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2 - The Peace: The Queen’s Proclamation and the Politics of Forgiveness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2024

Alastair McClure
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
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Summary

Chapters Three concludes the study of this political and constitutional transition by exploring the most important legal reform of this time: the Indian Penal Code (1860). Codification represented a highly political exercise that established the terms of the relationship between the subject and sovereign in India, while also further entrenching ideas of colonial difference into the everyday administration of criminal justice. In this chapter, I first examine how the crisis of 1857 shaped the final design of the IPC. I then pay close attention to the figure of the judge and the institution of the jury. I argue that colonial ideas of caste, culture, race, and gender informed the distribution of discretionary authority across the code in ways that would prove consequential for the administration of colonial justice.

Type
Chapter
Information
Trials of Sovereignty
Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922
, pp. 69 - 110
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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