Law and the Making of Modern India

Syllabus with List of Readings

Module 1:

Topics to be Covered:

What is ‘colonial’ about colonial law?

Week 1

Orientation Lecture

Why law in history: Significance of doing legal history

Hay, Douglas. “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law,” Albion's Fatal Tree (1975), pp. 17-63
 

Langbein, John. “AIbion's Fatal Flaw,” 98 Past and Present (1983), pp. 96-120

Linebaugh, Peter. “(Marxist) Social History and (Conservative) Legal History: A Reply to Professor Langbein,” 60 New York University Law Review (1985), pp. 212-243

Gordon, Robert W. "Critical legal histories." Stanford Law Review (1984): 57-125.

Week 2 & 3

Metropolis and the colony: legacy of the empire

Benton, Lauren. Law and colonial cultures: legal regimes in world history, 1400-1900. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Mommsen, Wolfgang J., and Jaap de Moor, eds. European expansion and law: the encounter of European and indigenous law in 19th-and 20th-century Africa and Asia. Oxford: Berg, 1992.

Snyder, Francis. “Colonialism and Legal Form,” Journal of Legal Pluralism, 1981.

Chanock, Martin. Law, custom, and social order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Moore, S. F. 1986 Social facts and fabrications" Customary" law on Kilimanjaro, 1880-1980. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Merry, S. E., Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law

Chanock, M. 1991 A Peculiar Sharpness: An Essay on Property in the History of Customary Law in Colonial Africa. The Journal of African History 32(1):pp. 65-88.

Rudolph, Lloyd I. and Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber. 1965. Barristers and Brahmans in India: Legal Cultures and Social Change, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 8, No. 1, (Oct., 1965), pp. 24-49

Week 4& 5

Law as a history of colonial ideas in India (and other colonies)

Law as a history of colonial ideas in India (and other colonies)

(Henry Maine)

Maine, Henry Sumner. Ancient law, its connection with the early history of society and its relation to modern ideas. J. Murray, 1906.

Mantena, Karuna. Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism. Princeton University Press, 2010

Cohn, Bernard S. “From Indian status to British contract” The journal of economic history.  Vol. 21.1961, 4, p. 613-628

(Utilitarianism)

Stokes, Eric. 1959. The English Utilitarians and India. Oxford: Clarendon Press

(Issue of Property)

Guha, Ranajit. A rule of property for Bengal: An essay on the idea of permanent settlement. Orient Blackswan, 1982.

Washbrook, David A. "Law, state and agrarian society in colonial India." Modern Asian Studies 15.03 (1981): 649-721.

Week 6

Locating colonial in the colonial law.

Hussain, Nasser. The jurisprudence of emergency: Colonialism and the rule of law. University of Michigan Press, 2003.

Chatterjee, Partha. The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Vol. 11. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Scott, David. "Colonial governmentality." Social Text 43 (1995): 191-220.

Week 7

Power of the word (oral and written):  Archival experiments in Indian legal history

Guha, Ranajit, “Chandra’s Death” in Subaltern Studies V, Oxford University Press, 1987.

Amin, Shahid, Event, Metaphor, Memory, Chauri Chaura 1922- 1992, Oxford University Press, 1995.

Baxi, Upendra. "'The State's Emissary': The Place of Law in Subaltern Studies", in Subaltern Studies VII, pp. 247-264.

Chatterjee, Partha. A Princely Impostor?: The Kumar of Bhawal and the Secret History of Indian Nationalism. Orient Blackswan, 2004.

Module 2

Topics to be covered:

Racism and colonial subjectivity

Week 8

Race, Crime and Justice in Colonial India

Fisch, Jorg. Cheap Lives and Dear Limbs: The British Transformation of the Bengal Criminal Law, 1769-1817

Singha, Radhika. A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Kolsky, Elizabeth. “Codification and the Rule of Colonial Difference: Criminal Procedure in British India,” Law and history review, Fall 2005, Vol 23(3)

Arnold, David. “The Colonial Prison: Power, Knowledge and Penology in Nineteenth Century India”, Subaltern Studies VIII

Week 9

Quotidian legality in colonial India

Sengoopta, Chandak. 2003. Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was born in Colonial India, Macmillan.

Smith, R. ‘Rule-by-records and rule-by-reports: complementary aspects of the British imperial rule of law’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 19 (1985).

Singha, Radhika. Settle, Mobilize, Verify: Identification Practices in British India, Studies in History, 2000; 16: 151-198

Raman, Bhavani. Document Raj: Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial South India. University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Week 10

Law and the subjects of law: The personal and the customary in colonial law

Cohn, Bernard S. 1996. “Law and the Colonial State in India,” Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge. Oxford University Press, pp. 57-75.

Anderson, M.R, “Islamic law and the Colonial Encounter in British India”, Peter Robb & David Arnold (ed.), Ideologies and Institutions, pp.165-185

Nair, Janaki. Women and law in colonial India: a social history. Kali for Women in collaboration with the National Law School of India University, 1996.

Mani, Lata. Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India , Cultural Critique, No. 7, (Autumn,1987), pp. 119-156

Bhattacharya, Neeladri. "Remaking custom: the discourse and practice of colonial codification.," Tradition, Dissent, and Ideology: Essays in Honor of Romila Thapar. Delhi: OUP (1996).

Giunchi, Elisa. "The Reinvention of Sharī ‘a under the British Raj: In Search of Authenticity and Certainty." The Journal of Asian Studies 69.04 (2010): 1119-1142.

Gilmartin, D. 1988. "Customary Law and Shari'at in British Punjab," in Shari'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam. Edited by K. P. Ewing, pp. 43-62. Berkeley: University of California Press

Birla, Ritu. Stages of capital: Law, culture, and market governance in Late Colonial India. Duke University Press, 2008.

Module 3

Topics to be covered:

The colonial legacy.

Week 11

Transfer of power and the transfer of law: postcolonial institutions and colonial foundations

De, Rohit. “Rebellion, Dacoity, and Equality: The Emergence of the Constitutional Field in Postcolonial India” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2014) 34(2): 260-278.

Burra Arudra. “The Indian Civil Service and the nationalist movement: neutrality, politics and continuity” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Volume 48, 2010 - Issue 4 (POLITICS AND ADMINISTRATION IN INDIA IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF DAVID POTTER)

Baxi, Upendra. “Accumulation and Legitimacy: The Indian Constitution and State Formation.” Delhi Law Review 12 (1991): 72–84.

Gould, William, Taylor Sherman, and Sarah Ansari. “The Flux of the Matter: Loyalty, Corruption, and the ‘Everyday State’ in the Post-Partition Government Services of India and Pakistan c. 1946–1952.” Past and Present 219 (2013): 237–79.

Menon, Nivedita. “Citizenship and the Passive Revolution: Interpreting the First Amendment.” In Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution, edited by Rajeev Bhargava, 189–211. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Week 12

Making sense of Law and the Making of Modern India (History and the contemporary)

Frank, A.G. “Emergence of Permanent Emergency in India,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 12, No. 11 (Mar. 12, 1977), pp. 463-465+467-475

Tarlo, Emma. “From Victim to Agent: Memories of Emergency from a Resettlement Colony in Delhi” Author(s): Emma Tarlo, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 46 (Nov. 18, 1995), pp. 2921-2928

Singh, Ujjwal Kumar. State Democracy and Anti-Terror Laws in India, Sage publications 2007, pages 346