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Biswajit Chanda participates in International Conferences
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| AKU-ISMC Project Assistant for the Muslim Civilisations Abstracts (MCA) project Biswajit Chanda presented two papers at international conferences in India and Bangladesh. |
Throughout March, AKU-ISMC Project Assistant for the Muslim Civilisations Abstracts (MCA) project Biswajit Chanda presented two papers at international conferences in India and Bangladesh.
The first paper was presented at the “International Conference on Law and Cultural Diversity”, held from the 11th to the 13th of March at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences in Calcutta, India. The conference aim was to accommodate dialogue on a range of issues related to legal pluralism.
In his paper, Legal Pluralism and Family Law Reform in Bangladesh, Chanda presented an analysis of the nature of the South Asian legal system with a special emphasis on Bangladesh. The paper expresses that the colonial rulers left the sub-continent with a deeply plural legal structure where old and new state-made secular laws applicable for criminal, civil or land related issues co-exist with different religious and customary laws on personal or family matters, known as personal laws.
Chanda’s paper argues that only a small number of changes to majority Muslim family law in Bangladesh have been useful because these laws have only made procedural adjustments to traditional Sharia law. Chanda’s paper concludes that a new reform programme which considers minority family laws should be implemented in Bangladesh.
Chanda’s second paper, To What Extent Personal Law Reform Would Empower Women, was presented at the International Workshop, “From Patriarchy to Empowerment: Gender and Law in Bangladesh” held on the 16th of March. The conference was co-organised by the University of Dhaka and the British Council.
By illustrating some inconsistencies and disadvantages that women face in the context of Bangladeshi personal laws, Chanda’s paper offers some possible reforms useful for the empowerment of women in Bangladesh. The paper argues that a significant problem with Bangladeshi personal laws is that people of different religions are not treated equally on the same kinds of issues. Chanda’s paper proposes that personal laws should be ‘harmonised’ (between members of different religions), and that there should also be an optional secular system for those who prefer it.
Participation in international conferences by AKU-ISMC staff and faculty allows for the greater sharing of knowledge by scholars on subjects related to Muslim cultures and societies in a variety of contexts and settings.
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