The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, Citizenship in Postcolonial India

Citation:

Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 2003. The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, Citizenship in Postcolonial India. Durham: Duke University Press.

Author: Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

Annotation:

Summary:

"The Scandal of the State is a revealing study of the relationship between the postcolonial, democratic Indian nation-state and Indian women’s actual needs and lives. Well-known for her work combining feminist theory and postcolonial studies, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan shows how the state is central to understanding women’s identities and how, reciprocally, women and “women’s issues” affect the state’s role and function. She argues that in India law and citizenship define for women not only the scope of political rights but also cultural identity and everyday life. Sunder Rajan delineates the postcolonial state in implicit contrast with the “enlightened,” postfeminist neoliberal state in the West. Her analysis wrestles with complex social realities, taking into account the influence of age, ethnicity, religion, and class on individual and group identities as well as the shifting, heterogeneous nature of the state itself."

“The Scandal of the State develops through a series of compelling case studies, each of which centers around an incident exposing the contradictory position of the Indian state vis-à-vis its female citizens and, ultimately, the inadequacy of its commitment to women’s rights. Sunder Rajan focuses on the custody battle over a Muslim child bride, the compulsory sterilization of mentally retarded women in state institutional care, female infanticide in Tamilnadu, prostitution as labor rather than crime, and the surrender of the female outlaw Phoolan Devi. She also looks at the ways the Uniform Civil Code presented many women with a stark choice between allegiance to their religion and community or the secular assertion of individual rights. Rich with theoretical acumen and activist passion, The Scandal of the State is a powerful critique of the mutual dependence of women and the state on one another in the specific context of a postcolonial modernity.” (Duke University Press)

Perception, treatment, abuse, and exploitation of women are all described as effects of corruption.

Acknowledgments xiii

1. Introduction: Women, Citizenship, Law, and the Indian State 1

I. Women in Custody

2. The Ameena “Case”: The Female Citizen and Subject 41

3. Beyond the Hysterectomies Scandal: Women, the Institution, Family, and State 72

II. Women in Law 

4. The Prostitution Question(s): Female Agency, Sexuality, and Work 117

5. Women Between Community and State: Some Implications of the Uniform Civil Code Debates 147

III. Killing Women 

6. Children of the State?: Unwanted Girls in Rural Tamilnadu 177

7. Outlaw Woman: The Politics of Phoolan Devi’s Surrender, 1983 212

Notes 237

References 279

Index 301

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Corruption, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Religion, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2003