Indian Civil Judiciary in Making

The pattern of British Indian administration was set during the East India Company’s rule in the controlling Presidency of Bengal. It was also here that the model of the future Indian Judiciary was evolved between the years (1800-33), through a process of trial and error and through an ultimate fusion under Bentinck of British liberalism heralded by Cornwallis, with the indigenous tradition of despotism championed by distinguished Civilians like Sir Thomas Munro and Sir Charles Metcalfe. If Cornwallis’s Governor-Generalship (1786-1793) is significant for the injection of liberal Whig concepts in the Indian administration, Bentinck’s (1828-35), is no less epoch-making for the ultimate shredding of abstract notions in favour of pragmatic policies of administration. Between these two landmarks stretches an equally interesting period in which solutions to the shortcomings of Cornwallis’s system were sought within the fold of Cornwallis’s ideology. Never before has this formative epoch of Civil judiciary in India been analysed as vividly and in such minute detail as in The Indian Civil Judiciary in Making which is based upon original research in the archives of United Kingdom and India.