Affirming gender parity for women belonging to the Gond community, a Scheduled Tribe as defined under Article 342 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court held that tribal women are entitled to inherit ancestral property, even in the absence of explicit customary recognition of this right.The two-judge Bench comprising Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, on July 17, held that when neither statutory law nor proven custom governs a matter, courts must decide according to “justice, equity and good conscience.”The ruling revives a doctrinal question: how far can constitutional principles of equality override tribal customs protected under the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution?Story continues below this adWhat laws govern Scheduled Tribes?The Hindu Succession Act, 1956, governs personal law for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. Section 2(2) of the statute carves out an explicit exception, “nothing contained in this Act shall apply to the members of any Scheduled Tribe” unless the Central Government issues a notification extending it to them. No such notification exists for the Gonds, leaving them to the governance of their own customs, many of which are unwritten, localised and uncodified.Section 3 of the Hindu Marriage Act defines “custom” as something that must be ancient, certain, reasonable, and not opposed to public policy to acquire the force of law. But in the absence of documentation, such customs must be proved through evidence. Courts have repeatedly held that custom cannot be presumed; it must be demonstrated by clear and convincing proof.This evidentiary burden is central to the 2025 SC dispute. The plaintiffs, children of a Gond woman, claimed that their mother has equal inheritance rights in property belonging to their maternal grandfather. Lower courts dismissed their claim on the ground that they failed to prove a Gond custom entitling women to inherit property equivalent to their brothers. The Madhya Pradesh High Court upheld this reasoning.What did the Supreme Court say?The SC reversed these findings and observed that both the trial court and the HC had viewed the case from a presumption of exclusion, that women could not inherit unless they proved otherwise. “An alternate scenario,” the bench said, “was also possible where not exclusion, but inclusion could have been presumed, and the defendants then could have been asked to show that women were not entitled to inherit property. This patriarchal predisposition appears to be an inference from Hindu law, which has no place in the present case.” The bench further stated that, “unless otherwise prescribed in law, denying the female heir a right in the property only exacerbates gender division and discrimination, which the law should ensure to weed out.”Story continues below this adArticle 14 of the Constitution prohibits the State from treating equal citizens unequally, unless there is a reasonable basis for doing so. This is known as reasonable classification. For a classification to pass muster, it must be based on a real difference that’s relevant to the law’s purpose. The bench, while relying on Article 14, said that “there appears to be no rational nexus or reasonable classification for only males to be granted succession over the property of their forebears and not women, more so in the case where no prohibition to such effect can be shown to be prevalent as per law.”The bench also relied on Article 15(1), which prohibits discrimination based on gender; Article 38, which urges the state to eliminate inequalities, and Article 46, which mandates the protection of weaker sections from “social injustice and all forms of exploitation.”The apex court further drew support from the constitutional evolution of gender equality in property law, noting the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the 2005 Amendment of the Hindu Succession Act, “The law by excluding the daughter from participating in the coparcenary ownership not only contributes to her discrimination on the ground of gender but also has led to oppression and negation of her fundamental right of equality guaranteed by the Constitution.”This Statement of Objects of the 2005 Amendment was used not to apply Hindu law directly, but to illustrate the constitutional ethos that should guide all adjudication where custom or law is silent. By doing so, the court situated its reasoning within a broader constitutional morality, where equality operates as a default norm unless displaced by a demonstrably valid custom.Story continues below this adWhat is the impact of this judgment?The practical effect of the SC judgment may be modest, but each claim will still depend on evidence of custom, and courts will continue to assess such evidence case by case. Yet the judgment recalibrates the burden of proof. Instead of assuming exclusion and demanding that women prove inclusion, it begins from equality and requires that exclusion be proved.This subtle reversal aligns constitutional morality with procedural fairness. It marks the judiciary’s attempt to mediate between two constitutional imperatives- preserving distinct tribal identities while ensuring that the promise of equality does not stop at the threshold of custom.The ruling revisits a position taken nearly three decades ago in Madhu Kishwar v. State of Bihar (1996), where the Supreme Court had upheld Chotanagpur customary laws that excluded tribal women from inheritance, reasoning that sudden disruption of customs could destabilise social structures, though Justice Ramaswamy had separately noted that customs violating equality could not stand constitutional scrutiny.The 2025 judgment shifts this balance. Instead of treating custom as insulated from constitutional principles, it holds that where custom is uncertain or unproven, courts must apply Article 14. The court, by linking equality and autonomy, suggests that preserving tribal self-governance does not mean preserving discrimination.