HARDLY HINDU:

Dharma, the Dharmaśāstras, and

the Shortfall of Anglo-Hindu Law

Rohan Pavuluri
CB 60 Final Paper
December 10, 2014
 Speaking before the British House of Commons as London’s chief for Indian affairs on
July 10, 1833, Thomas Macaulay described the pre-colonial state of the subcontinent: “Society
was a chaos. Its restless and shifting elements formed themselves every moment into some new
combination, which the next moment dissolved.”1 Representing the dominant view of the British
Empire, Macaulay continued by comparing “society throughout that vast country” to “the state of
Europe during the fifth century.”2 Ever since the onset of Warren Hastings’ term as Governor-
General of Bengal in 1772, the British made several attempts to tame this “chaos” that Macaulay
professed. Often paternal in nature, British measures varied from introducing the English
language to discounting the value of Indian literature. Nowhere were British efforts to moderate
India’s “restless and shifting elements” more apparent than their introduction of Anglo-Hindu
Law.
When the British East India Company first arrived in India, its employees discovered a
system of justice intertwined with Hinduism. Indeed, to separate Hinduism from India’s system
of justice would indicate a lack of understanding, as Indian law stemmed from the Hindu concept
of dharma or cosmic duty. Neither based on civil law, where citizens abide by a system of strict
statutes, nor common law, where judges interpret the law according judicial precedent, India’s
pre-colonial justice system deserved a vocabulary of its own. Adjudicators, who were chosen by
individual communities with different methods, made decisions by weighing several elements
rather than adhering to legal code or precedent. The Dharmaśāstras, a collection of ancient
Sanskrit texts concerning dharma, served as a primary factor informing adjudicators’ decisions.
Not to be mistaken with a legal code, the Dharmaśāstras were religious texts and, for this reason,
we can only reluctantly call the system of justice before British colonization a system of law,
especially if we think of law in its civil or common western context. Along with the
Dharmaśāstras, adjudicators considered the circumstances of a case before making their
decisions. Two separate cases with the exact same facts could have entirely different outcomes
given different circumstances, such as the location, caste, or socioeconomic class of the feuding
parties. Adding to the variability of the law, different interpretations of the Dharmaśāstras,
which changed over time, held varying levels of influence in different communities.
Faced with such a unique system of justice, the British colonizers believed that India

                                                                                                               
1
Macaulay, Government of India. A Speech Delivered in the House of Commons.
2
Ibid.

  1
needed a more consistent legal framework for any hope of stability. One legal opinion, authored
by Justice Lewis Charles Innes of the Madras High Court, effectively captured the British
frustration. Justice Innes wrote that if the pre-colonial system of law “were followed, nearly
thirty millions of people in this Presidency alone would be left without any ascertained law of
succession and the difficulties of arriving at a decision in each case would be complicated by a
richer growth of perjury and forgery than has ever been seen.” 3 In British minds, a single body
of written law, which every Indian followed regardless of the circumstances of a case or the
interpretations of an adjudicator, was the only way to ensure legal consistency and, therefore,
stability.
Replacing the entire legal framework that existed before them with their own legal
system, however, did not appeal to the British. Warren Hastings believed that uprooting the pre-
colonial judicial system entirely was “wantonly tyrannical.”4 Similarly, Thomas Macaulay
sought to “ascertain” and “digest” the pre-existing system and declared, “Respect must be paid to
feelings generated by differences of religion, of nation, and of caste.”5 According to Hastings
and Macaulay, avoiding “tyranny” and “respecting” India’s differences was consistent with
British efforts to introduce consistency to India’s legal system. In Macaulay’s words, “our
principle is simply this; uniformity where you can have it: diversity where you must have it; but
in all cases certainty.”6 Attempting to maintain “diversity,” while implementing the consistency,
uniformity, and certainty that they believed India badly needed, the British saw Anglo-Hindu
Law as the best solution to India’s “chaos.”
While Anglo-Hindu Law adequately addressed the British desire to standardize the
Indian legal system, it failed to maintain the defining features of the judicial framework it
succeeded. The pre-colonial system of justice, which scholars generally refer to as Classical
Hindu Law, had its roots in dharma. It remained fluid and flexible like Hinduism itself. In
contrast, Anglo-Hindu Law as introduced by Warren Hastings in 1772 was rigid and top-down.
Based on the landmark 1776 text spearheaded by Hastings, A Code of Gentoo Laws, or,
Ordinations of the Pundits, Anglo-Hindu Law relied on a single text and the partnerships
between British-selected Hindu pandits and British judges before altogether eliminating the
                                                                                                               
