W
hen we, at
Manushi, challenged this discriminatory practice in the SupremeCourt through a PIL in 1981, on behalf of several tribal women who were facing attacks because they wanted tohold on to their limited rights on the land, a large spectrum of "progressives", includingmany feminists, attacked our initiative, arguing that this would destroy the "tribal way of life" orthat property rights were a bourgeois obsession and we should work to abolish property instead. When theSupreme Court Bench gave a majority judgement in favour of retaining the discriminatory practices, there washardly a murmur of protest from among those sections who see the J&K Act as a betrayal of theConstitutional principles of gender justice.