Saumya Saxena launches book on divorce laws – Divorce and Democracy, A History of Personal Law

New Delhi: A new book on divorce laws and various religions in the post-colonial era was released here on Saturday at the India International Centre.

The book ‘Divorce and Democracy: A History of Personal Law in Post-Independence India’ talks about family law, religion, and gender politics in India.

Written by Saumya Saxena, British Academy Fellow at the faculty of History, University of Cambridge, the book talks about the Indian state's difficult dialogue with divorce, which reconciles largely through religion.

It also explores the path of marriage and divorce laws of Hindu, Muslim, and Christian communities in postcolonial India.

“The book shows a dynamic interplay between law, religion, family, minority rights, and gender in Indian politics,” Saxena told PTI.

“It also demonstrates that the framework of the private-public divide, individual versus group rights and universal rights versus legal pluralism is insufficient in capturing the peculiarities of religious personal laws in India,” she said.

The book launch was followed by a discussion on the book in which Ambreen Agha (O.P Jindal Global University), Laurence Gautier (Centre de Sciences Humaines), Hilal Ahmed (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies), and Rukmini Sen (Ambedkar University Delhi) participated.

On being asked if the book will include the demands of both men and women, she said, “I am not making any argument at all whether it should only be favouring the women but it would be realistic for us to acknowledge that it's mostly men enacting on divorce.”