Legally Dispossessed: Gender, Identity and the Process of Law
Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay
demy octavo hb
246pp ISBN 81-85604-39-8 Rs 180 Feb 1998
This path-breaking study of women’s experience of litigation
under personal laws (those that cover marriage and inheritance) raises vital
questions of identity and citizenship in India and throws new light on the
uniform civil code debate. The author asks why is it so difficult to
disentangle woman ‘as subject/citizen imbued with rights from that of being a
daughter, sister, wife, widow and the symbol of a community?’ Why is it that
both Hindu and Muslim women are usually unsuccessful in their claims for
property despite appealing to different personal laws?
By shifting focus from the text of the law to an ethnography
of litigation, the nature of disputes, the attitudes of lawyers, the
experiences in court, the logic of judgments, and so on, the analysis brings
into play the crucial factors that are obscured in abstract discussions of
‘rights’.
Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay received her Ph.D. from the School of
African and Asian Studies at the University of Sussex. She is currently working
at the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam.
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