Development of Personal Laws in India: an historical account (original) (raw)
Related papers
Personal Laws in India: A Theoretical Investigation from the Perspective of Muslim Personal Law
Social Science Research Network, 2021
There has been a lot of discussion around Personal Laws, especially Muslim Personal Law in India, in recent times. Where most of the discussions have centered around women's rights, the authority of the State, and the Constitutional freedoms, there has been very little deliberation over the theoretical understanding of Personal Laws and the role played by the State in this regard. The article attempts to address this gap.
Imperatives Of Personal Law Reform & Good Governance.pdf
SOCIO ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES: Why does India’s economic growth need an inclusive agenda, 2018
The political discourse of personal laws have changed over time but the basic discursive and conceptual field within which they have evolved was defined in the colonial era and perpetuated by state in independent India without innovation. The legal policies of Muslim personal law shaped under colonial legal institutions by Codification as potential resolution mechanism on ideological platter of community for justification of colonial rule. The Indian governments manifested continuity under secular republic without alteration by codification tantamount to returning to the classical roots of religion. The fact remained that under the garb of non-interference, the government responded to external political imperatives and often justified on community demand of returning to Sharia’h roots, religious identity and popular support. Invariably, political considerations prioritized state interest over and above the posited interest of the people, community and nation. The discernible trend in historical sequencing follows that Muslim personal laws were codified first and the codification of Hindu personal law started at later stage and conceptually linked to construction of national identity. In this process of reform, it is always logical to question the myth of Hindu progressiveness and Muslim repressiveness simply because of historical accident that the former took place in pre-independent days and the latter happened in independent India. It is not out of context, to further ask as to why the partial reform of Hindu personal law by postcolonial legislature simultaneously avoided codifying the personal laws of Muslim on succession, inheritance, marriage and divorce. The parameters of non-interference and transplantation of colonial laws therefore needs to be examined de novo in the ideology of legal centralism and personal laws. The paper subscribe that India’s continuation of trifocal legacy of recognition of traditional laws, development of powerful norms and assumption of reform of personal laws by state is not robust with the imperatives of inclusive growth and good governance. Suggested Citation: Nomani, Md.Zafar Mahfooz (or M.Z.M.)
Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2009
Recent debates about personal law and a uniform civil code in India have seen both Hindu and Muslim leaders insist on the ‘religious’ status of Muslim law vis-à-vis a more secular or ‘civil’ Hindu legal system. This article argues that such claims obscure very important similarities in the development and functioning of these legal systems. Tracing the origins of the current debate to late nineteenth and early twentieth-century debates about law reform, it argues that the systems of personal law in operation in India today are the outcome of late colonial attempts by Hindu and Muslim male reformers to alter their legal systems in ways that served their own interests. The ways in which they succeeded in securing these ends were very different; colonial constructions of Hindu and Muslim religious practices, and later partition, shaped the context within which male reformers sought to assert their claims, before the state and their own religious communities. Thus, far from marking an inherent difference between Hindu and Muslim law, claims about the ‘civil’ or ‘religious’ status of the legal systems serve in both cases to underpin particular forms of patriarchal authority and gender inequality.
Developing Personal Laws and Balancing Multiculturalism in Postcolonial India
2017
Narendra Subramanian provides a detailed historical account of the development of personal laws in postcolonial India. He analyzes this development through the ideas of cultural pluralism and gender equality. India is a multicultural, multireligious, and multilingual society with diverse castes and communities. In postindependent India, legislature has given due significance to the value of “equality before law” while passing personal laws concerning marriage, inheritance of ancestral property, and women’s rights in their spouse’s families. However, both the legislature and judiciary have been sensitive toward the concerns of different religious, ethnic, and caste groups. They have made conscious efforts to maintain balance between the value of “equality before law” and demand for “legal pluralism.”
The Displacement of Traditional Law in Modern India
Journal of Social Issues, 1968
Contemporary Indian law is, for the most part, palpably foreign in origin or inspiration and it is notoriously incongruent with the attitudes and concerns of much of the population which lives under it. However, the present legal system is firmly established and the likelihood of its replacement by a revived "indigenous" system is extremely small. The modern Indian legal system, then, presents a n instance of the apparent displacement of a major intellectual and institutional complex within a highly developed civilization by one largely of foreign inspiration. This paper attempts to trace the process by which the modern system, introduced by the British, transformed and supplanted the indigenous legal systems-in particular, that system known as Hindu law.