3
Thomson, A Manual of Hindu Law on the Basis of Sir Thomas Strange, ix.
4
Lariviere, “Justices and Paṇḍitas: Some Ironies in Contemporary Readings of the Hindu Legal Past”, 759.
5
Macaulay, Government of India. A Speech Delivered in the House of Commons.
6
Ibid.

  2
pandits. Though they made an honest attempt to understand India’s pre-existing legal
framework, the British colonizers failed to incorporate the defining features of Classical Hindu
Law, dharma, concern for circumstance, and variability, into Anglo Hindu Law. Anglo-Hindu
Law, therefore, can hardly be called Hindu.

*****

Though contemporary academics refer to the justice system before colonial rule as Hindu
Classical Law, Sanskrit contains no term corresponding to the western word “law,” as is
understood when referring to “English law,” or a body of rules intended to govern a group of
people in a certain location or time period.7 Following from this difference in language, the
Hindu conception of law did not find its basis in legal rule. Instead, Hindus derived their idea of
law from duty, which French scholar and legal historian Robert Lingat characterized as, “a more
general notion, which exceeds the domain of law in many respects without actually
comprehending it entirely.”8 The Dharmaśāstras, which include writings on this duty or dharma,
did not seek to delineate the rules by which people should conduct themselves in the physical
world. In a uniquely Hindu way, the Dharmaśāstras contained guidelines of conduct for people
on account of their place in society. Only from within these guidelines was the rule of law to be
established and interpreted. Informing rather than prescribing an adjudicator’s decision, the
Dharmaśāstras served as the basis from which the pre-colonial justice system developed not the
basis of the pre-colonial justice system itself.
Widely considered the most important and the oldest text of the Dharmaśāstras, the
Manusmṛti or the Laws of Manu holds that “dharma is the beginning, the middle and the end of
the cosmic and the mundane drama.”9 In contrast to the Buddha who emphasized dharma as it
related to the individual, Manu or the progenitor of humanity, underscored the relevance of
dharma in relationships between different groups in the same community, a government and its
people, and one region and another.10 The Manusmṛti addressed the collective and, thereby, laid
the foundation for Classical Hindu Law. Confirming the text as more than a legal treatise, Annie
Besant, the second President of the Theosophical Society, went so far as to say that the

                                                                                                               
7
Lingat, The Classical Law of India, xii.
8
Ibid.
9
Motwani, “Manu Dharma Sastra: A Sociological and Historical Study,” 6.
10
Ibid., xii.

