Shari’a, State, and Selfhood: Muslim Women’s Legal Consciousness in Postcolonial India

Abstract

This article explores negotiation of legal subjectivity by Muslim women in postcolonial India in the context of Shari’a, state law and daily living. Instead of working with the binary effects of the female subjects of the Islamic world as victims of a patriarchal personal law, or strong women who represent the section of the Islamic world that has received a secularized reform, the paper previews the concept of legal consciousness to understand women as they interpret, take, and challenge a variety of normative orders. It is based on feminist legal theory and South Asian writings on plural legalities and holds that the interactions of Muslim women with law are not entirely oppositional and compliant, but are conditioned by pragmatic moral judgments, communal pressures, and navigational moves through institutional structures. The paper places Muslim Personal Law in the context of the general system of constitutional secularism in India, with its attraction and conflict of dimensions of religious autonomy and gender valor. By examining the court transcripts, reform discourses, and life practices as is reflected in marriage, divorce, maintenance and inheritance it shows how women mobilise Islamic jurisprudence as well as constitutional entitlement to demand claims to dignity, justice and membership. Special focus is put on the subsequent legacies of the key legal constituencies; such processes as arguments on triple talaq to demonstrate how legal reforms are prismatic through local settings and fail to produce empowerment with uniformity. Centring the voices and practices of women, the article discloses the active co-production of the law and self in postcolonial India. It finally provides that legal consciousness by Muslim women is disruptive in fixed divisions between religion and state, providing a less dichotomous sense of agency, legality and gendered citizenship in South Asia today.