ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one aspect of feminist struggles in India–struggles against violence against women (VAW) in the family. It discusses feminist debates, advocacy, legal reform, and the growth of jurisprudence and public policy around the question of domestic violence (DV) and its interlinkages with gender-based discrimination in family laws from the early 1980s to 2016. Women's rights groups across India sprang from the need to reckon with gender discrimination and to find the theoretical tools to do this effectively. The significant aspect of the reform initiatives triggered by feminist groups in India is that there were a series of institutional responses that brought about a significant shift in the public discourse on VAW in the family. The chapter describes the reforms around anti-dowry legislations that primarily affected Hindu women and discusses the efforts at mobilizing Muslim women around issues of DV, imbuing new meaning to the idea of plural jurisprudence.
