Colonial publics used liberal rule-of-law arguments to resist executive overreach.

Evidence

In newspapers and pamphlets published in India and Britain, Indian journalists and Anglo-Indian lawyers argued that arbitrary police powers posed a greater threat to public security than religious fanatics. In doing so, they embraced a language of liberalism which emphasized the rule of law and asserted the role of public opinion as a check on government despotism. Debates about the Great Wahhabi Case demonstrate the ongoing contest between authoritarian and liberal strands of imperial ideology, even at the height of the panic over the intertwined threat of Indian sedition and fanatical Islam. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 10

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how ‘liberal’ legal argument becomes the sharpest tool of anticolonial critique, and why empires tolerate that language until they don’t.
• XREF: Connects to post-9/11 debates over emergency powers, preventive detention, and ‘fanatic’ as a legal category.