Iterations of law: legal histories from India, edited by Aparna Balachandran, Rashmi Pant and Bhavani Raman, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2018, viii + 302pp., INR 950 (hardback), ISBN 9780199477791

Abstract

ABSTRACT Iterations of Law is a valuable resource on the legal history of colonial India. The essays in this edited volume uncover the lived experience of law in the tradition of social history. The contributors discuss and rework ideas of legal pluralism, law’s violence, and the legacy of colonial law. Their embrace of legal archives other than the judgment, such as the stamp paper, and political and bureaucratic speeches is a welcome methodological intervention in the field. This review examines the volume’s contribution to two persistent debates in legal history: the perceived continuity of the colonial law and legal system, and the agency of the colonial subject vis-à-vis law. Read this way, the contributions emphasise several points of contact between subject and government that allowed the consolidation and legitimisation of colonial rule. Though greater engagement with law and a South Asian emphasis would have added much value, the review concludes that the volume is essential reading for legal historians as well as scholars analysing the conditions of authority and legitimacy of law.