This Book Will Not Only Be A Useful Reference Text For Those Dealing In Marital Law, Property Law And Gender Justice, It Will Welcomed By Women`S Groups And Ngos.

This volume is a collection of articles by scholars across disciplines to create a discourse of family law independent of Religious Personal Law, whilst striving for fairness and justice to all. It demonstrates the artificiality of the public–private divide and seeks the systematic development of ideas for a fair and just family law in contemporary India. The book does not merely document the pathologies of power within the family but also makes proposals for remedying these inequities. It is not confined to considering what changes need to be inducted into existing family law to make it more just, but also strategises on the means and methods of effecting the change. It lifts the familial veil and scrutinises the status, rights and disabilities of some of the subordinated members of the family. The volume is an invitation to redefine family law with the twin tools of reflection and responsibility. It will interest those in law judges, legislators, law reformers as well as those in women and family studies, policy makers and policy analysts, apart from the general reader.

Using the contemporary workings of property law in India through the lives and thoughts of middle-class and poor women, this is a study of the ways in which cultural practices, and particularly notions of gender ideology, guide the workings of law. It urges a close reading of decisions by women that appear to be contrary to material interests and that reinforce patriarchal ideologies. Hailed as a radical moment for gender equality, the Hindu Succession Act was passed in India in 1956 theoretically giving Hindu women the right to equal inheritance of their parents’ self-acquired property. However, in the years since the act’s existence, its provisions have scarcely been utilized. Using interview data drawn from middle-class and poor neighborhoods in Delhi, this book explores the complexity of women’s decisions with regard to family property in this context. The book shows that it is not passivity, ignorance of the law, naiveté about wealth, or unthinking adherence to gender prescriptions that guides women’s decisions, but rather an intricate negotiation of kinship and an optimization of socioeconomic and emotional needs. An examination of recent legal cases also reveals that the formal legal realm can be hospitable to women’s rights-based claims, but judgments are still coded in terms of customary provisions despite legal criteria to the contrary.

This book critically examines domestic violence law in India. It focuses on women’s experiences and perspectives as victims and litigants, with regard to accessibility to law and justice. It also reflects on the manner in which the legal process reproduces gender hierarchies. This volume: Analyzes the legal framework from a gender perspective to pinpoint the inherent stereotypes, prejudices and discriminatory practices that come into play while interpreting the law; Includes in-depth interviews and case studies, and explores critical themes such as marriage, rights, family, violence, property and the state; Presents alternatives beyond the domain of law, such as qualitative medical care and legal aid facilities, shelter homes, short-stay homes, childcare facilities, and economic and social security provisions to survivors and their children. Drawing on extensive testimonies and ethnographic studies situated in a theoretical framework of law, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of law, gender, human rights, women’s studies, sociology and social anthropology, and South Asian studies.

Family Law Digest book critiques the inconsistency of the Kenyan courts decisions as regards the division of matrimonial property. In a nutshell, this digest is a review of the decisions of Kenyan courts when faced with the question of the determination of inter-spousal property rights.

This book examines the prevailing legal discourse surrounding domestic violence law in India. It investigates the myths, patriarchal stereotypes, and misconceptions that undermine the process of justice and dilute legal provisions to the detriment of survivors. The volume: Develops arguments based on legal case studies and draws extensively on knowledge from various fields of study, as well as the experience of women survivors. Examines fallacies within the legal framework through a study of strategic lawsuits against public participation suits within the Indian context. Proposes measures for a fair and more gender inclusive legal system that focuses on facilitating access to justice. Suggests that emphasis be laid on establishing the rule of law and eliminating the culture of violence. A key text on gender and law in India, this book will be indispensable to scholars and researchers of socio-legal studies, law, gender, human rights, women’s studies, social science, political science, and feminist jurisprudence in South Asia. It will also be of interest to NGOs, activists, and lawyers.

This book examines the convergences, divergences and reciprocal lessons that the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) share with one another in developing the principles of private international law. The chapters provide a thematic understanding of the cornerstones of private international law in each of the BRICS countries: namely, (1) the procedure to initiate claims in civil and commercial matters, (2) the law that would govern such matters in litigation and arbitration, as well as (3) the mechanism to recognise and enforce foreign judgments and arbitral awards. Written by leading private international law scholars and practitioners, the chapters draw on domestic legislation and its interpretation through cases decided by the courts in each of these emerging economies, and explicitly cover the rules applicable in contractual and non-contractual concerns and issues of choice of court agreements. Issues around marriage, divorce, matrimonial property, succession and surrogacy are also addressed, considering the implication of such aspects through the increased movement of persons. The book is a useful comparative resource for the governments of the BRICS countries, legislators, traders, academics, researchers and students looking for an in-depth discussion of the reciprocal lessons that these countries may have to offer one another on these issues.

Routledge Readings on Law, Development and Legal Pluralism presents some of the finest essays on social justice, environment, rights and governance. With a lucid new Introduction, it covers a vast range of issues and offers a compelling guide to understanding the harm and risk relating to biodiversity, agro-ecology, disaster and forest rights. The book covers critical themes such as ecology, families and governance and establishes the trajectory of contemporary ecology and law in South Asia. The thirteen chapters in the volume, divided into three sections, trace violence and marginality in the plurality of families and their laws in India, as well as discuss community-based just practices. With debates on development, governance and families, the book highlights the politics and practices of law making, law reform and law application. This multidisciplinary volume foregrounds the politics and plural lives of/in law by including perspectives from major authors who have contributed to the academic and/ or policy discourse of the subject. This book will be useful to students, scholars, policymakers and practitioners interested in a nuanced understanding of law, especially those studying law, marginality, kinship and indigeneity studies. It will serve as essential reading for those in law, socio-legal studies, environment studies and ecology, social exclusion studies, development studies, South Asian studies, human rights, jurisprudence and constitutional studies, gender studies, history, politics, conflict and peace studies, sociology and social anthropology. It will also appeal to legal historians and practitioners of law, environmentalists and those in public administration.

An innovative cultural history of the evolution of modern marriage practices in Bengal, Marriage and Modernity challenges the assumption that arranged marriage is an antiquated practice. Rochona Majumdar demonstrates that in the late colonial period Bengali marriage practices underwent changes that led to a valorization of the larger, intergenerational family as a revered, “ancient” social institution, with arranged marriage as the apotheosis of an “Indian” tradition. She meticulously documents the ways that these newly embraced “traditions”—the extended family and arranged marriage—entered into competition and conversation with other emerging forms of kinship such as the modern unit of the couple, with both models participating promiscuously in the new “marketplace” for marriages, where matrimonial advertisements in the print media and the payment of dowry played central roles. Majumdar argues that together the kinship structures newly asserted as distinctively Indian and the emergence of the marriage market constituted what was and still is modern about marriages in India. Majumdar examines three broad developments related to the modernity of arranged marriage: the growth of a marriage market, concomitant debates about consumption and vulgarity in the conduct of weddings, and the legal regulation of family property and marriages. Drawing on matrimonial advertisements, wedding invitations, poems, photographs, legal debates, and a vast periodical literature, she shows that the modernization of families does not necessarily imply a transition from extended kinship to nuclear family structures, or from matrimonial agreements negotiated between families to marriage contracts between individuals. Colonial Bengal tells a very different story.

This volume addresses the issue of Hindu peasant women's ability to effectuate the statutory rights to succession and assert ownership of their share in family land. The work combines a critical evaluation of law with economic analyses into allocation of resources within the family as a means of addressing gender relations and explaining resulting gender inequalities.