Moments of decolonisation in Indian women’s navigations of interpersonal conflict
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.2017Keywords:
Legal pluralism, women’s agency, interpersonal conflictAbstract
In India decoloniality in law has been a movement of decolonising the state law. Stepping away from the perception of decolonialising as a legislative project, this paper argues for decoloniality of law to be explored as a thought process, that lies embedded with state-society relations in postcolonial India. Against the canvas of the vividly plural legal landscape, this contribution explores how individuals juxtapose legal institutions and legal orders in different permutations and combinations in pursuit of their ideas of justice and order, unravelling a decoloniality of thought and process that rests within the unique contexts of every conflict. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Mumbai, women’s experiences with conflict remain at the centre of this paper to help explore the notion of decoloniality in law.
Downloads
Metrics
Downloads:
First_Online_Kokal_OSLS 26
References
Agnes, F., 2018. The Politics behind Criminalising Triple Talaq. Economic and Political Weekly [online], 53(1), 12–14. Available at: https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/1/commentary/politics-behind-criminalising-triple-talaq.html
Ambedkar, B.R. (with V. Moon, ed.), 2019. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches. 1st ed., 14 (1). New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment.
Balagangadhara, S.N., and De Roover, J., 2007. The Secular State and Religious Conflict: Liberal Neutrality and the Indian Case of Pluralism. Journal of Political Philosophy [online], 15(1), 67–92. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2007.00268.x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2007.00268.x
Basu, S., 2012. Judges of Normality: Mediating Marriage in the Family Courts of Kolkata, India. Signs [online], 37(2), 469–92. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1086/661712 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/661712
Basu, S., 2015. The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India. Oakland: University of California Press.
Baxi, U., 2022. UCC: How Do We Fabricate Uniformity in Such Diversity? The Times of India [online], 8 May. Available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/ucc-how-do-we-fabricate-uniformity-in-such-diversity/
Bhambra, G.K., 2014. Postcolonial and Decolonial Dialogues. Postcolonial Studies [online], 17(2). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2014.966414 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2014.966414
Chakrabarti, S., 2015. Secularism Begins with Uniform Civil Code: Romila Thapar. The Hindu [online], 27 October. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/secularism-begins-with-uniform-civil-code-romila-thapar/article7806714.ece
Chiba, M., 1986. Asian Indigenous Law: In Interaction with Received Law [online]. London: KPI. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203037904 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203037904
Cohn, B.S., 1965. Anthropological Notes on Disputes and Law in India. American Anthropologist [online], 67(6), 82–122. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1965.67.6.02a00960 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1965.67.6.02a00960
De, R., 2013. Personal Laws: A Reality Check. Frontline [online], 21 August. Available at: https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/personal-laws-a-reality-check/article64764402.ece
Deepak, S.J., 2021. India, That Is Bharat [online]. New Delhi: Bloomsbury. Available at: https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/india-that-is-bharat-9789354350047/
Derrett, J.D.M., 1968. Religion, Law and the State in India. New York: Free Press.
Derrett, J.D.M., 1978. The Death of a Marriage Law: Epitaph for the Rishis. New Delhi [u.a.]: Vikas.
Dhingra, S., 2023. How Hindu Nationalists Redefined Decolonization in India. New Lines Magazine [online], 14 August. Available at: https://newlinesmag.com/argument/how-hindu-nationalists-redefined-decolonization-in-india/
Dirks, N., 2001. Castes of Mind [online]. Princeton University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400840946 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400840946
Dutta, S., 2022. Becoming Equals: The Meaning and Practice of Gender Equality in an Islamic Feminist Movement in India. Feminist Theory [online], 23(4), 423–43. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001211023641 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001211023641
Dutta, S., 2023. Polygamy and the Porous State: Reconstituting Gender in the Everyday Life of Muslim Law. Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis [online], 55(2), 180–200. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/27706869.2023.2170161 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/27706869.2023.2170161
Eckert, J., 2005. The Trimurti of the State: State Violence and the Promises of Order and Destruction. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers [online], no. 80, 30. Available at: https://www.eth.mpg.de/pubs/wps/pdf/mpi-eth-working-paper-0080
Eckert, J., 2009. “The Virtuous and the Wicked”: Anthropological Perspectives on the Police in Mumbai. Habilitation, Halle/Saale: Martin Luther University.
