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Law and identity in colonial South Asia : Parsi legal culture, 1772-1947 / Mitra Sharafi

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: India Permanent Black 2014Description: 343 pISBN:
  • 9788178244976
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 342.540 SHA-M
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Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Books Books BITS Pilani Hyderabad 340 General Stack (For lending) 342.540 SHA-M (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 36655
Total holds: 0

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 seem to have done so earlier or in more pronounced ways than the Parsis.

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