Just then, a tall, bearded man in his twenties entered the room, prompting Manjulaben to suddenly sit up straight. She introduced the man as her older son, just back from the day’s work on their farm.
“Yes, my father has decided to add mummy as an inheritor,” said the man. Wiping his sweat off with a gamchha, he added, “As such my mother has no right over my grandfather’s land. Our women usually get land only as widows. That’s just how it is – women have their maryada.”
As he left, 65-year-old Santaben Parmar, Manjulaben’s sister-in-law, pointed out that a wife does, in fact, have a right to her husband’s land.
“I work on the farm too, and I do the housework, which he [her husband] does not,” said Santaben. “I would like to have my name in the land, of course I would.”
Has she ever told her husband this?
Santaben’s eyes widened in shock, and she shook her head. “Em na karai, we cannot do that in our culture!”
Minutes later, Laduben Jhala had the same reaction. “We may feel bad about it, but it would not be accepted if we ask for a right in our husbands’ land,” said Laduben, 38, who had come to visit Manjulaben from down the street.
While the Parmars are Vankar Dalits, a community of weavers, Laduben is a Valmiki Dalit, traditional sweepers and manual scavengers considered the lowest in the caste order.
“Most Dalits don’t let Valmikis enter their homes, but I am more modern. In our house, we don’t follow this,” said Amarsinh Parmar, Manjulaben’s husband, who joined the conversation when he walked into the room and saw Laduben Jhala.
His presence prompted all the women to hurriedly pull down their sari pallus over their faces. When I asked them why they had done so, Amarsinh spoke first, explaining that this veiling was called “laaj kadhvanu” – maintaining shame or modesty.
“It is all part of women’s maryada,” Amarsinh said. “In front of other men, women generally maintain laaj, sit properly and talk softly.”
A short distance away, in the village of Jaravla, a group of Patidar women gathered to have similar discussions on land, rights and propriety for women.
“We Patels don’t practice laaj kadhvanu anymore, at least not in our village,” said Jayaben Patel, 63, whose sari covered her head, but not her face. “People of other castes still do it, but we have become more modern.”
The Patels, or Patidars, are a socially-dominant caste that has traditionally owned vast tracts of land in Gujarat. But as with the Dalits, even among Patidars, land is owned by the men.
Jayaben’s husband recently made her a joint owner of his 10 bighas of land, but only because he wanted to formally transfer land ownership to his sons in his lifetime. Under the Hindu Succession Act, a wife is a man’s first legal heir, and if he wants to bequeath inherited land to his children, he has to first make her a joint owner of the land.
“My daughter-in-law has not been added, not yet,” said Jayaben. “That is not the custom.”
Vasantiben and Kokilaben Patel, both in their 60s, nodded in agreement. “If you give land to a daughter-in-law, she might leave and not take care of us,” said Vasantiben, a widow with two daughters-in-law. Her daughters, who had initially been listed as inheritors of the family land, were removed after they were married.
“If you give land to a daughter, her husband and his family might take it,” said Kokilaben.
“Yes, women cannot be trusted either as dikris or vahus [daughters or daughters-in-law],” said Kokilaben’s 27-year-old daughter-in-law Neeru Patel, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Only men can be trusted.”