Paper short abstract:

British legal practice in colonial India was underwritten by a paranoid sensibility, rooted in the gap between the abstract language of the law and the commitments of everyday India life. This paper explores that sensibility through arguments in the Allahabad High Court in the 1880s.

Paper long abstract:

The creation of new legal institutions in colonial India was driven by the British search for coherent ways of making decisions at the expense of their relationship with the everyday lives of Indians. The abstract language of colonial law was produced through the effort by the British to govern India from a distance, and avoid being pulled into relationships and commitments which would have annihilated their sense of self and separateness. But abstraction didn't give the British certainty about the basis upon which they were deciding. The result was that law was administered in a paranoid sensibility, which made it impossible for British judges to trust Indians who had unknown and, from their perspective, partial biases and commitments. This paper shows that sensibility at work within a series of arguments between British and Indian lawyers and judges in the Allahabad High Court during the 1880s. Because of their abstract language, legal institutions seemed to offer a space where Indian legal officers could operate on an equal footing with their British colleagues. But, the suspicious, paranoid sensibility of colonial law meant the involvement of Indians was perceived as a challenge to British authority. The paper concludes by suggesting that an approach which pays attention to the sensibility as well as language of colonial practice allows us to see that Indianisation of the legal profession was a far more radical moment of decolonisation than historians have hitherto imagined.