  3
Manusmṛti was “by far the best and most pragmatic for the success of life” and “so dynamic and
flexible that it can always give proper guidance” to future generations despite changing social
structures.11 Though the Manusmṛti and the entire Dharmaśāstras gave rise to Hindu Classical
Law, the texts also discussed countless moral and social obligations.
Despite the role of the Dharmaśāstras in Classical Hindu Law, the circumstances of a
case played an equal if not more important part in determining the merits of a party’s claim. In
the Manusmṛti, Manu recommends that if one “walk[s] in the way of virtuous people which his
father and ancestors have trodden…he will do no wrong.”12 Family customs, according to the
text, serve as an adequate guide to conduct. Another verse of the Manusmṛti compares the
authority of custom to that of dharmic texts: “Custom is supreme Law, as is that which is said in
Śruti and Smriti. The twice-born concerned for the good of his soul must always be attentive to
it.”13 Equating “custom” to the “Śruti and Smriti,” which are both written sources of dharma,
Manu holds that following the customs of society is just as important as following the rules of
dharma. Applying this philosophy to Classical Hindu Law, adjudicators weighed the
circumstances of a case alongside their interpretations of relevant dharmic obligations. The
Nāradasmṛti, a text of the Dharmaśāstras attributed to the vedic sage Narada, takes the weight
of a case’s circumstances even further when he contends, “Custom is powerful and overrides the
sacred law.”14 Taking Narada at face value, some community adjudicators may have even
considered the Dharmaśāstras extraneous in certain cases.
The emphasis the Dharmaśāstras place on circumstance stemmed in large part from the
authors’ desire to maintain stable society. Instructing a king to “inquire into the law of castes, of
districts, of guilds, and of families” before settling on the law of his region, the Manusmṛti insists
that by adhering to the customs of his people, a leader could avoid social unrest. More direct in
its explanation for the importance of following custom, the Bṛhaspatismṛti, another text of the
Dharmaśāstras attributed to the sage Bṛhaspati, holds that “customs of countries, castes, families
and other groups must be maintained intact; otherwise the public would revolt.”15 Ultimately, no
conclusive clause in the Dharmaśāstras establishes the primacy of circumstance over dharma or
vice-versa.
                                                                                                               
11
Swain, Dharmasastra: A Link Between Tradition and Modernity, 108.
12
Lingat, The Classical Law of India, 197.
13
Ibid., 198.
14
Kishwar, “Codified Hindu Law: Myth and Reality,” 2147.
15
Lingat, The Classical Law of India, 200.

  4
 Another Hindu text, however, does answer this very question—the Bhagavad Gita.
Considered by many Hindus to be the most holy of texts, the dialogue between Arjuna, a
Pandava brother slated to fight his Kaurava cousins, and Krishna, who doubles as Arjuna’s
adviser and charioteer, addresses the tension between dharma and circumstance. While Arjuna,
influenced by his circumstance as an enemy to his kin, initially declares, “honor forbids us to kill
our cousins,” Krishna eventually convinces Arjuna that engaging in battle is his dharmic duty.16
It would be a mistake, though, to consider Krishna’s judgment as Hinduism’s final word. In a
quintessentially Hindu message, the Bhagavad Gita places just as much emphasis on the process
by which Arjuna makes his decision as the decision itself. Arjuna’s contrary arguments are not,
as scholar Amartya Sen highlights in the Argumentative Indian, “vanquished,” regardless of the
meaning behind the Bhagavad Gita.17 Similar to how Arjuna weighed circumstances and dharma,
pre-colonial adjudicators weighed, in a fluid and flexible process, custom and their
understanding of dharma from the Dharmaśāstras. Any alternative understanding of Hindu
Classical Law would be antithetical to both the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita and the essence
of Hinduism.
Underlying this conclusion, we must recognize a false dichotomy exists between
circumstance and dharma. While the exact authorship and age of the Dharmaśāstras remain
unknown, the texts, which were composed in both verse and prose starting from before the
Common Era, have undergone several transformations on account of their compilers.18 In the
most conservative speculations, these compilers annexed and excised texts with their own
personal discretion, which was influenced by the time and society in which they lived. In the
most extreme speculations, compilers inserted their own commentary based on the customs of
the day. Nevertheless, in both cases, the Dharmaśāstras were most definitely influenced by
custom. Therefore, the collection’s writings on dharma were based, at least in some substantive
measure, on circumstance.
Nowhere is the confluence of custom and dharma more evident than in the variability
throughout the Dharmaśāstras. For example, one section of the Manusmṛti permits a Brahmin to
have a Shudra woman as his wife, while another section vehemently prohibits a Brahmin man

