Gender, Law, and Resistance in India

Book excerpt: In rural Rajasthan, patriarchal ideology is upheld and reinforced through male-governed social and legal institutions. This book tells how women defy that control through acts of "domestic warfare": theft, poisoning, affairs, flights home, threats to divide the joint household, sly acts of sabotage, and refusals to work, eat, or have sex.Erin Moore details the life of an extended Muslim family she has known for twenty years. In many ways the plight of the central character, Hunni, is representative of dilemmas experienced by the majority of north Indian peasant women who are deprived of equal rights before the law.An account of cultural hegemony and defiance, Moore's work reveals how so-called "modern" state institutions and practices reinforce traditional arrangements -- and how women resist patriarchy in overt and covert ways. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.