We highly appreciate the government’s move to formulate a law to ensure equal rights of Hindu women so that they can inherit their ancestral properties.
The draft of the ‘Hindu Succession Act, 2021,’ is now in the Law Ministry for further initiative and it is likely to see the light of the day soon.
Country’s Hindu women have no right to get the share of their fathers and husband’s property as per the existing laws of Bangladesh including the ‘Hindu Women’s Right to Property Act, 1937’.
The Hindu women here are still being deprived of their ancestral property as equality between men and women in their community has not been achieved yet. As a result a serious discrimination towards Hindu women still persists across the country.
We hope the government will take
proper and necessary steps to ensure
equal inheritance rights of Hindu women
After the death of a father, his property and assets are appropriated among the sons and if there is no son, the brother's son will get shares but his own daughter will not get anything.
India left British law of 1937 nine years after their independence and amended their 1956 law in 2005 which granted equal inheritance rights to the women, while Bangladeshi Hindu women have been stuck in the 84-year-old law.
We think the enactment of a fresh law will open a new chapter, removing the long-standing discriminatory treatment of Hindu women. According to the Constitution, the State can’t discriminate based on gender or religion. When this law will be enacted all daughters of a man will be equally eligible to inherit their ancestral properties.
We hope the government will take proper and necessary steps to ensure equal inheritance rights of Hindu women. Therefore, we think the government has taken the issue seriously and it will amend Hindu inheritance law immediately as it wants to build Bangladesh as a developed country.
