INHERITANCE AND PROPERTY RIGHTS OF GALO WOMEN IN WEST SIANG DISTRICT A DOCTRINAL AND SOCIO-LEGAL ANALYSIS OF CUSTOM, CONSTITUTIONAL EQUALITY AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE

The property position of Galo women in West Siang District cannot be determined merely by asking whether women are socially described as heirs or whether daughters receive property in practice. The legally prior questions are: what rule governs succession, whether the alleged customary rule is legally established, what evidence is admissible to prove it, and how far constitutional equality may operate when State institutions recognise or enforce a customary norm. This study therefore adopts a principally doctrinal method, supplemented by a limited socio-legal analysis of a dataset containing 150 respondent records from West Siang. The empirical material is used contextually and is not treated as proof of the legal validity of Galo custom. The study examines Section 2(2) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956; the Supreme Courts jurisprudence on proof of custom in Thakur Gokalchand v. Parvin Kumari; the contemporary reasoning in Ram Charan v. Sukhram; and the statutory limits reaffirmed in Nawang v. Bahadur. It argues that Section 2(2) is an exclusionary provision and does not itself create a rule of male succession.