Abstract
This chapter draws on a state level study of the context and experience of inheritance rights for Muslim women. The authors examine how Muslim women in Uttar Pradesh assert land rights individually, notwithstanding structural and socio-cultural barriers and compounded marginalisation due to multiple intersections of gender, religious identities and socio-economic status. Using a livelihoods approach the chapter analyses the processes of dispossession, awareness, access and agency related to land rights for Muslim women in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh. The chapter explores the possible ways to strengthen land inheritance for Muslim women through focused and specific interventions by the state and by women’s organisations.
This research has been possible thanks to the support of the International Land Coalition, in the framework of the research project ‘Assessing inheritance laws and their impact on rural women in selected countries in Asia’. The study was undertaken by the CAWL Rights collective, of which the authors are members for International Land Coalition. Field work in Uttar Pradesh was undertaken in collaboration with Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives (AALI) and is also gratefully acknowledged.
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- 1.
Waqf is an Islamic endowment of property to be held in trust for charitable/religious purposes.
- 2.
Mehr is a sum of money or any property that the wife is entitled to receive from her husband upon marriage. The nature of this can be decided prior to or at the time of marriage. There are two types of mehr: (a) prompt—a fixed amount is given to the wife immediately upon solemnisation of marriage; (b) deferred—amount given to the wife when the marriage is ended, either by the death of her husband or by divorce.
- 3.
Name changed, to protect the respondents anonymity here as well as elsewhere in instances where women are quoted.
- 4.
Ulema is the body of scholars trained in Islam and Islamic law who are the interpreters of Islam’s doctrines and laws, and the chief guarantors of continuity in the intellectual history of the Islamic community.
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Saxena, N., Parthasarathy, S.K. (2016). Claiming Space, Claiming Rights: Inheritance and Land Rights for Muslim Women in Uttar Pradesh, India. In: Land, Labour and Livelihoods. Gender, Development and Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40865-1_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40865-1_5
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