Forum shopping in the Middle East and South Asia: its impact on women and the evolution of inheritance codes

Parsis (Indian Zoroastrians), a small traditionally endogamous group, are well known in India for their philanthropic giving. The Parsis of Mumbai are beneficiaries of hundreds of Parsi public charitable trusts today, and this article will show how trusts, as particular forms of giving, establish perpetual communal obligation connecting the past and present. It will show how the circulation of personal assets through customary inheritance within a family is replaced by the trust with the circulation of communal obligations in perpetuity. While this mechanism of giving has a marked endurance, what has changed is what constitutes ‘the good’ within these deeds. Moving away from traditional philanthropic practices of subsidizing education, medical care, and welfare to the poor, the focus of giving has shifted to the pursuit of communal reproduction, both biological and social.

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Zamindars, inheritance law and the spread of the waqf in the United Provinces at the turn of the twentieth century

Singh

2015

The Indian Economic & Social History Review

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The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the fragmentation and transfer of Muslim-owned estates in the United Provinces to Hindus of non-agrarian castes. This was followed by increasing usage of the waqf by Muslim landowners. This study looks at land-holding patterns in the United Provinces and use a comparative analysis of Hindu and Islamic inheritance laws to explain why land was transferred during the second half of the nineteenth century from Muslims to Hindus. It posits that the implementation of Islamic inheritance laws in the mid-nineteenth century led to increased fragmentation of Muslim-owned estates. The study also suggests that waqf became popular among Muslim landowners because it fulfilled two crucial functions that the Hindu joint family had fulfilled for Hindu landowners: First, it prevented estate fragmentation by circumventing the implementation of Islamic inheritance laws. Second, the waqf shielded assets of landowners by increasing costs of creditors seeking to recover their loans.

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Forum shopping in the Middle East and South Asia: its impact on women and the evolution of inheritance codes

Cited by 3 publications

References 46 publications

Adjudicating the Sacred: The Fates of “Native” Religious Endowments in India and Hong Kong

Adjudicating the Sacred: The Fates of “Native” Religious Endowments in India and Hong Kong

Good Deeds: Parsi trusts from ‘the womb to the tomb’

Zamindars, inheritance law and the spread of the waqf in the United Provinces at the turn of the twentieth century

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