Global South Visiting Scholar Lecture

From Status to Contract: Constructing Muslim Marriage in Colonial India, 1844-1935

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council redefined Muslim marriage as a contractual relationship. During the initial phase (1844–1925), influenced by the concept of common law marriage, the imperial advisory body interpreted Muslim marriage through evidence such as extended sexual cohabitation or paternal acknowledgment of a child. The Privy Council further distinguished Muslim marriage from other sexual relations—such as concubinage or prostitution—based on a binary distinction between licit and illicit sex. As a result, two conceptions of Muslim marriage—contractual and sex-based—coexisted at least until the early twentieth century. In the later phase (1861–1935), the Privy Council increasingly applied common law contract principles to interpret Muslim marriage. This approach effectively framed Muslim marriage in terms of the husband’s control and ownership over his wife’s body. I argue, despite that colonial construction of Muslim marriage in India, these judicial practices shifted the understanding of marriage from a status-based institution toward a legal contract, representing a movement toward modernity.

Speaker

Anisur Rahman, an Associate Professor of Law at the Independent University, is a socio-legal historian. His research interests include Intellectual History of Law; South Asian Legal History; Islamic Law and Society; Law and Religion; and Legal Secularism. Anisur fulfilled his PhD with the National University of Singapore. Recently, he has published a book chapter titled “Criminalizing Adultery in Colonial India: Constructing the Wife vs. the ‘Other’ in Islamic Family Law” in Criminal Legalities in the Global South: Cultural Dynamics, Political Tensions, and Institutional Practices (Routledge: 2020). His manuscript entitled Reconfiguring Muslim Marriage: Law, Islam, and Modernity in South Asia is under review by the Melbourne University Press. Anisur has taught several universities, including the Asian University for Women.