Two developments in the Indian subcontinent since 1986 have highlighted the ways in which women's rights have been poised between community and state. On the one hand are the breakthroughs made by Indian feminism in legal reform, strategic uses of the law and generation of sophisticated understandings of how the law operates or has operated in the past, to both mirror and challenge existing hierarchies. On the other hand has been the meteoric rise, particularly since the 1980s, of the Hindu right which, by often adopting the language of ‘feminism’, has called for a recalibration of earlier feminist demands. The certainties of the immediate pre-independence days and the optimism about the emancipatory outcomes of law reform since 1947 have been radically recast by feminists themselves. Feminists increasingly express caution regarding the imposition of one uniform law for all, since they recognize that uniformity does not promise gender justice. The wariness also arises from the vastly altered political circumstances under which the demand for a uniform civil code is now being made, not necessarily as a tool for ensuring gender justice, but as a weapon with which to target Muslim men (and women).

We start with an observation that remains as true today as when personal law reform was first discussed in the 1920s. Indira Jaising has said:

Marriage and family formed the core of colonial Hindu (as well as other personal) law. Despite its frequent assertions to the contrary, by ‘denominating marriage and family as the primary subjects of religious law, the colonial state both claimed to be attending to the effective significance of these matters for Indians, and also subjected them to state scrutiny and jurisdiction’.