Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the judicial career of the first Indian and first Muslim judge to sit on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the final court of the British empire. It explores Justice Amir Ali's social vision, especially his placing of Islam in modern society, and does so by connecting his better known philosophical, historical and legal writings with his reasoning in legal judgments.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will look at the judicial career of Sayyid Amir Ali (1849-1928), the first Indian to hold the post of judge on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. To South Asianists, Amir Ali is well-known for the key role he played, as a founder member of the Muslim League. He has also been studied for his highly publicized engagements in the debates over the nature of Islam and the nature of ideal modern Muslim society. In all this, Amir Ali appears to be a committed sectarian and has been derided for his 'failed Islamic modernism'.

However, for the greatest part of his public life, Amir Ali worked not as a politician but as a judge in the highest of colonial courts (High Court of Calcutta before the JCPC), and dealt with dozens of routine cases involving women and men litigants, interpreting common law as it applied to India, but also Islamic and Hindu law as admitted within the British imperial and colonial legal systems. A survey of his decisions, shows him to be equally, if not more active in interpreting Hindu law as Islamic law, and fully awake to the realities of social life in India's complex religious context.

This paper looks at the many decisions on Muslim and Hindu law, which Amir Ali dispensed or contributed to, examining them for the social vision that they implicitly expressed and the argument of cultural expertise which he used to claim authority.