Inheritance rights of Syrian christian women: a study in Kerala

Abstract

There has been a growing interest to focus the research on issues related to inheritance rights of women belonging to the Syrian Christian community, the oldest and predominant Christian community in Kerala, especially after the implementation of the Indian Succession Act (1925). The study has made an attempt to elucidate the implications of the legal changes in inheritance rights among Syrian Christian women belonging to five principal Syrian Christian denominations, namely Orthodox, Jacobite, Syro-Malankara Catholics or (Reethu), Marthoma and Church of South India (CSI). The major objective of the study was to assess the levels of awareness, knowledge and attitudes of Syrian Christian women on inheritance rights and allied issues in the light of the Indian Succession Act (1925). Given the fact that Syrian Christian women belonged to varied socio-economic and demographic backgrounds, a sample survey approach to assess the awareness, knowledge and attitudes of Syrian Christian women was adopted. The primary data were collected through a field survey, among Syrian Christian women residing in Adichanalloor village and Kollam town of Kollam district of Kerala. Two stage stratified sampling technique was employed and using probability proportionate to size method, a total of 300 married women were selected from five randomly selected Churches of Syrian Christian denominations. Necessary information from the respondents was collected by administering interview schedule, which comprised both structured and open-ended questions. Collected data were analysed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) adopting bivariate and multivariate techniques. The denomination was adopted as controlled variable to find out the similarities and differences of women’s responses towards inheritance issues. Denominations like Orthodox, Jacobite and Reethu were meaningfully merged into one as `Orthodox Syrian’, and constituted by (45.3%) of the total sample and Marthoma and CSI were merged into one as `Reformed Syrian’ (54.7%). In order to understand the utilisation aspect of the law, three case studies of Syrian Christian women involving qualitative approach have been covered. Sampled women were all married and they were largely (28.7%) in the age group of 31-40 years. Respondents with two children- one son and one daughter constituted (32.7%) and those with two living siblings- one brother and one sister constituted 14.7 per cent among them. Those who were from nuclear families were more (55.7%) than those who were from joint families (44.3%).