Astha Saxena

Adivasi women exemplify a confounding intersectional position within India’s societal structure. As part of a broader community-level assertion for land and resources, Adivasi women have played crucial roles. Yet, Adivasi women’s struggle for inheritance has resisted both customary laws and the State’s historic, oppressive imposition of land acquisition policies.

Over years, courts have compelled Adivasi women to deny their indigenous identity in the quest for equality in inheritance laws; but a Supreme Court decision last year re-inquired whether they must sacrifice one for the other.