RIGHT TO EQUALITY FOR HINDU WOMEN IN BANGLADESH: A QUEST FOR REFORMS IN PERSONAL LAW

Abstract

This thesis interrogates the right to equality for Hindu women in Bangladesh and treats personal law as a domain of public responsibility, not a private enclave. Anchored in Articles 27 to 29 and 31 of the Constitution, and read alongside the obligations of Bangladesh under CEDAW and the ICCPR, it asks how gender inequality within Hindu personal law can be removed through principled legislative, judicial and administrative change. The study is doctrinal and comparative. It conducts close analysis of statutes, case law and classical authorities, and sets those sources against constitutional benchmarks and international standards. A feminist analytical lens, attentive to intersectionality and to material effects, tests whether formal guarantees of equality translate into real bargaining power for women. Indian post-independence reforms are used not as a template but as a repertoire of legal functions, so that lessons are translated with sensitivity to the institutional and minority contexts of Bangladesh. The argument proceeds through five pressure points in which the current regime sustains structural dependency. Marriage registration remains optional. The result is predictable. Proof becomes fragile, age verification is uncertain, and access to remedies is obstructed. The position is compounded by the absence of a Hindu divorce statute. Without a statutory exit, negotiation space narrows, and women can be trapped in harmful relationships that the law does not allow them to dissolve. Inheritance and succession retain Dayābhāga-based asymmetries and vestiges of the limited estate, suppressing women’s proprietary capacity. Maintenance rules are fragmented and weakly enforced, which undermines both dignity and deterrence. Guardianship and custody rely on a nineteenth-century framework that does not treat mothers and fathers as equal legal parents, and that fails to integrate the child’s welfare as the organising principle across forums. A sequenced programme of reform is proposed. First, make registration of Hindu marriages mandatory, with humane transition arrangements and low-friction administration. Secondly, enact vii a Hindu marriage statute that defines capacity and formalities, provides grounds and procedures for dissolution, and integrates ancillary relief on maintenance, custody and equitable distribution. Thirdly, legislate a guardianship and adoption code that centres the child’s welfare, recognises mothers as equal parents and allows women to adopt in their own right. Fourthly, enact a modern Hindu succession statute that secures equal proprietary capacity and abolishes the limited estate. Finally, consolidate forum and procedure in the family courts with clear jurisdiction, realistic fees, legal aid, robust enforcement and reliable data. Three claims guide the analysis. Doctrinal rules that restrict women’s exit, property and parental authority cannot be justified within a constitutional order committed to equality. Judicial harmonisation is valuable, yet cannot substitute for codification; principled legislation is indispensable. Lessons from India are portable when reframed as functions to be adapted rather than rules to be transplanted. The thesis, therefore, synthesises dispersed rules into a coherent map of status, capacity and remedy, and sets out a practical, context-sensitive pathway by which Bangladesh can align Hindu personal law with its constitutional and international commitments to gender equality.