10, 16, 18, 44, 47, 52n, 54, 64, 113,
Jeffrey, R., 173, 176 131, 144, 160, 179, 180, 191,228,
Jehangir, K. N., 305 229, 230, 264, 284, 285, 330, 337,
jhum, 102-4, 107, 108, 109, 154, 155-8, 376,434, 469
160-2, 163, 164, 167, 168, 196 in Punjab, British assumptions about,
Jodha, N. S., 22n, 23 228-31
Jones, R. L., 353, 386 'universes', 343
562 Index
Kishwar, M., lOn, 254, 274-6, 313, 431-2, information on, 324
481,483 skewdness in, 3In, 476, 491
Klass, M., 327 fragmentation of, see fragmentation
Knox, R., 126 management by women's groups, 488-9
Kochar, V. K., 393 market for, 18, 73, 173, 179, 181
Koda, K., 398 as mortgageable asset, 32, 469
Kolenda,P., 53n, 391 mortgage, right of, 129
Koranic heir, 234, 236 and poverty, 30, 31
Kozlowski, G. C , 99, 228 in private hands, estimate of, 24, 472
Krause, I-B., 18n privatization of communal, 23, 24, 49,
Kulkarni, S. W., 22n 109, 159, 164, 167, 290, 455, 457,
Kumar, D., 95 473, 488, 497
Kumar, R., 72n record of, ownership, 252, 255, 257, 279,
Kumar, S. K., 29 293, 294n, 4 8 ^ 5
Kurin, R., 301,388,401 redistribution of, 5, 34, 78, 446
Kutty, A. R., 289, 397 as saleable asset, 32, 469
sale, right of, 109, 11 On, 129
labour force, 25, 29 sale of, 18, 173, 181, 191, 259, 284, 293,
participation by women in, 11, 12, 13, 25, 294, 487
165, 167,319,322,459,476 scarcity of, 140, 154, 159, 165, 167, 168,
wages from, and child nutrition, 29-30 181-2, 191, 193, 288, 292, 320, 324,
data biases concerning, 323 361-7,368,475,476
percent, by sector, 50 struggles over, 46, 444, 445, 450, 453n,
Rural Female Labour Force 454, 487
Participation Rate (RFLFPR), 317, land-fragmentation effect, 34
319,321,322,368-9,371,374 land reform, 8-10, 23, 34, 44, 65, 109, 156,
regional variations in, 355-8, 370, 374 174-5, 180, 193, 215, 221, 226, 257n,
see also agricultural labour(er) 280, 324, 434, 453n, 469, 474n, 476,
Lahiri, B., 158 487,490,491,498
Lakshmanna, C , 394 legislation, 174-5, 199, 478, 480
Lai, I., 280, 456 anomalies and gender inequities in,
Lalita, K., 441-2 215-23,247
Lalung(s), 83, 101, 108-9, 140, 141, 142, see also ceiling on land ownership
144, 165,286,336,394 land rights, for women
Land independent vs. joint (with husbands),
ceiling on, see ceiling on land ownership 3n, 20-1
communally owned, see communal land meaning of, 3n, 19-21
as component of diversified livelihood women's need for, 27^15
system, 32 see also under land titles
concentration of, 31, 320n, 362, 368 land tenure, 21, 47, 11 On, 175
regional variations in, 371 land titles,
see also gini coefficient and access to agricultural technology and
control over information, 34
dimensions of, 292 Bodhgaya struggle, women receiving, 39,
critical importance of, 13-14 280, 447
and credit, 32, 33, 469 and credit access, 33, 470
degradation of, 24n election manifestos, promise to grant
disputes over, 18, 172, 182, 191, 269, 274, women, 45n
281,283,288,498 joint (with husband), 5, 443
see also under conflict vs. independent rights for women, 3n,
distribution of, by government, 5, 8-9, 20-1
24, 447, 476, 486n, 497 for individual women vs. women's group,
to women, 6n, 7, 9, 11,21 21,487-8
distribution of operational holdings, 3 In male bias in distribution of, 2, 8-9, 159,
distribution of ownership holdings, 3In, 167,168,290,476,497
364 opposition to granting women, 280, 447,
Index 563
449 389, 400, 425

