Appropriation and Invention of Tradition: The East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal

The beginning of Anglo-Hindu jurisprudence was occasioned by decisive developments in the cultural, intellectual, and legal history of India. This book deals with the appropriation of the Dharmasastras - a powerful written tradition - and its codification, in the construction of Hindu law. It
explores the significant connections between this process of formalization and the consolidation of the empire in Bengal.
Bhattacharyya-Panda analyses the shifting administrative and political needs of the colonial regime as well as the perceptions and attitudes of the officials in this process of codification. Through a careful study of the compilations, Vivadarmavasetu and Vivadabhabgarnava alongside their late
eighteenth-century colonial translations, she brings out the ways in which ancient textual traditions - the prescriptive, normative, and moralistic rules of the Dharmasastras - were metamorphosed into legal rules to be directly administered in courts.
Investigating the intricate and dynamic links between power and knowledge in the evolution of institutions under colonial rule, this book underlines innovative ways of looking at the legal history of colonial India.