India, Sept. 8 -- It was in 1996, when I was Senior Editor with The Indian Express, that the tenth anniversary of the annulment of the Travancore-Cochin Christian Succession Act of 1916 and 1921 was commemorated. Mary Roy, the headmistress of Pallikoodam and the mother of a future Booker Prize winner, had by then become a household name in Kerala and beyond.

She was the woman who dared to take on the combined might of the Syrian Christian community and who succeeded in persuading the Supreme Court to strike down an archaic law that "discriminated" against daughters in matters of inheritance.

At that time, Mary Roy stood at the zenith of her popularity. She was hailed as a crusader for women's rights, a pioneer who dealt a mortal blow to...