| Summary: | The common thread that unites the three books is mapping the issue of equality before law and various issues relating to women's rights, social justice, and empowerment. The new Introduction by Flavia Agnes discusses the process of legal change. The omnibus forms a comprehensive and significant study for understanding why progressive laws, once passed, continue to be implemented in such limited manner. It highlights that legistlation even in the past fifty years have not brought equality even though lip service is paid to it by policy-makers. Sudhir Chandra studies the case of Rukhmabai wherein he reveals the inner working of the legal system during the colonial period and studies the conflicting and overlapping ideologies which underpinned it. This proves an essential reading in legal social and women's history of the period. Monmayee Basu takes the subject further. Her book is an in-depth study of the development and changes in the Hindu marriage laws are analysed to explain women's position in society. Flavia Agnes takes up the newer/contemporary struggles for reforms related to women. Her work interweaves numerous perspectives into a meaningful whole. The analysis is backed by facts and cases. She takes up the important issue of Uniform Civil Code and has exposed the communal undertones of some of the recent judicial pronouncements.
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