The relationship between tribes and the state with reference to the Indian legal structure is the focus of this book which fills a gap in the literature. Examining three tribes of India, the author traces the historical roots of their dispossession, their engagement with and subjugation by the British, and how their ordeal of disempowerment continues, even after independence. The book offers new research data from a variety of sources and by bringing together insights from anthropology, ancient history and law, it draws political conclusions that are deeply relevant in today′s world.

From the Colonial to the Contemporary explores the representation of law, images and justice in the first three colonial high courts of India at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. It is based upon ethnographic research work and data collected from interviews with judges, lawyers, court staff, press reporters and other persons associated with the courts. Observing the courts through the in vivo, in trial and practice, the book asks questions at different registers, including the impact of the architecture of the courts, the contestation around the renaming of the high courts, the debate over the use of English versus regional languages, forms of addressing the court, the dress worn by different court actors, rules on photography, video recording, live telecasting of court proceedings, use of CCTV cameras and the alternatives to courtroom sketching, and the ceremony and ritual that exists in daily court proceedings. The three colonial high courts studied in this book share a recurring historical tension between the Indian and British notions of justice. This tension is apparent in the semiotics of the legal spaces of these courts and is transmitted through oral history as narrated by those interviewed. The contemporary understandings of these court personnel are therefore seen to have deep historical roots. In this context, the architecture and judicial iconography of the high courts helps to constitute, preserve and reinforce the ambivalent relationship that the court shares with its own contested image.

A leading expert on Indian judiciary, George Gadbois offers a compelling biography of the Supreme Court of India, a powerful institution. Written and researched when he was a graduate student in the 1960s, this book provides the first comprehensive account of the Court’s foundation and early years. Gadbois opens with Hari Singh Gour’s proposal in 1921 to establish an indigenous ultimate court of appeal. After analyzing events preceding the Federal Court’s creation under the Government of India Act, 1935, Gadbois explores the Court’s largely overlooked role and record. He goes on to discuss the Constituent Assembly’s debates about Indian judiciary and the Supreme Court’s powers and jurisdiction under the Constitution. He pays particular attention to the history and practice of judicial appointments in India. In the book’s later chapters, Gadbois assesses the functioning of the Supreme Court during its first decade and a half. He critically analyzes its first decisions on free speech, equality and reservations, preventive detention, and the right to property. The book is an institutional tour de force beginning with the Federal Court’s establishment in December 1937, through the Supreme Court’s inauguration in January 1950, and until the death of Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964.

It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.

This book provides an overview of the content and functioning of the Indian Constitution, with an emphasis on the broader socio-political context. It focuses on the overarching principles and the main institutions of constitutional governance that the world's longest written constitution inaugurated in 1950. The nine chapters of the book deal with specific aspects of the Indian constitutional tradition as it has evolved across seven decades of India's existence as an independent nation. Beginning with the pre-history of the Constitution and its making, the book moves onto an examination of the structural features and actual operation of the Constitution's principal governance institutions. These include the executive and the parliament, the institutions of federalism and local government, and the judiciary. An unusual feature of Indian constitutionalism that is highlighted here is the role played by technocratic institutions such as the Election Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and a set of new regulatory institutions, most of which were created during the 1990s. A considerable portion of the book evaluates issues relating to constitutional rights, directive principles and the constitutional regulation of multiple forms of identity in India. The important issue of constitutional change in India is approached from an atypical perspective. The book employs a narrative form to describe the twists, turns and challenges confronted across nearly seven decades of the working of the constitutional order. It departs from conventional Indian constitutional scholarship in placing less emphasis on constitutional doctrine (as evolved in judicial decisions delivered by the High Courts and the Supreme Court). Instead, the book turns the spotlight on the political bargains and extra-legal developments that have influenced constitutional evolution. Written in accessible prose that avoids undue legal jargon, the book aims at a general audience that is interested in understanding the complex yet fascinating challenges posed by constitutionalism in India. Its unconventional approach to some classic issues will stimulate the more seasoned student of constitutional law and politics.

Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this book provides a systematic approach to legislation and legal practice concerning energy resources and production in India. The book describes the administrative organization, regulatory framework, and relevant case law pertaining to the development, application, and use of such forms of energy as electricity, gas, petroleum, and coal, with attention as needed to the pervasive legal effects of competition law, environmental law, and tax law. A general introduction covers the geography of energy resources, sources and basic principles of energy law, and the relevant governmental institutions. Then follows a detailed description of specific legislation and regulation affecting such factors as documentation, undertakings, facilities, storage, pricing, procurement and sales, transportation, transmission, distribution, and supply of each form of energy. Case law, intergovernmental cooperation agreements, and interactions with environmental, tax, and competition law are explained. Its succinct yet scholarly nature, as well as the practical quality of the information it provides, make this book a valuable resource for energy sector policymakers and energy firm counsel handling cases affecting India. It will also be welcomed by researchers and academics for its contribution to the study of a complex field that today stands at the foreground of comparative law.

Theft, poisoning, affairs, flights home, refusals to work, eat or have sex, threats to divide the joint household, and sly acts of sabotage are some of the domestic warfare tactics employed by Muslim women attempting to resist patriarchy. Gender, Law, and Resistance in India dramatically illustrates how a patriarchal ideology is upheld and reinforced through male-governed social and legal institutions and how women defy that control. Based on anthropological fieldwork in rural Rajasthan in northern India, Erin Moore's book details the life of an extended Muslim family she has known for twenty years. In many ways the plight of the central character, Hunni, is representative of dilemmas experienced by the majority of north Indian peasant women. Ultimately an account of cultural hegemony and defiance, Gender, Law, and Resistance in India reveals how so-called "modern" state institutions and practices reinforce traditional arrangements, resulting in women being silenced, deprived of equal rights before the law, and returned to their male guardians. Still, women resist in overt and covert ways. The first ethnographic work to focus principally on the law and legal institutions of gender and agency in South Asia, this unique volume examines the interpenetrations of north India's pluralistic legal systems. Moore adeptly connects engrossing case histories to national dialogues over women's rights, discussing these issues in terms of Muslim personal laws, secularism, and communal violence. Gender, Law, and Resistance in India is a rich and truly significant contribution to gender studies, South Asian studies, and sociolegal studies.

By accessibly recounting and analyzing the unique experience of institutions in colonial Indiawhich were influenced heavily by both British Common Law and indigenous Indian practices and traditionsLaw and the Economy in Colonial India sheds new light on what exactly fosters the types of institutions that have been key to economic development throughout world history more generally. The culmination and years of research, the book goes through a range of examples, including textiles, opium, tea, indigo, tenancy, credit, and land mortgage, to show how economic laws in colonial India were shaped neither by imported European ideas about how colonies should be ruled nor indigenous institutions, but by the practice of producing and trading. The book is an essential addition to Indian history and to some of the most fundamental questions in economic history."

Routledge Readings on Law and Social Justice: Dispossessions, Marginalities, Rights presents some of the finest essays on social justice, rights and public policy. With a lucid new Introduction, it covers a vast range of issues and offers a compelling guide to understanding law and socio- legal studies in South Asia. The book covers critical themes such as the jurisprudence of rights, justice, dignity, with a focus on the regimes of patriarchy, labour and dispossession. The fourteen chapters in the volume, divided into three sections, examine contested sites of the constitution, courts, prisons, land and complex processes of migration, trafficking, digital technology regimes, geographical indications and their entanglements. This multidisciplinary volume foregrounds the politics and plural lives of/ in law by including perspectives from major authors who have contributed to the academic and/ or policy discourse of the subject. This book will be useful to students, scholars, policymakers and practitioners interested in a nuanced understanding of law, especially those studying law, marginality and violence. It will serve as essential reading for those in law, socio- legal studies, legal history, South Asian studies, human rights, jurisprudence and constitutional studies, gender studies, history, politics, conflict and peace studies, sociology and social anthropology. It will also appeal to legal historians and practitioners of law, and those in public administration, development studies, environmental studies, migration studies, cultural studies, labour studies and economics.

Women in custody -- Women in law -- Killing women.