Suchandra Ghosh

• Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

In India, where religion-specific laws govern issues of marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption and inheritance, the family laws of Muslims – the largest religious minority – have been a thorny issue in the post-independence period. In recent years, the major intervention in Muslim personal law reform came in the form of the invalidation of instan...

The phenomenon of 'legal pluralism' in India is conditioned and facilitated by the democratic state's commitment to protect religious freedom and uphold sociocultural diversity. Community-based adjudicating institutions such as the Darul Qaza (also known as Sharia court) function within this constitutional framework but every citizen also has the r...

A keen understanding of the intricacies of the procedural aspect of personal law and internal hierarchies/fissures within the community in question need to guide our vision of judicial reforms. Considering the bias that exists in terms of class, caste, gender and religion in the implementation of law, one wonders what would be the real gains of bri...