British officials reframed India’s legal pluralism as chaos requiring codification

Evidence

The British magistrates found it difficult to make sense of the staggering variety of opinion and the pliability of Islamic and Hindu “law,” a situation they often described as a chaotic, uncontrollable, and corrupted mass of individual juristic opinion. To deal with this “chaos”—a mess exhibiting “disorder” and “primitive existence”—the classicist and foremost Orientalist Sir William Jones (1746–94) was marshaled from Oxford. There seems to have been no question in Jones’s mind as to what he should do to solve the “Indian problem.” He decisively proposed to Hastings the creation of codes or what he termed a “complete digest of Hindu and Mussulman law,” what amounted in the long run to nothing short of a structural revolution in India’s laws and society. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 260 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Perceived legal chaos justified British codification of Indian law. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 260; British administrators imposed Manusmriti as India’s legal code.; Orientalist translations of Hindu law justified British colonial property restructuring — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 795 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Perceived legal chaos justified British codification of Indian law. #corroborates (0.97) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 260