                                                                                                               
16
Miller, The Bhagavad-Gita, 28.
17
Sen, The Argumentative Indian, 5.
18
Kane, History of Dharmasastra, 304.

  5
from marrying a Shudra woman and assigns heavy fines to those who violate this rule.19
Similarly, eating flesh is both condoned and condemned in separate parts of the Manusmṛti.20
Even verses directly following each other in the Dharmaśāstras sometimes appear contradictory
when read in the strictest sense. Speaking in the Nāradasmṛti, Narada declares, “An object given
as a pledge, boundaries, the property of a child, a deposit, a loan, women, the property of the
king…does not cease to belong to their owners by being in the possession of another.”21 In the
very next sentence, though, Narada states that the possessions “are lost to their owner when they
have been openly in possession of another during twice ten years.”22 Changes in the general
attitude of the people on issues such as inter-caste marriage, flesh eating, and property rights
likely led to these contradictions within the Dharmaśāstras. This reveals that adjudicators were
not the only varying factor in Hindu Classical Law; the texts the adjudicators relied upon were
constantly changing.
Despite this fluidity, we must refrain from calling the Dharmaśāstras legally inconsistent.
The Dharmaśāstras were neither intended to be a body of law nor were they intended to be static.
Referring to the Hindu concept of yugas or four distinct epochs of the universe, Manu highlights
the development of dharma when he says, “Distinct are the dharmas of the krta Age, distinct in
the treta and the dvapara Age, distinct in the kali Age, because of the worsening of those
Ages.”23 As the Manusmṛti indicates, the texts of the Dharmaśāstras themselves laid the
foundation for their changeability by recognizing that dharma was in constant flux. Depending
on circumstance, behavior such as niyoga or the practice by which a childless widow could
request help in bearing offspring, was either acceptable or forbidden.24 Indeed, Classical Hindu
Law embraced a characteristically consistent quality. The rule of law consistently took into
account the circumstances of each case. And, for this reason, it would be imprudent to
characterize the legal outcomes that followed as inconsistent. While the adjudicators of Classical
Hindu Law made highly variable decisions, the philosophical approach they employed remained
wholly invariable.

*****
                                                                                                               
19
Kane, History of Dharmasastra, 331.
20
Ibid., 331.
21
Lingat, The Classical Law of India, 160.
22
Ibid., 160.
23
Ibid., 184.
24
Kane, History of Dharmasastra, 331.

  6
 When the British arrived in India, they quickly realized the difficulty of ruling over such
an expansive landmass when different communities had different interpretations of dharma, and
legal cases with the same facts could result in disparate rulings. The adjudicators of Hindu
Classical Law had the ability and necessary resources to understand the needs of their
communities and, from that understanding, extrapolate from the Dharmaśāstras. For the British,
though, legislating and enforcing different laws based on specific communities was entirely
impractical. The colonizers had neither the bureaucratic infrastructure nor the cultural, religious,
or social comprehension required for such an endeavor. Reasonably, the British sought to
address their inherent deficiencies with their own revisions to India’s legal system.
The British also embraced a paternalistic argument for revising the pre-colonial legal
system. In the words of William Jones, an English philologist who undertook the first translation
of the Manusmṛti into English in 1794, “It would not be unworthy of a British Government to
give the Natives ... a permanent security for the due administration of justice among them,
similar to that which Justinian gave to his Greek and Roman subjects.”25 According to Jones and
many of his countrymen, Indians required a different legal system for “due administration of
justice.” Hindu Classical Law, in their minds, was inequitable and unable to keep Indians
“secure.”
Given the impracticality and supposed inadequacy of Hindu Classical Law, which held
virtually no resemblance to their own legal system, the British colonizers attempted to introduce
Western elements of civil and common law to India while maintaining the essential qualities of
pre-colonial law. This process began when Warren Hastings, who served as the first Governor-
General of India, hired eleven pandits, skilled in the Sanskrit language, to create a digest of
Hindu law and translate it to Persian before English philologist Nathaniel Halhed translated the
text to English.26 The first attempt to codify Hindu law, the text that resulted, A Code of Gentoo
Laws, or, Ordinations of the Pundits, served as the basis for the British-implemented legal
system in India after 1772. Contemporary scholars call this legal system, which lasted until
Indian independence in 1947, Anglo-Hindu Law.
Along with codifying and consolidating the Dharmaśāstras and applying them as legal
doctrine, Hastings set up a system of British-run courts throughout India. After hearing cases,

