Mary Roy

Mary Roy is an Indian educator and women's rights activist known for winning a Supreme Court lawsuit in 1986 against the gender biased inheritance law prevalent within the Syrian Malabar Nasrani community of Kerala. The judgement ensured equal rights for Syrian Christian women as with their male siblings in their ancestral property. Until then, her Syrian Christian community followed the provisions of the Travancore Succession Act of 1916 and the Cochin Succession Act, 1921, while elsewhere in India the same community followed the Indian Succession Act of 1925.

Mary Roy was denied her share of the familial property due to the Travancore Succession Act of 1916. She sued her brothers after her father's death. This was the case that made its way through the Indian court system and which she won.

She is the founder-director of Pallikoodam school (formerly Corpus Christi High School) at Kalathilpady, a suburb of Kottayam town in the state of Kerala. Her daughter is the Man Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy.

Court case

The women of Mary Roy's Syrian Christian community could not inherit property because of the Travancore Succession Act of 1916. Contending this, Mary Roy filed the case against George Isaac, her brother, after the demise of her father P.V. Isaac in 1960. She sued her brother to gain equal access to the inheritance left to them. The lower court at first rejected her plea. The property was divided into two parts - the Kottayam property which was spread over two locales and another at Nattakom grama panchayat. The case was considered a landmark case for the reason it fought for equal property rights for Syrian Christian women.

Mary Roy approached the Kerala High Court in 1994 to get the lower court's judgement overruled. She was successful. After her mother's death in 2000, she approached the Kottayam Sub-court for the final decree. The case continued for 8 years after which she filed the execution petition in 2009, and she finally received the property.

Personal life

Mary Roy was the daughter of P.V. Isaac, an entomologist who trained in England under Harold Maxwell-Lefroy and became Imperial Entomologist at Pusa. In a personal interview with the Times of India, she disclosed personal details about her life. She admitted to having a complicated relationship with her elder brother George, whom she sued, and mentioned the separation from her husband.

The God of Small Things, written by Arundhati Roy, has a character Ammu which was based on her mother Mary. Mary confirmed she was very similar to the character her daughter wrote, however, she was never involved with a man of lower caste - as was the case in the book. In the interview, she details that Arundhati declared independence from her mother and both had a strained relationship for that particular period. However, she declared she was proud of Arundhati's accomplishments and did not expect that she would win the Man Booker Prize.

References

• Manorama Online - World Women's Day feature about Mary roy

External links

• About Us - Pallikoodam Official website