More than 200 km away, in the coastal town of Ghogha in Bhavnagar district, Sajida Sheikh can hope for justice.
On March 20, a day she will never forget, she took her first steps on the 5-bigha parcel of land that had been denied to her for 18 years. The land was rocky, undulating, and full of tall shrubs and brambles, but it still lifted Sajida’s spirits.
“I cried tears of joy that day, even though I know I have a lot more land to fight for,” said Sajida, a round faced, cheerful 36-year-old. “There was a time my family grew groundnuts, jowar, bajra and cotton on this soil. I will make sure to grow it all again.”
Sajida’s husband, like many other Muslim men in Ghogha, is a fisherman. Unlike the wives of other fishermen, however, Sajida was never content to run the house, raise her son and help her husband sell fish. “I have always wanted to be a farmer, like everyone in my parents’ family,” said Sajida, who lost her mother when she was a baby. “I have grown up with farming, I know how to do it, and I love it.”
This passion is why Sajida has kept up the long-term family feud with her 50-year-old cousin, Haji Hasan, the son of her mother’s oldest brother.
The dispute began in 2002 over a 40-bigha plot in rural Ghogha that belonged to Sajida’s maternal grandfather. When he died in the early 1990s, the land was to be divided equally – 10 bighas each – between his four children. By 2002, however, three of his four children had died, and Haji Hasan, the oldest among two grandsons and seven granddaughters, had taken over the entire property.
“My uncle Adam was the only one of my mother’s brothers still living, and he decided to file a case against Hasan in the district court,” said Sajida.
Sajida is enraged about how the case ended: In 2015, after her uncle Adam died, his son agreed to a settlement with Haji Hasan. “All the cousins took part in the court settlement, except my sister and me,” said Sajida. “We did not even know it was happening because no one told us about it.”
In the settlement, it was agreed that Haji Hasan would keep 25 bighas of the land while Adam’s son, who works as an electronics technician in Muscat, would get 5 bighas. Since Haji Hasan’s three sisters did not lay any claim to the property, the remaining 10 bighas were to be divided between four women: Sajida, her sister Munira who is divorced and lives with Sajida, and their two female cousins, Minaz and Reshma, who live in neighbouring Bhavnagar city.
“It makes no sense, it is totally unfair. Munira and I should be getting 10 bighas as our mother’s inheritance,” said Sajida, fury thickening her voice. “If I had been party to that settlement meeting, I would never have accepted this deal.”
In 2016, with the help of her husband, Sajida and Munira filed an appeal against the settlement. The case, which is still ongoing, is against all of Sajida’s cousins, including Minaz and Reshma.
Outside the court, however, the four women are not adversaries.
“Minaz and Reshma are on our side now because Haji Hasan was refusing to actually give us our land,” said Sajida. “He told the court he had already handed over the land that we were supposed to get according to the settlement. In reality, his goondas always threatened us with swords and rods when we tried to enter the property. Once, Hasan slapped me for trying to go there.”
Shaken, Sajida went straight to the police but she was let down, she said.
“They did not file any case against him. Instead, they just called him and gave him a warning,” said Sajida. For two years after that, Sajida was too intimidated to follow up on the case. Then in January, she met field workers from the Samarthan Mahila Sangathan, a Bhavnagar-based women’s group that is “notorious” for mobilising women to fight for their rights.
“They helped me get over my fear. And together, we warned Hasan that we would get 3,000 women to come and help me take over the land,” said Sajida. “Maybe because of this, and maybe because he realised he will lose the court case one day, he suddenly agreed to give us five bighas of the land.”