Examine the role of customary succession practices like 'Kulachar' in shaping princely/zamindari inheritance disputes and their judicial treatment in colonial and post-colonial India.

Article 13(3)(a) of the Constitution treats "custom or usage having the force of law" as law itself [1] — a recognition that, for centuries, succession to India's landed estates was governed not by statute but by family custom. The Kulachar of Raj Darbhanga, mandating impartibility and male primogeniture, is a representative case, and its judicial career maps the shift from deference to custom to its constitutional displacement.

How custom shaped inheritance disputes

• Impartibility and primogeniture: estates like Raj Darbhanga passed undivided to the eldest male heir, excluding younger sons and women — a rule aimed at preserving revenue-paying units, not family equity.
• Because Kulachar was unwritten, every succession invited litigation over whether the custom was ancient, certain and uniformly observed; disputes ran for decades.
• Colonial revenue interest reinforced custom: intact zamindaris meant assured land revenue, so courts of wards and British administration favoured single-heir devolution.

Colonial judicial treatment

• Privy Council and High Courts recognised proved family custom as displacing general Hindu law, but demanded strict proof — making custom a question of evidence rather than right.
• This created a dual regime: personal law for ordinary families, negotiated custom for the landed elite.

Post-colonial transformation

• Zamindari abolition removed the economic base of such customs; the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950 [2] vested proprietors' interests in the State, upheld in State of Bihar v. Kameshwar Singh of Darbhanga (1952) [3].
• The Hindu Succession Act, 1956 [4] codified succession, and courts read customary exclusions narrowly.
• In Madhu Kishwar v. State of Bihar (1996) the Court tested male-preference succession against equality [5]; in Tikka Shatrujit Singh v. Sukjit Singh (2026) it held primogeniture survives only for the gaddi, private estates devolving under personal law [6].

Custom thus moved from being the governing law of elite succession to a residual claim that must survive constitutional scrutiny. The trajectory reflects a maturing legal order that respects tradition only where it aligns with equality under Articles 14 and 15 — a balance the judiciary should continue to hold as remaining princely-estate disputes are settled.