This book is premised on the understanding that women’s inclusion in constitutional politics is critical for our equality. In the present political context, particularly Muslim contexts, it is imperative to promote women’s equality both in law and in practice, so that women can move closer towards equality. Utilising a feminist constitutionalist approach, this book highlights the impact of women’s historical underrepresentation in constitutional drafting processes and discussions across the globe, as well as recent feminist interventions to address legislative processes that consider women’s needs and interests. It reflects on the role of Islam in politics and governance, and the varied ways in which Muslim-majority countries, as well as Muslim-minority countries, have sought to define women’s citizenship rights, personal freedoms, and human rights from within or outside of a religious framework. Recognising the importance of Constitutions for the recognition, enforcement and protection of women’s rights, this book explores how women seek justice, equality, and political inclusion in their diverse Muslim contexts.

The book advocates for more inclusive constitutional drafting processes that also consider diverse cultural contexts, political history, and legal and institutional developments from a gendered lens. Tracing the ways in which women are empowered and exercise agency, insist on inclusion and representation in politics and seek to enshrine their rights, the contributing authors present case studies of Afghanistan, Algeria, India, Iran, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. Positioned at the crossroads of secular and religious legal forces, the book situates women’s rights at the centre of debates surrounding constitutional rights guarantees, gender equality, and religious rules and norms. The contributors offer a range of disciplinary approaches and perspectives that illustrate the richness and complexity of this field. The dominant emergent themes that each contributor tackles in considering how women’s rights impact, and are, in turn, impacted by Constitutions, are those of critical junctures such as revolutions or regime change which provide the impetus and opportunity for women’s rights advocates to push for greater equality; the tension between religion and women’s rights, where women’s legal disadvantage is justified in the name of religion, and finally, the recognition of the important role women’s movements play in advocating and organizing for equality. While much has been written about the constitutional processes of the past decade across the Muslim world as a result of pro-democratic uprisings, revolutions, and even regime change, most of such analyses lack a gendered lens, disregard women’s perspectives and fail adequately to acknowledge the significant role of women in constitutional moments. Even less has been written about the importance of constitutionalizing women’s equality rights in Muslim contexts. This edited volume is an effort to fill this gap in the literature. It will appeal to a broad range of scholars, students and activists in the areas of Muslim constitutionalism, feminist constitutionalism, Muslim law and society, gender studies, anthropology, and political science, religious studies and area studies.

EDITORS:

Dr. Vrinda Narain is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, McGill University, Canada, and Research Fellow, Research Directorate, University of the Free State, South Africa. Professor Narain’s research and teaching focus on constitutional law, social diversity and feminist legal theory. She is the author of two books: Reclaiming the Nation: Muslim Women and the Law in India (University of Toronto Press, 2008) and Gender and Community: Muslim Women's Rights in India (University of Toronto Press, 2001). She was Associate Dean, Academic, at the Faculty of Law from 2016 to 2019. She is a Board Member of the transnational research and solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), Member of the National Steering Committee of the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), Canada, and the President of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre (SAWCC) in Montreal.

Mona Tajali is a scholar of gender and politics in Muslim countries, with a focus on Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. She is the author of Women’s Political Representation in Iran and Turkey: Demanding a Seat at the Table (EUP 2022), and co-author of Electoral Politics: Making Quotas Work for Women (WLUML 2011) with Homa Hoodfar. She serves as executive board member of the transnational feminist solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), and is currently the director of research of WLUML’s multi-sited Women and Politics project and its Transformative Feminist Leadership Institute. She is an associate professor of International Relations and Women’s Studies at Agnes Scott College, where she helped found the Middle East Studies Program and directed the Human Rights Program. She is currently researching institutionalization of women’s rights in Iran and Afghanistan at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL) as a visiting scholar.

