Reading Information

Bernard Cohn, “Law and the Colonial State,” Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge

Overview

This chapter mainly talks about how the British were initially uncertain as to how to establish rule in India. Previously, British colonies such as New England and the Caribbean had adapted to the legislature of Great Britain. However, India was different because of the history of their civilization. There were already established forms of self-governance that worked. The problem for the British was that the local villagers and territorial rulers were not on the East India Company’s side. The British at first attempted to import their own legal system, but failed miserably. For instance, in 1765, the British tried to collect taxes from the Bengals but later caused a famine that killed a third of the population.

Warren Hastings, an employee of the East India Company, was given the task to establish rule in Bengal. Hastings began his task by deciphering the Hindu law so judges in civil courts could use it. He hired 11 pandits in Bengal to compile all the literature of the Hindu law so it could be readily used for translation. The task was then passed on to a man named Sir William Jones. Jones also knew that the British legal system would never work in India. He strongly believed that the basis of law should be the Hindu and Mahomedan laws. However, he did not trust the Indian scholars’ interpretations of the Hindu law and instead hired two pandits to continue translating until his death in 1794. Taking the reins, H. T. Colebrooke completed and published Jones’ works in 1798. Colebrooke used “European methods” of filling in the gaps (text that was not complete) the Hindu law. This eventually led to the Indian judicial system reform in 1864. But by now, most of the transformed “Hindu law” is derived from the British legal system, which was what Hastings, Jones and Colebrooke wanted to avoid.

The Indians viewed the British and the East India Company as trading partners. However, the British viewed the Indians as constituents of the British crown. The slow but gradual interpretation and translation of the Hindu law for English judges reinforces this idea. They needed courts that would be in favor of the British.

Keywords

1. pandit: an educated person or scholar in India
2. Mahomedan: a person who follows the Islamic prophet Muhammad
3. jagir: a system that dealt with the distribution of grants or public revenues in India

Argument

“Although employees of the company owed allegiance to the British Crown, the natives of India – be they peasant or territorial rulers allied to the East India Company – did not (Cohn, 58).” The British acknowledged the stability and success of the current Indian legal system, but sought to reinterpret it in terms favorable to them. “They 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).”

Evidence

Cohn uses Clive’s letter addressed to the East India Company to describe how inefficient the British were at collecting revenues. “They believed that Englishmen were unfit to conduct the collection of revenues and to follow the subtle native through all his arts, to conceal the real value of his country, to perplex and elude the payments (Cohn, 59.)” This evidence is reliable because their inexperience with tax collection caused a third of the Bengal population to die from a famine.

Orme’s account of a court trial is used to describe how justice in India was determined by the person in charge of the court, not by rule of law. After the plaintiff offers the judge money, “the wealth, the consequence, the interest, or the address of the part, become now the only consideration (Cohn, 64).” This evidence is reliable because the British were now aware how much power the judges of the court held. This fueled their desire to find an interpretation of the Hindu law.

Historiographical Debate

Cohn refers to H. T. Colebrooke’s The Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions (1798) to make a point that it took 26 years of culminating efforts to create the compilation; from when Hastings was appointed to the publishing of the book. Cohn also mentions Thomas Strange’s Elements of Hindu Law to make the argument that the Anglo-Saxon law has already encroached and mostly replaced the Hindu Law. Cohn also mentions Ferishta’s History of Hindostan to make his point that the people of India were willing to subject themselves under the rule of one “tyrant” to another. This feeds into the British argument that the Indian legal system was despotic and thus needed a “strong hand who could administer justice in a rough-and-ready fashion unfettered by rules and regulations (Cohn, 65).” The British believed they were the ones ready to take this job on.

Contribution to Our Understanding of Colonial Rule

Upon reading this chapter, I was able to get a further understanding of one of the key investigative modalities that shaped British perception of India. The East India Company arrived in India as “merchants” who wanted to conduct trade with the Indians. But as we all know, their true intentions were to gain control and colonize the territory. At first, they ran into many problems because of their lack of knowledge of the “ancient civilization and forms of local self-governance that were stable and deeply entrenched (Cohn, Colonialism, 58).” Perhaps the biggest problem was the British and the East India Company had no influence in the courts. The British realized that they would never be profitable or successful without familiarizing themselves with the Hindu law. Even elites like Sir William Jones “seemed to distrust Indian scholars’ interpretations of their own legal traditions, a distrust that grew in India (Cohn, Colonialism, 69).” In response, the British compiled and translated as much of the Hindu law as they could and began redistributing the translations to British judges. By 1864, the reform of the judicial system began.

This chapter reminded me that “there’s more than meets the eye.” As I was reading the first few pages of the chapter, I did not understand how interpreting the law could have possibly benefited the British. But towards the last few pages of the chapter, I found out that although they managed to do what Hastings and Jones tried avoiding, it worked in their favor and the English law became the law of India.