Book contents
- Empires of Complaints
- Empires of Complaints
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Map
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration and Names
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Petitioning, Taxation, and Law in Eighteenth-Century Bengal
- 2 Recasting Mughal Law
- 3 Zamindari Succession Disputes and Persianate Hindu Law
- 4 ‘At the Durbar’ in Calcutta
- 5 A Jagirdar’s Lament
- 6 Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
3 - Zamindari Succession Disputes and Persianate Hindu Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 September 2022
- Empires of Complaints
- Empires of Complaints
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Map
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration and Names
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Petitioning, Taxation, and Law in Eighteenth-Century Bengal
- 2 Recasting Mughal Law
- 3 Zamindari Succession Disputes and Persianate Hindu Law
- 4 ‘At the Durbar’ in Calcutta
- 5 A Jagirdar’s Lament
- 6 Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores how inheritance disputes involving landholders (zamindars) in early colonial Bengal became a site for the production of a Persianate form of Hindu law. By tracing in detail the process of judicial investigation in two complex cases of of zamindari inheritance involving elite Hindu zamindars, the chapter shows how British officials drew on the expert knowledge of khalsa revenue officials (especially qanungos) and of brahman pandits (experts on dharmashastra), and how the Company government tried to justify its judicial decrees on the basis of a reconstituted form of Mughal law. The records of judicial inquiries into zamindari tenures reveal the Persianate context for the Company’s early administration of Hindu law, as nawabi practices for hearing and deciding disputes among tax-paying zamindars were reformulated under the Company state.
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- Empires of ComplaintsMughal Law and the Making of British India, 1765–1793, pp. 113 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022