The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c13.29

c13.29

General circumstances in society were very unfavourable to the theory of the joint ownership being utilised to invest the wife with the above powers and rights. Landed property was for a long time being owned either by village communities or by large joint families. Individual ownership was but slow in coming into general recognition even in the case of males. By the time individual coparceners could assert their individual rights in the estate of the family, the husband had come to be deified; so it became very difficult for jurists to invest the wife with any substantial rights as against the husband. The joint ownership of the husband and the wife thus practically remained a legal fiction. In effect the husband was the sole owner of the family property and the wife had no legal remedy, if he proceeded to squander it and defeat her right to a maintenance or a share. The modern law courts also have not come forward to afford any protection to the wife in such cases. It is only in Portugese India, where the Code Napoleon prevails, that the consent of the wife is a condition precedent to any valid disposal of the family property by the husband. It is now high time that the Indian Legislature should proceed to amend the Hindu Law, and invest the wife with full powers over her own share of the family estate, rendering its sale without her express consent illegal. The old Vedic theory of the joint ownership of the husband and the wife will fully justify such a legislation.