Reading Information

Bernard Cohn, “Chapter 3: Laws and the Colonial State in India,” Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge

Overview

In chapter 3, Cohn analyzes how the British were able to construct a government in India. When the British conquered India they not only conquered a giant chunk of land, but also a vast cultural and intellectual “space”, very different from their own. The British had to adapt to and understand Indian culture and ideology in order to implement laws that would not induce revolt and uproar. Indian people adhered to ancient civil laws and practiced Hinduism. The British would use these civil laws in order to reshape British law to fit Indian society. Essentially, the British were trying to “sell” British civil code to the Indian population by “repackaging” and rewording it to sound more similar to Hindu laws and codes.

Keywords

1. East India Company: a major territorial power in India after the Battle of Plassey in 1757
2. Despotic government: to rule “as a master over a slave”
3. Sir William Jones (1746-1794): a classical scholar who studied Persian and Arabic at Oxford, who set out to compile ancient Indian laws and codes and to translate them into English.

Argument

Cohn’s argument in this chapter is that the British would try to conquer the epistemological space in India by applying their own ideologies and traditions to Indian culture, while maintaining the position that the Indian population would eventually “adapt.” Through the process of translating Hindu and Muslim laws, the British would slowly eliminate differences between Indian and British law by (unintentionally?) incorporating British philosophy into their translation. Through these translations the British created a way to transform Indian laws and customs into British law, eventually eliminating Hindu and Muslim civil codes and laws entirely. Cohn seems to argue that the British imposed their laws unwittingly as the British sought to find parallels between Indian civil codes and their own structures of rule.

Evidence

“[The British] also agreed that the peoples of India, unlike the Indians and slaves of the New World, had an ancient civilization and forms of local self-governance that were stable and deeply entrenched.” (Cohn, 58)

“Hastings ‘had to modify and adapt the old to fit English ideas and standards. He had to produce a piece of machinery that English officials could operate and English opinion tolerate . . . to graft Western notions and methods on to the main stem of Eastern Institutions.’” (Cohn, 61)

“Jones, and especially his successor, Colebrooke, established a European conception of the nature of Hindu law that was to influence the whole course of British and Indo-British thought and institutions dealing with the administration of justice down to the present.” (Cohn, 71)

“After the reform of the judicial system in 1864, which abolished the Hindu and Muslim law officers of the various courts of India, and after the establishment of provincial high courts, publication of authoritative decisions in English had completely transformed “Hindu law” into a form of English case law.” (Cohn, 75)

Historiographical Debate

Similar to the Introductory chapter, in this chapter, Cohn touches upon the works of British scholars, whose work he refers to “narrative genres”(6). He quotes Alexander Dow’s preface to the translation of History of Ihndostan. Cohn than analyzes this by writing, “Dow, and other English historians as well, stressed that the arbitrariness of the political order caused the salient characteristic of despotism to become the insecurity of property.” (Cohn, 63) Cohn also quotes Robert Orme, who believed “in 1752 there were ‘no digests or codes of laws existing in Indostan…’”

Contribution to Our Understanding of Colonial Rule

Jones set out to compile ancient Indian laws and codes and to translate them into English. They first were translated into Persian from Sanskrit. Then they were translated to English from Persian. (Cohn, 60) In order to keep the Indian population content, it was important for British to keep the Indian cultural and religious spirit in the laws they would implement in this newly acquired territory. In the process of translation, the laws would obviously be distorted by British interpretation. Eventually, the British were able to completely eliminate Hindu and Muslim laws.

The situation in British India was unique in the fact that the British actually tried to incorporate Indian codes, customs, and traditions in the structure of government. However, they eventually wiped out these codes. The Indian experience allows us to understand how a country like England was able to completely control such a gigantic piece of land with its own efficient government structure and set of laws and “Westernize” it in the process. They basically “repackaged” British law to make it relatable to Indian law.