Personal Laws In India Research Articles

From Tradition to Reform: A Comparative Study of Personal Laws in India

The legal system of India is characterized by its diverse structure, where individual laws concerning marriage, divorce, inheritance, and adoption are influenced by a person's religious and communal affiliations. The rules, originating from religious traditions, have continuously adapted to mirror shifting social contexts and emerging concepts of fairness and impartiality. This paper provides a comparative analysis of Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Parsi personal laws, tracing their historical foundations, core tenets, and the complex challenges they face within India’s contemporary legal landscape. The genesis of these personal laws can be traced to religious scriptures and practices, with formal codification occurring under British colonial rule. Reforms aimed at advancing gender equality have transformed Hindu law, particularly through the 2005 inheritance amendments, yet issues persist, notably within Muslim law, where doctrines related to divorce and inheritance often favor male beneficiaries. Christian and Parsi laws are more egalitarian by comparison, though they still bear vestiges of colonial legal structures The discussion surrounding the implementation of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), as outlined in Article 44 of the Indian Constitution, is gaining momentum, portraying the UCC as a tool to harmonize personal laws in pursuit of gender equality and social justice. However, the UCC remains challenging, with many communities concerned that it may destroy cultural autonomy. This paper critically explores the evolution and current state of India's personal laws, evaluating the possibilities and implications of a UCC. It believes that, while a path to legal uniformity is conceivable, it necessitates a nuanced approach that protects religious plurality while advancing individual rights and gender parity.

Cultural and social empowerment of Muslim women in Context of Personal Law in India and Indonesia

Background: This research paper examines the cultural and social empowerment of In India and Indonesia, Muslim women make up the majority of the framework of personal law. Objective: This study's major goal is to investigate the connection between cultural empowerment, personal law awareness, and the resulting empowerment of Muslim women. The research aims to provide insights into factors influences cultural and social dimensions of empowerment. Methods: Employing a mixed-methods approach involving surveys and questionnaires, the study gathers data from Muslim women in both countries. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the connections between variables are evaluated. effect of cultural empowerment, social empowerment and Muslim personal law on both the countries. Findings: The analysis reveals a strong correlation between awareness of Muslim Personal laws and empowerment indicators, including engagement with cultural identity and social participation. Conclusion: The research underscores the pivotal role of personal law awareness in shaping the cultural and social empowerment of Muslim women. The findings emphasize the significance of legal literacy and its potential to bridge the gap between cultural norms and legal rights, ultimately contributing to the overall empowerment of Muslim women in diverse societal contexts.

Assessing Contribution of Indian Judiciary for the Reformation of Muslim Personal Law In India

Assessing Contribution of Indian Judiciary for the Reformation of Muslim Personal Law In India

Sharia, Legal Pluralism and Muslim Personal Law: Ethnographic Lessons from the Mahallu System of Malabar, India

Contemporary public as well as academic discourse on personal law in India has over the years engaged with the issues of its inadequacies, judicialisation and uniformity. This discourse has paid scant attention to the functioning of the law and the complexities of a multicultural nation-state committed to the idea of political secularism. This paper engages with the mahallu system of Malabar and sheds light on how decision-making in Muslim personal law is a process embedded in quotidian micro-politics, sectarian dynamics, social censure and affect. By tracing a triple talaq case in its ethnographic details we show that love (or lack of it), kinship expectations and community authority come together in resolving a conjugal dispute that does not lead to a straight path of legal interpretation but into a labyrinth of micro-politics of local religious factions and authority. The paper shows that the non-state quasi-legal institutions that come under the rubric of the mahallu system comprise of a particular kind of legal pluralism which is complex and replete with multilayered relations of power. This also brings to fore the binary and the play between what is considered to be legal and legitimate.

Competing Allies: Legal Pluralism, and Gendered Agency in Mumbai’sShariaCourts

Building upon participant observation in a women’sshariacourt in Mumbai, run by activists of an Islamic feminist movement in India, and its networks with similar alternative dispute resolution forums run by maleqazis(non-state actors trained in Islamic law and Muslim personal law), this article explores the modalities of interaction between non-state actors who adjudicate Muslim personal law in India. It also delineates how gendered agency is shaped in these interactions. This article identifies three aspects of this interaction between male and female non-state actors: (1) everyday cooperation between male and female qazi despite their doctrinal differences; (2) the gradual assertion of female qazi in and through everyday cooperation with male qazi; and (3) institutional competition interlaced with everyday cooperation. I explore a range of interactions including contestation and collaborative contestation between non-state actors, a domain that has not been explored in existing scholarship on legal pluralism. I also draw attention to how we might think about women’s agency in a legal pluralist context beyond a straightforward challenge to male authority and as it is forged at the intersection of individuals, interactions, and institutions. Through a critical exploration of women’s agency, I show how women both inhabit and transform gender norms at an individual and institutional level in their interactions with non-state actors and institutions, expanding scholarship on legal pluralism and gender beyond reified “women’s interests.”

