Mary Roy. She took Kerala's male-dominated society by the horns. She challenged whatever she thought was unfair. She would have known the meaning of the word 'isolation' more than any others of her generation. Isolation is the reward for rebels who question the society of their times. From the fight for succession rights to resisting the clergy and the local politicians when they stopped her school Corpus Christi (later called Pallikoodam) from staging rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Mary Roy resisted society as if her life depended on it.
The term 'women's rights activist' is inadequate to describe a person like Mary. The rights of women are the rights of human beings, of the planet. A Twitter user recollected a time when the school, over three decades ago, had decided to stage the rock opera by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber for their annual day function. Mary challenged the whole town which rose up in protest --- the community, the district collector, the priests, the Marxists (who wished to please the Christians), and her family. The performance was banned by then Kottayam district collector Alphons Kannanthanam who is a BJP MP. The year was 1990.
The verdict in Mary Roy v State of Kerala was a landmark victory for the women of this country. Roy as a lone woman fought against the repressive Tranvancore Christian Succession Act which barred Syrian Christian women from obtaining a decent inheritance from their father's property.
Mary Roy was a divorced single mother from an affluent Syrian Christian family. Her father was an entomologist who had trained in London. Mary, who had married a Bengali man against her father's wishes, did not receive any dowry. She ended her marriage at 30 when she discovered her husband, a Bengali Hindu tea estate manager, was an alcoholic. She then moved to a family property in Ooty to live with her mother, who also had walked out of her marriage.
When Mary's father passed away without a will, problems arose. One of her brothers wanted to sell the property in Ooty as he was in need of money, and he quoted the Christian Succession Act of 1916 when Mary protested against the decision to sell the house where she was raising her children.
Under the Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916 which applied to the Christians residing in the erstwhile Travancore State, a daughter was entitled to only a quarter of the share of a son in family property, or Rs 5,000, whichever was less.
Mary Roy challenged the Act in the Madras High Court, and the court ruled in her favour. Since the property in Ooty, Tamil Nadu was under the jurisdiction of the Indian Christian Succession Act, 1925, which did not discriminate heirs based on gender, the property was handed over to Mary Roy by the family.
Later on, when Mary moved back to Kerala, the Act stood in her way. She had no right to an equal share in the familial property. Mary Roy took the battle to Supreme Court, but no one came in support of her. Most women in her community had not heard about the archaic Act. The Syrian Christian community in Kerala had well-educated, working women but no one had challenged the custom of giving dowry instead of an equal share in the family property.
Mary also started a school with the aid of bank loans and managed to make it one of the best schools in the region.
She was a harbinger of hope to widows, unmarried women, and women without children who had been ousted by their own families with the help of the Act.
The Supreme Court in 1986 held that the Travancore Christian Succession Act stood repealed with retrospective effect from 1951. However, it was only in 2010, that a final decree was given by a Kottayam sub-court where Mary tasted victory.
Mary Roy's fight was for the principle of equality more than for a 'share' in the family property. A fight to for a Christian woman to have a value of more than Rs. 5000.
In the past year, Kerala witnessed several deaths by suicide of young women who faced torture at the hands of their husbands and in-laws. They had something in common --- their dowries were not sufficient.
Mary's daughter Arundathi Roy's Booker-winning novel 'The God of Small Things' features a character named Ammu which is loosely based on Mary. Arundathi dedicated the novel to her mother --- " “For Mary Roy… Who loved me enough to let me go.”
Arundathi in an interview to Asianet described her mother thus: "She is one of the most extraordinary women that I know".
Arundathi had dedicated one of her collection of essays "To the unconsoled". Her mother Mary Roy was a consolation to countless women who had been thrown out into the streets and had no one to turn to. Mary was indeed a legend.