record of, see land, record of Lingat, R., 84, 92-3, 200
Sixth Five Year Plan, India, and women, Lipton, M., 3In, 35, 65n
5 literacy/illiteracy, 7, 50, 66, 78, 179, 265,
Seventh Five Year Plan, India, and 282, 289, 293, 304, 306, 312, 314,
women, 5 319-20, 359, 428, 448, 457, 475, 476,
and women's empowerment, 39-41 490, 494, 497
landlessness, 164, 182, 284, 294n, 320, 324, Rural Female Literacy Rate (RFLR),
362-3, 367, 368, 369 319, 321, 322, 356, 358-9, 368, 371
landless households, 10, 22n, 26n, 28n, regional variations in, 358-9, 368-9,
29, 31, 39, 64-5, 361, 362-3, 366, 371
368-9, 371, 375, 476, 491 Total Literacy Programme, 497-8
regional variations in, 362-3, 366, livelihood(s), 2, 17, 22, 24-5, 27, 99, 100,
368-9, 371, 375 101, 118, 140, 158, 162, 168, 309,
landless labour(er), 1, 279, 445, 446, 453n 314, 320, 343, 455, 471
landless women, 17n, 32, 40, 61, 69, 178, diversified livelihood system, and land,
280, 304, 441, 457, 469, 471, 490, 495 32, 469
landless men, 2, 489 non-land-based, 11, 24-7
landless, the, 8n, 23, 64, 65, 66, 175, 497 Logan, W., 1 lOn
laws of inheritance Longhurst, R., 35n
Christian, 221-3 Lukacs, G., 422n
customary, 95n, 201-2, 204, 213n, 229n, Luschinsky, M. S., 265, 269, 299n, 311, 314,
232,235, 236, 237,238,241, 242, 380, 391, 425-6
247, 271,279n,472
General Law, Sri Lanka, 185, 237, 238-9, MacDorman, N., 330, 35In
241, 242n, 246, 479 Macfarlane, A., 399
Hindu, see Hindu law MacKinnon, C , 79n
Islamic/Muslim, see Islamic law Madan, T. N., 347n, 379
Kandyan, 122, 125, 185, 237, 238, 241 Mahalanobis, P. C , 18n
Law Commission, 125n Maher, V., 434n
Parsi, 225-6 Mahila Aghadi, of Shetkari Sanghatana,
Roman-Dutch, 125, 185-6, 190, 237, 238, lOn, 69n, 452, 453n, 486
239 see also Shetkari Sanghatana
see also customary practices, Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti (MARS), 439,
Aliayasantana, Dayabhaga, Hanafi 440, 441
School of Sunni law, Ithna Ashari Mahila Samakhya [Equality for Women's
School of Shia law, Maluki Ain, Education] Programme, 43, 495,
Marwnakkattayam, Mitakshara, the 497-9
Shariat, and Thesawalami Mahmood, T., 480n
Laxminarayana, H. D., 383, 395 Maine, Sir H. S., 200
Leach, E. R., 389, 401 maintenance
Leslie, J., 30n for divorced women, 244, 260, 26In
Lessinger, J., 309 for widows, 97, 117, 123, 244, 275
Levinson, J. F., 28n for Santal widows, 275
levirate, 202-3, 228n, 257n, 273, 274n, 318, Maiti, A. K., 313
322, 354, 415-20, 502 Maitra, Pandit, L. K., 210n
regional variations in, 415-20 Majumdar, D. N., 108n, 155, 156, 159-60,
see also niyoga 162-3, 262, 380, 391
Lewis, O., 262, 329, 349, 379, 428 Malabar Marriage Act of 1896, 171
life estate/interest, definition of, 87n Malabar Marriage Commission, 170
life expectancy, 50 Report of, 1891, 170-1
Libbee, M. J., 321n, 331, 376 Malhotra, K. C , 381
Lim, L. Y. C , 427n Maluki Ain, 242-6, 247, 250n, 479
limited estate/interest, definition of, 87n Mandelbaum, D. G., 376
Lindberg, S., 397 Manikymba, P., 500-1
Lindholm, C , 252n, 273n, 302, 345, 349, Manimala, 2, 39, 280, 444-50, 445n, 451,454n
564 Index
Manusmriti, 85, 210 Mayne, J. D., 87n, 90, 96, 120

