As its title suggests, this volume serves as an introduction to the interaction of the Hindu tradition and law. Hindu religious law as formalized in the law books or dharmaśāstras is of course a focus, along with the negotiations that occurred between the Sanskrit legal tradition and various localized regimes. The impact on Hinduism of secular systems of law during the colonial and post-colonial periods also looms large.
The editors are widely respected academics known for their expertise in this field. They contend that scholarship on religion and law has emphasized the Roman, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic worlds while neglecting India. This book will do much to redress this imbalance. It brings together the work of most of the leading contemporary scholars of India's traditions of law with a view to providing an accessible overview of the field. The editors aim to move beyond the study of Hindu law, per se, to “a new field of study on the model of other work in law and religion that focuses on the mutual connections between particular religious traditions and particular legal systems” (p. 6). John Witte and Frank S. Alexander's Christianity and Law: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) is cited as an example.
The book is divided into three parts. Part one deals with the history of Hindu law, from the ancient texts through colonial and contemporary developments. Chapters cover the history of Hindu legal traditions (Donald R. Davis, Jr., Patrick Olivelle), pre-modern practice (Alex Michaels), and the transformation of Hindu law in the colonial and post-colonial periods (Rosane Rocher, Rachel Sturman, Rina Verma Williams). Part two looks at particular aspects of the practice of law in ancient and medieval Hinduism, including but looking beyond Dharmaśāstra. Chapters focus on Hindu law and classical Mīmāṁsa hermeneutics (Lawrence McCrea), Indic conceptions of authority (Timothy Lubin), caste (Ananya Vajpeyi), literature and politics (Whitney M. Cox), and ritual and poetry (Robert A. Yelle). Part three deals with the interplay between law and Hinduism during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Discussed is the legal status of Hindu deities (Richard Davis), a “god of justice” in Uttarakhand (Aditya Malik), controversies over India's caste-based affirmative action policies (Laura Dudley Jenkins), law and Hindu nationalism (Smita Narula), and law and the Hindu diaspora (Jayanth K. Krishnan).
The contributors describe a legal system that, until late in the colonial period, was polycentric, with the Brahminical Dharmaśāstras providing an overall “legal theology” as well as particular rules of behavior for upper-caste Hindus, but with multiple other legal traditions, institutions, and actors—guilds, village and caste councils, rulers—all subject to influence from formal Hindu law but retaining various degrees of autonomy. Several of the essays stress the importance in India, until relatively recently, of ācāra or uncodified customary law. Important also were the Buddhist saṅgha, the Jain community, various Muslim polities and constituencies, and other distinct groups, each with its own laws, rules, customary practices, and institutions.
A date resurfacing repeatedly as pivotal in India's legal history is 1772, when the colonial government of Bengal adopted a Judicial Plan that specified, in matters of personal and family law, that the colonial courts would rely on Hindu and Muslim legal traditions for members of those communities. This marked the birth of Anglo-Indian law, as well as British interest in the study of Sanskrit, enabling access to what were understood as the foundational texts. The authors note that British judicial use of Manu and other Dharmaśāstra literature “showcased and privileged” (Rocher, p. 81) these texts, especially Manu, along with their patriarchal, high-caste agenda. This reality is nuanced, however, by the contention that Dharmaśāstra had always been the jurisprudential center of Hindu law, insofar as it was Hindu (Davis, p. 17), and that Manu had always been preeminent among the Dharmaśāstra texts (Olivelle, p. 40; see McCrea, pp. 128–29). It is also noted that issues of caste, while highlighted divisively by the British (Jenkins, p. 216), had nevertheless been central to “pre-colonial intellectual life, legal practice, polity, and statecraft” (Vajpeyi, pp. 161, 165).
Rocher and Sturman show how, during the colonial period, Hindu law was gradually transferred from its traditional venues of enactment to become a function of government, while being progressively narrowed to the sole realm of personal law. Williams, Jenkins, and Narula describe the complete disengagement of Hindu law from Dharmaśāstra in independent India and how the post-colonial state's contrasting treatment of Hindu and Muslim personal law has become a point of grievance for Hindu nationalists.
The contributors to Hinduism and Law represent a range of disciplines including religious studies, Asian studies, Sanskrit, law, history, political science, and anthropology. The essays achieve an evenly high standard. Moreover, they speak to each other consistently and cogently. The editors are to be congratulated for achieving a remarkable degree of coherence and interdisciplinarity. I give the book an enthusiastically high recommendation. It is certainly a “must-read” for serious students of South Asia and comparative law.
