In the Shadow of Minority Rights: Decolonising Gender, Liberalism and the Politics of Difference - Hardcover

Dutta, Sagnik

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1009582038 ISBN 13: 9781009582032

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2025

Synopsis

How and where do religious minorities claim their rights? This book challenges abstract liberal approaches to minority rights and colonial constructions of the minority. It charts a new way of understanding minority rights based on an exploration of the everyday life of Muslim women's activism in Mumbai and its intersection with transnational feminist networks and a global politics of Islamic reform. It shows how women deploy everyday ideas of ethics and bodily practices to challenge inequality in Muslim family law. They construct a just community based upon the ethical ideals of the Quran and rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution and negotiate for rights within homes, police stations, and neighbourhoods in ghettoes. Everyday familiarity is interlaced with violence in women's interactions with the state and non-state actors as they claim their rights, and practices of ethics and intimate negotiations with processes of ghettoisation and violence shape the everyday life of rights.

About this title

About the Author

Sagnik Dutta is Researcher at the Department of Cultural Studies, Tilburg University, and Associate Professor at Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University. They were awarded the Gates Cambridge scholarship for their doctoral studies. They work on decolonial and postcolonial theory, minority citizenship, securitisation, and data justice. Their scholarship has appeared in several prominent peer-reviewed journals.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009582038
• ISBN 13: 9781009582032
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 198