Includes bibliographical references (pages 315-339) and index.
Contents:
Life, law, and legal history -- Rethinking law, religion, and the state -- Becoming qazi in British Bombay: imperial expansion, legal administration, and everyday negotiation -- Creating a qazi class: navigating expectations between company and community -- From petitions to elections: Islamic legal practitioners and the exigencies of colonial rule -- Crown rule in the context of noninterference -- Personal law in the public sphere: fatwas, print publics, and the making of everyday Islamic legal discourse -- From files to fatwas: procedural uniformity and substantive flexibility in alternative legal spaces -- Accounting for qazis: negotiating life and law in small-town North India -- Analyzing sharia, state, and society -- Of judges and jurists: questioning the courts in Islamic legal discourse -- Whose law is it, anyway? Navigating legal paths in late colonial society -- The limits of legal possibilities.
Summary:
"Beginning in the late eighteenth century, British rule transformed the relationship between law, society, and the state in South Asia. But qazis and muftis, alongside ordinary people without formal training in law, fought back as the colonial system in India sidelined Islamic legal experts. Following these developments from the beginning of the Raj through independence, Elizabeth Lhost rejects narratives of stagnation and decline to show how an unexpected coterie of scholars, practitioners, and ordinary individuals negotiated the contests and challenges of colonial legal change"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.