Mappilas, 84, 109, 118-9, 133, 140, 141, 142, Mayne, S., 191
148, 150, 173n, 227, 233, 288-9, 295 Mazumdar, V., 4n, 5n, 51n, 434, 457, 498
and Islamic law, 233, 288-9 McCarthy, F. E., 277n
of the Lakshadweep Islands, 119 McCormack, W., 396
of north Kerala, 118 McGilvray, D. B., 130-1, 288
March, K. S., 307-8 mehr, 227-8, 260, 345, 352
Maritime Provinces, 125n Mehta, H., 211
marketed surplus Mencher, J. P., 28n, 29n, 149, 153, 171,
effect of farm size on, 34-5, 173n, 176-8
and women farmers, 36n Menken, J., 28In
marriage practices, 16, 47, 83, 84, 93, 105n, Menon, G., 64n
110, 122n, 131, 134, 138, 163, Merry, D. J., 37n, 280, 295-6, 336
169-70, 176, 177, 180, 182, 238, 476 Merry, K. L., 303, 401, 428
distance, 262-3, 291, 311, 318, 321n, 322, Mies, M., 17n, 41, 222, 495
325, 331-5, 343, 358, 368-9, 370, Miller, B. D., 376
376, 379-89 Miller, R. E., 289
regional variations in, 331-5, 370, Millet, K., 14
379-89 Minault,G.,231n,461
marriage proposal, 103^4, 163, 194-7 Minturn, L., 262n, 272, 297, 300, 305, 391
see also under binna marriage, close-kin, Miranda, A., 260
cross-cousins, diga marriage, Mitakshara, 84—91, 95, 206, 208, 209,
endogamy, exogamy, parallel 212-3, 214, 247, 256, 296, 472, 478
cousins, post-marital residence, and Mohan, B. V., 131, 240n
sapinda Molnar, A., 136, 257-8, 386, 399
Married Women's Property Ordinance of Molyneux, M., 13n, 42
1923, 186-7 Moore, E., 278
Marriott, M., 381 Moore, H. L., 55n, 464n
Marumakkatayam, 112, 170, 175, 233 Moore, M. A., 113
and the Hindu Succession Act, 211,213 Moore, M. P., 376n
Mashreque, M. S., 399 Moors, 84, 122, 131-2, 133, 135, 138, 141,
Mathur, K. S., 392 142, 143, 145, 148, 240-1, 288-9,
Mathur, P. G. R., 429-30 337, 402, 406, 413, 480
matrilineal communities/groups/tribes, 8, inheritance practices
45, 48, 81, 83, 100, 102, 108, 109, traditional, 131-2
117, 120, 132, 134, 136, 139, 140, now, 288
141, 142, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, and Islamic law, 240-1
151, 154, 165, 180, 192, 211, 212n, marriage practices
233, 249, 253, 277, 285, 289, 290, traditional, 131-2
291, 295, 317, 336, 368, 377, 433n, now, 288
472, 473, 474, 476, 481 women's role in cultivation, 132
matrilineal inheritance, 9, 48, 69, 83, 84, 97, Morgen, S., 39n
98, 99, 102, 108, 112, 113, 116, 117, Moris, J., 69n
118, 119, 131, 132, 134, 140, 141, Morrow. C , 388, 401
142, 150, 151, 159, 160, 164, 176, Moser, C. O. N., 42
227, 241, 246, 317, 358, 472 movements, see Bodhgaya movement,
definition of, 8n Chipko movement, peasant
matrilocal residence (matrilocality), post- struggles, Tebhaga movement,
marital, 102, 107, 108, 114, 118, 119, Telangana movement, ^ w o m e n ' s
131, 140, 141, 143, 146, 147, 154, movement
161, 162, 163, 164, 167, 168, 288, mudisam, 127-8, 130, 239^0
317, 325, 433 Mukund, K., 94-5
definition of, 506 Mulla, D. F., 212n, 231n, 232n
matrilineal descent, see descent Mumtaz, K., 496n
Mayer, A. C , 250, 255, 257-8, 264, 266, Munck, V. C. de, 150, 288, 337, 402
271-2, 284, 330n, 381, 392 Murray, S. C , 297, 302, 305
Index 565
Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961, marriage practices

236,352 traditional, 111-2
Muslim law, 98n, 99n, 236, 237, 240 changes in, 168-71, 174, 177-8
see also Islamic law, Hanafi School of women's role in cultivation,
Sunni law, and Ithna Ashari School traditional, 112
of Shia law Nehru, Jawaharlal, 210
Muslims, matrilineal, 84n, 118, 120, 131, Nelson, J. H., 200n
135n, 238, 240, 288, 289, 300, 473 Nepali, G. P., 399
see also Mappilas, and Moor(s) neolocal residence (neolocality), post-
Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application marital, 134, 140, 169, 178, 191, 238,
Act, 1937, 230, 232 286,317,325
definition of, 506
Naidu, Padmaja, 198 Newell, W.H., 250, 271,330
Naidu, T. S., 395 niyoga, 93n
Nakane, C , 107, 109, 147, 157n, 158, see also levirate
161-3, 177, 194n, 286 non-farm sector/activities, 25-7, 31, 33, 64,
Nambudiri(s), 110-1, 113, 114, 169, 170, 161,469,470,471
171n, 211,405 and access to land, 26n, 64
women's resistance, 429-30 and farm size, 26n
women's organizations, 205n and products, 38
Nandwana, R., 255, 279n non-land-based livelihood, 11, 24-27
Nandwana, S., 255, 279n non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
Nangudi Vellalars, 8n, 83, 109, 119-20, 131, types of, 62n
133, 135, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143,480 relationship with the State, 77, 78, 79n,
Narayan,Jayaprakash, 445 495, 497
Nash, J. F., 55 role in promoting women's land rights,
Nath, J. N., 251, 283, 385, 399, 425 484, 489
Nathan, D., 275-6 and women's bargaining power, 62, 65,
National Commission for Women, 6 66,76
Act of 1990, 6 North-West Frontier Province Muslim
National Council for Women in India Personal Law (Shariat) Application
(NCWI), 205, 209 Act, 1935, 230n, 274
National Perspective Plan for Women,
1988-2000,6 Obeyesekere, G., 123-5, 137, 181, 184^6,
National Sample Survey (NSS), 3In, 323, 190-92
325 Oldenberg, V. T., 99
Organization of, 25n Omvedt, G., 1,30,452
National Seminar on Land Reform, India, Ong, A., 427n, 430n
1989, 6, 53 Operation Barga, 9n, 45n, 257n, 280-1,
Naveed-I-Rahat, 303, 389 453n
Nayar, P. K. B., 359n Orenstein, H., 393
Nayars, 82, 83, 84, 101, 109-15, 117, 118, Osella, C , 177n
119, 133, 140, 141, 142, 146, 148, Osella, F., 177n
149, 150, 151, 153, 167-80, 184, 193,
205n, 233, 285, 295, 317, 322, 341, Pachauri, P., 5O3n
359,396,410,426,472 panchayat, 5, 51n, 276n, 277-9, 301, 310,
see also Nayars of central Kerala 452, 453n, 457, 483, 485-6, 500-1
Nayars of central Kerala see also, caste council, and village council
cultivation practices, traditional, 112 Panchayati Raj, 277-8, 452, 500, 501n
estate management, traditional, 112-3 Papanek, H., 434n
inheritance practices Papola, T. S., 26n
traditional, 112 parallel cousins,
changes in, 171-7 definition of, 505
land tenure system marriages between, 274, 336, 398, 400
traditional, 110-1 veiling before, 118
changes in, 172-5 Parashar, A., 201, 207n, 230
566 Index
Parry, J. P., 272, 330, 390 374

