SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, December 27: Land in the Santhal world is not mute earth. It remembers footsteps, seasons, and the long breath of families who lived and laboured upon it. It carries the names of fathers, sons, and sometimes—quietly, almost apologetically—the names of daughters. For generations, those names were spoken softly, often erased when inheritance was discussed. Yet history has a way of circling back, and courts, at their best, listen to what land and memory together reveal.
The judgment in Ismail Hansda v. Mathias Murmu, delivered by Justice Anubha Rawat Choudhary of the Jharkhand High Court on July 25 2025, is a notable example of listening. It is not a judgment that storms tradition. Instead, it walks beside it, asking whether an old rule still lives as law, or whether it has already loosened its grip under the weight of lived experience.
This decision, later upheld by the Supreme Court, marks a thoughtful step in a longer judicial journey—one that had already begun when the Jharkhand High Court, through Justice Gautam Choudhary, recognised a daughter’s right to inherit land in the Oraon community. Together, these decisions reflect a considered voice of the Court: careful, restrained, yet unwilling to turn away from change already present within tribal society itself.
A Family, a Daughter, and a Disputed Field
The story in Ismail Hansda begins with a man named Harma Murmu. He died without a son, leaving behind a single daughter, Joba Murmu. When she too passed away, two claims arose from the same soil.
One came from the agnates—the male relatives—who said that Santhal custom was firm and ancient: daughters did not inherit land. The other came from Joba Murmu’s descendants, who said that the land had already recognised them, long before the courts were asked to speak.
The agnates relied on a familiar belief. They said a daughter could inherit only if she married in the gharjamai form, where her husband left his own family and became part of her father’s household, almost as a son. Joba Murmu, they argued, married ordinarily and lived away. Therefore, the land could not follow her.
Yet Joba Murmu’s children and grandchildren told another story—one not only of belief, but of record, possession, and acceptance.
Records as Witnesses of Change
The descendants of Joba Murmu did not merely argue; they pointed. They pointed to settlement records. They pointed to long, uncontested possession. They pointed to history itself, where even the most authoritative reports spoke of movement rather than rigidity.
Justice Anubha Rawat Choudhary did not rush to choose between the voices. Instead, she asked a deeper question: when does a custom become binding enough to silence a daughter’s claim altogether?
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To answer this, the Court turned to a document written nearly a century ago—the Gantzer Settlement Report. Prepared during the settlement operations of the 1920s and 1930s, this report remains one of the most detailed windows into Santhal life. It acknowledged the old preference for male inheritance, but it did not stop there.
It recorded something far more important: change.
Gantzer’s Quiet Testimony
The Gantzer Report spoke of public opinion shifting. It noted that daughters were sometimes recorded as heirs, without protest, and sometimes at the request of male relatives themselves. It spoke of village elders and arbitrators who had found in favour of daughters. It warned against treating old rules as fixed forever and advised that customs must be understood as they are practised in particular places, not as they once were imagined.
Justice Choudhary read this report not as a relic, but as a living narrative. It revealed that the exclusion of daughters was never as complete, or as unquestioned, as it was claimed to be. Even in the early twentieth century, the Santhal community was negotiating fairness, care, and survival in ways that softened old boundaries.
What the Land Records Revealed
The land records in the present case echoed that same story. A portion of the disputed land had long stood recorded in the names of Joba Murmu’s descendants. This was not a recent entry, nor a hidden one. It had existed openly, peacefully, and without objection.
When the agnates attempted to explain this away by invoking another custom, the Court refused to accept explanations without roots. Customs, it made clear, cannot be summoned at convenience. They must be pleaded, proved, and shown to live in practice.
These records mattered because they spoke of conduct, not theory. They showed that daughters were not always excluded, and that once a rule begins to bend, it can no longer claim to bind with certainty.
Courts Listening to Custom, Not Freezing It
The judgment drew strength from earlier decisions that had already walked this path. In Madhu Kishwar, the Supreme Court cautioned against sweeping statements about tribal customs, observing that they vary by tribe, region, and time. Customs, the Court said, guide social life, but they are not immovable codes. Each case must be understood through its own facts.
The Jharkhand High Court itself had echoed this understanding in several decisions, including Prabha Minz. There, the Court observed that exclusion of daughters had not crystallised into a single, binding rule and that claims must be examined individually, with care and humility.
Most notably, before Ismail Hansda, Justice Gautam Choudhary had upheld the inheritance rights of daughters in the Oraon community. That judgment recognised that tribal societies were already evolving and that courts should not pretend otherwise. Justice Anubha Rawat Choudhary’s decision did not depart from this reasoning; it continued it.
Who Bears the Burden of the Past
One of the quiet strengths of the Ismail Hansda judgment lies in its clarity about responsibility. If someone wishes to rely on an old custom to deny a daughter her inheritance, they must show that the custom still operates firmly, clearly, and without exception.
Age alone does not give a rule authority. Memory alone does not turn belief into law.
Here, the agnates could not meet that burden. They could not show that daughters were always excluded in this region. They could not explain why Joba Murmu’s descendants had already been accepted over part of the land. They could not show a living, unquestioned practice of exclusion.
Custom, the judgment reminds us, survives through conduct, not assertion.
A Decision That Refuses Silence
What makes this decision enduring is its restraint. It does not declare that all Santhal daughters must inherit in every case. It does not rewrite tradition overnight. Instead, it recognises that where change has already taken root, the law should not uproot it.
Where society has made space for daughters, courts should not push them back into silence.
The appeal was allowed. The agnates’ claim failed. The land remained with the descendants of Joba Murmu.
Afterword: A Name That Stays
The Supreme Court’s affirmation of this judgment gives it lasting weight. It confirms that this is not a solitary moment, but part of a settled judicial understanding. Along with the Oraon judgment, Ismail Hansda reflects a careful, evolving voice of the Jharkhand High Court—one that honours tradition, acknowledges change, and refuses to let uncertain customs erase women.
These judgments do not shout.
They do not claim to transform society overnight.
But they do something more enduring.
They let the land remember a daughter’s name.
