Faculty Seminar | Muslim Law and Legal Pluralism: Intersections of State and Community in Matrimonial Dispute Resolution among Muslims in Kerala

In the final faculty seminar for the term, Noor Ameena, Assistant Professor of Law at NLSIU will be presenting on “Muslim Law and Legal Pluralism: Intersections of State and Community in Matrimonial Dispute Resolution among Muslims in Kerala.”

Abstract

Even though Muslim Personal Law occupies a disproportionate space in the Indian public sphere, the diversity of personal law practices is seldom explored. In this thesis, I intend to provide a field view of Muslim Personal Law through Family Courts, Mahal Committees and Qazi Offices. The study is set in Kerala. The study brings out the evolving jurisprudence of Muslim Personal Law through Family Courts. Within the framework of legal pluralism, the study examines the interaction between state and community systems of matrimonial dispute resolution, and how the rights and entitlements of the parties are mediated through these forums. It also studies how individuals, as well as the community, respond to the incursions by the state into their personal law. The study finds that the state and community systems of dispute resolution constantly collaborate with one another. The individuals engage with these systems by strategic inter-use to derive the desired results. There is a systemic and strategic integration of state and community systems. There is a constant process of secularization in this domain, however when this happens, the community is ‘holding on to religion’ in terms of substantive law, and ‘ceding to state’ in procedural law. In response to the incursions of state, the community law and systems are re-adjusting themselves into the boundaries set by the state, without completely losing their identity.