KIIT Law School (KLS) organized a webinar on the topic “Dominant Discourses, Gender Stereotypes, And The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955” on 27th September 2021. The resource person for the webinar was Prof. (Dr.) Gangotri Chakraborty. She introduced the concept of gender and how it evolved with the course of time. She also discussed the relationship between gender and discourse, putting forward an academician’s point of view about gender and gender construct.
Prof. Chakraborty discussed the influence of dominant discourse and stated that a dominant discourse regarding marriage shapes various situations, some of which could be favorable to you, but most of them are unfavorable to women. She discussed the famous case of State of Punjab vs Gurmit Singh and others AIR 1996 SC 1393, in which Justice A.S. Anand stated that a murderer destroys the physical body of his victim, while a rapist degrades the very soul of a helpless woman. She spoke about some myths that are still prevalent in the 21st Century and moved to the topic of natural guardianship and also about the PIL that is filed against Section 9 of The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. Further a number of marriage related cases like the T. Sareetha, Sayera Bano, Shah Bano and Daniel Latifi cases were discussed.
Discussing Section 5 of the Hindu Marriage Act, she pointed out that the act has specifically stated about a valid consent, and not about free consent. Despite a particular age for marriage has been specified in the Act, child marriage is prevalent as the punishment is very nominal, she said.
The vote of thanks was proposed by Prof. P.C. Mishra, Dean, KLS. Aporva Shekhar was the student moderator.