Abstract: A broad definition of law manifests itself in various ways: it legitimates certain visions of social order, it determines relations between individuals and groups, and it manipulates cultural understandings and discourses over various concepts of rights – and duties. In India, the Hindu Succession Rights Act (HSA) of 1956 allows the wife and daughters, along with the sons of the deceased senior male, to claim an equal share in familial property. By giving inheritance rights to daughters and widows, not only to sons, this Act proposes a radically different organization of the ideal household, commonly referred to as the