Paruck, P. L., 225 rural, 50
Pastner, C. M., 252, 260n, 269-70, 273, 300, post-marital residence, 17, 45, 48, 82, 83,
342, 344, 400 107, 109, 117, 118, 124, 131, 133,
Pastner, S. L., 400 134,139-43, 146, 160, 162, 167, 169,
Patel, R., 228n, 270, 273, 282 182, 189-90, 250, 286, 288, 290, 291,
Patel, Vallabhbhai, 210 314, 317-8, 321, 325, 331, 376, 450,
patrilineal communities/groups, 53n, 83, 84, 482, 486
97, 98, 109, 126, 136n, 137, 144, 146, cross-regional variations in, 314, 325-31
148, 149, 152, 162, 191,205,207, links with women's land rights, 48, 82,
212n, 227, 247, 249, 260, 271, 282, 109, 124, 134, 140-3, 145, 249-50,
290,296,299,317,318,336,377, 286-7, 291, 317-8, 376-7, 486
421, 433n, 473, 474, 476, 486 see also ambilocal residence, avunculocal
patrilineal inheritance, 48, 69, 116, 150, residence, duolocal residence,
228, 472 matrilocal residence, neolocal
definition of, 8n residence, patrilocal residence,
patrilocal residence (patrilocality), post- uxorilocal residence, virilocal
marital, 69, 75, 82, 140, 143, 147, residence, endogamy, and under
152,261,311,317,318,325,433, exogamy
453, 454, 474, 475, 486 Prabhat, 454n
definition of, 506 Pradhan, B., 267, 353, 387, 399
pattas, 159, 162 Prasad, B.G., 70
patwari, 279-80, 484, 485 Prasad, P., 96
Peach, J.T., 31 Prasad, Dr. Rajendra, 210
peasant struggles, 10, 438, 451, 458, 492, pre-marital sex, 104, 138, 141, 145, 317,
496,503 319,349-50,370,403-6
see also Bodhgaya movement/struggle, regional variations in tolerance of,
Shetkari Sanghatana, Tebhaga 349-50, 370, 403-6
movement, and Telangana Prindle, C. S., 398, 482n
movement public policy, 2, 7-9, 42, 44, 45, 200, 203n
Pehrson, R. N., 400 and gender needs/interests, 9, 42
Percival, R., 82 and state rhetoric, 498
Peters, P. E., 434n and women's land rights, 2, 7, 8, 45
Pettigrew, J., 351 Punjab Alienation of Land Act, 1900,
pewa, 243-4, 246 228
Phadiyas, 84, 117, 118, 132, 141-2 purdah
Phylactou, M. C , 254 campaign against, 460-1, 492
Pieris, R., 125, 126 changing attitude towards, 463
planning, 2, 3, 4, 33, 44, 499 and economic necessity, contradictions,
Planning Commission, India, 5-6, lOn, 53, 377
212n,281 history of, 458-9
Plans, Five Year ideology of, 269, 298, 299, 303, 377
of Bangladesh, 7 implications of, 304^7, 355, 357
of India, 4-7, 25 managing land under, 96
of Nepal, 7 restricts ability to claim land, 268-70
of Pakistan, 8 restricts ablity to self-manage land, 298,
Playfair, M. A., 104n, 155 304-7,311
ploughing, taboo against women, 312-4, regional and social variations in practice
486 of, 298-304, 307, 321, 344^-5, 346-8,
Plunkett, F. T., 390 368-9, 370, 373
Pocock, D., 392 veiling, 299-300
polyandry, 126, 182, 184, 193 women contest/redefine, practice of,
population 460-4
density of, 362-3, 365, 367, 368, 371, 374 Puthenkalam, S. J., Father J., 171n, 172,
totals, 50 178
regional variation in, 362-3, 365, 368-9, putrikaputra, 87-8, 138n
Index 567
Qadir, R., 293 Saha, V., 157n

