• ISBN13: 9780198072201
• Binding: Paperback
• Subject: Sociology and Anthropology
• Publisher: Oxford UP
• Publisher Imprint: Oxford UP
• Publication Date: January 1, 2011
• Pages: 508
• Original Price: INR 995.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 1000 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): Family Law / Children, Family Law / Marriage, and Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice

Family law in India has a complex legal structure where different religious communities are guided by their own personal laws, each of which historically evolved under various social, religious, political, and legal influences. In two comprehensive and lucid volumes, Flavia Agnes, a leading activist and advocate in the area, examines family law in the light of social realities, contemporary rights discourse, and the idea of justice. What is unique in these volumes is that the ground level litigation practices around women’s rights are interwoven with the critical analyses of the statutory provisions. Relying extensively upon case law, Volume 2 examines: the litigation around the validity of marriage and procedures for dissolving it, the contemporary debates around issues such as child marriages, NRI marriages, and registration of marriages the framework of law on the issues of maintenance, matrimonial residence, and custody and guardianship of children, and whether considering the procedural aspects of matrimonial law, and the increased powers of the family courts, gender justice concerns are being adequately addressed. The volume also emphasizes that it is necessary and possible for the law to fairly reflect individual and social contingencies at the ground level.

Flavia Agnes is a practicing lawyer in the Mumbai High Court and co-founder of MAJLIS, a Mumbai-based legal and cultural resource centre. She is well known as a pioneer of the women's movement in India and, more specifically, for her work on legal reforms.