Women, Land and Moral Justice in Late Colonial India

This book uncovers how peasant women in late colonial India invoked the concept of parvarish to defy male patrilineal inheritance of property and stake claims of their own.

This book, set in Kumaon and Garhwal in late colonial India, reconstructs the moral world of peasant women who transmitted ancestral property in defiance of a legal regime that only recognised patrilineal inheritance. Appealing to the concept of parvarish (‘providing for’) in Hindu law, these women invoked a moral economy and norms of obligation, reciprocity and loyalty to reconfigure their household structure and ensure care and labour in exchange for property from the late 19th century onwards.

Arguing that this historical practice clearly demonstrates non-elite women’s agency during this period, the book taps into hitherto untapped regional archival material such as gift deeds, community-brokered agreements and litigant depositions to highlight the importance of familial obligations in peasant culture. In doing so, Women, Land and Moral Justice in Late Colonial India brings together colonial, gender and legal histories to provide a story of women creating a third way, one that allowed them to reject patriarchal norms in practice, defy colonial law and reclaim control of their households.