Kaanu

Title

Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India

Creator

Washbrook, D. A.

Date

1981

Subject

colonial

legal framework

land rights

property rights

history

Identifier

doi:10.1017/s0026749x00008714

issn:0026-749X

Source

Original source

Is Part Of

Modern Asian Studies

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Abstract

Perhaps the most intransigent problem in the recent history of Indian society remains an adequate understanding of the processes of social change which took place under colonialism. As the continunig controversies within, as much as between, the traditions of modernization theory, Marxism, and the underdevelopment theory make plain, the Indian historical record is peculiarly difficult to grasp with conventional sociological concepts. In the study of Western European society, a focus on the evolution of legal ideas and institutions has proved a useful entry point to social history.The law may be seen to represent a set of general principles through which political authority and the state (however constituted) attempt to legitimize the social institutions and norms of conduct which they find valuable. As such, its history reflects the struggle in society to assume, control or resist this authority. Its study should help to reveal the nature of the forces involved in the struggle and to suggest the implications for social development of the way in which, at any one time, their struggle was resolved. The condition of the law may be seen to crystallize the condition of society. This, of course, could be said of any governing institution. But where the law becomes uniquely valuable is in that, because of its social function, the struggle around it is necessarily expressed in terms of general statements of principle rather than particular statements of private and discrete interest. At the most fundamental level, these principles demarcate the rules on which the contending parties seek to build their versions of society and provide useful clues to their wider, often undisclosed, positions.

Bibliographic Citation

Washbrook, D. A.. (1981). 'Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India'. Modern Asian Studies, 15(3), pp. 649-721.

Extent

Vol. 15, Issue 3, pp. 649-721

Has Format

Download PDF

Type

journal-article

Kaanu ID

kb000304