Gerald J. Larson, ed., Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call to Judgment ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001; New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2002)
Abstract
In this essay, we compare the way the administration of personal law systems reflects and shapes the social identities of religious communities within India and Israel. We also compare the way these personal law regimes affect the roles, rights, and burdens of women. We examine the evolution of personal law systems in India and Israel, and we focus on the way these systems affect the religious and ethnic communities they regulate." By systems or regimes of personal law, we refer to legal arrangements for the application within a single polity of several bodies of law to different persons according to their religious or ethnic identity'^ Personal law systems arc designed lo preserve to eacli segment its own law. In the last several centuries, the most prominent instances have been personal law regimes in the areas of family law (marriage, divorce, adoption, maintenance), intergenerational transfer of property (succession, inheritance, wills), and religious establishments (offices, premises, and endowments).'* Such personal law typically co-exists with general territorial law in criminal, administrative, and commercial matters." On occasion, some commercial or criminal rules may be included in personal law." As the new millennium begins, many countries that maintain such personal law systems are under increasing pressure to abandon these structures and adopt a universal set of rules and regulations that apply to all citizens. According to Bassam Tibi, globalization and the twentieth century's technological revolution have projected the concepts of fundamental human rights and freedom to even the most culturally traditional societies." As a result, countries with personal law systems experience a clash between two ideological perspectives. Opponents of religiously based separate systems embrace a concept of universal human rights and freedom where "there is an urgent need for establishing globally-shared legal frameworks on cross-cultural foundations." Those who lavor maintaining personal law are suspicious of such (primarily Western-based) concepts as human rights and freedom, and they challenge the compatibility of human rights and freedom with their cultural traditions." We shall return to this conflict after we have examined the two different ways that personal law is institutionalized in India and Israel. Let us begin by first turning to the personal law system of India.
