In transcribing the following paragraphs from the Internet Archive online version of The Imperial Gazetteer’s entry on British India — modern South Asia — I have expanded the divided the long entry into separate documents, expanded abbreviations for easier reading, and added paragraphing and links to material in the Victorian Web. The charts are in the original. This discussion of British India has particular importance because it immediately precedes the 1857 Mutiny and the subsequent major shift in its status as it came under the direct control of the British government rather than that of the East India Company, a private company.— George P. Landow]
An Independent Judiciary: Superior, Civil, and Criminal Courts Not under Control of Court of Directors or the Board of Control
In each of the capital cities of the presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, is a superior, civil, and criminal court, over which neither the Court of Directors nor the Board of Control have any authority, the judges in them being appointed directly by the sovereign. Within these cities, English law is held to be equally binding upon the European and the native inhabitants; but beyond their limits Europeans only are subject to British jurisprudence. The high courts at the three above-named presidencies are termed Sudder Dewannee and Fovjdarry Adawlut, or superior civil and criminal courts, and they consist of a chief and three puisne judges, in addition to whom, in the courts at Calcutta, native Hindoo and Mahometan judges sit on the bench. In the Sudder courts, suits for property to the amount of £5,000 may originate, and from their decisions appeal lies only to the sovereign in council, and then only when the property in dispute amounts to £10,000 or upwards.
Zillah Courts
Other courts are those of commissioners of circuit, the judges of which hold sessions of jail delivery at least twice a-year at the zillah and city stations zillah courts, both European and native, are established throughout British India, in each district or collectorate, as well as in the cities and towns. The European zillah courts consist of a judge, a magistrate, and a registrar, in conjunction with native assessors: in them may originate suits to the value of £2000, and they decide appeals from the decisions of the native zillah courts, and those of the registrars, sudder-ameens, and moonsifFs (native Hindoo and Mahometan arbitrators.) In the zillahs are also courts composed of native judges alone, who may try causes to the value of 1000 rupees, or to that of 5000 rupees, on the recommendation of a European judge.
Native Police Courts
In each village and community are native police-courts, the head officer of which receives criminal charges, and holds inquests; and in the northwest provinces are established punchayets or native juries of five persons, who arbitrate in minor causes. In all the superior courts, trial by jury takes place in criminal cases; and natives are eligible both as petty and grand jurors.
Use of Native Languages
The proceedings in the superior courts are, conducted in English, but in provincial courts always in the vernacular languages. Copies of all laws and regulations are preserved for inspection in the courts of justice, and are translated and sold to the community at a low price. At Calcutta the court of requests, once the scene of much venality and oppression on the part of native officers, has been superseded by the establishment there (1850) of a small-cause court, on the plan of the county courts in England; and it is expected that similar courts will be established in the capitals of the other presidencies. Except at those capitals, the Mahometan laws (the severity of which has been mitigated under the British rule) are commonly administered to the Mahometan, and the Hindoo laws to the Hindoo population; but it is at the option of the judge to dispense with these in particular cases, and to substitute the regulations of the government of India.
Major Ordinances and Improvements in Public Safety
In the year 1850 there was extended to the whole of British India, an important ordinance passed under the administration of Lord West. Bentinck, and which, since his rule, has been current in the Bengal presidency. Formerly a Hindoo, on his conversion to Christianity, having become impure in the highest degree in the opinion of his previous co-religionists, was held to have forfeited all his previous rights to property and inheritance, as well as other civil privileges. By the act referred to, all those pains and penalties which had before been attached to the relinquishment of Hindooism were an nulled, and no native of India now forfeits, by change of creed, any property or privilege to which he would, but for that change, have been entitled. (Calcutta Review, 1851.)
By an act of the Indian Government, passed in 1843, slavery in India was abolished. The Meriah sacrifices of the hill tribes of Orissa were suppressed in 1845; other superstitious ceremonies elsewhere have shared the same fate; Suttee or widow- burning; and Thuggee or religious murder, have been put down; and, for the most part, Dacoity or gang robbery. [II, 1272]
Bibliography
Blackie, Walker Graham. The Imperial Gazetteer: A General Dictionary of Geography, Physical, Political, Statistical and Descriptive. 4 vols. London: Blackie & Son, 1856. Internet Archive. Inline version of a copy in the University of California Library. Web. 7 November 2018.
Last modified 5 December 2018