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998. “Qiyas.” Britannica History and Society.
Fernandes, J.K., 2021. Interrogating the Freedoms of Queer Liberation in India. In: T. Herklotz and S.P. de Souza, eds., Mutinies for Equality: Contemporary Developments in Law and Gender in India [online]. Cambridge University Press, 185–203. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108991735.011 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108991735.011
Fyzee, A.A.A., 1974. Outlines Muhammadan Law [online], 4th ed. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Available at: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/outlines-muhammadan-law/
Galanter, M., 1981. Justice in Many Rooms: Courts, Private Ordering, and Indigenous Law. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law [online], 13(19), 1–47. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.1981.10756257 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.1981.10756257
Gallien, C., 2020. A Decolonial Turn in the Humanities. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, no. 40, 28–58. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26924865
Ghose, S., 2003. The Dalit in India. Social Research [online], 70(1), 83–109. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2003.0032 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2003.0032
Ghosh, S., and Chakrabarti, A., 2021. Religion-Based “Personal” Law, Legal Pluralism and Secularity: A Field View of Adjudication under Muslim Personal Law in India. Oxford Journal of Law and Religion [online], 10(2), 254–74. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ojlr/rwab012 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ojlr/rwab012
Griffiths, J., 1986. What Is Legal Pluralism? Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law [online], 24(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.1986.10756387 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.1986.10756387
Griffiths, J., 2006. The Idea of Sociology of Law and Its Relation to Law and to Sociology. In: M. Freeman, ed., Law and Sociology [online]. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 49–68. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199282548.003.0004 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199282548.003.0004
Grover, S., 2009. Lived Experiences: Marriage, Notions of Love, and Kinship Support amongst Poor Women in Delhi. Contributions to Indian Sociology [online], 43(1), 1–33. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/006996670904300101 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/006996670904300101
Gupta, C., 1991. Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany. Economic and Political Weekly [online], 26(17), WS40–48. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4397988
Gupta, C., 2002. (Im)Possible Love and Sexual Pleasure in Late-Colonial North India. Modern Asian Studies [online], 36(1), 195–221. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X02001063 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X02001063
Gupta, C., 2009. Hindu Women, Muslim Men: Love Jihad and Conversions. Economic and Political Weekly, 44(51), 13–15.
Gupta, C., 2011. Anxious Hindu Masculinities in Colonial North India: “Shuddhi” and “Sangathan” Movements. CrossCurrents [online], 61(4), 441–54. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/cro.2011.a782514 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cro.2011.a782514
Gupta, C., 2014. Intimate Desires: Dalit Women and Religious Conversions in Colonial India. The Journal of Asian Studies [online], 73(3), 661–87. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911814000400 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911814000400
Guru, G., 2018. The Politics of Naming. Seminar [online], 710. Available at: https://www.india-seminar.com/2018/710/710_gopal_guru.htm
Herklotz, T., 2017a. Law, Religion and Gender Equality: Literature on the Indian Personal Law System from a Women’s Rights Perspective. Indian Law Review [online], 1(3), 250–68. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/24730580.2018.1453750 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/24730580.2018.1453750
Herklotz, T., 2017b. Shayara Bano versus Union of India and Others. The Indian Supreme Court’s Ban of Triple Talaq and the Debate around Muslim Personal Law and Gender Justice. Verfassung Und Recht in Übersee / Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America [online], 50(3), 300–311. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5771/0506-7286-2017-3-300 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5771/0506-7286-2017-3-300
Hildebrand, V., 2016. Women at War: Subhas Chandra Bose and the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. 1st ed. Noida: HarperCollins India.
