What does an anthropological study of Hindu divorce – and one that, of necessity, focuses its attention on the practices in one small corner of one Indian state – have to offer English legal readers? The answer, it turns out, is quite a lot. First, there is the very practical point that in the modern global village English lawyers may find themselves having to deal with unfamiliar family practices. As Holden points out, ‘Hindu divorce … is not only travelling within Hindu diaspora, but it is also increasingly stranding [sic] before the immigration authorities who take upon themselves the prerogative to judge on the morality of the divorced women and men from South Asia’ (p 189). Who can divorce, and how, is not merely an esoteric academic issue but one that courts in the West are increasingly having to tackle.

Perhaps more important, however, is what Hindu Divorce has to say about the relationships between law, religion and custom. The complexities of the subject make the jurisprudence of the English ecclesiastical courts seem a model of clarity. Some common ground can be discerned: classical Hindu texts, like their Christian equivalents, insisted on the sacramental quality of marriage and its consequent indissolubility (although in both cases challenges to this were voiced). In each case limited exceptions were thought to be available (again, with the existence and scope of those exceptions being hotly disputed). But the English courts did not have to grapple with the question of the legitimacy of customary forms of divorce. While such practices undoubtedly existed in England – there are plenty of examples of wife-selling and other rituals designed to give the arrangement some legitimacy in the eyes of the communities – the law did not have to evaluate their effect, simply adjudging them to be invalid. In India, by contrast, the legislation that introduced formal, ‘Western-style’ divorce also explicitly acknowledged the existence and validity of customary divorce, providing that the Act would not affect ‘any right recognised by custom or conferred by any special enactment to obtain the dissolution of a Hindu marriage’ (Hindu Marriage Act 1955, section 29(5)).

There is also an important gender dimension. As Holden tartly points out, prior to the 1955 Act ‘divorce was not needed for the man because more wives were simply added to the family’ (p 15). By contrast – polyandry being rarely accepted – a woman who wanted to take a second husband had to divorce the first. Moreover, men's voices have tended to prevail in the debate about divorce: it is acknowledged that ‘it is not only easier to collect men's points of view, it is difficult to go beyond their perception because the modalities of men's formulation are more widely recognized and accepted than those of women’ (p 159). A key part of the book is therefore devoted to uncovering women's stories.

The outline of South Asian scholarship on Hindu divorce in chapter 1 is followed by a fascinating account in chapter 2 of the way in which the fieldwork data were collected. Holden switches into first-person narrative to ‘highlight not only that fieldwork is not disengaged from individual occurrences, but also that their suppression in academic texts often hides something scientifically relevant’ (p 27). We learn of her initial interest in the subject, her journey to the village of Pipasod with her husband, Marius, and the noises, smells and sights of their first days there. Occasional black-and-white photographs offer the reader an insight into their experiences. We discover how anthropological fieldwork has to negotiate new challenges: Holden sees herself as a collaborator rather than an observer, noting how the residents ‘are becoming increasingly aware of the research that is being conducted in their village and of the implications of their accounts as representatives, abroad, of their village life’ (p 44) and how some wished to take an active role in shaping that representation. This presented an interesting tension: given the strong local culture that women did not speak publicly about sensitive issues of this kind, women who were willing to tell their story to a foreign audience might not wish it to be known that they had done so.

Chapter 3 then moves to the divorce stories of specific women (alluding in the course of so doing to those who were effectively browbeaten into remaining silent). Holden lets the women speak for themselves – a privilege not always accorded to them – in setting out lengthy accounts of the conversations in which the information was elicited. The fullness of these women's narratives in conversation contrasts sharply with the monosyllabic responses of some (although not all) women when interviewed by a notary.

Men are given a voice in chapter 4, but as observers rather than as individuals who have experienced matrimonial problems personally. The experiences of local notaries in mediating between law and custom are particularly illuminating: the two are not hermetically sealed institutions but may affect each other. Thus the ‘growing awareness of official law, even at the village level, is leading to interesting changes in how customs themselves are perceived by the parties and in the way they are presented before official jurisdictions’ (pp 145–146).

Chapter 5 shifts the focus to the formal law, and to the way in which the courts (of Madhya Pradesh, India, and across the world) have dealt with the issue of customary divorce. Holden traces how the Indian courts have become increasingly willing to recognise customary divorce, but demonstrates that such recognition is far from straightforward. ‘Custom’ is by its nature a difficult concept for law courts to accommodate, especially where customs may differ between different areas and tribes. The recognition of a custom of a specific tribe may be a progressive step in some respects, but instantly raises questions about the appropriate treatment of those not belonging to that particular group. It also risks perpetuating stereotypes about those who engage in customary practices. One might imagine modern judges would be less likely than their Victorian predecessors to characterise such practices as ‘primitive’ and to draw implicit parallels with other ‘uncivilised’ practices such as devil worship (for examples of which see p 179), but even in the late twentieth century one finds courts ascribing ‘liberal and amoral views’ to communities with distinctive divorce customs. The chapter closes with a description of three cases in which courts in the UK and the US have had to get to grips with the issue of customary divorce (with mixed results).

I suspect that Holden might disapprove of the way in which I began the review with the issues raised by these cases, but I hope that she would also sympathise with the fact that we all process new information by relating it to what is already familiar. (The same tendency can be found among Holden's interviewees: one, expressing his perception of developments in the West, suggested that ‘Lady Di ran away from her husband of her own free will. She was not forced. Yet, she was not able to freely remarry’ (p 149).) But Hindu Divorce is a fascinating study not only of customary divorce practices but also of the very process of finding out what happens beyond the scope of the formal law.