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SUMMARY:Women\, personal law and property rights: notions of modern citize
 nship in late colonial India - Eleanor Newbigin\, Trinity College\, Cambri
 dge
DTSTART:20061123T170000Z
DTEND:20061123T180000Z
UID:TALK5609@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Su Lin Lewis
DESCRIPTION:The interwar period saw a growing preoccupation amongst Indian
  legislators with questions of women’s status and property rights under 
 Hindu law. These debates have\, hitherto\, received remarkably little atte
 ntion but have been pointed to in studies of Indian women’s history as e
 vidence of the growing influence of women’s movements and more liberal s
 ocial attitudes in this period. This paper takes an alternative view and a
 rgues that these debates were about much more than growing awareness of wo
 men’s rights. It demonstrates the ways in which gender formed a cornerst
 one of many of the key power structures in late colonial society. Against 
 the backdrop of constitutional reform and the development of representatio
 nal politics in India\, reform of Hindu personal law provided an opportuni
 ty for many men to redraw relationships of authority and improve their own
  legal and political power. From this perspective the debates about law re
 form can be seen as a site on which alternative views of society and its r
 elationship were presented and contested. Focusing in particular on the ef
 forts of M.R. Jayakar\, a renowned Bombay lawyer\, to reform Hindu persona
 l law\, this paper argues that these debates form a window onto the proces
 s through which a modern Indian state was coming to be constructed long be
 fore 1947.
LOCATION:Rushmore Room\, St. Catharine's College
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