                                                                                                               
25
Sharma, “Civil Law in India,” 7.
26
Kishwar, “Codified Hindu Law: Myth and Reality,” 2145.

  7
English judges consulted pandits, who provided their own opinions on Hindu texts.
Unfortunately for the British, employing pandits often had an outcome directly opposite the
desired effect. Instead of “standardizing” Hindu law, the pandits, who were appointed without
examination on the nebulous basis of prestige, made the legal decision-making process more
arbitrary by incorporating their own prejudices into the opinions they provided.27 Given the utter
lack of oversight that pandits enjoyed, as British judges had no alternative channel to
understanding Hindu texts, the pandits used the Dharmaśāstras to provide legitimacy to their
prejudices. For example, when Hindus refused to take oaths over Ganges water before giving
testimony in court, a Brahmin pandit compiled a treatise arguing that Hindu law forbade such a
practice.28 Beyond making decisions based on caste, pandits faced accusations of bribery.29 After
all, a pandit held substantial power when a litigant realized that all he needed to win his case was
a pandit’s approval.
Eventually, the British understood the futility in trusting pandits. Writing in March of
1788 to Charles Cornwallis, who succeeded Warren Hastings as Governor-General of India,
William Jones acknowledged, “It would be absurd and unjust to pass an indiscriminate censure
on so considerable a body of men. But my experience,” Jones continued despite his reluctance to
generalize, “justifies me in declaring, that I could not with an easy conscience, concur in a
decision, merely on the written opinion of native lawyers, in any cause in which they could have
the remotest interest in misleading the Court.” 30 Speaking for the British frustrations, Jones, who
also doubted the authenticity of the Persian translation initially given to Halhed for his Code of
Gentoo Laws, further condemned reliance on pandits, writing, “I can no longer bear to be at the
mercy of our pandits, who deal out Hindu law as they please, and make it at reasonable rates,
when they cannot find it ready made.”31 Destined to fail from the beginning, pandits lost their
place in British courts once judges developed an adequate amount of case law on which to rely.
Though their respect for Hindu pandits eventually waned, the British did appear to
respect the Hindu faith at the onset of colonial rule. At the time Warren Hastings tried to codify
Hindu law and introduce a system of courts, the British seemed to have acted in good faith in
their attempt to preserve the fundamentals of Hindu Classical Law. Revealing his respect for
                                                                                                               
27
Derret, Religion, Law and the State in India, 245.
28
Ibid., 245.
29
Ibid., 232.
30
Lariviere, “Justices and Paṇḍitas: Some Ironies in Contemporary Readings of the Hindu Legal Past,” 761.
31
Kishwar, “Codified Hindu Law: Myth and Reality,” 2146.

