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A major postcolonial feminist theorist explores the gendered nature of citizenship and the state

Table of Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1. Introduction: Women, Citizenship, Law, and the Indian State 1
I. Women in Custody

2. The Ameena “Case”: The Female Citizen and Subject 41
3. Beyond the Hysterectomies Scandal: Women, the Institution, Family, and State 72
II. Women in Law
4. The Prostitution Question(s): Female Agency, Sexuality, and Work 117
5. Women Between Community and State: Some Implications of the Uniform Civil Code Debates 147
III. Killing Women
6. Children of the State?: Unwanted Girls in Rural Tamilnadu 177
7. Outlaw Woman: The Politics of Phoolan Devi’s Surrender, 1983 212
Notes 237
References 279
Index 301

About the Author

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan is Reader in English and Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She is the author of Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture, and Postcolonialism and editor of Signposts: Gender Issues in Post-Independence India.

Reviews

"The Scandal of the State is filled with Rajeswari Sunder Rajan's trademark scrupulousness and full documentation of opposing views, yet also with her characteristic wit and deep political wisdom. Her ultimate indictment of the realities of the Indian state is biting and utterly persuasive. This is a brilliant, path-breaking book." Bruce Robbins, author of Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress "The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, and Citizenship in Postcolonial India is an engaging exploration of the mutually constitutive relationship between women and the state. In six compelling case studies, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan demonstrates that theorists' relegation of women to the realms of community and family has been misguided, and that the study of 'women as citizens' is a productive one... The Scandal of the State is a rewarding, if sobering, discussion of women in the Indian state. Rajan has made a valuable contribution to state theory by delving into the problematic ways in which women live with the state."--Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2004, Volume 22 issue 6