Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

Parsi Legal Culture, 1772–1947

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8105960
AutoresMitra Sharafi (0000-0002-4524-125X, autor de correspondencia)
Año2014
Fecha de publicación2014-04-21
Open AccessSí
TipoBOOK
RevistaLaw and Identity in Colonial South Asia (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/cbo9781107256545
OpenAlexW2969463362
Open LibraryOL28513636M
ISBN9781107256545
GOOGLE_BOOK_IDQDM4AwAAQBAJ
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas73

This book explores the legal culture of the Parsis, or Zoroastrians, an ethnoreligious community unusually invested in the colonial legal system of British India and Burma. Rather than trying to maintain collective autonomy and integrity by avoiding interaction with the state, the Parsis sank deep into the colonial legal system itself. From the late eighteenth century until India's independence in 1947, they became heavy users of colonial law, acting as lawyers, judges, litigants, lobbyists, and legislators. They de-Anglicized the law that governed them and enshrined in law their own distinctive models of the family and community by two routes: frequent intra-group litigation often managed by Parsi legal professionals in the areas of marriage, inheritance, religious trusts, and libel, and the creation of legislation that would become Parsi personal law. Other South Asian communities also turned to law, but none seems to have done so earlier or in more pronounced ways than the Parsis

Aesthetics · Autonomy · Colonial rule · Colonialism · Identity (music · Independence (probability theory · Inheritance (genetic algorithm · Legal culture · Legal history · Political science · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · asia · History · India & South Asia · Law · Legal status, laws · Parsees · Philosophy