The Scandal of the State is a pathbreaking examination of the relationship between the postcolonial democratic Indian nation-state and Indian women’s actual needs and lives. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan combines feminist theory and postcolonial studies to show 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, for Indian women, law and citizenship define 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’, post-feminist neo-liberal 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. Through a series of compelling case studies, each centred around an incident exposing the contradictory position of the Indian state vis-?-vis its female citizens, this book demonstrates the inadequacy of the state’s commitment to women’s rights. It 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 labour rather than crime; and the surrender of Phoolan Devi. It 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 in the specific context of India’s postcolonial modernity.
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