Law and the Image
The Media Lab : Jadavpur University

The 1^st module of the Law and the Image database focuses on The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955; the debates, arguments and scholarly readings it generated and their relationship with the questions of family, love and marital relations that came to the fore in the heydays of post-independence melodrama.

The debates around the Act cut across disciplines; the materials are therefore diverse in source and implications. Though films remain the central focal point, the database reflects generally on Indian culture and society of the 1950s. It is conceived as a space, which provides a collation of academic essays, newspapers reports and articles, film clips, film posters and reviews, details of legal proceedings and judgments passed by courts across the Indian Union, etc.

While the user can browse serially through titles, disciplines, item types, authors and so on, they can also use tags between items to cut across disciplines. This would help them establish connections that might not be evident in the original logic of collection.

Featured Item Bigamy Law Defied Article published in the Oct 1947 issue of the Filmindia magazine commenting on how bigamy practised by the protagonist of a film actually led to a…

Featured Collections: Social Essays A Collection of essays collected from various academic disciplines pertaining to various socio-cultural issues emerging from an analysis of the Hindu Marriage Act passed by the Indian Parliament in… Film Adevrtisements A collection of images illustrating advertisements of Bengali films of the era in an around the passage of the Hindu Marriage Act, from contemporary daily newspapers and film journals. Journal Articles A Collection of articles from the film journals in and around the period of passage of the Hindu Marriage Act: articles from women's pages, censorship debates and so on, which throw light on the… View All Collections

Recently Added Items Woman versus Womanliness in India: An Essay in Cultural and Political Psychology The essay involves an analysis of the constricted role of woman in Indian society and public affairs as part of an ongoing process of civilisational… Love in a Colonial Climate: Marriage, Sex and Romance in Nineteenth-Century Bengal A study of the 19th century Bengali society and the changing notions of marriage, conjugality and companionship ushered in through an acquaintance to… Review: Bratacharini Review of the film Bratacharini published in the Kartik, 1362 (Nov-Dec, 1955) issue of the Chitrabani magazine. View All Items