Marriage and its Discontents: Women Islam and the Law in India

Contents: 1. Where Will She Go? What Will She Do?': Paternalism in the Administration of Muslim Personal Law in Contemporary India. 2. Muslim Women and Personal Law. 3. The 'Cancer of Dowry' in Muslim Marriages: Themes in the Popular rhetoric from the South Indian Muslim Press. 4. Divorce at the Wife's Initiative: Options and Implications for Women's Welfare?. 5. Islamic Feminism in India: Muslim Women activists and the Reform of Muslim Personal Law. 6. Change and Continuity in Marital Alliance Patterns: Muslim in South India, 1800-2012. 7. What can Divorce Stories Reveal about Muslim Marriages?. 8. Maintenance for Divorced Muslim Women after the Muslim Women (protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986: a View from the Lower Courts.

Debates around Muslim Personal Law, the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act and the Muslim Women (protection of Rights on Divorce) Act have tended to focus on the issue of unilateral divorce, a right granted to husbands, as well as on polygamy and other discriminatory provisions in MPL.

This landmark study, while giving no quarter to undesirable practices like triple talaq, presents the author's detailed findings on when, and how, Muslim women resort to legal remedies should their marriages break down. Her thoughtful- and thought-provoking-analysis is based on ten years of research in Chennai and Hyderabad, during which she consulted family court records and court petitions; conducted extensive interviews with government-appointed qazis in both cities; met and had detailed discussions with the women themselves, as well as with lawyers, judges, counsellors, court staff and advocates. She also examined, for the first time, the phenomenon of wife-initiated divorces or Khula, and made the startling discovery that their number far exceeded court awarded divorces in any given year.