Around the world, as many as 1 in 3 women face marital violence (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence). In India, this statistic climbs to approximately 3 out of 4. 77.4%, to be precise (Ram, Anath, et. al 362). This violence encompasses physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and many institutions contribute to it. In The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India, Srimati Basu explores the ways in which feminist law in India can be used and reformed to combat these marital issues. She does, however, also make note of the complications of settling a marital dispute. From colonialism to the division of inheritance to maintenance payments, Basu comments on the repercussions of divorce and the origins of the struggles women in India often experience when involved in unhealthy relationships. 

Throughout The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India, Basu makes several arguments relating to women’s struggles in marriage and divorce as well as commenting on the institutions and movements meant to alleviate these struggles. Her main argument is that in many aspects of marriage and divorce in India, women are severely oppressed. With values and laws that felt influence from British colonialism, women are regarded as inferior. The legal system in India, while seemingly making strides to support women, often “turn a blind eye to violence” (Basu 214) when confronted about sexism and its consequences in Indian society. 

Srimati Basu works at the University of Kentucky as an Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Anthropology. She has a Ph.D. from Ohio State University in Cultural Studies, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies, and her work pulls from the disciplines of Global Feminisms, Law, Gender-Based Violence, Social Movements, Feminist Methodologies, and Masculinities. She has written several scholarly monographs and been published in multiple journals, mostly focusing on property, law, marriage, and violence. Basu has also been a host professor at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, giving her first-hand experience with the social, political, and legal climates of India. 

It is made clear that Basu believes that the institution of marriage itself is creating problems for women, as it results in a woman being akin to property. She discusses legislature based on both Hindu and Muslim law, with examples given being the Special Marriage Act (1954) and the Muslim Dissolution of Marriage Act (1939), respectively. The Special Marriage Act “made marriage into a secular and civil contract,” but was based on the Hindu caste system, specifically that of the upper class (Basu 35). This law dictated that “joint-family property” would legally belong to the man in a heterosexual marriage (Basu 35). The Muslim Dissolution of Marriage Act overrode previous laws about “matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and succession for Muslims” with the intention of benefitting Muslim women (and eventually all Indian women) through modernization (Basu 37). While the law protected the natal inheritance rights of the Muslim women going through a divorce, it did not do the same for her rights to property or alimony (Basu 37). 

The main method through which Basu acquired information to be able to form a set of arguments and evidence was courtroom ethnography. This was done to better understand the legal systems at work and the people who rely on them. Basu explores the Kolkata Family Courts, specifically. These courts essentially operate without lawyers and rely on mediation to resolve disputes. Also called “alternative dispute resolution,” or ADR, this is a strategy that uses a neutral third party to negotiate the topic of concern in order to avoid litigation (Basu 94). The intention was to create a more casual, less intimidating space for familial legal disputes to be settled between parties. However, since clients are expected to act as their own “lawyers,” essentially, and must “speak up” to relay the details of their situation (Basu 95). 

Basu notes, however, that women face a history of “being silenced” by various legal categories, acting as a deterrent to communicating their side of the story in full (Basu 95). There is a judge involved, who seems to act as the mediator. Basu notes that the judges often project “religious and cultural expectations” onto each case (Basu 96). These judges also typically find themselves in this circuit as their last stop before retirement. This job places them not under the “High Court,” but under the state government, which Basu argues creates a stark accountability issue within the court system (Basu 96). This applies directly to ADR. The ADR approach often leads to couples being pushed to get back together rather than holding a hearing to continue with a divorce (Basu 103). While making life easier for the judge, this oftentimes only creates more harm for the women involved. Since there are no lawyers to argue the case, and women in India (as previously stated) may not feel comfortable speaking up about issues like rape, domestic abuse, or just general unhappiness or incompatibility, they are likely to become trapped in an unhealthy marriage. 

