Public finance and personal law in late-colonial India

Newbigin, Eleanor

Abstract

This chapter considers the ways in which the fiscal demands of representative government, and specifically the development of a direct, personal income tax, impacted legal subjecthood during India’s transition to Independence. It shows how early twentieth-century understandings of economic value and public finance were embedded into Indian society and legal system through discussions about personal law. This had particular consequences for Hindu personal law, which, under pressure from a centrally administered income tax regime, was re-imagined as a singular, homogeneous all-Indian legal system in ways that rendered the Hindu joint family synonymous with the representative and fiscal structures of the Indian state.

Citation

Newbigin, E. (2017). Public finance and personal law in late-colonial India. In A. Balachandran, R. Pant, & B. Raman (Eds.), Iterations of Law: Legal Histories from India. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199477791.003.0010

• Online Publication Date: Apr 1, 2018
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Mar 25, 2017
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Book Title: Iterations of Law: Legal Histories from India
• ISBN: 9780199477791
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199477791.003.0010
• Keywords: Personal law, Hindu joint family, public finance, representative government, income tax regime, legal subjecthood