GOPIKA SOLANKI, ADJUDICATION IN RELIGIOUS FAMILY LAWS: CULTURAL ACCOMMODATION, LEGAL PLURALISM, AND GENDER EQUALITY IN INDIA (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Abstract

People in Quebec and elsewhere who have watched with fascination and trepidation the proceedings of the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences [CCAPRCD], or read its 2008 final report, 1 will this find this book refreshing and intellectually stimulating. Gopika Solanki, an assistant professor of political science at Carleton University, is a rare breed. Trained as a political scientist, she approaches her research question— “How do multireligious and multiethnic societies construct accommodative arrangements that can both facilitate cultural diversity and ensure women’s rights?” 2 through an “ethnography of legal adjudication of marriage and divorce across formal and informal arenas in Mumbai.” 3 While her book is being published as part of the Cambridge Studies in Law and Society, it could, arguably, easily have been published under another disciplinary imprint. While it is common sense to want to study family law through the lenses of state law and its formal court proceedings and decisions, in a country as multireligious and multiethnic as India any observer would miss the everyday life reality of adjudication, which occurs not only in courtrooms but also in a multitude of other sites such as religious communities, civic organizations and women’s groups; in fact family law in India is not based on legal centralism but instead on legal pluralism, meaning that the family is governed through a sharing of authority between the state and ethno-religious groups. Adjudication is thus shared—for instance, the state governs interreligious marriages, allows citizens to opt out of religious laws, but retains the authority to enforce the division of property—and because of that it allows diversity, dialogue and negotiations within and between religious and ethnic groups. It is the process of negotiation that ultimately defines the boundaries of the autonomy enjoyed by religious groups and how far the law of the state will reach. Of course, it is not because group claims can be accommodated and multicultural policies implemented that there will not be any conflicts, confrontations or contestations. The challenge is to avoid the latter problems, as Solanki makes clear, through the construction of “policies that can facilitate equality between and among diverse ethno-religious groups while ensuring gender equality within these groups in the matter of religious family