James Jaffe, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has published
Ironies of Colonial Governance: Law, Custom and Justice in Colonial India in Cambridge University Press's Studies in Law and Society series.
The village council, or panchayat, has long held an iconic place in India history, culture, and society. Ironies of Colonial Governance traces the history of that ideal and the attempts to adapt it to colonial governance. Beginning with an in-depth analysis of British attempts to introduce a system of panchayat governance during the early nineteenth-century, the book analyses the legacies of these actions within the structures of later colonial administrations as well as the early nationalist movement. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the ideologies of panchayat governance evolved during this period as well as to the transnational exchange and circulation of panchayat ideologies.
TOC after the jump.
H/t: Katy Schumaker for the Law & History - LSA Collaborative Research Network
Part I. Discoveries and Adaptations:
1. The rise and fall of the panchayat in the Bombay Presidency
2. Bringing justice to every man's door
3. Appeals and the language of petitioning
4. The construction of
panchayat legality
5. The
panchayat and trial by jury, I: the civil trial
6. The
panchayat and trial by jury, II: military and criminal justice
7. The
panchayat debate in the Bengal Presidency
Part II. Lineages and Legacies:
8. The
panchayat from village republic to municipality
9. The
panchayat and the building of civil society
10.
The panchayat legacy.
