The Hindu Family and the Emergence of Modern India

Law, Citizenship and Community

Eleanor Newbigin

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781107439962
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

Between 1955 and 1956 the Government of India passed four Hindu Law Acts to reform and codify Hindu family law. Scholars have understood these acts as a response to growing concern about women's rights but, in a powerful re-reading of their history, this book traces the origins of the Hindu law reform project to changes in the political-economy of late colonial rule. The Hindu Family and the Emergence of Modern India considers how questions regarding family structure, property rights and gender relations contributed to the development of representative politics, and how, in solving these questions, India's secular and state power structures were consequently drawn into a complex and unique relationship with Hindu law. In this comprehensive and illuminating resource for scholars and students, Newbigin demonstrates the significance of gender and economy to the history of twentieth-century democratic government, as it emerged in India and beyond.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Maps
• Tables
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Hindu law, family and Indian democracy
• 1 Making the modern Indian family: property rights and the individual in colonial law
• 2 Financing a new citizenship: the Hindu family, income tax and political representation in late-colonial India
• 3 Wives and property or wives as property? The Hindu family and women's property rights
• 4 The Hindu Code Bill: creating the modern Hindu legal subject
• 5 B. R. Ambedkar's Code Bill: caste, marriage and postcolonial Indian citizenship
• 6 Family, nation and economy: establishing a postcolonial patriarchy
• Conclusion: modern democracy, secularism and the Hindu family in postcolonial India
• Appendix Law Members involved with the Hindu Code Bill
• Bibliography
• Index