Religion-based ‘Personal’ Law, Legal Pluralism and Secularity: A Field View of Adjudication under Muslim Personal Law in India

The phenomenon of ‘legal pluralism’ in India is conditioned and facilitated by the democratic state’s commitment to protect religious freedom and uphold sociocultural diversity. Community-based adjudicating institutions such as the Darul Qaza (also known as Sharia court) function within this constitutional framework but every citizen also has the right to approach a state court as and when they deem necessary. So far, the discourse on Islam, personal law, and the secular state has revolved around parliamentary debates, judicial activism, and legislative changes where the focus has been on the question of Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and gender justice. The discussion on personal law has rarely paid serious academic attention to the complexities of kinship conflicts embedded in affective as well as economic and legal matrix or more importantly how they are resolved. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the jurisprudential practices of Sharia courts in Uttar Pradesh, India, the paper offers a lens to understand how conflict resolution in family matters takes place in a legal plural landscape ensconced between citizenship rights and community practices. We argue that understanding this process also offers important insights on the shifting meaning of secularism1,2 in contemporary India.