Qadir, S. A., 385 Saikia,P.D., 157-8, 161
Qadir, S. R., 259 sambandham, 111, 112, 113, 169-71, 172,
Qureshi, M. A., 228n 174
Sanyal, B., 79n, 497n
Radhakrishnan, P., 173n sapinda
Raha, M. K., 393 definition of, 88n
Rahman, O. M., 28In and marriage prohibition, 89n
Rahman, R. I., 68 Saradamoni, K., 175, 222
Raj, B., 70 Sarkar, J., 393
Raj, K. N., 65 Sarkar, L., 204
Rajaure, D., 387 Sarkar, N. K., 181, 188
Ram, K., 131n, 136n, 309n, 314n sarpanch, 254n, 256, 452, 500, 501
Ramusack, B. N., 205n Sawers, S., 123
Rangachari, K., 112, 116-7 Schrijvers, J., 290
Rao, K. R., 382, 393 Schroeder, E., 257n
Rao, M. K., 395 Schroeder, R., 257n
Rattigan, W. H., 18n, 91n, 92, 95n, 98, 200, Schuler, S. R., 138, 250, 254, 399
203, 228-9 Scott, J. C , 62, 4 2 3 ^ , 433
Rau (Hindu Law) Committee, 205n, 208-11 seclusion, of women, 15, 16, 41, 43, 44, 57,
Ray, B., 460 64, 72, 75, 76, 78, 80, 113, 149, 265,
Reddy, P. C , 396 267, 268, 270., 278, 282, 285, 289,
Reddy, Ravi N., 442 297, 298, 303, 305, 307, 319, 321,
resettlement schemes/programmes, 9, 69n, 345, 369, 429, 458, 459n, 460, 473,
223, 290, 476, 487, 497 475, 476
residence, post-marital, see post-marital see also purdah
residence Seiz, J., 56n
resistance, by women, types of Self-Employed Women's Association
covert, 48, 52, 57, 60, 422, 425, 426, 430, (SEWA), 43, 66, 464, 489, 494
433, 436-7 self-interest, 53, 58, 59, 72, 423, 428, 432,
group-overt, 422, 436-8, 459, 490, 504 434^6
by groups, 438-58 women's perception of, 56-7, 58
individual-covert, 422, 436-7, 490, 504 Selvadurai, A. J., 18, 191,389
by individuals, 422-38 Sen, A. K., 28n, 32, 37n, 39n, 54n, 55-9,
overt, 52, 422, 430-2, 436-7 60n, 61-2, 358n, 423, 424, 430-31,
Resnick, S., 14n 433,437
Rikynti, 105 Sengupta, S., 28n
Riraid, 105-6,286 Sewa Mandir project, 456, 488
Risseeuw, C , 146, 182, 184, 186-7, 425 sex ratio(s), 28, 50, 179
Rizvi, S. H. M., 397 sexual
Robinson, M., 311,389, 502 conduct, 80, 244, 246, 479
Roldan, M., 7In exploitation, 438-9, 441, 443, 445
Rosenzweig, M. R., 18n freedom, 15,81,83, 107, 108, 111, 117,
Ross, A. D., 264 133, 149, 150, 154, 164, 167, 351-2,
Rouse, S. J., 303 358
Roy, A., 225n harassment, 76, 104n, 149n, 310, 439,
Roy, Mary, 21 In, 224, 225, 226 457, 495
Roy, P., 35n jokes, 429
Roy, R., 434 norms/mores, 107, 139, 147, 150, 165,
Roy, Sripati, 96 181
Rustomji, K. J., 95n, 203 taboos, 74n
Ryan, B., 190,353,389,401 sexuality, control over women's, 16-17, 18,
Ryan, J. G., 65n 140, 144-5, 23In, 299, 317, 319, 321,
345, 349, 355, 357, 368, 459n, 476,
Sachchidananda, 276n, 314n, 382, 393 494
Saha, N., 157 regional variations in, 368-9, 403-20
568 Index
Shah, A. M., 52n Strauss, J., 37n

