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Monasticism, or monkhood, is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Monastic life plays an important role in many Christian churches, especially in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions as well as in other faiths such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. In other religions monasticism is criticized and not practiced, as in Islam and Zoroastrianism, or plays a marginal role, as in modern Judaism. Many monastics live in abbeys, convents, monasteries or priories to separate themselves from the secular world, unless they are in mendicant or missionary orders.
Uniform Civil Code,, sometimes referred as UCC, is a proposal in India to formulate and implement personal laws of citizens which apply on all citizens equally regardless of their religion, gender and sexual orientation. Currently, personal laws of various communities are governed by their religious scriptures. Implementation of a uniform civil code across the nation is one of the contentious promises pursued by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. It is an important issue regarding secularism in Indian politics and continues to remain disputed by India's political left wing, Muslim groups and other conservative religious groups and sects in defence of sharia and religious customs. Personal laws are distinguished from public law and cover marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption and maintenance. Meanwhile, article 25-28 of the Indian constitution guarantees religious freedom to Indian citizens and allows religious groups to maintain their own affairs, article 44 of the constitution expects the Indian state to apply directive principles and common law for all Indian citizens while formulating national policies.
The law of India refers to the system of law across the Indian nation. India maintains a hybrid legal system with a mixture of civil, common law and customary, Islamic ethics, or religious law within the legal framework inherited from the colonial era and various legislation first introduced by the British are still in effect in modified forms today. Since the drafting of the Indian Constitution, Indian laws also adhere to the United Nations guidelines on human rights law and the environmental law.
Hindu texts present diverse and conflicting views on the position of women, ranging from feminine leadership as the highest goddess, to limiting gender roles. The Devi Sukta hymn of Rigveda, a scripture of Hinduism, declares the feminine energy as the essence of the universe, the one who creates all matter and consciousness, the eternal and infinite, the metaphysical and empirical reality (Brahman), the soul, of everything. The woman is celebrated as the most powerful and the empowering force in some Hindu Upanishads, Sastras and Puranas, particularly the Devi Upanishad, Devi Mahatmya and Devi-Bhagavata Purana.
The Manusmṛiti, also known as the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra or Laws of Manu, is one of the many legal texts and constitution among the many Dharmaśāstras of Hinduism. In ancient India, the sages often wrote their ideas on how society should run in the manuscripts. It was one of the first Sanskrit texts to be translated into English in 1776, by British philologist Sir William Jones, and was used to construct the Hindu law code, for the East India Company administered enclaves.
Dharmaśāstra is a genre of Sanskrit texts on law and conduct, and refers to the treatises (śāstras) on dharma. Unlike Dharmasūtra which are based upon Vedas, these texts are mainly based on Puranas. There are many Dharmashastras, variously estimated to be 18 to about 100, with different and conflicting points of view. Each of these texts exist in many different versions, and each is rooted in Dharmasutra texts dated to 1st millennium BCE that emerged from Kalpa (Vedanga) studies in the Vedic era.
The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947.
Hindu law, as a historical term, refers to the code of laws applied to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs in British India. Hindu law, in modern scholarship, also refers to the legal theory, jurisprudence and philosophical reflections on the nature of law discovered in ancient and medieval era Indian texts. It is one of the oldest known jurisprudence theories in the world and began three thousand years ago whose original sources were the Vedas and indigenous customs.
With the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976, the Preamble to the Constitution asserted that India is a secular nation. However, the Supreme Court of India in the 1994 case S. R. Bommai v. Union of India established the fact that India was secular since the formation of the republic. The judgement established that there is separation of state and religion. It stated "In matters of State, religion has no place. And if the Constitution requires the State to be secular in thought and action, the same requirement attaches to political parties as well. The Constitution does not recognize, it does not permit, mixing religion and State power. That is the constitutional injunction. None can say otherwise so long as this Constitution governs this country. Politics and religion cannot be mixed. Any State government which pursues nonsecular on policies or nonsecular course of action acts contrary to the constitutional mandate and renders itself amenable to action under Article 356". Furthermore, constitutionally, state-owned educational institutions are prohibited from imparting religious instructions, and Article 27 of the constitution prohibits using tax-payers money for the promotion of any religion.
A matha, also written as math, muth, mutth, mutt, or mut, is a Sanskrit word that means 'institute or college', and it also refers to a monastery in Hinduism. An alternative term for such a monastery is adheenam. The earliest epigraphical evidence for mathas related to Hindu-temples comes from the 7th to 10th century CE.
