From abstract notions of identity mediated through colonial courts, this family history recovers the disorderliness of human experience. The inhabited worlds of Matthew, Charlotte, and their family expose the limits of identities introduced from the top down, even when litigants appropriate them for their own ends. The legacy of the Abrahams concerns the possibility of racial and cultural mixture among poor, marginalized people and the heightened vulnerability to identity closure as people acquire status and wealth. With remarkable candor, Abraham v. Abraham records both trajectories.

Until the onset of their court case, the Abraham family consistently defied the imperial ordering of Indian society into distinct religious and cultural units. From their humble beginnings as paraiyars and poor East Indians, to their lives as an interracial family, and their fruitful years as Bellary entrepreneurs, their story reveals interwoven experiences lying beneath the identity choices they encountered in court. The family traversed a diverse social terrain, bridging European and indigenous social spaces. The court case left behind a detailed public record of their lives; but the same documents that reveal the family’s mixed heritage also reveal its adoption of enclosed identities, defined by checklists of cultural characteristics.