Mary Roy, an educator and a women’s rights activist, died September 1 after a brief ill-ness in Kottayam, a town in the southern Indian state of Kerala. She was 89.
She was survived by two children, son Lalit Roy and daughter Arundhati Roy, renowned writer and activist who won the 1997 Man Booker prize for her novel “God of Small Things.”
Roy was known for winning a landmark Supreme Court case in 1986 that ensured equal rights in family property for women belonging to the Syrian Christian community in Kerala. She fought a 39-year-long legal battle to gain equal access to the property of her deceased father that led to the Supreme Court judgment against the archaic Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916.
A Family Where Faith Inspired Six Sisters to Religious Life
In the mist-covered hills of Venappara in Kerala, the Kallidukkil family became a remarkable witness to faith and vocation. Thomas and Thresiamma Kallidukkil raised their
