The East India Company’s Conquest of Assam, India, and “Community” Justice: Panchayats/Mels in Translation

Shodhan, Amrita

Abstract

The East India Company troops fighting the Burmese aggression on the frontier of Bengal in Eastern India “freed” upper and lower Assam territories in 1825. David Scott of the Bengal Service was appointed to oversee the establishment of civil and revenue administration in these frontier territories. He established a hierarchical multiple structure of “native courts”—called panchayats—as the chief medium of civil and criminal justice. This was ostensibly continuing a traditional Assamese form of dispute resolution—the mel; however, the British criminal jury as well as the expert assessor model animated the system. After his death in 1831, the system was brought in line with the rest of the Bengal administration based on the British court system. His experiment, paralleled in many other newly conquered and ceded districts from the Madras territories to Central India, suggests the use of this mode in post-conquest situations by British administrators in South Asia.

Citation

Shodhan, A. (2015). The East India Company’s Conquest of Assam, India, and “Community” Justice: Panchayats/Mels in Translation. Asian Journal of Law and Society, 2(2), 357-377. https://doi.org/10.1017/als.2015.12

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 14, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Sep 7, 2015
• Publication Date: Nov 2, 2015
• Deposit Date: Aug 1, 2018
• Journal: Asian Journal of Law and Society
• Print ISSN: 2052-9015
• Electronic ISSN: 2052-9023
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 357-377
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/als.2015.12
• Keywords: Law - History, Assam - History, Community and Law
• Related Public URLs: https://doi.org/10.1017/als.2015.12