Shah, N., 225, 261n, 485 stridhan, 89-91, 207, 224
Shaheed, F., 71n, 303, 461, 496n, 501n Stuers, C. V., 249n, 270
Shankar, K., 18n Sultan, M. M., 294
sharecroppers, 41n, 116, 279, 281, 438, 439, Sundaram, K., 31n
445, 446, 453n Sunni, 99n, 118, 131, 233-6, 241
sharecropped out, of land, 158, 280, 288, Syamchaudhuri, N. K., 108, 286
294, 296-7, 454
Shariat, the, 99, 119, 227, 230-3, 252, 271, Talbot, C , 94^5
282,285,289,293,472,479 tali, 111, 114, 116, 131, 169
Sharma, M. L., 70 Tambiah, H. W., 129, 130n
Sharma, R. S., 94n Tambiah, S. J., 123, 126, 135n, 137, 140,
Sharma, S. P., 329, 390 143, 181, 184, 188-90, 335, 337,
Sharma, U., 261, 313, 431 343n, 389, 401
shastras, 84, 85n, 87, 89, 92, 127, 137, Tamils, of Batticaloa, 130-1
199-201, 204, 237, 242 Tamils, of Jaffna, 19, 84, 120, 127-30, 132,
and actual practice, 91-7 133, 135, 138, 141, 142, 143, 144n,
upper-caste and elite bias in British 145, 149, 237, 238, 239-40, 241, 247,
interpretation of, 92, 201 287, 295, 349, 353, 389, 402, 406,
Shetkari sanghatana, lOn, 69n, 452, 453n, 413, 420, 479, 480, 486
485, 486, 492 inheritance practices, traditional, 127-30
Shia, 99n, 233-6 land ownership by women, today, 287
Shiva, V., 455n marriage practices
Siddiqui, K., 220n traditional, 130-1
Silva, de G. V. S., 453n today, 287-8
Silvertsen, D., 337, 383, 397 Taniguchi, S., 283
Singh, K. S., 322n taravad/tavazhi, 111-5, 116, 117, 118, 119,
Singh, R , 456 149, 150, 169, 170, 171—4, 175, 178,
Singh, T. R., 353n 179, 233, 288, 289
Sinhalese, 17n, 18n, 69, 82, 84, 101, 120, Tebhaga movement, 4 3 8 ^ 1 , 442, 443, 495
122-7, 132, 133, 137, 141, 142, 143, technology
145, 146, 147, 148, 153, 180-92, 193, class bias in transfer of, 34
237, 238-9, 240, 241, 247, 285, 286, gender bias in transfer of, 34, 168
290, 318, 322, 337, 349, 350, 352, male control over, 311-5
353, 355, 389, 401, 406, 413, 420, see also under agricultural
430n, 479, 482, 506 tehsildar, 279, 484, 485
inheritance practices Telangana movement, 438, 441—4, 495
traditional, 122-5 tenancy
changes in, 181-91 arrangements regarding, 19
marriage practices laws relating to, 215, 216-8, 223, 247,
traditional, 122-3, 125-6 443, 491
changes in, 182-3, 189-90 see also sharecroppers, and sharecropped
women's role in cultivation, 126-7, 192 out
Sircar, D. C , 96n Tendulkar, S., 31n
Sivaramayya, B., 87n, 222n, 224, 248, 478n Tharakan, N., 65
smarthavicharam, 429 thediathetam, 127-9, 239-40
smritis, 84-5, 92, 200 Thesawalami, 120, 127, 237, 239-40, 241,
Sopher, D. E., 376 247
Special Marriage Act of 1872, 226 Thomas, D., 29n
Special Marriage Act of 1954, 226, 235 Thompson, E. R., 23n
spirit possession, 426-7 Thomson, Justice H. B., 185
Srinivas, M. N., 74, 273n, 396 Thurston, E., 112, 116-7
Srinivasan, A., 94n Tibeto-Burman communities, 101, 136, 242,
Standing, H., 71, 279, 393 257, 267, 298, 307, 331, 337, 350,
Statization, of village commons and forests, 351, 353, 355, 472
23, 473 Tilakaratne, M. P., 147
Index 569
titles, see land titles, andpattas rare among Garos, 163

Tiyyar(s), 83, 109, 111, 113, 114, 115-6, reduction of, on BRAC members, 69
117, 118, 119, 133, 141, 142, 396, 410 threat of, 304, 310
Towards Equality, Report, 4n virilocal residence (virilocality), post-
Trautmann, T. R., 262n marital, 115, 122, 124, 130, 140, 141,
Travancore Christian Succession Act 1916, 142, 143, 165, 167, 178, 182, 190,
223-4 191,286,310,317,325
Tupper,CL.,91n, 98, 228-9 definition of, 506
Tyabji, F. B., 99n, 232n, 235 Vreeland III, H. H., 389, 400
Uberoi, P., 138n Wade, R., 75n