  8
Hinduism, Nathaniel Halhed wrote, “We are not justified in grounding the Standard and
Criterion of our Examination of the Hindoo Religion upon the known and infallible Truth of our
own,” in his preface to A Code of Gentoo Laws.32 "The Faith of a Gentoo (misguided as it is, and
groundless as it may be),” Halhed continued, “is equally implicit with that of a Christian.”33
William Jones moved from respect to affection for Hinduism. Responding to criticism of the
Manusmṛti, William Jones declared, “I am no Hindu; but I hold the doctrine of the Hindus
concurring a future state to be incomparably more rational, more pious and more likely to
determine from vice, that the horrid opinion inculcated by the Christians on punishment without
end.”34 Regardless of how British administrators viewed Hinduism, they seemed to refrain from
undermining the religion’s practice in India in the earlier stages of colonial rule.
As the 19th century progressed, though, British views on Hinduism shifted from
respectful to disparaging. Conveying popular sentiments in his famous work The History of
British India, historian and philosopher James Mill called William Jones’ thinking on India
“crude.”35 Mill continued, “in regard to the Hindus, their laws and institutions…could neither
begin, nor exist, under any other than one of the rudest and weakest states of the human mind.”36
In the same time frame as this shift, Utilitarians in England, who included Mill and philosopher
Jeremy Bentham, began to gain popularity. Applying the theory of maximum utility to India
justified the implementation of written law over British attempts to preserve Hinduism.
Consequently, the rise of Utilitarianism in English only compounded the emerging feelings that
the British need not respect the previous system of law. As the pandits began to be phased out
around the middle of the 19th century, so did British attempts to preserve Hinduism. But even
Thomas Macaulay, who called Hinduism a “false religion” in his famous “Minute on
Education,” believed as late as 1835 that it was “the duty of the British Government in India to
be not only tolerant but neutral on all religious questions.”37 Those colonizers who devalued
Hinduism mainly kept their feelings to themselves, at least in the first fifty years after Hastings’
revisions to Hindu Classical Law.

*****
                                                                                                               
32
Halhed, A Code of Gentoo Laws or, Ordinaions of the Pundits, xii.
33
Ibid., xv.
34
Swain, Dharmasastra: A Link Between Tradition and Modernity, 107.
35
Mill, The History of British, 156.
36
Ibid., 163.  
37
Macaulay, Minute on Education.

  9
 Despite their best attempts to preserve the tenets of Hindu Classical Law while
maintaining “neutrality” on Hinduism, the British established a system of law that was hardly
Hindu; the British misunderstood the defining features of the pre-colonial legal system and, by
extension, Hinduism in their pursuit of a “standardized” law. The first and most serious mistake
the British made occurred even before any British court heard a single case in the subcontinent.
In hiring eleven pandits to compile and translate the Dharmaśāstras to make the first Hindu legal
treatise, the colonizers mistook the Dharmaśāstras for the Hindu rule of law in the western sense
of the word. If they had fully comprehended the philosophy behind the text they were translating,
the British would have realized that the Dharmaśāstras were never intended to be a legal text by
which Hindus conducted their daily activities. Pertaining to dharma, which included legal duty
but was by no means limited to it, the Dharmaśāstras were meant, instead, to serve as the
foundation from which a legal system could arise. By compiling and translating the
Dharmaśāstras into A Code of Gentoo Laws, Warren Hastings spearheaded the process by which
the Dharmaśāstras became the legal system. In trying to codify Hindu law, Hastings lost it.
Along with treating the Dharmaśāstras as the code of law, leaving the job of compiling
and translating the Dharmaśāstras to eleven pandits remained antithetical to Classical Hindu
Law. Unlike in the pre-colonial legal system, where adjudicators chose which texts within the
Dharmaśāstras were relevant to making an informed decision on the case at hand, the translation
limited the texts upon which a judge could rely to a pre-arranged treatise. As a result, British
judges and the litigants who appeared before them were subject to the interpretations of a small
body of pandits. In Classical Hindu Law, individual adjudicators could rely on any Hindu holy
text he chose to inform him on dharma. To the contrary, the colonial system of law restricted the
texts on which a judge could rely. Similarly, whereas pre-colonial adjudicators could fully form
their interpretations of the texts by themselves, British judges were naturally subject to both the
interpretations of the eleven pandits who translated the text to Persian and that of the English
translator. In their endeavor to bring, as Thomas Macaulay put it, “uniformity” and “certainty” to
Indian law, the British centralized a process that was decentralized as a defining characteristic.
Adding insult to their initial misunderstanding of Hindu Classical Law, the colonizers
replaced community-selected adjudicators with British-appointed pandits and judges. Without
legal decision makers who fully understood the customs of a community, the circumstances of a
conflict could not thoroughly be weighed with the writings of the Dharmaśāstras, as the text

