In 1772, the British East India Company appointed a new governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings, “one of the most remarkable figures in India's history” (see Frykenberg 1988: 38). Hastings did not wait long to promote the adoption of a juridical plan that was to become one of his major legacies on the Indian subcontinent. According to the plan, “in all religious suits regarding inheritance, marriage, caste and all other religious usages and institutions, the laws of the Koran with respect to the Mohamedans and those of the Shaster with respect to the Gentoos shall invariably be adhered to.” In other words, in 1772 the British authorities in Calcutta decided that Indian Hindus and Indian Muslims should not be ruled by British laws, which they would not be able to understand, but by their own laws, which they had cherished for many centuries. In this essay, I will not deal with the Indian Muslims, who, according to the plan, were to be governed by the laws of the Koran. I will restrict myself to the Hindus, who were to be ruled by the laws of “the Shaster.”

The term “Shaster,” used in the judicial plan of 1772, corresponds to the Sanskrit term śāstra, which is the collective name for the voluminous body of Sanskrit texts (the śāstra and their commentaries) dealing with the Hindu dharma. The term dharma has no appropriate English equivalent; it refers to the aggregate of all the rules by which a Hindu must live, including rules that we would label rules of law.