Law must work by the pretense of defining a person's legal identity, but people do not fit neatly into just one identity. This contradiction arose particularly saliently in colonial judiciaries in Asia, where the most fundamental presuppositions about laws and about people's status held by European colonizer and Asian colonized clashed, and also both changed over time. Chandra Mallampalli insightfully walks us through the social, cultural, religious, and judicial contexts, the diverse personalities, and the opposing legal arguments at each of several stages of an inheritance lawsuit within a particularly complex family in South Asia. Mallampalli reads the records of this contested archive skillfully to analyze the litigation's implications not just for India during the early nineteenth century but also for imperialism and modernity.
British colonialism in India sought to classify and order people by religion, race, and caste but also created opportunities for mobility. From early in colonial rule (until today), distinct civil codes have separately governed Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Thus, the law (like other colonial institutions, including censuses and religiously defined separate electorates) worked to fix the identity of each person. Simultaneously, however, various colonial institutions worked to transform (some) Indians through Anglicization and conversion to Christianity. Further, new economic and commercial opportunities available through serving and catering to Britons and the colonial government and economy enabled a few Indians to rise in class. These opposing and cross-cutting processes often led to particularly disputed identities.
As Mallampalli skillfully reconstructs the events and issues: Matthew Abraham (ca. 1790–1842) came from a relatively poor Tamil-speaking paraiyar (pariah untouchable) family that had earlier converted to Roman Catholic Christianity. During the 1830s, he entrepreneurially rose to relative wealth, especially through negotiating annual contracts for abkari (alcohol and other intoxicants) with the East India Company's Madras Army and as part of the commercial service sector for its officers and others in the bustling military cantonment of Bellary (today in northern Karnataka). As Matthew moved up economically and socially, he serially converted to Evangelical Protestantism and then to the Church of England. He also married Charlotte Fox (ca. 1805–69), an East Indian (ambiguously meaning a claimant to some or all European descent and/or customs). Finding his sari-wearing mother, Chinthathri, too much a visible link to his pre-East Indian past, they sent her away. Needing reliable assistance, Matthew brought in his much younger brother, Francis.
A dozen years after Matthew's death intestate in 1842, Charlotte sued Francis, who had long been managing the various family enterprises. This litigation laboriously but revealingly played out in the Bellary civil court, on appeal in Madras, and finally on appeal at the Privy Council in London. At issue were the legal and cultural identities of the principal parties, the opposing arguments of their advocates, the interests of the 271 witnesses, and the inconsistent decisions of the various judges. Broadly, Charlotte contended that deportment, not race, mattered, so Matthew had become East Indian like her, especially after her marriage to him. Thus, English inheritance law should apply, giving her as widow the entire estate. Her advocates and (mostly) Protestant and East Indian witnesses stressed Matthew's complete break from his Hindu ancestors and their customs.
In contrast, Francis strategically contended that he was co-sharing brother in a customary “Hindu joint family” (p. 188). Hence, Hindu law should apply, giving him the family's undivided property with only a modest living allowance for the widow. Francis's advocates and (mostly) Catholic Indian witnesses argued for the family's essential continuities with Hindu customs, even after conversion. After nine years of costly litigation, Francis obtained what he had initially offered in an out-of-court settlement a decade earlier: half the profits from the family enterprises he had been managing since his brother's death, leaving the actual ownership of the property to his widowed sister-in-law.
Over its many lengthy phases, this case accumulated and preserved extensive court records, including verbatim testimonies, personal letters, and biographical information. These provide an unmatched ethnography of the region and of the diverse and often contentious intermediate society of Indian converts to Christianity, East Indians, and others below the white British but serving them. In addition to the specific legal issues, related cultural ones arise as well. Charlotte's role in business, the law courts, and society, and her economically upward but socially downward marriage to a paraiyar (albeit a Christian one) shows how asymmetrically gendered these all were. Matthew's eldest son, Charles Henry, sought acceptance in British society by studying in Queens College, Cambridge University, and attempting to qualify as a barrister, but expensively failed as he experienced class and racial disparagement in Britain.
This family's complex case, particularly well documented and fascinating, provides a broad window on the surrounding society and also reveals the larger, but often obscured, principles and forces at work. Mallampalli writes persuasively, presenting the sequence of events, analyzing the argumentation and roles of the people involved, and making the depth and implications of the underlying issues clearly evident. Advanced students and other scholars of Asian and imperial history, of inter-racial relations, and of comparative legal history will all find this book well worth reading.
