State Ideology and Law in India

Paper Code: 
WMS-123
Credits: 
4
Contact Hours: 
60.00
Max. Marks: 
100.00
Objective: 

To understand the way women are perceived in Indian State ideology and the various laws in India related to women. To see how this furthers active citizenship to make spaces for women visible in these spheres.

12.00

Creating Gendered Citizens: Education and Gender Socialisation

  1. Educating Women as Wives and Mothers: Class and colonial imperatives in the 19th and 20th centuries – Reform Movements.
  2. Contemporary debates and policies on women welfare and education.

 

 

12.00

Gendering and State

  1. Ideologies of the State: the paternalism of the modern state.
  2. Questions of Citizenship: formal equality and substantive equality in Indian Constitution
12.00

Contemporary Legal Systems:

  1. Inside the Family: personal codes; marriage, inheritance and guardianship.
  2. Laws for working women: maternity benefits and child care.
  3. Defining Sexual crimes: rape, sexual harassment in workplace.
12.00

Women’s Movement and Law.

  1. Transforming the laws on rape, dowry murders, sati.
  2. Analysing the experience of working with the state: Contemporary debates in the women’s movement
12.00

73rd and 74th Amendments: Political spaces gained by women through the Panchayati Raj Institutions and Local Self Governments and gaps that remain.

Essential Readings: 
  1. Singh, Dr. Hoshiar; Local Government, pp 1-17, 19-36, Kitab Mahal, Allahabad, 1997, 
  2. Sinha, Niroj, Empowerment of Women Through Political Participation, Kalpaz Publications, Delhi, 2007
  3. Poonacha, Veena, ed. Women, Empowerment and Political Participation, RCWS, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai 1997
  4. Das, Veena, ed. Handbook of Indian Sociology, OUP, New Delhi 2004
  5. Kumar, Radha. The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800-1990, Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1993
  6. Buch, Nirmala; Women and Panchayats: Opportunities and Challenges pp 343-365, in Jain, L C, ed. Decentralisation and Local Governance, Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 2005
  7. S. P. Sathe, Towards Gender Justice, RCWS, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai, 1996
  8. Banerjee, Somya, National Policy for Women, Arise Publishers & Distributers, New Delhi, 2009
  9. Rao N, Rump L & Sudershan R (ed.), Site of Change, UNDP, New Delhi, 1996

 


 

References: 

Kabeer, N., Reversed Realities, London: Verso, 1995.

Hasan, Zoya (ed.) Forging Identities: Gender Communities and State, Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1994

Lucy Caroll, The Law, Custom and Statutory Social Reform: The Hindu ‘Widow’s Remarriage Act of 1856’ in J Krishnamurti ed. Women in Colonial India, Delhi OUP, 1989.

Janaki Nair, Law in Colonial India, Delhi, Kali for Women, 1996

Lucy Caroll, The Law, Custom and Statutory Social Reform: The Hindu ‘Widow’s Remarriage Act of 1856’ in J Krishnamurti ed. Women in Colonial India, Delhi OUP, 1989.

Agarwal, Bina, Field of her Own, Kali for Women, New Delhi

JC Johri, Principals of Modern Political Science, Sterling Publisher, 1995

JC Johri, Contemporary Political Theory,

Kapur, Ratna (ed.), Feminist Terrains in Legal Terrains, Kali for Women, Delhi 1996

Butalia U, Sarkar, T (ed.), Women and the Hindu Right, Kali for Women, New Delhi 1996.

Bina Srinivasan, Restless Boundaries, A Study on the Impact of Urban Displacement on women in Baroda, VAK, Mumbai, Oct 1997

Janaki Nair, Law in Colonial India, Delhi, Kali for Women, 1996

Millet, Kate, ‘Sexual Politics’, Virago, London, 1970

Oberoi, Patricia, ‘Social Reforms, Sexuality and the State’, Contributions to Women’s Studies, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1996

Articles from EPW

  1. Bhattacharji, Sukumari, ‘Motherhood in Ancient India’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 25 No 41, 20-27 October 1990 pp Ws 50-57
  2. Gokhale, Sane, ‘Mother in Sane Guruji’s Shamchi Ai’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 25 No 41, 20-27 October 1990 pp Ws 95-103
  3. Krishnan, Prabha, ‘In the Idiom of Loss: Ideology of Motherhood in Television Serials’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 25 No 41, 20-27 October 1990 pp Ws 103-116
  4. Lakshmi, C S, ‘Mother, Mother-Community and Mother-Politics in Tamil Nadu’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 25 No 41, 20-27 October 1990 pp Ws 72-94
  5. Poonacha, Veena, ‘The Rites de Passage of Motherhood and Social Construction of Motherhood Among Coorgs in South India’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 32 No 3, 18 January 1997 
  6. EPW Issues: 30th Oct- 5th Nov 1999, 15-21st  Jan 2000, 17-23rd June 2000, 24-30th June 2000, 29th July – 4th August 2000, 24-30th  March 2001, 30th June- 6th July 2001
Academic Session: 
2018-19
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