Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:45:41.671Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Abstract

This essay articulates the contributions of Mitra Sharafi's study of Parsi legal culture to colonial legal studies. Situated at the intersection of the literature on legal pluralism and legal institutions, Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772–1947 (2014) uses a range of new legal sources and case law to recover a remarkable history of collective identity that emerged via the medium and infrastructure of law. The Parsis' active participation in colonial legal institutions not only reshaped their normative worlds but also de-anglicized imperial law.

Type
Review Essay
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agnes, F., Chandra, S., and Basu, M. 2004. Women and Law in India: An Omnibus Comprising Law and Gender Inequality; Enslaved Daughters; Hindu Women and Marriage Law. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, M. R. 1993. Islamic Law and the Colonial Encounter in British India. In Institutions and Ideologies: A SOAS South Asia Reader, ed. Arnold, David and Robb, Peter. Richmond, UK: Curzon.Google Scholar
Bajpai, R. 2011. Debating Difference: Group Rights and Liberal Democracy in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Benton, L. 2002. Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900. New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bhabha, H. 1984. Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse. October 28:125–33.Google Scholar
Birla, R. 2009. Stages of Capital: Law, Culture and Market Governance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Birla, R. 2011. Performativity Between Logos and Nomos: Law, Temporality and the Non‐Economic Analysis of Power. Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 21 (2): 492515.Google Scholar
Cohn, B. 1989. Law and the Colonial State. In History and Power in the Study of Law: New Directions in Legal Anthropology, ed. Starr, June and Fishburne Collier, Jane. Ithaca, NY/London. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Cover, R. 1983. The Supreme Court 1984 Term—Foreword: Nomos and Narrative. Harvard Law Review 97:468.Google Scholar
Derrett, J. D. M. 1961. The Administration of Hindu Law by the British. Comparative Studies in Society and History 4 (1): 1052.Google Scholar
Derrett, J. D. M. 1963. Introduction to Modern Hindu Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Derrett, J. D. M. 1977. Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law: Anglo‐Hindu Legal Problems (Vol. 3). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Freitag, S. B. 1991. Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India. Modern Asian Studies 25 (2): 227–61.Google Scholar
Galanter, M. 1968. The Displacement of Traditional Law in Modern India. Journal of Social Issues 24 (4): 6591.Google Scholar
Galanter, M. 1981. Justice in Many Rooms: Courts, Private Ordering, and Indigenous Law. Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 13 (19): 147.Google Scholar
Lingat, R. 1973. The Classical Law of India, trans. J. Duncan M. Derrett. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Luhrmann, T. 1996. The Good Parsi: The Fate of a Colonial Elite in a Postcolonial Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nelken, D. 2004. Using the Concept of Legal Culture. Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 29:128.Google Scholar
Singha, R. 1998. The Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vismann, Cornelia. 2008. Files: Law and Media Technology. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Washbrook, D. A. 1981. Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India. Modern Asian Studies 15 (3): 649721.Google Scholar