UN Food and Agricultural Organization, Wadhwa, D. C , 255n, 279n
4n Wadley, S. S., 266, 391
Uniform Civil Code, 207n, 479 Wallace, B. J., 18n
United Nations, 14n waqf, 99, 227
United Nations (UN) Decade for Women, wastelands, 49, 280, 456, 488
3,78 development of, 25, 487
Unni,K.R., 177-8,410 welfare argument/case
Unninathan, C. H. U., 346 for women's land rights, 27-33, 37, 38,
usufructuary rights/shares, 102, 106, 108, 42, 43, 207, 468-9
132, 140, 154, 254, 295, 472, 487 Weerasinghe, R., 191
Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and West Punjab Muslim Personal Law
Land Reforms Act 1950, 217n, 218 (Shariat) Application Act of 1948, 231
challenged in Supreme Court, 221 West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law
uxorilocal residence (uxorilocality), post- (Shariat) Application Act of 1962,
marital, 97, 122, 124, 130, 134, 141, 232,274, 468
143, 146, 147, 160, 161, 191,250, Westergaard, K., 265, 294, 304
251, 258, 271, 286, 289, 296, 317, White, S., 4n, 32n, 77, 251, 264, 284, 295,
325, 486 426, 482n
definition of, 506 Whitehead, A., 36, 134n
uxorilocal son-in-law, 139, 258, 275, 296, widow(s)
297, 486, 506 adoption by, of agnate's son, 250,258, 295
chastity, and inheritance rights,
Varghese, T. C , HOn, 171 201-2, 244, 246
Vatuk, S., 136n, 262n, 297n, 298n, 299, 324, cultivation/management of land by, 33,
330, 336, 344, 389 36n, 96, 126, 127, 130, 290, 297, 312,
village common land/ village commons 313,470
(VCs), 2 1 ^ , 25, 49, 62, 317, 320, and destitution/beggary, 1, 30, 259, 297
324, 368, 454, 455-6, 471, 488, 497 and government loans, 32
dependence on, by the poor and women, and kin support, 64, 264, 266, 268
22,63 and land, deprived of, 1, 2 9 3 ^
decline in, 23-4, 64, 455 and land claims, registration of, 256-7
see also land, privatization of land gifts by, to temples, 94-5
communal land grants to, 99
village council(s), and land inheritance/ownership, in
election to and land ownership, 41 practice, 40, 96, 191, 250, 252, 253,
women question judgement of, 464 254-9
women punished by, for ploughing, 313, and land management by, 96, 290, 297
486 and land sale, 293
see also caste council, clan council, and and land titles, 159
panchayat and living arrangements of, 268, 28In
violence, against women, 15, 20, 39, 43, and maintenance rights, 97, 117, 123,
23In, 275-6, 294, 297, 348-9, 449, 244,275
450,453,475,491,495 property rights of, in law, see laws of
campaign against, 440, 441, 456, 465, 494 inheritance
protection from, and the State, 77 and public land distribution to, 8, 447
570 Index
widows, remarriage of, 82, 92n, 93, 115, 290, 307, 490
117,128, 142,145, 149,169,201-4, agricultural extension services, 36n, 312
244, 267, 273n, 317, 319, 322, 349, agricultural inputs, 36, 306, 315, 470,
353-5, 370, 414-20, 459 475, 489
and inheritance rights, 144, 201-4, 206, agricultural technology, 34, 312, 315, 489
224, 244, 255 assets, and treatment in family, 68
see also laws of inheritance basic necessities, 28
regional variations in, 353-5, 370, brother's home, 263—4
414-20, cash/earnings/income, 23, 30, 67, 68, 69n,
see also karewa and levirate 158,265,312,425
widowhood child-care support, 63n
implications of, 14, 30, 57, 246, 260, 261 cooperatives, 306
incidence of, 257n, 259 credit, 33, 306, 470, 489, 494
and natal home, rights to return to, 115, economic institutions, 268
116, 117, 118, 123, 143,317,487 economic resources, 27, 30, 66, 67, 71,
social stigma of, 265, 267 469
widow-headed households, 8-9, 28In, 443, education, see under education
449, 497 employment, see under employment, and
Winters, J., 454 labour force
witch-hunting/killing, 275-6, 294 government officials, 66
Wolff, R., 14n information on laws, 269, 304, 319
Wolkowitz, C , 250n, 501 information on agricultural technology,
Wolpin,K.L, 18n 33^,36,319,475,489
women kin support, 70, 435, 469, 476
and control over land, difficulties faced land, see access to land
by, 292-315, 316 markets, 312
cooperatives of, 490 natal home, 261
contributions to family welfare by, 431 public space, 475
undervaluation of, 431-2 property, 227, 265, 443
knowledge of indigenous seeds, 37n, 312 Women's Action Forum (WAF), Pakistan,
and land purchase, barriers to, 259 465, 496n, 503
and land sale, 293, 294 women's groups/organizations, 3, 6-7, 9,
and land titles, see under land titles 10, 13, 15, 33, 62n, 65, 76, 77, 79, 80,
songs of, 1,344,427-8 205, 207-9, 211, 231, 232, 279, 310,
women, land cultivation by, 30, 33, 36n, 368, 421, 422, 451, 460, 464-5, 480,
104,107, 108, 116,117,126, 127, 481,488,491-8,500,503
130, 132, 148, 150, 158, 160, 161, Women's India Association (WIA), 205,
164, 165, 167, 192, 254, 276, 303, 460
312,443,450,454,470 women's movement, 3, 104n, 211, 298, 444,
women, land management by, 36n, 37, 96, 451,483,493,496,498
109,113,117,122, 132, 134,150, Working Women's Forum, India, 66
151, 250, 256n, 290, 351, 377, 473, World Conference on Agrarian Reform
488-90 and Rural Development
barriers to, 296-7, 298-315, 454, 486 (WCAARD), 5
joint, by group, 488-90
self-management, meaning of, 292 Yadav, K. S., 381,392
women, inherting land in practice, Yalman, N., 120, 125, 131, 135n, 137,
among marilineal and bilateral groups, 145-7, 189, 190, 192, 337, 352-3,
285-91 389, 402
among patrilineal groups Young, C. S. L., 305
barriers to, 260-82, 316-78, 475 Yunus, M., 293
claiming shares, 259, 2 8 2 ^
as daughters, 188, 249-54, 447, 454 Zaman, M. Q., 283, 293, 384, 398
as sisters, 250, 259 zamindari estates, 96, 256n
as widows, 250, 252, 254^9, 280, 447 Zeidenstein, S. A., 283, 293, 300, 304-6,
women's access to 425-6, 482n
administrative and judicial bodies, 282,
These monographs are published by the Syndics of Cambridge University Press in

association with the Cambridge University Centre for South Asian Studies. The
following books have been published in this series:
29 Ian Stone: Canal Irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological

