Sikkimese Women's Differentiated Citizenship: Postcoloniality, Indigeneity, and Gender in India

本项目考察后殖民时期的法规和公民身份做法如何在印度东北部的锡金人中沿着性别和土著的轴心运作，以及锡金妇女是如何经历这些规定和做法的。这项研究结合了间接统治的后殖民遗产，即殖民列强利用习惯法作为统治被殖民人口的手段，以及土著女权主义公民身份的观点，以审查这些遗产是如何影响今天锡金妇女的生活的。它特别侧重于父系公民法，这些法律限制妇女在与土著群体以外的人结婚时将锡金人的主体身份以及不动产传给子女的权利。除了对锡金臣民身份的父系传承规则的法律文件进行批判性分析，以及对律师和政策制定者的采访外，这项研究还让锡金妇女发声，了解她们如何通过婚姻制度体验和谈判她们不同的公民身份。通过这样做，这项研究不仅产生了关于锡金男女法律平等面临的挑战以及印度性别与土著之间复杂关系的新知识，而且更广泛地通过对全球南方殖民后社会的土著、权利和公民身份的理论和分析，为女权主义知识提供了一个新的视角。

This project examines how postcolonial regulations and practices of citizenship operate among the Sikkimese in Northeast India along the axes of gender and indigeneity, and how they are experienced by Sikkimese women. The study combines the postcolonial legacy of indirect rule, that is, the use of customary law by colonial powers as a means of ruling colonised populations, with indigenous feminist perspectives on citizenship to examine how such legacies are brought to bear on the lives of Sikkimese women today. It focuses specifically on patrilineal citizenship laws that curtail the rights of women to pass on their Sikkimese subjecthood, and by extension immovable property, to their children if they marry outside their indigenous group. Alongside a critical analysis of legal documents on the patrilineal rules of transmission for Sikkimese subjecthood, and interviews with lawyers and policymakers, the research gives voice to Sikkimese women to understand how they experience and negotiate their differentiated citizenship through the institution of marriage. By doing so, the research produces new knowledge not only about the challenges towards legal equality between womenand men in Sikkim, and the complex relationships between gender and indigeneity in India, but also more broadly it offers a new perspective to feminist knowledge by theorising and analysing indigeneity, rights and citizenship in postcolonial societies in the global south.