"Going to Law": Reflections on Law, Religion, and Mitra Sharafi's Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia. Issue 4 (2nd October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers
• Is Part Of: Law & social inquiry. Volume 42:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 1231
• Page End: 1239
• Publication Date: 2017-10-02
• Subjects: Sociological jurisprudence -- Periodicals; 340.115
• DOI: 10.1111/lsi.12323
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0897-6546

Abstract

Abstract : This essay explores religion's need for law, comparing the story told in Mitra Sharafi's Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia (2014)—about the virtual hijacking of British colonial law to serve the communal religious needs of Parsis in colonial India—to other contexts in which secular and religious legal systems have built symbiotic relationships, including in the United States and Thailand. It concludes by urging a reweaving of religious and legal histories after the critique of secularism and its shadows, separationism, and antinomianism.