  10
instructs. Though pandits could incorporate a community’s customs in the opinions they
furnished the British judges, their slipshod selection and personal prejudices made such
consideration by pandits at best inferior to the previous adjudicators and at worst nonexistent.
When the colonizers eliminated pandits altogether, replacing them with case law, the British
ensured that a case’s circumstances would be subordinate to the written body of law, directly
contradicting Manu’s belief that “custom is supreme Law.”
By making a legal treatise with texts that were never supposed to be thought of as the rule
of law, relying on a restricted translation, and upholding the supremacy of written rule over
custom, the British neglected to uphold the central characteristics of Hinduism in the colonial
legal system. Though, as Macaulay affirmed, the British hoped to “ascertain” and “digest” the
pre-colonial system of law, they failed to understand dharma and its fluidity. Despite their
deferential rhetoric, the British misunderstood Hinduism. They did not standardize Hindu
Classical Law. They removed it. While modern scholarship refers to the period between Warren
Hasting’s Judicial Plan of 1772 and Indian independence in 1947 as the period of Anglo-Hindu
Law, we must excise “Hindu” from this term. In the most generous review, the colonial system
of law attempted to accommodate Hinduism. In a more moderate and, as a close examination
reveals, reasonable review, the colonial system of law abandoned Hinduism.

*****

The deep irony of the colonial system of law was that the British desired to maintain
stability by standardizing Hindu Classical Law when, in reality, attempting to standardize Hindu
Classical Law engendered instability. In their failure to maintain the supremacy of custom, the
British angered Hindus. From the Rebellion of 1857 onwards, this anger served as a main driving
forces behind Indian calls for independence. In the Dharmaśāstras, the sage Brhaspati forecasts
Indian discontent: “Customs of countries, castes, families and other groups must be maintained
intact; otherwise the public would revolt, the subjects would take an aversion to their king."38
The irony did not end with the fact that British attempts at stability induced instability. As we see
in Brhaspati’s directive, the texts that the British tried to standardize themselves held that
standardization would lead to instability.
Perhaps the legal system Warren Hastings introduced to India was antithetical to
                                                                                                               
38
Lingat, The Classical Law of India, 200.

  11
Hinduism because Hinduism was antithetical to the British conception of law. It is difficult to
imagine how the British could have substantively incorporated Hinduism into their system of law
given the British longing for standardization and dharma’s inherent variability. A particularly
prescient Englishman in India may have realized the tall—and potentially impossible—order
from the moment he set foot on the subcontinent; the natives of the land did not even have a
Sanskrit word for law, as the British understood it. It may be an overzealous historical claim to
say that British efforts to include Hinduism in their system of law were inevitably doomed.
Nevertheless, it appears unreasonable to reconcile Hinduism with the Western notions of
standardization and law.
Ultimately, the difficulty the British faced in incorporating Hinduism into their secular
system of justice epitomizes the central problem virtually every ruler or government in the
subcontinent has faced: How do you govern such a large landmass with unparalleled diversity?
As the British figured out for themselves, variability in India did not end with Hinduism and the
Dharmaśāstras; India’s multifarious religions, castes, classes, cultures, languages, and regions
made the subcontinent even more difficult to govern under one legal system. The “restless and
shifting elements” that Thomas Macaulay interpreted as “chaos” and used as evidence for the
necessity of the colonial justice system were not random. They were merely a result of India’s
intrinsic nature. They were the defining characteristics of a people that had virtually nothing else
in common. India was, and still is, uniform in its lack of uniformity. Thus, the shortfall of the
colonial legal system—its failure to materially preserve Hinduism—can be considered just as
much a product of the subcontinent as it was a product of British action.

  12
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