Modern Indian Family Law

Menski, Werner F

doi:10.4324/9781315028354

Cited by 18 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Socio-legal scholarship has pointed out, especially in the domain of Muslim family law, the subtle implications of what has been called South Asian judicial activism (Menski 2001;Pearl and Menski 1998;Serajuddin 2011). At the same time, but interestingly unrelated and to a great extent unnoticed, some anthropological studies have shed light on the specific modalities in which stability and apparent accountability of the legal machinery in Pakistan has been largely supported by the many procedures of out-of-court justice (Chaudhary 1999;Mehdi 2002).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In Pakistan, while on one hand judicial activism has been a mixed blessing (Lau 1996;Menski 2001) and on the other out-of-court systems such as jirga and panchayat have been largely tolerated by the state, observers have instead concentrated almost exclusively on the dangers of overstepping boundaries between the judiciary and the executive. It should be pointed out however, that the judiciary has been always part of the process of the modernization and liberal governance that began with the Independence of Pakistansometimes also when moderately supporting Islamization and non-state sources of law (Lombardi 2010a;2010b).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…With the help of forward thinking lawyers and judges, women could get a fair share". This point is crucial because judicial activism in India and in Pakistan has afforded very significant room for interpretation even beyond the legislator's purpose (Basu 2012;Menski 2001;Holden 2011b). Nevertheless, as this paper has shown, positive law alone is failing in adequately supporting daughter's inheritance claims.…”

Section: Personal Laws and Legal Pluralismmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Daughters’ inheritance, legal pluralism, and governance in Pakistan

Holden

Chaudhary

2013

The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law

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This paper explores social actors' arguments regarding daughters' inheritance, their use in court, and the implications of legal pluralism on governance in Pakistan. It scrutinizes the notion of custom, non-state law, and positive law as crucial dynamics that shed light on the ways social actors make sense of power and governance. In Foucauldian terms, this paper deals with the formation of statements -their temporalization and their becoming but in particular sheds light on the potential logics of the perpetuation of gender discrimination in inheritance laws. This paper suggests that the everyday arguments that play a role in the elaboration of the story told to the courts and received by the judge have the role of actants. Within the framework of proceedings it is possible to isolate the micro-units on which the legal discourse is elaborated either for state-or non-state jurisdiction, or for both of them, not necessarily seen as antagonistic places, and not necessarily seen within a framework of justice and injustice. This paper concludes that notwithstanding polarized discourses on centralized and decentralized governance, everyday practices of law in Pakistan tend rather to perpetuate non-state law together with positive law as continuous and concomitant interlegalities in and beyond the state instead of exclusive and conflicting sources of legitimacy.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Personal Laws and Legal Pluralismmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Daughters’ inheritance, legal pluralism, and governance in Pakistan

Holden

Chaudhary

2013

The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law

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“…The divorce rate is extremely low in India (Holden, 2008;Menski, 2001), partly because of the legal difficulties-up to the time of the survey-of getting a nofault divorce. The divorce rate is extremely low in India (Holden, 2008;Menski, 2001), partly because of the legal difficulties-up to the time of the survey-of getting a nofault divorce.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taller indian women are more successful at the marriage market

Smits

Monden

2012

American J Hum Biol

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“…It was protected by Section 17 of the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 but later abolished by the Kerala (Hindu Joint Family System Abolition) Act of 1975. Writing on the Kerala Act, Werner Menski (2001, 323) stated: “First, it damages the property rights of women and their dependents and strengthens the already superior rights of men. .…”

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confidence: 99%

Secularism in the Indian Context

Acevedo¹

2013

Law soc. inq.

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Indian constitutional framers sought to tie their new state to ideas of modernity and liberalism by creating a government that would ensure citizens' rights while also creating the conditions for democratic citizenship. Balancing these two goals has been particularly challenging with regard to religion, as exemplified by the emergence of a peculiarly Indian understanding of secularism which requires the nonestablishment of religion but not the separation of religion and state. Supporters argue that this brand of secularism is best suited to the particular social and historical circumstances of independent India. This article suggests that the desire to separate religion and state is integral to any understanding of secularism and that, consequently, the Indian state neither is nor was meant to be secular. However, Indian secularists correctly identify the Indian state's distinctive approach to religion-state relations as appropriate to the Indian context and in keeping with India's constitutional goals.

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Modern Indian Family Law

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Daughters’ inheritance, legal pluralism, and governance in Pakistan

Daughters’ inheritance, legal pluralism, and governance in Pakistan

Taller indian women are more successful at the marriage market

Secularism in the Indian Context

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