Legal Reform and Minority (in) Law 1874-1947

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the local application of “laws of exclusion” in the patchy imperial frontiers and the consolidation of an overarching jurisprudence of “minority” subjects of laws. The paper begins with a discussion of what I describe as “laws of exclusion” in the colonial provinces of Bengal and Assam, that evolved into colony wide legislation of the Scheduled Districts Act of 1874.  The Laws of Local Extent Act, named the Scheduled Districts Act of 1874 (SDA), was a colony wide exclusionary framework that included parts of Bengal, central and north India, and the northeastern frontier such as the Assam Chief Commissioner’s province. The recognition of different typologies of legal subjecthood based on religion, race, geography, and so on was integral to colonial jurisprudence. Plurality and hybridity of jurisprudence did not simply entail the coexistence and co-constitution of colonial and indigenous laws. A more complex and violent historical process resulted in the production of notions of minority laws and minority governance. For instance, the legal category tribe was produced during the 19th century by identifying differences from revenue yielding caste communities. Whereas the autonomy of tribal communities from dominant state structures was noted by colonial authorities, they were simultaneously attributed civilizational, political, and social backwardness. Tribal and indigenous/Adivasi rights in India are understood as minority rights, although the categories are socially, politically, and historically diverse and heterogenous. This paper describes the context in which such differentiated subjects of law were identified such as through the SDA, Inner Line Regulation of 1874, Frontier Regulations Act 1880. Analogous to the Inner Line Regulation of 1874 in the northeast frontier, laws of exclusion were further consolidated in northwest frontier with the Frontier Crimes Regulation 1872 (FCR). This law divided juridical subjects along the boundaries of the Afghan kingdom as wild versus civilized. The FCR and traced its travels across other colonial contexts such as frontiers of Kenya, the Ottoman Empire, and mandate Palestine. Such exclusions were further solidified through an evolving relationship between imperial spatiality and layered practices of jurisdiction in legislative reforms of the 20^th century. There were large differences in the local application of the laws such as SDA and persistent debates about the nature and extent of exclusions in the northeast frontier. These debates reflect the stakes of local communities, and elite and commercial agents in excluded tracts. The paper will demonstrate how successive laws of exclusion, and debates on extent and nature of legislative and jurisdictional exceptions in the northeastern frontier formulated the notions of minority (in) law.