The Amendment brought about in 2005 to the Hindu Succession Act provided for…

Under the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, the Mitakshara coparcenary rule originally gave only male descendants — sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons — a birthright share in ancestral joint Hindu family property; daughters held no such coparcenary status and could inherit only as ordinary heirs on intestate succession.

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 rewrote Section 6 of the 1956 Act to make a daughter a coparcener by birth in the joint Hindu family property in exactly the same manner as a son, with the same rights, and the same liabilities, in that property.

So the 2005 Amendment is best understood as the law finally recognising a woman's equal share in ancestral/joint family property alongside male members of the family — this is exactly what the amendment provided for.

The other options describe entirely separate legal areas that this amendment did not touch:

• the right of minority communities to run their own religious/educational institutions is a matter of Article 30 of the Constitution, unconnected to Hindu succession law;

• special marriage-related rules for the Hindu community fall under the separate Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, which the 2005 succession-law amendment did not alter;

• protection of men from paying compensation after divorce concerns maintenance/alimony questions under matrimonial law, a subject the 2005 amendment neither created nor addressed.