Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia PDF

Author: Mitra June Sharafi

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 9781139862332

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This book explores the legal culture of the Parsis, an ethno-religious community unusually invested in the colonial legal system of British India and Burma.

Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia PDF

Author: Mitra Sharafi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-21

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1139868063

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This book explores the legal culture of the Parsis, or Zoroastrians, an ethnoreligious community unusually invested in the colonial legal system of British India and Burma. Rather than trying to maintain collective autonomy and integrity by avoiding interaction with the state, the Parsis sank deep into the colonial legal system itself. From the late eighteenth century until India's independence in 1947, they became heavy users of colonial law, acting as lawyers, judges, litigants, lobbyists, and legislators. They de-Anglicized the law that governed them and enshrined in law their own distinctive models of the family and community by two routes: frequent intra-group litigation often managed by Parsi legal professionals in the areas of marriage, inheritance, religious trusts, and libel, and the creation of legislation that would become Parsi personal law. Other South Asian communities also turned to law, but none seem to have done so earlier or in more pronounced ways than the Parsis.

The Politics of Personal Law in South Asia

The Politics of Personal Law in South Asia PDF

Author: Partha S. Ghosh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-23

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1136705112

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It is a political study of the controversy surrounding the issue of the uniform civil code vis-à-vis personal laws from a South Asian perspective. At the centre of the debate is whether there should be a centralized view of the legal system in a given society or a decentralized view, both horizontally and vertically. This issue is entangled within the threads of identity politics, minority rights, women’s rights, national integration, global Islamic politics and universal human rights. Champions of each category view it through their own prisms, making the debate extremely complex, especially in politically and socially plural South Asia. So, this book attempts to harmonize the threads of the debate to provide a holistic political analysis.

The Post-Colonial States of South Asia

The Post-Colonial States of South Asia PDF

Author: Amita Shastri

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-11

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 1136118748

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This text discusses the principal political and constitutional questions that have arisen in the states of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka following fifty years of independence. In Sri Lanka the pressing problems have been around the inter-ethnic civil war, experiments with constitutional designs, widespread prevalence of corruption and the recrudescence of Buddhist militancy. In India it has been corruption, Hindu nationalism and general political instability. In Bangladesh and Pakistan it has been the role of the military, the state and religion. A general theme is an analysis of the malaise that is prevalent and how and why this was inherited, despite the colonial legacy of parliamentary democracy, the steel framework of a trained bureaucracy, the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law.

Fluid Jurisdictions

Fluid Jurisdictions PDF

Author: Nurfadzilah Yahaya

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1501750895

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This wide-ranging, geographically ambitious book tells the story of the Arab diaspora within the context of British and Dutch colonialism, unpacking the community's ambiguous embrace of European colonial authority in Southeast Asia. In Fluid Jurisdictions, Nurfadzilah Yahaya looks at colonial legal infrastructure and discusses how it impacted, and was impacted by, Islam and ethnicity. But more important, she follows the actors who used this framework to advance their particular interests. Yahaya explains why Arab minorities in the region helped to fuel the entrenchment of European colonial legalities: their itinerant lives made institutional records necessary. Securely stored in centralized repositories, such records could be presented as evidence in legal disputes. To ensure accountability down the line, Arab merchants valued notarial attestation land deeds, inheritance papers, and marriage certificates by recognized state officials. Colonial subjects continually played one jurisdiction against another, sometimes preferring that colonial legal authorities administer Islamic law—even against fellow Muslims. Fluid Jurisdictions draws on lively material from multiple international archives to demonstrate the interplay between colonial projections of order and their realities, Arab navigation of legally plural systems in Southeast Asia and beyond, and the fraught and deeply human struggles that played out between family, religious, contract, and commercial legal orders.

Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia PDF

Author: Mitra Sharafi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-21

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1107047978

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This book explores the legal culture of the Parsis, or Zoroastrians, an ethnoreligious community unusually invested in the colonial legal system of British India and Burma. Rather than trying to maintain collective autonomy and integrity by avoiding interaction with the state, the Parsis sank deep into the colonial legal system itself. From the late eighteenth century until India's independence in 1947, they became heavy users of colonial law, acting as lawyers, judges, litigants, lobbyists, and legislators. They de-Anglicized the law that governed them and enshrined in law their own distinctive models of the family and community by two routes: frequent intra-group litigation often managed by Parsi legal professionals in the areas of marriage, inheritance, religious trusts, and libel, and the creation of legislation that would become Parsi personal law. Other South Asian communities also turned to law, but none seems to have done so earlier or in more pronounced ways than the Parsis.

Family, Gender, and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia

Family, Gender, and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia PDF

Author: Kenneth M. Cuno

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2009-12-28

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0815651481

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The essays in this collection examine issues of gender, family, and law in the Middle East and South Asia. In particular, the authors address the impact of colonialism on law, family, and gender relations; the role of religious politics in writing family law and the implications for gender relations; and the tension between international standards emerging from UN conferences and conventions and various nationalist projects. Employing the frame of globalization, the authors highlight how local and global forces interact and influence the experience and actions of people who engage with the law. By virtue of a "south-south" comparison of two quite similar and culturally linked regions, contributors avoid positing "the West" as a modern telos. Drawing upon the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, and law, this volume offers a wide-ranging exploration of the complicated history of jurisprudence with regard to family and gender.

Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia

Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia PDF

Author: Harald Fischer-Tiné

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-01

Total Pages: 697

ISBN-13: 0429774699

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The Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia provides a comprehensive overview of the historiographical specialisation and sophistication of the history of colonialism in South Asia. It explores the classic works of earlier generations of historians and offers an introduction to the rapid and multifaceted development of historical research on colonial South Asia since the 1990s. Covering economic history, political history, and social history and offering insights from other disciplines and ‘turns’ within the mainstream of history, the handbook is structured in six parts: Overarching Themes and Debates The World of Economy and Labour Creating and Keeping Order: Science, Race, Religion, Law, and Education Environment and Space Culture, Media, and the Everyday Colonial South Asia in the World The editors have assembled a group of leading international scholars of South Asian history and related disciplines to introduce a broad readership into the respective subfields and research topics. Designed to serve as a comprehensive and nuanced yet readable introduction to the vast field of the history of colonialism in the Indian subcontinent, the handbook will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of South Asian history, imperial and colonial history, and global and world history.

Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia

Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia PDF

Author: Priyasha Saksena

Publisher:

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780191957451

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What constitutes a sovereign state in the international legal sphere? This question has been central to international law for centuries. This book provides a compelling exploration of the history of sovereignty through an analysis of the jurisdictional politics involving a specific set of historical legal entities.

Governing Islam

Governing Islam PDF

Author: Julia Stephens

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-06-21

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1107173914

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Stephens argues that encounters between Islam and British colonial rule in South Asia were fundamental to the evolution of modern secularism.