She's Come Undone: Parsi Women's Property and Propriety under the Law

Abstract

AbstractParsis (Indian Zoroastrians), like many religious groups, manage their ritual spaces and funds with charitable trusts. High numbers of intermarriage have caused much debate over who counts as a Parsi within the community, and more attention is being paid to women and their rights of access. After a local trust in Valsad, Gujarat, barred intermarried women from entering Zoroastrian sacred spaces, Goolrukh Gupta, an intermarried Parsi woman, sued her trust in the high court. It ruled that Gupta was no longer a Parsi but a Hindu, like her husband, even though she had married under the Special Marriage Act of 1954, which enables civil marriage. Offering fresh insight into debates on the politics of recognition and the potentialities and pitfalls for women who appeal to the law to secure their communal rights, I argue that the mechanism of the trust allows the analysis of the two distinct but not separable notions of property and propriety. I analyze how the communal trust in India propertizes married women's legal and religious personhood. This article reveals how Indian women's composition as communal subjects as well as some aspirations of Indian secularism come undone.