Guwahati: Noted educationalist and women’s rights activist Mary Roy breathed her last at the age of 89 on Thursday.
The famous Supreme Court case Roy, the Pallikoodam school’s founder, won in 1986 against the Keralan Syrian Christian community’s discriminatory inheritance legislation is well-known.
According to the ruling, Syrian Christian women have the same rights to the family’s land as their male siblings.
She is notable because Arundhati Roy, the Booker Prize-winning author, is her mother.
Mary Roy, who was born in 1933, was the biological child of P. V. Isaac, an entomologist. She attended the Jesus and Mary Convent in Delhi for her formal education and received her degree from Queen’s Mary College in Chennai.
When Mary was employed as a business secretary in Calcutta, she met Rajib Roy. After experiencing marital problems, she later went to her father’s home in Ootty with her two children. Her legal conflict with her brother George Isaac was ultimately sparked by the property dispute around this residence.
She established the college Corpus Christi in 1961; it was renamed Pallikoodam subsequently.
She is survived by her son Lalit Roy and daughter Arundhati.