Further, Basu reflects on the troubles faced by women in regard to sexual violence in India. Basu notes that based on her observations, it seemed that oftentimes rape prosecutors were more concerned with the concept of a woman’s virginity than the survivor’s testimony of the assault itself (Basu 151). In nations so ruled by patriarchal and colonial viewpoints, a woman’s virginity is tied directly to her worth. An ongoing problem with law-making in regard to sexual assault in India is that the legislature tends to emphasize rape as a crime on the basis of compromising a woman’s “honor and modesty” instead of recognizing the drastic violation of her “bodily integrity” and disregard for “affirmative consent” (Basu 159). It is noteworthy, however, that rape cases are only taken seriously when the allegations come from upper-middle to high-class women, erasing the struggles with sexual violence that plague the women of lower-class in India. The bodily autonomy of less fortunate women is just as valuable as their more privileged counterparts, but this is rarely represented when it comes to pressing charges. This echoes many of the same issues experienced by women internationally, as poorer women are hung out to dry while those who are wealthier have access to resources to pursue justice. 

In many cases, Basu found women to be much more tolerable of mental instability in a heterosexual marriage. The term “of unsound mind” describes “allegations of mental illness as grounds for divorce or annulment” (Basu 131). In the eyes of a man, the smallest misstep of a woman, even in mere housework, renders her unfit. It was even observed by Basu that “women’s failure to perform everyday gendered social roles featured as prominent symptoms of mental unsoundness,” proving that men seriously took their wives to court for divorce over things as mundane as housework (Basu 134). For a woman, though, the abusive behavior of her husband should be brushed off, not taken as a threat. Men were found to hold their wives to sexual standards that violated the basic idea of consent, with one example being a man who tried to divorce his wife because she “failed to consummate marriage on the first night,” when in reality it is her right to refuse any sexual interaction at will (Basu 134). In many of these cases, the woman’s only defense was to claim there were “ulterior motives” for the divorce or to allege that the husband’s family was acting on false grounds (Basu 134). 

One evident strength of Basu’s is her ability to write conversationally. With a text as dense and complicated as The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India, writing that flows with regard to natural speaking patterns allows the content to be more firmly grasped. Perhaps this is a matter of personal preference, but Basu’s writing feels as though she is speaking directly to her reader. Since this is a scholarly monograph, the intended audience includes people of high academic knowledge. Never does the writing seem condescending, even when Basu is providing a plethora of background information that may seem obvious to someone of her level of scholarship. Her writing style is one of sophistication but remains comprehensible to someone who is not an expert in the field of gender and sexuality studies in India.  

A weakness found in The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India is the length of each chapter. Despite having 217 pages, the monograph is only made of 8 chapters. Each chapter confronts many different issues, and while they do tend to be interconnected, they could also be broken down into several different chapters to provide more distinction between topics. With everything grouped together, even under one umbrella-like category, the information seems a bit overwhelming. Although each chapter does have a few subheadings to specify what is being discussed, I cannot help but wish that these were instead just chapters of their own, allowing Basu more flexibility to expand on her ideas and giving the reader a more clear division of information based on section. 

Srimati Basu’s The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India is a thoughtful text offering insight into the troubles faced by Indian women and the role of the institutions established to help them. Whether those institutions are helpful or not is largely up for debate. This monograph does focus exclusively on heterosexual marriages, but it is to be noted that anything other than that is unacceptable by Indian societal (and legal) standards. By giving a perspective into how women in countries that still struggle with issues like access to education and the right to own property deal with marital issues and divorce, Basu opens the eyes of readers to feminist causes beyond their own borders. Although there is much work to be done, Srimati Basu does a phenomenal job of educating readers and raising awareness of the struggles of women in India, making this a monograph of high recommendation. 

Works Cited

Basu, Srimati. The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India. University of California Press, 2015.

NCADV | National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. https://ncadv.org/STATISTICS#:~:text=1%20in%203%20women%20and,be%20considered%20%22domestic%20violence.%22&text=1%20in%207%20women%20and,injured%20by%20an%20intimate%20partner.

Ram, Ananth, et al. “Domestic Violence and Its Determinants among 15–49-Year-Old Women in a Rural Block in South India.” Indian Journal of Community Medicine : Official Publication of Indian Association of Preventive & Social Medicine, vol. 44, no. 4, 2019, pp. 362–67. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.4103/ijcm.IJCM_84_19.