Communities and Courts: Religion and Law in Modern India

by Manisha Sethi (editor)

The entanglement of law and religion is reiterated on a daily basis in India. Communities and groups turn to the courts to seek positive recognition of their religious identities or sentiments, as well as a validation of their practices. Equally, courts have become the most potent site of the play of conflicts and contradictions between religious groups. The judicial power thus not only arbiters conflicts but also defines what constitutes the ‘religious’, and demarcates its limits.





This volume argues that the relationship between law and religion is not merely one of competing sovereignties – as rational law moulding religion in its reformist vision, and religion defending its turf against secular incursions– but needs to be understood within a wider social and political canvas. The essays here demonstrate how questions of religious pluralism, secularism, law and order, are all central to understanding how the religious and the legal remain imbricated within each other in modern India. It will be of interest to academics, researchers, and advanced students of Sociology, History, Political Science and Law.





The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

144 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 30, 2021

About the author

Manisha Sethi is currently Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. She teaches at the Centre for Comparative Religions and Civilizations, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She is also Associate Editor at Biblio: A Review of Books. Her book Escaping the World: Women Renouncers among Jains was published in 2012. Sethi is an activist with Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association (www.teacherssolidarity.org).