Nation and Family points to the need to examine carefully the ways in which conceptions of nation inform attempts to regulate family life through law and policy in plural societies. It addresses questions about plurality of personal laws and the patterns and pace of family law reform in independent India. One of the principal arguments Subramanian makes is that the extent and direction of personal law reform is determined by specific interactions between discourses of nation and community and the “coalition-building ambitions” of the political elites. In India this resulted in what he describes as “modest” yet “significant” reforms as compared to changes in other multicultural nations such as Turkey, Tunisia, and Indonesia that he surveys in Chapter 2. Subramanian presents an interesting introductory account of the various combinations of conceptions of postcolonial nations, responses to colonial institutions and discourses, desires for both the indigenous and the modern in several postcolonial nations, and the different forms of multiculturalism and family law these combinations have produced. This broad comparative overview is a significant contribution that serves as an invitation for more in depth comparative research in this field.
In chapters that follow Subramanian traces the changes in particular aspects of family law in India, first in Hindu law, and then in Muslim and Christian laws. Subramanian argues that reforms in the latter two started late and have been slower, primarily because policy makers, majority of whom were Hindus, regarded Hindu culture as being more dynamic. They also failed to recognize the impetus for social change within minority communities and relied instead almost exclusively on “Hindu concerns and initiatives” in order to understand and reduce the existing inequalities (p. 277). In case of Muslims, there was also a misreading of the community's desire for a distinct personal law as a resistance to any change in the family law, with serious implications for gender equality. Subramanian also sheds light on the ways in which the policy makers' ignorance of the nature of reform the Muslim mobilizers were seeking coupled with their reliance on stereotypes of Christian communities being more open to “modern values” led to the different approaches to Muslim and Christian personal law reforms in the country, which in turn resulted in more marginalization of Muslims than of Christians.
While Nation and Family focuses primarily on the role of policy makers in legal reform, it also offers interesting comments on legal elites, especially on the tendency of judges trained in a particular tradition to rely on colonial personal law while interpreting statutes, unlike religious elites who are often committed to reform agendas that are also based on what Subramanian refers to as precolonial traditions (page 37).
The literature Subramanian reviews in the book would be an important resource for anyone unfamiliar with this body of work. The references to some significant case law on divorce, maintenance, and inheritance offered in the book also serves as an overview of certain legal milestones and their significance in shaping family law in the country. However, while Nation and Family promises better and more comprehensive answers to critical questions on nature of legal change, the treatment assumes a reader's familiarity with the work of scholars Subramanian disagrees with. It would have helped, for example, if in pointing out differences and discrepancies, the author had also indicated whether these arise from different research questions, methodologies, or sites that others may have been pursuing.
A book that begins quite promisingly with a reference to the landmark controversial Shah Bano case (1985), in which the Supreme Court of India upheld a divorced Muslim woman's right to maintenance under the Indian Criminal Procedure Code, and aims to understand gender inequality across religious communities, disappoints in its lack of attention to two aspects of legal reform in the country: the agency of women in shaping personal law reforms, and the role of the Constitution. The book is centrally focused on the political (and to a lesser extent, on religious and legal) elites and their visions and strategies, and admittedly does not seek to engage with everyday practices of claim-making. However, an acknowledgment of the ways in which visions of a just and equal society that underlie legal claims women bring to courts (often in the normative language of the State) also shape legal change would have helped avoid what appears to be an omission in this book that seeks to engage with pluralism and gendered citizenship. I can also not help but wonder about the use of the phrase “feminine interpretations” of law in the book as the author does not provide any explanation of the same.
Despite the omissions, Nation and Family offers timely and valuable insights into the complex ways in which interactions between visions of nation, discourses of community and perceptions about minorities shape multicultural societies. Recently renewed attempts by certain groups to reimagine India as a particular Hindu nation provide an interesting contemporary context for reading and appreciating this book.
