Colonialism and Muslim Personal Law in South Asia
Colonialism and Muslim Personal Law in South Asia
- Elizabeth LhostElizabeth LhostUniversity of California Los Angeles, Charles E. Young Research Library
Summary
While the origins of religious legal pluralism in South Asia predate European colonialism, the personal law system assumed its present shape during the period of British rule. From 1772 onward, East India Company regulations laid the foundations for a state-centered legal system that would adjudicate religious, personal-law disputes according to the laws of the community. Until the middle of the 19th century, this approach meant consulting local experts and searching for answers to legal questions within medieval texts that were translated and published to provide British judges with access to their contents. Texts were numerous, but they remained only one tool in the jurist’s toolbox. In the second half of the 19th century, legal cases involving disputes between Muslim litigants contributed to the production of substantive case law that informed subsequent rulings, and British-trained Indian Muslim judges took a leading role in deciding cases and writing opinions that challenged and further shaped the contours of Anglo-Muslim law. Legislation also became an important part of this toolbox in the decades before independence, but even with the passage of laws like the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act (1937) and the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act (1939), legislation remained one of several interpretive mechanisms. Nearly a century later, key questions about who can and how to define Islamic law remain contested and the field of legal debate and interpretation is lively.
Subjects
- South Asia