Reading Information

Bernard S. Cohn, “Chapter Three: Law and the Colonial State in India,” Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge

Overview

In this chapter, Cohn is relating the British’s attempt at incorporating India’s solid and well-established ancient civilization and its forms of self-governance with British ideas of law and government, which they believed to be the superior form. Cohn first explains British sovereignty in India and the role of the East India Company in India. The East India Company was able to exercise state functions from royal grants and charters provided by the British Crown and Parliament. As a result, the Company was able to act as the state with state functions such as the ability to wage war, raise taxes, etc., which also raised complex issues of the legitimacy of the Company acting as the state in India. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to British agents and scholars in adopting India’s established system of rule with English standards that English officials could tolerate and work with. Warren Hastings, a commercial and diplomatic agent for the East India Company, was one of these people and presided over two courts. Hastings stressed the importance of utilizing Indian law and rejected the widespread European belief of the Indian state being despotic. In the next part of the chapter, Cohn writes of Sir William Jones’ and H. T. Colebrooke’s quest to find the oldest text of Hindu law to guarantee its authenticity and authority and their completed publication of a compilation of Indian law called The Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions. However, the end result in India after Jones’ and Colebrooke’s search for the oldest Indian text was what they had strived to avoid: the transformation of Hindu law into English law.

Keywords

1. Despotic model: to rule “as a master over a slave”; arbitrary rule.
2. Mimamasa: method used to reconcile conflicting texts of equal authority by applying various rules for the interpretation of words, phrases, and sentences; also style of argumentation.
3. Case law: law based on precedent; court cases are based on decisions of prior cases.

Argument

The British’s approach to colonial rule involved establishing relations with native Indians through research of Indian law, history, culture, society, and language. The British intended to “creat[e] a body of knowledge that could be utilized in the effective control of Indian society” (61).

Evidence

Cohn uses a significant amount of evidence from the writings of English scholars during the time of British rule in India. Cohn references Robert Orme’s description of the process of the administration of justice in India from his work Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire. Cohn quotes directly from letters and essays of Sir William Jones and H. T. Colebrooke in which they describe their experiences with India’s legal system. Cohn also draws from translations of the works of Indian authors. He specifically refers to an English translation of Ferishta’s History of Hindostan, a history of the Muslim conquerors of India, by Alexander Dow and an english translation of Abu’l Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari, an account of the mode of governing under the most illustrious of the Mughal emperors named Akbar. Cohn relies heavily on the works of English authors and scholars to relate information regarding India, which would provide a biased perspective, but considering his argument for this chapter, the use of these sources is adequate in supporting his argument.

Historiographical Debate

I am not sure how the author is situating him/herself in a wider scholarly debate.

Contribution to Our Understanding of Colonial Rule

This chapter aids in our understanding of colonial rule by again showing the ways in which a colonial power can essentially “invade and conquer” an epistemological space. The chapter emphasizes the lack of agency a colonized territory in regards to representing its culture and history in the world; the chapter makes clear the control the British had over India’s narrative. This chapter also helps in understanding the reasoning for using an epistemic approach to colonial rule and why Jone’s and Colebrooke’s search for the oldest Indian text was so important in securing British rule. Cohn writes: “British law… could not become the law of India because that would be counter to the very nature of an established legal system… ‘a system of liberty, forced upon a people invincibly attached to opposite habits, would in truth be a system of tyranny’” (68). Cohn is explaining the British’s recognition of how weak their authority would be in India if they had established their own system by force. This is a contrast from an element of modern colonialism Osterhammel describes in his text, in which he writes that there is an, “unwillingness of the new rulers to make cultural concessions to subjugated societies” (15). In this chapter, Cohn demonstrates the necessity of making at least some “concessions to subjugated societies” that have deeply entrenched forms of self-governance to maintain power over them.