The government of social life in colonial India : liberalism, religious law, and women's rights / Rachel Sturman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sturman, Rachel Lara, 1969- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in Indian history and society. ; 21.

Cambridge studies in Indian history and society ; 21

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women's rights--India--History.

Women's rights.

Religious law--India--History.

Religious law.

India--Social conditions.

India.

Great Britain--Colonies.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 289 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Map of the Bombay presidency and British India

Introduction

Economic governance

Property between law and political economy

The dilemmas of social economy

The politics of personal law

Hindu law as a regime of rights

Custom and human value in the debates on Hindu marriage

Law, community and belonging

Conclusion

Select bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-139-41140-3

1-107-22854-9

1-280-77373-1

9786613684509

1-139-42276-6

1-139-41974-9

0-511-85194-4

1-139-41769-X

1-139-42179-4

1-139-42383-5

OCLC:

796384361