A Daughter’s Right

A letter to Sr. Adv. Indira Jaising and the Law Commission of India

By CA Geetha Gupta

Published in srijanani.org in Nov 2022

Dated:	14th January, 2013
From:	Ms. Geetha Gupta
To:	Ms. Indira Jaising, Additional Solicitor General, Supreme Court of India; Cc: Member- Secretary, Law Commission of India

Subject – A daughter’s demand for enabling her with the right to look after her parents

Dear Indira Ji,

At the outset, I must introduce myself – I am a Hindu woman and a mother of two sons.

So, I know full well, because of my position, that the tradition is overly advantageous to me. As a soon to be mother-in-law, this suits me fine. I can still get away with so many things. But, firstly, I am a woman and the woman in me rebels against this stance of the tradition.

And I also know, in the long run, any gains I may make as a mother-in-law can never ever offset the loss I will endure as a daughter-in-law. What I lose as a daughter-in-law is way too precious. Therefore, on the whole, a woman only loses in the current system. So, we must realise, though apparently, she seems to be gaining and gaining only, ultimately, even the most powerful and dominant mother-in-law is a loser.

Hence, I feel compelled to do whatever I can do to stop these injustices from going on further. Hence this letter.

I have just read your article titled “MAPPING WOMEN’S GAINS IN INHERITANCE AND PROPERTY RIGHTS UNDER THE HINDU SUCCESSION ACT, 1956” and felt I must to write to you on this subject.

I want to tell you this – I have yet to come across a more frank and an honest appraisal of a Hindu women’s situation. In particular, I noted your comments on “Nearness of relationship” with respect to Hindu women and I want to tell you that I am in absolute agreement with you.

Indeed, this is the issue that needs to be pursued to its logical end – the enabling of a woman’s unconditional and unrestricted right to be with her parents, in their hour of need. It is my firm conviction that this is The central issue of all women’s struggles.

Whenever I think on the issue of elder care, I am unable to understand how, men, some of them who claim to so grateful and boast endlessly about all that they did and do to look after their parents, fail to acknowledge or understand those very feelings in a wife. They behave as if this feeling of gratitude is something that only men are endowed with or have a right to. As if women are robots!

But we know it is not so. We know women are not robots. So the problem is how can we enable a woman too, to give free expression to this feeling of gratefulness towards her parents.

With the amending of HSA 1956, in 2005, daughters are coparceners too. The amendment has not only provided daughters with some assured property but has also given them some security, that is so vital to them, for, by and large, the matrimonial home is not a very safe place for a woman to stay in. So, since it is her parents who are now providing some assured material means as well as security to their daughter, there are these additional reasons now, apart from having birthed and raised her, for the daughter to be grateful and look after her parents.

One more thing I cannot understand is why or how can it be expected of someone that they should place another’s parents before their own, give priority to another’s parents over their own, or may be even better, disown their own parents completely and totally adopt another’s as their own!! I feel that this is extremely weird and unnatural. Yet this is what is expected if that someone is a woman.

That is the real issue –  every child should be able to look after their parents, irrespective of the gender of the child, for a daughter is as much a child of her parents as the son is. No one should be made responsible for another’s parent, that too, to the total exclusion of their own! This is exceedingly unfair.

To my mind, even if the in-laws of a woman have behaved well with her, that is not reason enough for a daughter to give up her parents. At most, the wife may assist the husband in his duty towards his parents. And in all fairness, expect a reciprocal gesture, with respect to her parents from the husband. This doesn’t seem to be happening in the near future.

This denying a wife, the opportunity to look after her parents, forcing her to give them up and further, taking her support whenever they need for their duty towards their parents has become a deeply ingrained and an unconscious habit in husbands. This way of “caring for their parents by the sons” has attained the distinction of not only just a custom but a revered and a haloed one at that, a custom regarded as a major pillar stone of Hinduism.

Sadly, the manner in which one of the most touted and lauded customs of this land is performed has been completely overlooked. This misbehaviour has been followed for so so long under the name of custom that now nobody regards this as a misbehaviour any more. Now, for many, unfortunately, for many women too, any woman who wants to look after her parents is seen to be committing not just a cultural travesty but a sin. 

Indeed, a woman is forced to ask – what kind of a house is this for me, where there is no place for even my parents whereas if that very same place is a house for a male, his parents are the most cherished inmates there!

In this connection, I want to mention these two reports by the Law Commission of India:-

1.       Report 204 dated February 2008, for amending Sec 8 of HSA 1956

2.       Report 207 dated June 2008, for amending Sec 15 of HSA 1956

It is the dates of these reports that literally threw me off. Even the most cursory reading of these proposals, made barely 5yrs ago, is enough to reveal the extent of bias still pervading against women, in spite of the constitutional guarantee for equality for women. The worst thing I find is, that even the intention to set right the centuries-old wrong doing is missing. Instead, the proposals for the new Sec 15 seeks to perpetuate the misdeeds, some how or the other. We need to debate on the real nature of this “Support” supposedly given to a wife by the husband and his family, on the basis of which, the husband and his family claim so many privileges.

And I am filled with anguish. I keep asking myself again and again – is this going to be the future for Hindu women? Is this the legacy we are going to leave for our daughters?

Now that women are more aware, more educated, some financially better placed and possibly financially independent too, are more in public life than before, and some like you, in influential positions as well, aren’t we better placed than generations of women before us? Can we not do something about this? If we all put our minds to it, surely, we will come up with a workable solution to this important issue.

This issue is important because the problems that a daughter faces when she wants to look after her parents infringes not only a daughter’s right but a parents’ right too, to be cared for by one of their own, if the child is a daughter. 

Also, it is the urgent need of these times in which we are living. We can no longer afford to ignore the growing incidents of domestic violence against the older couple by the younger woman i.e., by the daughter-in-law towards her husband’s parents. As the one who has drafted “Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005”, you know this well. I need not tell you more.

Definitely, whenever possible, I would like to be present and participate whenever there are any discussions on these issues. Please do tell me if there is anything else I can do about this.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Yours truly,

Geetha Gupta

(A mother of two sons)

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Reply from  Sr. Adv. Indira Jaising to the letter

———- Forwarded message ———
From: indira jaising <indira…@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 10:40 PM
Subject: Re: A daughter’s right
To: Geetha Gupta <gupta…@gmail.com>

i thank you for your deep perception of what women’s condition and how she is constructed both in her natal home and in her matrimonial home 

i will send you a report we have written on how the new law in functioning, it seems to be frustrated by judges who believe women have no rights 

we are having a conference on the domestic violence act on the 21st in Delhi at the Habitat , do let me know if you would like to attend 

indira