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Informationen zum Autor 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. Klappentext 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. Zusammenfassung An important new study which analyses the system of personal law in colonial India, showing how it encouraged gender equality and a better relationship between state and society. By focusing on Hindu law, this illuminating book challenges existing scholarship, showing how - far from being based on traditional values – Hindu law was developed around ideas of liberalism. Inhaltsverzeichnis 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....
