HEGEMONIC TREATMENT OF HINDU DIVORCE CUSTOMS

The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, besides providing for the first time in India statutory divorce as a matrimonial remedy for all Hindus (section 13), officially recognised customary divorce as well (section 29(2)), consequently offering both possibilities to those couples willing to end their matrimonial tie. Interestingly enough, the directions of development of these two institutions have been until now almost opposite. The statutory divorce policy, which until the mid-1980s tended to facilitate dissolution of marriages, has since the 1990s been replaced by careful consideration of the possible financial disadvantages of divorce, especially for women. An inverse trend has characterised the official treatment of customary divorce, which was at first strongly discouraged in the post-Independence period, and later from the 1990s onwards, gradually encouraged especially in view of the multiple advantages of relying on the traditional family. This paper is developed around Rajkumari’s narrative, an individual account of customary divorce collected during extensive fieldwork in the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh. By comparing Rajkumari’s narrative with similar divorce stories in official case-law and thus reflecting on its possible outcome in a law-court in the light of legal precedents, this paper pinpoints the specific elements of praxis on which has been developed the legal reasoning of law courts. Furthermore it highlights the ideological reasons linked to the choices of the judiciary in th