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Religion-based ‘Personal’ Law, Legal Pluralism and Secularity: A Field View of Adjudication of Muslim Personal Law in India

In this paper, we show how this plural legal landscape is negotiated by litigants, especially women, and thereby illustrate the procedural interplay between civil and religious courts through this adjudication process. The ethnography of adjudication at the Darul-Qaza situated in a large Muslim neighbourhood in Kanpur and the institution’s intersections with the societal (We mean the tribunals that function at the neighbourhood or community level) secular courts show how Muslim personal law functions. In this paper, we identify both the links between the Darul-Qaza and civil courts, and the processes of evidence making and legal reasoning that are integral to this interlegality. We argue that the issue of personal law should be understood within the post-colonial legal structure of India and with a good understanding of the processes through which disputes in the delicate area of family, affect and kinship are addressed and resolved. The above case shows how resolution occurs in a family dispute when plural institutional mechanisms are at work. This paper explores the adjudication process at a Darul-Qaza to understand how religion-based family laws get constituted as litigants seek both religious counsel and civil authority.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:36147
Date14 November 2019
CreatorsGosh, Suchandra, Chakrabarti, Anindita
ContributorsKolleg-Forschergruppe 'Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersion, doc-type:workingPaper, info:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaper, doc-type:Text
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Relationurn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-167259, qucosa:16725

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