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Look Inside The Government of Social Life in Colonial India

The Government of Social Life in Colonial India
Liberalism, Religious Law, and Women's Rights

Part of Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society

Author: Rachel Sturman, Bowdoin College, Maine

Date Published: April 2017
availability: Available
format: Paperback
isbn: 9781316649787

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About the Authors

From the early days of colonial rule in India, the British established a two-tier system of legal administration. Matters deemed secular were subject to British legal norms, while suits relating to the family were adjudicated according to Hindu or Muslim law, known as personal law. This important new study analyses the system of personal law in colonial India through a re-examination of women's rights. Focusing on Hindu law in western India, it challenges existing scholarship, showing how - far from being a system based on traditional values - Hindu law was developed around ideas of liberalism, and that this framework encouraged questions about equality, women's rights, the significance of bodily difference, and more broadly the relationship between state and society. Rich in archival sources, wide-ranging and theoretically informed, this book illuminates how personal law came to function as an organising principle of colonial governance and of nationalist political imaginations.
- Presents important new analysis of religious law in colonial India, showing how it operated and how it impacted on women's rights
- Empirically rich and wide ranging, the book illuminates how society played an important role in colonial governance and Indian nationalism
- A sophisticated book for scholars of South Asian history, law, colonial history, religion and gender studies
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Product details
- Date Published: April 2017
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781316649787
- length: 309 pages
- dimensions: 230 x 150 x 15 mm
- weight: 0.45kg
- contains: 1 b/w illus. 1 map
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I. Economic Governance:
1. Property between law and political economy
2. The dilemmas of social economy
Part II. The Politics of Personal Law:
3. Hindu law as a regime of rights
4. Custom and human value in the debates on Hindu marriage
5. Law, community, and belonging
Conclusion.
Look Inside
Author
Rachel Sturman, Bowdoin College, Maine
Rachel Sturman is Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at Bowdoin College, Maine. Her writing has appeared in many journals including Comparative Studies in Society and History, The Journal of Asian Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, and Gender and History.