Hirschauer, S., 2007. Putting Things into Words. Ethnographic Description and the Silence of the Social. Human Studies [online], 29(4), 413–41. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-007-9041-1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-007-9041-1
Husain, Z., 2023. Ambedkarization and Dalit Assertion: Notes from Banaras District in East Uttar Pradesh. The Oriental Anthropologist [online], 23(2), 383–95. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0972558X231207909 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0972558X231207909
Jauregui, B., 2015. Just War: The Metaphysics of Police Vigilantism in India. Conflict and Society [online], 1(1), 41–59. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3167/arcs.2015.010105 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/arcs.2015.010105
Jauregui, B., 2016. Provisional Authority. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Khanna, R., and Price, J., 1994. Female Sexuality, Regulation and Resistance. Focus on Gender [online], 2(2), 29–34. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09682869308520008 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09682869308520008
Khorakiwala, R., 2020. From the Colonial to the Contemporary: Images, Iconography, Memories, and Performances of Law in India’s High Courts. Oxford/New York: Hart. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509930685
Kokal, K., 2016. Decoding Diversity: Experiences with Personal Law in the Lower Courts of Maharashtra. In: K. Topidi and L. Fielder, eds., Religion as Empowerment: Global Legal Perspectives [online]. Abingdon: Routledge, 78–105. Available at: https://www.crcpress.com/Religion-as-Empowerment-Global-legal-perspectives/Topidi-Fielder/p/book/9781138606609
Kokal, K., 2018. Tamāshā: The Theatrics of Disputing and Non-State Dispute Processing. In: K. Topidi, ed., Normative Pluralism and Human Rights: Social Normativities in Conflict [online]. Abingdon: Routledge, 189–206. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315165233-9 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315165233-9
Kokal, K., 2020. State Law, Dispute Processing and Legal Pluralism: Unspoken Dialogues from Rural India [online]. Abingdon: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429460074 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429460074
Kokal, K., 2021. Turning to the State: Between Processing Disputes and Protecting Autonomy. In: S.P. de Souza and T. Herklotz, eds., Mutinies for Equality: Contemporary Developments in Law and Gender in India [online]. Cambridge University Press, 242–57. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108991735.014 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108991735.014
Kokal, K., 2022. Living by Religion, Playing by Law: Early Glimpses of the Ban on Triple Talaq. Socio-Legal Review [online], 18(1), 1. Available at: https://doi.org/10.55496/RSNO2362 DOI: https://doi.org/10.55496/RSNO2362
Kumar, S., 2017. Interpreting the Scales of Justice: Architecture, Symbolism and Semiotics of the Supreme Court of India. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique [online], 30(4), 637–75. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-017-9513-1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-017-9513-1
Malik, A., 2023. How to Truly Decolonise Criminal Law, Make It “Indian.” News Portal. Deccan Herald [online], 9 November. Available at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/how-to-truly-decolonise-criminal-law-make-it-indian-2762925
Mandal, S., 2018. “Taking a Gun to Kill the Mosquito”: Gender Justice, Deterrence and Protection in the Legislative Debate on Criminalising Triple Talaq. The JMC Review, 2, 83–102.
Mansfield, J., 2005. Personal Laws or a Uniform Civil Code? In: I. Deva, ed., Sociology of Law. Oxford University Press, 174–93.
Menski, W., 2001. Modern Indian Family Law. Richmond: Curzon.
Menski, W., 2006. Comparative Law in a Global Context: The Legal Systems of Asia and Africa [online]. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606687 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606687
Menski, W., 2010. Sanskrit Law: Excavating Vedic Legal Pluralism. SOAS School of Law Research Paper [online], No. 05-2010. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1621384 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1621384
Menski, W., 2014. Remembering and Applying Legal Pluralism: Law as Kite Flying. In: S.P. Donland and L.H. Urscheler, eds., Concepts of Law: Comparative, Jurisprudential, and Social Science Perspectives. Farnham: Ashgate, 91–108.
Merry, S.E., 1984. Anthropology and the Study of Alternative Dispute Resolution. Journal of Legal Education, 34(2), 277–83.
Misra, J., et al., 2018. Navtej Singh Johar & Ors. vs. Union of India, 10 2018 Supreme Court Cases 1. Supreme Court of India.
Mody, P., 2013. Love Jurisdiction. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology [online], 31(2), 44–59. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3167/ca.2013.310203 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/ca.2013.310203
Moore, S.F., 1973. Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study. Law & Society Review [online], 7(4), 719–46. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/3052967 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3052967
Mukhopadhyay, M., 1998. Legally Dispossessed: Gender, Identity, and the Process of Law. Calcutta: Stree.
