Mary Roy, an educator and a women’s rights activist died on September 1, 2022, at the age of 89. She is the mother of Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy. She died after suffering from a prolonged illness and is survived by her two children, Lalit Roy and Arundhati Roy

She was in the limelight for winning a landmark Supreme Court case in 1986 that was against the gender-biased inheritance law and the judgment ensured equal rights in the family property for women belonging to the Syrian Christian community in Kerala

Who was Mary Roy? 

Mary Roy was born in 1933 to a Syrian Christian family and was the daughter of P.V. Isaac, an  Imperial Entomologist at Pusa. She graduated from Queen’s Mary college in Chennai. After completing her education in Chennai she moved to Kolkata with her elder brother Issac and later married Rajeeb Roy, a manager in the tea estate of Assam

Mary Roy after her divorce returned to Kottayam and started teaching in her own school Corpus Christi in 1961.

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In an interview with the Times of India, Mary Roy mentioned that she had a complicated relationship with her elder brother George and that she was forced to leave her paternal property and later this led to a legal fight between the two. 

She was always very vocal about discrimination against women. She stood strongly against domestic violence, dowry harassment and helped young women fight against it. 

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In 1960, Mary Roy sued her brother George in the apex court of Kottayam to gain equal access to the property of her deceased father. In February 1986, she won a lawsuit in the Supreme Court and the landmark judgment passed ensured equal rights for Syrian Christian women along with their male siblings in their ancestral property. This judgment remains one of the greatest examples of gender justice in the country.