Economic growth is uneven within many developing countries as some sectors and industries grow faster than others. India is no exception, where anemic performance in manufacturing has been offset by robust growth in services. Standard scholarly explanations fail to explain this kind of variation. For instance, the factor endowments that are required for services—such as an educated workforce or access to electricity and other infrastructure—should also complement manufacturing. Reciprocally, if a state’s institutions hold back manufacturing, they should also impair growth in services. Why have services in India outperformed manufacturing? We examine India’s performance in the computing industry, where a dynamic software services sector has emerged even as its computer hardware manufacturing sector has flagged. We argue that the uneven outcomes between the software and hardware sectors are due to the variable needs of the respective sectors and the state’s capacity to coordinate agencies. The policies required to promote the software sector needed minimal coordination between state agencies, whereas the computer hardware sector required a more centralized state apparatus for successful state-business engagement. Domestic and transnational political networks were critical for the success of the software sector, but similar networks could not deliver the same benefits to the computer hardware industry, which required more coordination-intensive policies than software. A state’s ability to coordinate industrial policy is thus a critical determinant for effective sectoral political networks, shaping sectoral variations within an economy.

As India’s power and prominence rise on the international stage, its longstanding tradition of democracy is under threat. Since establishing a secular and democratic constitution in 1950, India has held elections at the local, state, and national levels with frequent transitions of power between opposing parties. This commitment to democracy has provided political order to a country that is twice the size of Europe and with a stunning array of social and economic divides.

Despite this rich tradition, India’s democracy faces an unprecedented threat with the rise of Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. After decisively winning general elections in 2014, Modi and the BJP have pursued a range of anti-democratic policies in which the state and society are used to undermine the opposition, to stifle free speech, and to harass religious minorities. The Troubling State of India’s Democracy brings together leading scholars from around the world to assess the conditions of India’s democracy across three important dimensions: politics, specifically the state of political parties and the party system; the state, including the condition of federalism and the health of various institutions; and society, including NGOs, ethnic and religious tensions, and control of the media. Even though elements of India’s democracy seem to function—like its commitment to elections—the contributors document a disturbing trajectory, one that not only threatens to undermine India’s own stability, but could also affect the global order.

EDITORS:

Šumit Ganguly is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and holds the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Dinsha Mistree is Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Larry Diamond is William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

Food adulteration with toxic chemicals is a global public health threat. Lead chromate adulterated spices have been linked with lead poisoning in many countries, from Bangladesh to the United States. This study systematically assessed lead chromate adulteration in turmeric, a spice that is consumed daily across South Asia. Our study focused on four understudied countries that produce >80 % of the world's turmeric and collectively include 1.7 billion people, 22 % of the world's population. Turmeric samples were collected from wholesale and retail bazaars from 23 major cities across India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal between December 2020 and March 2021. Turmeric samples were analyzed for lead and chromium concentrations and maximum child blood lead levels were modeled in regions where samples had detectable lead. A total of 356 turmeric samples were collected, including 180 samples of dried turmeric roots and 176 samples of turmeric powder. In total, 14 % of the samples (n = 51) had detectable lead above 2 μg/g. Turmeric samples with lead levels greater than or equal to 18 μg/g had molar ratios of lead to chromium near 1:1, suggestive of lead chromate adulteration. Turmeric lead levels exceeded 1000 μg/g in Patna (Bihar, India) as well as Karachi and Peshawar (Pakistan), resulting in projected child blood lead levels up to 10 times higher than the CDC's threshold of concern. Given the overwhelmingly elevated lead levels in turmeric from these locations, urgent action is needed to halt the practice of lead chromate addition in the turmeric supply chain.

The November 2023 issue of Democracy and Autocracy features essays from contributors to the forthcoming volume The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (University of Michigan Press, Emerging Democracies Series), co-edited by Larry Diamond (Stanford University), Šumit Ganguly (Indiana University), and Dinsha Mistree (Stanford University). Newsletter authors include Diamond, Ganguly, and Mistree; as well as Maya Tudor (University of Oxford); John Echeverri-Gent (University of Virginia); Aseema Sinha (Claremont McKenna College); Andrew Wyatt (University of Bristol); Kanta Murali (University of Toronto); and Eswaran Sridharan (University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India in Delhi). Mukulika Banerjee (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Sushmita Pati (National Law School of India University, Bengaluru) also exchange reviews of their recent books, Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India (Banerjee, Oxford University Press, 2021) and Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi (Pati, Cambridge University Press, 2022). Anindita Adhikari (U-M) and Nandini Dey (U-M) serve as guest editors.

The Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan hosted a roundtable connected to this issue in September 2023, with Diamond, Ganguly, and Mistree presenting as panelists and Adhikari and Dey serving as respondents. Watch the recording here.