The adjudication of religious personal laws of minority communities in India has been a domain of contestation between competing claims of cultural autonomy, gender justice, and individual rights. The Supreme Court of India has time and again been confronted with the conflict between the secular law and legislation that protects group rights of minorities. While the existing literature has taken note of the attempts by the Indian state and the judiciary at legal-pluralist interventions to secure gender justice within the framework of personal laws based on religion, there has not been a sustained analysis of the discursive construction of constitutional law in dynamic interaction with the secular law and tenets of religion. This paper attempts to address this important gap in the scholarship using a discourse analysis of the judgments of the Supreme Court of India from 1985 until 2015 pertaining to post-divorce maintenance for Muslim women. I examine how the “rights” of Muslim women are framed in a realm of dynamic interaction between legislation premised on community identity, notions of constitutionalism, and personal laws based on religion to argue that the state adopts an interventionist role in a legal-pluralist paradigm; it further uses the specificity of community identity to foreground a vision of social justice.

中文翻译：

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从适应到实质平等：1985-2015 年穆斯林属人法、世俗法和印度宪法

印度少数群体宗教属人法的裁决一直是文化自治、性别公正和个人权利等相互竞争的主张之间争论的领域。印度最高法院一再面临世俗法律与保护少数群体权利的立法之间的冲突。虽然现有文献已经注意到印度政府和司法机构在基于宗教的属人法框架内进行法律多元主义干预以确保性别公正的尝试，但尚未对宪法的话语建构进行持续分析在与世俗法律和宗教信条的动态互动中。本文试图通过对 1985 年至 2015 年印度最高法院关于穆斯林妇女离婚后赡养费的判决的话语分析来解决学术上的这一重要差距。我研究了穆斯林妇女的“权利”是如何在以社区身份为前提的立法、宪政概念和基于宗教的属人法之间动态互动的领域中构建的，以论证国家在法律多元主义范式中采取干预主义角色; 它进一步利用社区身份的特殊性来突出社会正义的愿景。立宪主义的概念，以及基于宗教的属人法，主张国家在法律多元主义范式中采取干预主义角色；它进一步利用社区身份的特殊性来突出社会正义的愿景。立宪主义的概念，以及基于宗教的属人法，主张国家在法律多元主义范式中采取干预主义角色；它进一步利用社区身份的特殊性来突出社会正义的愿景。