Nation and Family takes a new approach to the study of religion-based personal laws, particularly in India. While much of the discourse on personal laws in India has occurred within the context of gender (in)equality or secularism/multiculturalism, Narendra Subramanian combines the investigation of these issues with a focus on the idea of nation and nation-building. According to Subramanian, the book is an exploration of personal law as “an important arena in which official nationalism, multiculturalism, secularism and citizenship were formed and expressed in India” (3). In a single observation, the author encapsulates the issue that is at the heart of the debate over religion-based personal laws and the formation of a Uniform Civil Code in India that “majoritarian constructions” and the ways in which the nation is imagined continue to influence the debate on personal laws. In order to fully grasp the significance of religion-based family laws, it is important to understand the processes involved in the formation of the nation and the ways in which different cultural components including religion have been central to the envisioning of the state, society, and family in postcolonial nations (32). This impressive work, which is a product of a meticulous study of Parliamentary Debates, Constituent Assembly Debates, Legal Cases, and personal interviews, explores the centrality of religion to nation, law and citizenship.
The most interesting and important part of the book is Chapter Two, “Nationalism, Recognition and Family Formation.” This chapter makes a significant contribution to scholarship on the comparative study of personal laws. Within the context of the book, it provides a comparative historical and political framework for the route taken by the post-colonial Indian nation in the formation and reform of personal laws. Subramanian's thorough investigation historicizes the evolution of personal law in Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and India, among others. This comparative study helps explain why, despite having roots in the same religion (Islam, for instance), different post-colonial countries adopted different stances toward family law and the reform thereof. This chapter also highlights the ways in which personal laws were informed by perceptions on modernity and secularism. For instance, Turkey and Tunisia, the two countries that saw the most extensive modernist reforms, differed in their perspective and the content of personal law reform because while Turkey adopted a secular stance, the Tunisian approach was, according to Subramanian, “Islamic modernist.” However, as Subramanian argues, Tunisian laws did not necessarily disadvantage women when compared to the Turkish family laws. This comparative scholarship is not only important in order to dispel the myth of Islam and Islamic law as inherently retrogressive, but by historicizing the relationship between religion and politics, it also helps to both complicate and expand the meaning and content of secularism. This chapter highlights that the ways in which post-colonial nations have approached diversity/assimilation, cultural change/stability, and modernity/indigenous authenticity have profoundly influenced the shaping of religion based family laws. Thus, religion and religion-based personal laws have been at the heart of the political debates and the policies that shaped postcolonial nations.
The weakest part of the book is the initial part of Chapter Three, where the author discusses gender (in)equality in the context of personal laws. In countering and seemingly discounting feminist scholarship on the subject, the author fails to attend to the distance between formal and substantive equality, even though he recognizes this distance in other parts of the book. Much of the feminist scholarship he cites is premised on and elaborates this distinction (that the mere presence or absence of formal policies on gender equality in personal laws does not indicate that the laws were experienced as such by women). Class and educational status of women and their families, for instance, have often impacted the ways in which women are governed by personal laws, irrespective of their religion, an argument of which Subramanian is cognizant in other parts of the book. Feminist scholarship has contributed nuanced analyses of personal laws, Uniform Civil Code, and gendered citizenship in India, and this book falls short of contributing to this conversation. Although the author touches upon the issue of gender insofar as women's rights of equality were central to the reform of personal laws, the book does not contribute a fresh analysis of the nature of gendered citizenship or its centrality to nation-building, an argument that has been explored by feminist scholars and historians working on the subject. Notwithstanding this limited drawback, this book is a great resource for women's/feminist studies scholars for exploring the context within which reform of personal laws took place in India (as well as other post-colonial nations that have religion-based personal laws), the intent of policy makers in reforming personal laws, and the rights that these reforms give women under different personal laws.
Nation and Family is also an excellent resource for students and scholars interested in the political history of personal law in India. Chapter Four includes a fascinating discussion about changes brought about to the provisions pertaining to marriage and conjugality, maintenance, and succession within Hindu Law. The author not only includes legislative changes but also discusses court cases and legal precedents. Chapter Five throws light on these issues within Muslim and Christian family laws, and contextualizes the reluctance of policy elites to initiate reform within Muslim and Christian personal laws during the early years of independence, within the history of majoritarian nation-building. The Indian nation's approach to religious minorities vis-à-vis diversity, secularism and modernity (explored in Chapter Two) caused policy elites to formulate “modern and culturally Indian forms of family life” based on Hindu personal law (92). Thus, even while there were mobilizations within Muslim communities for personal law reform during the early years of independence, Muslim personal law saw no significant reforms until the 1970s. The erroneous assumption that the Muslims were resistant to reform and to western forms of modernity (especially in contrast to Christians who were perceived as “agents of modernization” in both colonial and postcolonial rhetoric) created a distance and dissonance between the elites determining the shaping of personal law policies and the demands and expectations of a majority of people from the Muslim communities (204).
The most important contribution of this book is its exploration of the relationship between the nation and the family within the context of the consolidation of state authority in postcolonial countries. As postcolonial nations struggled to find their own identities, the family became an important arena within which these identities came to be defined and realized. The idea of the nation was premised upon the ideal of the family. It is within this context that the reconciliation of minority accommodation with ideas of modernity and secularism resulted in the reform of personal laws in most postcolonial nations. Nation and Family is a truly multifaceted work which will be of value not only to scholars of religion and politics, but also to those interested in political history, comparative history and gender studies.