Fatawa 'Alamgiri, also known as Al-Fatawa al-'Alamgiriyya or Al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya, is a 17th-century sharia based compilation on statecraft, general ethics, military strategy, economic policy, justice and punishment, that served as the law and principal regulating body of the Mughal Empire, during the reign of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Muhiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir. It subsequently went on to become the reference legal text to enforce Sharia in colonial south Asia in the 18th century through early 20th century, and has been heralded as "the greatest digest of Muslim law made in India".
Dasanami (IAST Daśanāmi Saṃpradāya "Tradition of Ten Names"), also known as the Order of Swamis, is a Hindu monastic tradition of "single-staff renunciation" generally associated with the four cardinal mathas of the Advaita Vedanta tradition and, according to tradition, organized in its present form by 8th-century CE Vedic scholar and teacher Adi Shankaracharya.
A joint family or undivided family is an extended family arrangement prevalent throughout the Indian subcontinent, particularly in India, consisting of many generations living in the same household, all bound by the common relationship.
Christian Personal Law or family law regulates Adoption, Divorce, Guardianship, Marriage and Succession in India. The provisions of canon law concerning marriage are recognised as the personal law of Catholics in India. Marriages of Indian Catholics are regulated by the Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872. Christian Personal Law is not applicable in the state of Goa. The Goa civil code, also called the Goa Family Law, is the set of civil laws that governs the residents of the Indian state of Goa. In India, as a whole, there are religion-specific civil codes that separately govern adherents of different religions. Goa is an exception to that rule, in that, a single secular code/law governs all Goans, irrespective of religion, ethnicity or linguistic affiliation.
Modern Hindu law refers to one of the personal law systems of India along with similar systems for Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, and Christians. This Hindu Personal Law or modern Hindu law is an extension of the Anglo-Hindu Law developed during the British colonial period in India, which is in turn related to the less well-defined tradition of Classical Hindu Law. The time frame of this period of Hindu law begins with the formal independence of India from Great Britain on August 14, 1947, and extends up until the present. While modern Hindu law is heralded for its inherent respect for religious doctrines, many still complain that discrimination still pervades the legal system, though efforts to modernize and increase the legal rights of the marginalized have been made.
Anglo-Hindu law refers to the laws enacted during the British colonial era, which applied to the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs of British India.
The Hindu code bills were several laws passed in the 1950s that aimed to codify and reform Hindu personal law in India, abolishing religious law in favor of a common law code. Following India's independence in 1947, the Indian National Congress government led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with the help of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar completed this codification and reform, a process started by the British Raj. According to the British policy of noninterference, personal-law reform should have arisen from a demand from the Hindu community. That was not the case, as there was significant opposition from various conservative Hindu politicians, organisations and devotees; they saw themselves unjustly singled out as the sole religious community whose laws were to be reformed. However, the Nehru administration saw such codification as necessary to unify the Hindu community, which ideally would be a first step towards unifying the nation. They succeeded in passing four Hindu code bills in 1955–56: the Hindu Marriage Act, Hindu Succession Act, Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, and Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act. They continue to be controversial to the present day among women, religious, and nationalist groups.
Anglo-Hindu law reflected the difference in values between "law" in Western tradition and colonial Hindu tradition. It was not until the 1770s, when the British Empire came to colonize India, that the concept of law came into practice.
Jain law or Jaina law is the modern interpretation of ancient Jain law that consists of rules for adoption, marriage, succession and death prescribed for the followers of Jainism.
All the Muslims in India are governed by the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937. This law deals with marriage, succession, inheritance and charities among Muslims. The Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939 deals with the circumstances in which Muslim women can obtain divorce and rights of Muslim women who have been divorced by their husbands and to provide for related matters. These laws are not applicable in the state of Goa, where Goa civil code is applicable for all persons irrespective of religion. These laws are not applicable to Muslims who married under the Special Marriage Act, 1954.
References
- 1 2 3 Kishwar, Madhu (13 August 1994). Codified Hindu Law: Myth and Reality. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 29, Number 33, pp.2145-2161.
- ↑ Kasturi, Malavika (Sep., 2009). 'Asceticising' Monastic Families: Ascetic Genealogies, Property Feuds and Anglo-Hindu Law in Late Colonial India. Modern Asian Studies, Volume 43, Number 5, pp. 1039-1083.