Change in a Peasant Society
30 Rosalind O'Hanlon: Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatmas Jotirao Phute and
Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India
31 Ayesha Jalal: The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, The Muslim League and the Demand
for Pakistan
32 N. R. F. Charlesworth: Peasant and Imperial Rule: Agriculture and Agrarian
Society in the Bombay Presidency, 1850-1935
33 Claude Markovits: Indian Business and Nationalist Politics 1931-39. The
Indigenous Capitalist Class and the Rise of the Congress Party
36 Sugata Bose: Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics,
1919-1947
37 Atul Kohli: The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform
38 Franklin A. Presler: Religion Under Bureaucracy: Policy and Administration for
Hindu Temples in South India
39 Nicholas B. Dirks: The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom
40 Robert Wade: Village Republics: Economic Conditions for Collective Action in
South India
41 Laurence W. Preston: The Devs ofCincvad: A Lineage and State in Maharashtra
42 Farzana Shaikh: Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in
Colonial India 1860-1947
43 Susan Bayly: Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South
Indian Society, 1700-1900
44 Gyan Prakash: Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labour Servitude in Colonial
India
45 Sanjay Subrahmanyam: The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India
1500-1650
46 Ayesha Jalal: The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's Political
Economy of Defence
47 Bruce Graham: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Develop-
ment of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh
48 Dilesh Jayanntha: Electoral Allegiance in Sri Lanka
571
572 Cambridge South Asian Studies
49 Stephen P. Blake: Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India

1639-1739
50 Sarah F. D. Ansari: Sufi Saints and State Power: The Pirs ofSind, 1843-1947
51 Rajnarayan Chandavarkar: The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India:
Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900-1940
52 Tapati Guha-Thakurta: The Making of a New 'Indian' Art: Artists, Aesthetics
and Nationalism in Bengal c. 1850—1920
53 John R. McLane: Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-century Bengal
54 Ross Mallick: Development Policy of a Communist Government: West Bengal
since 1977
55 Dilip M. Menon: Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India: Malabar,
1900-1948
56 Milton Israel: Communications and Power: Propaganda and the Press in the
Indian Nationalist Struggle, 1920-1947
57 Joya Chatterjee: Bengal divided: Hindu communalism and partition, 1932-1947

(Cambridge South Asian Studies) Bina Agarwal - A Field of One's Own - Gender and Land Rights in South Asia-Cambridge University Press (1995)

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(Cambridge South Asian Studies) Bina Agarwal - A Field of One's Own - Gender and Land Rights in South Asia-Cambridge University Press (1995)

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Economic analysis and policies concerning women have long been

preoccupied with employment. In a radical shift of focus, Professor

BINA AGARWAL is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic

A field of one's own

C. A. Bayly, G. P. Hawthon., Gordon Johnson, S. J. Tambiah

A catalogue recordfor this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Transferred to digital printing 2003

List of illustrations page xii

2 Conceptualizing gender relations 51

3 Customary rights and associated practices 82

5 Contemporary laws: contestation and content 198

7 Whose land? Who commands? The gap between ownership and

8 Tracing cross-regional diversities 316

9 Struggles over resources, struggles over meanings 421

10 The long march ahead 467

Diagram 4.1 Garos in transition: causes and effects page 166

A1.1 Village common lands in India by State: 1987-88 page 49

A8.3a Sexual control over women in South Asia: norms of pre-

This book has grown out of two long-standing involvements. One is my

We had tongues but could not speak.

Map 1.1 South Asia: provincial/state divisions

To my brother belong your green fields

Rural women in northwest India, married among strangers miles away

II. Gender, property, and land: some conceptual links

(1) Household property and women's property

sexuality, marriage practices, and kinship structures. Engels argued, for

(2) The significance of land as property

(3) What do we mean by rights in land?

(4) Prospects for non-land-based livelihoods

III. Why do women need independent rights in land?

(1) The welfare argument

worthy in this regard: based on a sample of landless and near landless

(2) The efficiency argument

(3) The equality and empowerment arguments

100 p o r elaboration a n d examples see chapter 2.

While each of these arguments for women's independent rights in land is

Against this background, the question (which I am sometimes asked) -

IV Questions addressed, information base, and the book's structure

In the chapters which follow, chapter 2 is theoretical and suggests how a

Table A1.1: Village common lands in India by State: 1987-88

Andhra Pradesh 5465 19.9 0.12

All India 58769 17.9 0.10

h 210 144 106.7 84 56.5 9.8 33.7 94 51 52 22

ncludes both rural and urban sectors.

I. Gender relations within the household/family

(1) The bargaining approach

(2) What determines intra-family bargaining power?

Bargaining for subsistence within the family. What determines a

Bargaining for family land. Contestation within the household

Revealing intra-family relative bargaining power: empirical evi-

II. Gender relations outside the household/family: the market,

The market. Unlike the theoretical ambiguity that has surrounded

The community. A community could be defined in terms of a

The State. The framework of cooperative conflict and contes-

III. Interactions: the household/family, the community, and the State

In the chapters which follow, the framework of bargaining or contestation

a historical analysis of communities which indisputably gave women

I. Which communities customarily recognized women's rights in

For tracing Hindu inheritance and marriage practices in ancient times,

Muslim women's inheritance rights in South Asia also showed a marked

On the whole, therefore, it does appear accurate to infer that customarily in

Map 3.1 Traditional forms of land inheritance