Mustafa, F., 2017. Why Criminalising Triple Talaq Is Unnecessary Overkill. The Wire [online], 15 December. Available at: https://thewire.in/gender/why-criminalising-triple-talaq-is-unnecessary-overkill
Nandy, A., 2009. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism. 2nd ed. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Pandey, G., 2006. The Time of the Dalit Conversion. Economic and Political Weekly [online], 41(18), 1779–88. Available at: https://www.epw.in/journal/2006/18/special-articles/time-dalit-conversion.html
Rai, S.K., 2019. Gazing at the Woman’s Body: Historicising Lust and Lechery in a Patriarchal Society. Social Scientist, 47(1–2 (548–549)), 49–62.
Rautenbach, C., 2010. Deep Legal Pluralism in South Africa: Judicial Accommodation of Non-State Law. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law [online], 42(60), 143–77. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2010.10756639 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2010.10756639
Rege, S., 2013. Against the Madness of Manu. New Delhi: Navayana.
Santos, B.S., 2007. Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges. Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 30(1), 45–89.
Sen, A., 2023. J Sai Deepak’s India That Is Bharat: Coloniality, Civilisation, Constitution. Bloomsbury 2021. Social Dynamics [online], 49(2), 376–85. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2023.2236899 . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2023.2236899
Sezgin, Y., 2013. Human Rights under State-Enforced Religious Family Laws in Israel, Egypt and India [online]. Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139649612 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139649612
Shachar, A., 2001. Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights. Contemporary Political Theory [online]. Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490330 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490330
Shah, A., 2017. Ethnography?: Participant Observation, a Potentially Revolutionary Praxis. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory [online], 7(1), 45–59. Available at: https://doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.008 DOI: https://doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.008
Solanki, G., 2011. Adjudication in Religious Family Laws: Cultural Accommodation, Legal Pluralism, and Gender Equality in India [online]. Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511835209 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511835209
Subramanian, N., 2013. Myths of the Nation, Cultural Recognition and Personal Law in India. In: G. Bouchard, ed., Whither National Myths? Reflections on the Present and Future of National Myths [online]. New York: Routledge, 259–75. Available at: http://nsubramanian.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/myths-of-the-nation-cultural-recognition-and-personal-law-in-india-bouchard-volume-version-ii-docx.pdf
Subramanian, N., 2014. Nation and Family: Personal Law, Cultural Pluralism, and Gendered Citizenship in India [online]. Stanford University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.11126/stanford/9780804788786.001.0001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11126/stanford/9780804788786.001.0001
Tagore, R., 2005. The Home and The World. Trans.: S. Tagore. Revised. London: Penguin.
Tamanaha, B.Z., 2008. Understanding Legal Pluralism: Past to Present, Local to Global. Sydney Law Review, 30, 375–411.
Teltumbde, A., 2020. Dalits: Past, Present and Future. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Routledge India. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003030300
Tundawala, A., 2012. Multiple Representations of Muslimhood in West Bengal: Identity Construction Through Literature. South Asia Research [online], 32(2), 139–63. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0262728012454212 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0262728012454212
Valmiki, O., 2008. Joothan: An Untouchable’s Life. Trans. from the Hindi by A.P. Mukherjee. New York: Columbia University Press.
Vatuk, S., 2019. Extra-Judicial Khulʿ Divorce in India’s Muslim Personal Law. Islamic Law and Society [online], 26(1/2), 111–48. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-02612P06 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-02612P06
Virdi, P.K., 2013. Barriers to Canadian Justice: Immigrant Sikh Women and Izzat. South Asian Diaspora [online] 5(1), 107–22. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/19438192.2013.722383. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/19438192.2013.722383
Waghmore, S., 2013. Civility against Caste: Dalit Politics and Citizenship in Western India. 1st ed. Los Angeles: Sage.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Kalindi Kokal
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
OSLS strictly respects intellectual property rights and it is our policy that the author retains copyright, and articles are made available under a Creative Commons licence. The Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution No-Derivatives licence is our default licence, further details available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 If this is not acceptable to you, please contact us.
The non-exclusive permission you grant to us includes the rights to disseminate the bibliographic details of the article, including the abstract supplied by you, and to authorise others, including bibliographic databases, indexing and contents alerting services, to copy and communicate these details.
For information on how to share and store your own article at each stage of production from submission to final publication, please read our Self-Archiving and Sharing policy.
The Copyright Notice showing the author and co-authors, and the Creative Commons license will be displayed on the article, and you must agree to this as part of the submission process. Please ensure that all co-authors are properly attributed and that they understand and accept these terms.