Rochisha Narayan speaks on Family and Politics in Colonial North India

In late 18th century Banaras, newly established colonial courts were a critical site in which processes of state and family formation came to be intertwined.  Rochisha Narayan develops this inquiry during her talk, titled, “Litigious Widows, Blood Brotherhoods and Sectarian Orders: Constituting Hindu Law and Community in Eighteenth Century Banaras”, in the South Asian Studies Colloquium on February 8, 2012. 

4.30pm • February 8 • Room 203, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue

In 1772, East India Company officials led by the Governor- General Warren Hastings implemented a Judicial Plan according to which the colonial state would purportedly refrain from interfering in all cases regarding marriage, inheritance, caste status and religious prescription. Categorized under ‘personal law’ these issues would be judged according to the
shastras for Hindus and the shariat for Muslims. Three decisions underlay this plan:  first, to administer Indians using their own laws rather than British Common law; second, to find the sources of these laws in antiquated books to the marginalization of local custom; and third to appoint in newly created colonial courts, learned men such as pandits and muftis who wielded the authority and capability to dispense justice based on the antiquated texts. Under the overarching frame of personal law, two seemingly distinct branches of law came to be identified, Anglo-Hindu law and Anglo-Muslim law. While Muslims were subject to Anglo-Muslim law, Anglo-Hindu law was applied to a diverse range of people including Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains.

In this paper, Rochisha uses eighteenth-century court records over inheritance disputes to demonstrate the ways in which the practice of Anglo-Hindu law in newly established colonial courts was fraught with tensions as court officials struggled to identify a community that could be subject to Anglo-Hindu law. British officials and indigenous competing disputants, who sought the colonial courts, actively participated in creating a homogenous Hindu community during the eighteenth century. Rochisha elaborates upon a familial dispute involving a khatri widow, her affinal male kin and a Nanakpanthi sect in Banaras to show that the channeling of widows’ wealth and charitable practices away from heterodox religious sects towards patrilineal inheritance was central to this process. Furthermore, she illustrates that disputes over, and the shoring up of, patrilineal inheritance called into question the intersecting familial practices through which ascetic and lay members of religious orders recruited disciples and sons into sect and lay homes. The patrilineal Hindu family and community were therefore historically produced through categories that separated ‘Sikh’ from ‘Hindu’, ‘ascetic’ from ‘lay’ and ‘sect’ from ‘family’.  The consequence, Rochisha argues, is that judicial arguments relating to family, community and caste helped to constituted, and were in turn constituted by, strategies to consolidate and extend imperial power. 

Rochisha’s work on late 18th century court cases builds on, and extends her dissertation research on the intersections of family and state formation in colonial north India from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. This research draws upon sources including eighteenth-century genealogical narratives, colonial administrative and judicial records and normative vernacular literature.  By historicizing the concept of the family, she examines how disputes among sisters and brothers, and widows, over claims and entitlements to land, as well as norms of dowry relating to marriage, were significant in the formation of colonial agrarian orders. 

During her time at the Council, Rochisha will be teaching two courses: Women in Modern India and Family and Caste and Religion in Early Modern South Asia, c 1500-1800. Drawing on her research, these courses allow students to bring critical historical perspective to considering concepts of gender, family, caste and religious community.