Mary Roy was an Indian educator and women's rights activist known for winning a Supreme Court lawsuit in 1986 against the inheritance law prevalent within the Syrian Malabar Nasrani community of Kerala.
16 Facts About Mary Roy
1.
2.
Mary Roy was denied her share of the familial property due to the Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916.
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Mary Roy sued her brother after her father's death for equal inheritance.
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Mary Roy was the founder-director of Pallikoodam at Kalathilpady, a suburb of Kottayam town in the state of Kerala.
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Mary Roy's daughter is the Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy.
6.
Mary Roy sued her brother to gain equal access to the inheritance left to them.
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Mary Roy was represented by advocate Indira Jaising, herself a women's right activist.
8.
Mary Roy approached the Kerala High Court in 1994 to get the lower court's judgement overruled.
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Mary Roy was the founder-director of Pallikoodam at Kalathilpady, a suburb of Kottayam town in the state of Kerala.
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Mary Roy was born in 1933 and was the youngest among four siblings in the family.
11.
Mary Roy admitted to having a complicated relationship with her elder brother George, whom she would later sue over property inheritance.
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Mary Roy grew up in Delhi where she completed her schooling before going to Madras to obtain a degree.
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Mary Roy later moved to Calcutta and worked as a company secretary.
14.
Mary Roy married Rajeeb Roy, a Bengali Christian tea plantation manager in Shillong.
15.
Mary Roy confirmed she was very similar to the character her daughter wrote she was never involved with a man of lower caste, as was the case in the book.
16.
Mary Roy died in Kottayam on 1 September 2022, after a long period of age-related illness.