Religion-based ‘Personal’ Law, Legal Pluralism and Secularity: A Field View of Adjudication under Muslim Personal Law in India

Abstract The phenomenon of ‘legal pluralism’ in India is conditioned and facilitated by the democratic state’s commitment to protect religious freedom and uphold sociocultural diversity. Community-based adjudicating institutions such as the Darul Qaza (also known as Sharia court) function within this constitutional framework but every citizen also has the right to approach a state court as and when they deem necessary. So far, the discourse on Islam, personal law, and the secular state has revolved around parliamentary debates, judicial activism, and legislative changes where the focus has been on the question of Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and gender justice. The discussion on personal law has rarely paid serious academic attention to the complexities of kinship conflicts embedded in affective as well as economic and legal matrix or more importantly how they are resolved. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the jurisprudential practices of Sharia courts in Uttar Pradesh, India, the paper offers a lens to understand how conflict resolution in family matters takes place in a legal plural landscape ensconced between citizenship rights and community practices. We argue that understanding this process also offers important insights on the shifting meaning of secularism1,2 in contemporary India.

Maintenance of Hindu Widow under Personal Law in India

The law of maintenance for widow at India under the Indian law .The personal law of India do recognized the of the widow form the period of British rule. The article demonstrate the right of the Hindu female under personal law.

Towards the Uniform Civil Code and Personal Laws in India: Gender Equality Perspective

Family life and personal law in India express together a complex blend of historical, philosophical and political aspects. Family law is setting out a framework for thinking about how personal life affects the most profound aspects of our lives and communities. But the political issues are facing problematic as politician are not in favor of this because fear of losing their vote bank. There is not only political issue but also legal issue. Again, in the matters of personal law segment pertaining to marriage, dowry, divorce, adoption, legitimacy, wills, and inheritance each individual of different backgrounds must appeal to their respective religious laws for guidance or rulings. In a modern secular India, balancing the claims of religious communities in secular nature has caused some difficult problems as a nation. The author will scrutinize how personal laws in secular India provides an inclusive look into the issues and challenges and what extent State can interfere in the matters of religion so as to remove the hindrance in the governance. This article will also analyze the basis of national integration by removing disparate reliability on law which has conflicting ideologies of gender equality.

Status of homosexual marriage in India

Marriage is seen as a holy connection between a man and a woman for the sake of reproduction in India. Each religion has its own set of beliefs, practices, and traditions that members of that group adhere to religiously; these laws are recognized as personal laws in India. These personal laws address marriage, successions, adoption, divorce, and other issues, setting down the necessary procedural procedures to make all religious activities lawful. The idea of marriage is interpreted narrowly through the binary lens of the union of two diverse people, which implies that they represent the society's standard standards, and any conduct that deviates from these norms would be met with opposition. The same may be said of India's homogenous relations. Though the court has decriminalized Section 377, many possibilities remain unexplored, including as the effect of homogenous relationships on succession rules and the validity of their offspring and their rights. The author's goal in this article is to examine the legal status of same-sex marriage in India. Examine the effect of homogeneous relations on succession rules, and finally, comprehend the function of the court in resolving homogeneous relations disputes.

Personal Laws in India: A Theoretical Investigation from the Perspective of Muslim Personal Law

Personal Laws in India: A Theoretical Investigation from the Perspective of Muslim Personal Law

Maintenance of Widow under Personal Law in India

This article deals with law of maintainance widow & women in India . even just after the independence law was made for widow and female in respect to law of inheritance and maintainance, the provision are made thinking about the society well in advance . so the the then law is discussed with few judicial pronouncement .

Comparative Study of Personal Law in India

A woman was considered less than a full human, an object to be transferred by her male guardian. Though the turn in rights and behavior hasn’t quite corrected itself, women, possibly in a better place today than ever before -women are uniformly discriminated in India concerning all religions. Poly gamy forms a key basis for discrimination among Muslim women. In Christians, a wife can claim separation only on the adultery of the husband and his change of profession of Christianity to some other religion and marrying other women -There are different inheritance rules among the male and female Hindus. All this discrimination among the Indian women have to without any distinction be they Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Parsi, Sikh or Buddhist take what is best in all laws and frame a Uniform Civil Code - This article critically examines the uniform discrimination of women in India among Hindu, Muslim and Christian female marriage, Divorce and succession.

Withholding Consent to Conjugal Relations within Child Marriages in Colonial India: Rukhmabai's Fight

Married at the age of eleven, Rukhmabai refused to go and live with her husband who had filed a suit for restitution of conjugal rights against her in 1884. This paper analyses the transplantation of the notion of restitution of conjugal rights into Hindu personal law in India at a time when child marriage was rife and there was no minimum age of marriage. Within this context Rukhmabai's case symbolises an important interjection in its attempt to posit lack of consent to an infant marriage as a defence against suits for restitution of conjugal rights. This marked a shift from female consent being understood as a question of physical maturity alone, to a claim of intelligent consent and the capacity to withhold such consent within an unconsummated marriage arranged in the girl's infancy. While analysing these notions of consent within colonial law the paper also closely scrutinises Rukhmabai's public writings to recover one of the earliest published Indian female views on the need for marital consent.

