Owning Land, Being Women: Inheritance and Subjecthood in India
Author: Amrita Mondal, amrita.mondal@uni-erfurt.de
Department: Social Studies
University: Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Germany
Supervisor: Antje Linkenbach-Fuchs
Year of completion: In progress
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
Inheritance law
, Land rights
, Hindu Family
, Gendered Subjecthood
Areas of Research:
Law
, Economy and Society
, Human Rights and Global Justice
Abstract
Owning Land, Being Women enquires into the processes that establish inheritance as a unique form of property relation in law and society. It focuses on India, examining the legislative processes that led to the 2005 amendment of the Hindu Succession Act 1956, along with a series of interconnected welfare policies. Scholars have understood these Acts as a response to growing concerns about women’s property rights in developing countries. In re-reading these Acts and exploring the wider nexus of Indian society in which the legislation was drafted, this study considers how questions of family structure and property rights contribute to the creation of legal subjects and demonstrates the significance of the politico-economic context of rights formulation. On the basis of an ethnography of a village in West Bengal, the study brings the moral axis of inheritance into sharp focus, elucidating the interwoven dynamics of bequest, distribution of family wealth, welfare concerns and reciprocity of care work across generations that are integral to the logic of inheritance. These insights pose questions of the dominant resource-based conceptualisation of inherited property in the debate on women’s empowerment. In doing so, this work opens up a line of investigation that brings feminist rights discourse into conversation with ethics, enriching the liberal theory of gender justice.
