Mary Roy

Mary Roy was an Indian educator and women's rights activist known for winning a Supreme Court lawsuit in 1986 against the gender biased inheritance law prevalent within the Syrian Malabar Nasrani community of Kerala. The judgement ensured equal rights for Syrian Christian women as with their male siblings in their ancestral property. Until then, her Syrian Christian community followed the provisions of the Travancore Succession Act of 1916 and the Cochin Succession Act, 1921, while elsewhere in India the same community followed the Indian Succession Act of 1925.