Fathers and sons: son has no legal right to live in his parents’ self-acquired property_HC

EOI, 2 December, 2016: The Delhi High Court has ruled that an adult son has no legal right to live in his parents’ self-acquired property; he can live only at his parents’ ‘mercy’. Fathers and sons have faced many problems in living together – the problems differing from age to age. But basically the reason has remained unchanged: the conflict between the views, outlooks and lifestyles of the old generation and the new. In Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons the conflict was between the conservative ideas of the father and the non-traditional views of the son. In the West, a son who has come of age at eighteen, does not live with his parents but finds out a job and lives separately. This is their tradition. In Bengal of the last century (and also in some other Provinces) there was the tradition of a huge family living together. This was known as ekannavarti parivar which meant a common kitchen for all the members of a big family consisting of several brothers and their progeny living together.

That family system died out by the middle of the last century. The new era was that of ‘nuclear family’. Employed and married adult sons living with their parents against the latter’s wish has become a rare phenomenon. Now there is a counter-narrative: adult and earning sons living separately from or willfully deserting their parents, many even living abroad and completely disowning any responsibility to their old and infirm parents. In the comparatively affluent areas of Kolkata like the Salt Lake the number of old parents living all alone with none to look after them has become the rule rather than the exception.

Adult sons staying with the parents and creating problems for them is one side of the picture. The other side is sons and daughters deserting their parents, leaving them to fend for themselves as best as they can. Filial ties are becoming more and more tenuous. There should be some legal protection provided to the old parents who have no income of their own. The sons – or in some cases even daughters – have a responsibility to look after their parents. Many middle or lower middle class people find it difficult even to go to an old-age home where the charges are steadily rising. There has been demand for unemployment allowance being given to the jobless. But the old and the elderly also deserve to be brought under the purview of some social security network. They, too, have the right to live, and live with dignity.