Not all of us take birth with a silver spoon in our mouth, nor we inherit the similar ground for our upbringing. Yet we all have a common ground, an equality we all human beings stand and rise upon, and that reasonable, accepted equality is the “right to live”. Every Individual possesses this only possible basic human right. Some take birth in rich households; some may take birth in poverty ridden situations. Some of us take birth in aplenty and yet time makes us to suffer starvation, we all have the right to live, to act, to earn a living and to save the wealth earned, and we have the right to dispose our earned property in whatever way we prefer. If there are Kane, there are Abel too.^[1]
None of us can have any birth right to any property as such, we earn our property freely and we dispose it freely.
It was Dashratha’s right to disinherit his elder son Rama and announce his younger son Bharata as the future owner of his property. Rama could not challenge Dashratha’s decision nor could he fight against it because principally, Rama had no basic right on, whatever property Dashratha owned or produced, and it was Dashratha’s right to give away that property to anybody he deemed to be worthy of owning it. Rama was honestly courageous and ethically right enough to respect the property right of his father and leave Ajodhya willingly, Bharata had right to dispose the property he got hold on from his father back to Rama as he did, and Rama accepted that property again respecting Bharata’s right to dispose his property and gift it to Rama.
The debate of legitimate heir has created some major epic issues in Indian historical and philosophical front, and the great epic Mahabharata registers one of such debate. Mahabharata was a debate about the right of eldest son as the legitimate heir or the right of the able son as the legitimate heir, and although Mahabharata establishes that the able son irrespective of being younger or elder, should be legitimate heir of parental property, it does not establishes that the parents or the actual owner of the property has the right to decide the heir of their property.
How can one decide for who is the able heir and who is unable?
Moughal King Shah Jahaan knew that his elder son Dara Shikoh^[2] was the proper and able heir of his empire, yet Aurangzeb proved to be better military controller, he not only killed Dara Shikoh, but imprisoned Shah Jahan too. Obviously, we cannot expect everybody to respect the property rights of the owner in the same way as Rama respected Dashratha’s rights.
Rani Lakshmi Bai is considered as the symbol of resistance to the British Empire, yet was she only that? Jhansi ki Rani in reality is the symbol of the fight for the legitimate property rights.
When Lord Dalhousie announced the doctrine of lapse^[3] , King of Jhansi Raja Gangadhar Rao knew he would loose his kingdom and his property because he had no legitimate heir, and in order to avert such loss, he married a 14 year old girl Manu whom we know as Rani Lakshmi Bai.^[4] Any breach of property rights always caused the major reshuffles in the world history. British government denied Indian woman’s right to hold acquire and create property, and thus after the death of Raja Gangadhar Rao, British army claimed on the kingdom of Jhansi and that became one of the major reasons of Indian mutiny of 1857.
On similar grounds of right to property and its annexation, Begum Hazrat Mahal, the Queen of Awadh^[5] stood against British as her property rights were rejected, as she was a divorcee.
Begum Hazrat Mahal was one of the bravest fighters for the independence of India. She challenged the alien domination to the last breath of her life and upheld the celebrated tradition of Indian womanhood by sacrificing her life for self-respect, self-governance. She refused to accept any offer short of complete independence and let herself perish in the remote regions of Nepal where she got refuge.
British rule not only denounced the woman’s right to acquire and hold property, (including her husband and father’s property) they denounced a man’s right to decide who will hold his property after his death. The assumed claim of son as the legitimate heir of parental property and in absence of a son, lapse of whole property was the major ride. Clearly, it was all against capitalism, it was totalitarianism of feudalism.
Indian common citizens never realized the importance of economic freedom and self-governance; they were so used to feudalism. May be that was the reason why the sense of slavery never occurred in the common citizens mind. For them, it hardly mattered who rules over them, they were slaves under regional raj kingdoms, and they remained slaves under foreign rulers of Afghans, Lodhis, Moughals and British.
Yet whenever the Indian citizen realized the sense of freedom and economic liberty, they gathered to shout against any slavery and exclaimed the right to self-governance, denouncing any sort of government.
When Chanakya with the help of Chandragupta Maurya^[6] denounced all tyrannical compulsory taxation of Nand dynasty, common citizens praised the libertarian idea of life, and Chandragupta Maurya became the first popular leader of India. When Akbar denounced all excessive taxation on Indians, and provided them the freedom to produce, hold and create wealth, when he denounced dynasty’s interference in market, price calculations through sales taxes, and hence providing a sense of freedom in the market, he became the popular Moughal leader of India. None else than Chandragupta Maurya and Akbar got that much support of common Indians, and the reason was the sense of freedom and economic liberty they provided for the common citizen.
After the 1857 mutiny, when under the flagship of Indian Congress, the trio of Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Dada Bhai Naoroji denounced the feudalism in every sense, and established the right of every citizen to self-govern; Indian struggle of freedom gained a new momentum.
The idea was not only to remove British rule, but it was to establish the sovereignty of Individual, his right to self-governance^[7] which obviously can be staged only on his right to acquire, create, hold and dispose property in whatever way he deem is profitable. It was the sense of capitalist freedom, which fuelled the Indian struggle of freedom. When Gandhi used the power of Liberty to raise the masses of Indian against British rule by denouncing the British taxation, whole India, and every Individual engulfed him to provide him strength, the strength of non-violence and right to live free, act free and self-govern, the right to Individual Sovereignty^[8] .
Yet, after the removal of British government, when Indian constitution under the headship of Nehru acclaimed the ideals of socialism, Indians were again denied the economic freedom, and the sovereignty of Individuals, but Indians had suffered under the feudal system too much, hence not many actually realized the new sense of slavery and kept enjoying the freedom from Feudalism for long.
Many of us now acclaim that India has improved allot, yet can we really put forth this progress and improvement as the achievement of the socialist set of slavery we accepted while denouncing feudalism, or is it the result of our consistent struggle for Individual freedom and right to self-govern?
Indians again started revolting against the collective governance and started demanding for Individual sovereignty in 1970’s and they suffered the times of emergency rule too and in early 1990’s Indian government started taking back steps, opening up the market, providing the space for Individual freedom, reducing and easing taxes, and providing the sense of right to property, yet we were not allowed to be free. The struggle for Independence never ceased, the struggle at Nandigram and Singur were just steps forward towards the need and nature of individual sovereignty.
In 1956, Indian government issued the Hindu Succession Act, which went through an amendment in 2005^[9] .
The HSA again establishes the fact that an Individual is not free to decide for his own property, and state rules are above his freedom and decision about how to dispose his own earned property. We will discuss the issues related to HSA in next step.

1. Kane and Abel, Wikipedia [↩]
2. Dara Shikoh, chosen heir of ShahJahan, Wikipedia [↩]
3. Doctrine of Lapse, Wikipedia [↩]
4. Rani Lakshmi Bai, Wikipedia [↩]
5. Begum Hazrat Mahal, Wikipedia [↩]
6. Chanakya a Liberty proponent, Reason for Liberty [↩]
7. India in search of Freedom, Equality and Justice, Reason for Liberty [↩]
8. Sovereign state Vs Sovereign Citizen, Reason for Liberty [↩]
9. Hindu Succession Act amendment, The Hindu [↩]