Critical review of changing trend relating to maintenance under personal laws in India

Maintenance is an allowance, required by the law to be made to a wife, out of her husband’s estate for her support either during the matrimonial suit or on its termination where fact of marriage is established and she proves herself entitled separate maintenance. Maintenance can be claimed by wives under all matrimonial statutes except under the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act, 1939, as an ancillary relief in matrimonial proceedings. The right can be claimed only as subsidiary relief while claiming a primary matrimonial relief such as divorce, judicial separation, annulment of marriage, or restitution of conjugal rights. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 provides an additional avenue for women to claim maintenance and compensation from their husbands and live in partners. Under these provisions, maintenance can be obtained without the necessity of initiating proceedings for a primary matrimonial relief.

Towards a Muslim Family Law Act? Debating Muslim women's rights and the codification of personal laws in India

ABSTRACTMuslim personal laws in India have never been systematically codified, in marked contrast both to Hindu family laws in India and to Islamic family laws in much of the Muslim-majority world, both of which have been subject to a far greater degree of codification. This article examines the call being made by one prominent contemporary Muslim women's organisation, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), for the wholesale codification of Muslim family laws in India as a pathway to protecting women's rights. Following a discussion of the wider context of India's uncodified Muslim personal law system, this paper offers a commentary on the BMMA's draft Family Law Act, first released in 2014. It demonstrates how this document synthesises discourses of women's rights drawn from a series of Qur’anic, constitutional and transnational reference points. By drawing from such diverse sources, and while legal codification in much of the Islamic world has instituted fundamentally patriarchal legal norms, the BMMA's proposed code articulates a distinctive, more gender-equal reading of Islamic family law.

Conventions, Courts, and Communities: Gender Equity, CEDAW and Religious Personal Law in India

The Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is central in outlining the gendered dimensions of human rights. India ratified this treaty with the reservation that it would be complied with only in accordance with the religious personal law. This article will examine the ways in which the convention interfaces with religious personal law, and the efficacy of the convention in both top-down and bottom-up reform of religious personal laws, as well as secular laws.

Sharia Courts and Muslim Personal Law in India: Intersecting Legal Regimes

In July 2005, a Delhi lawyer filed suit with the Supreme Court of India seeking to ban “sharia courts” (dar ul qazas) and Islamic legal opinions, arguing that they constitute a “parallel judicial system” that undermines the state's legal institutions. The Supreme Court decided in 2014 that dar ul qazas are not parallel but appropriate alternative forums. In this article, I analyze several divorce cases in Delhi and Patna dar ul qazas to show that, rather than being alternative or parallel, dar ul qazas intersect with state courts. Attending to this intersection, I argue, has implications for how we understand legal pluralism, secularism, and the relation between them. Specifically, I argue that because of how cases travel between dar ul qazas and state courts, dar ul qazas help to consolidate the oppositions between religious and secular law, kin relations, and rights upon which secularism relies.

Muslim women and gender based violence in India and the UK

This article examines how the marginality of Muslim communities in India and the UK intersects with gender based violence (GBV) in Muslim communities. We briefly outline the socio-economic positioning of Muslims and then move on to (i) discuss communalism in India and radicalisation in the UK and (ii) consider personal laws in India and the call to Sharia law in the UK to elucidate the ways in which these wider policies, legislation and discourses impact on Muslim women experiencing GBV in both contexts. We conclude that there is a continuum between state responses and community responses, and personal and criminal law in entrenching GBV at a structural and interpersonal level in both India and the UK and that the current socio-political context further limits public spaces available to Muslim women to access support for GBV.

Out of Shah Bano’s shadow: Muslim women’s rights and the Supreme Court’s triple talaq verdict

ABSTRACTIn a 2017 judgment, the Supreme Court of India invalidated triple talaq – a mode of instant, unilateral, extra-judicial divorce available to Muslim males. This mode of divorce has been widely criticized for making Muslim women vulnerable to threats of instant divorce and the resulting destitution. This note scrutinizes three formulations of the problem pursued by the judges in this case: triple talaq as constitutionally protected right to freedom of religion; as a violation of the fundamental right to equality; and as a practice disapproved within Islamic legal traditions. The note argues that the third formulation (the majority verdict), that eschewed constitutional rights analysis in favour of reforming Muslim personal law from within, along with wide participation of Muslim women’s groups in the litigation, suggests new directions for the debate on Muslim personal law in India.

CHANGING DIMENSIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF MARRIAGE - A CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGE TO PERSONAL LAWS IN INDIA.

28Jul 2017 CHANGING DIMENSIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF MARRIAGE - A CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGE TO PERSONAL LAWS IN INDIA. Balwinder Singh. Assistant Professor, School of Law, The NorthCap University, Gurugram.