Inheritance for Ownership: Examining Ideas of Land Ownership among Pahāḍi Women in Uttarakhand

Abstract

Land presents an interesting site for examining inheritance, given its complex intertwining with kinship and its contested relationship with gender. In Indian society, land has been a resource owned in common, belonging jointly to family and kinship networks. Drawing on this imagination, customary institutions and legal regulations either permit or deny women's right to access, increasingly influencing their livelihoods in a capitalist economy. Recognising the complex relationship between land and gender, this article focuses on the inheritance experiences among rural pahāḍi women in Uttarakhand. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Uttarakhand, we examine the meaning of inheritance in the context of an asset that holds multiple meanings and values in the everyday lives of these communities. We raise the questions: How do these communities perceive and engage with the inheritance of land? How these practices and imaginations of inheritance sit alongside the changing value of land in the free market.