scholarly journals Postcolonial penality: Liberty and repression in the shadow of independence, India c. 1947

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Brown

This article reports primary archival data on the colonial penal history of British India and its reconfiguration into the postcolonial Indian state. It introduces criminologists to frameworks through which postcolonial scholars have sought to make sense of the continuities and discontinuities of rule across the colonial/postcolonial divide. The article examines the postcolonial life of one example of colonial penal power, known as the criminal tribes policy, under which more than three million Indian subjects of British rule were restricted in their movements, subject to a host of administrative rules and sometimes severe punishments, sequestered in settlements and limited in access to legal redress. It illustrates how at the birth of the postcolonial Indian state, encompassing visions of a liberal, unfettered and free life guaranteed in a new Constitution and charter of Fundamental Rights, freedom for some was to prove as elusive as citizens as it had been as subjects.

Author(s):  
Elspeth Berry ◽  
Matthew J. Homewood ◽  
Barbara Bogusz

Titles in the Complete series combine extracts from a wide range of primary materials with clear explanatory text to provide readers with a complete introductory resource. This chapter discusses the history of the European Union. It covers the historical rationale for the EU; the aims of the EU; the four stages of economic integration; economic and political difficulties; expansion of membership; institutional developments; legal developments; closer European integration; the Treaty of Rome (1957), the Single European Act (1986); the Treaty on European Union (1992); the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997); the Charter of Fundamental Rights; the Treaty of Nice (2001); the Treaty of Lisbon (2007); and the potential process for and impact of ‘Brexit’.


Author(s):  
Elspeth Berry ◽  
Matthew J. Homewood ◽  
Barbara Bogusz

Titles in the Complete series combine extracts from a wide range of primary materials with clear explanatory text to provide readers with a complete introductory resource. This chapter begins with a brief history of human rights protection in Europe, including the separate role of the Council of Europe and the ECHR, as well as that of the EU and EU law. It then discusses the development of human rights protection by the EU; the need for human rights protection against the EU and its Member States; the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU; the enforcement of human rights in EU law; and the possibility of EU accession to the ECHR.


2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 116-123
Author(s):  
Saeed Ahmed Rid ◽  

The careful reading of the history of Pakistan movement tells us the movement rose in response to the fear of the imposition of majoritarian- unitary democracy model in British India following the West Minister model. After 1857 war of independence, Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan had advised Muslims not to take part in politics and focus their energies on acquiring modern education and hence securing their due share in bureaucratic positions under the British rule. But when Congress was formed in 1885 and gradually democratic reforms were introduced, the fear of majoritarian-unitary model started creeping in among the Muslim elite. The leaders of Muslim League felt if the Westminster style majoritarian- unitary democracy model is introduced in British India that will ultimately bring over the centralized Congress rule in British India which they equated as the Hindu raj. The debate around the federal question remained on top of the agenda in British India since the announcement of the Nehru report in 1928. The failure of the Congress in addressing Muslim concerns regarding majoritarian- unitary democracy model ultimately led to the partition of India in 1947. In this paper the debate around the federal question and the demands for consociational democracy in Pakistan movement would be studied in detail and it will be analysed how far the failure of addressing the federal question was responsible for the partition of India. Keywords: Majoritarian Democracy, Indo-Pak History, Consociationalism, All India Muslim League, Muslim Separatism


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-52
Author(s):  
Elspeth Berry ◽  
Matthew J. Homewood ◽  
Barbara Bogusz

Titles in the Complete series combine extracts from a wide range of primary materials with clear explanatory text to provide readers with a complete introductory resource. This chapter discusses the history of the European Union. It covers the historical rationale for the EU; the aims of the EU; the four stages of economic integration; economic and political difficulties; expansion of membership; institutional developments; legal developments; closer European integration; the Treaty of Rome (1957), the Single European Act (1986); the Treaty on European Union (1992); the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997); the Charter of Fundamental Rights; the Treaty of Nice (2001); the Treaty of Lisbon (2007); and the potential process for and impact of ‘Brexit’.


2014 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-124
Author(s):  
Belkacem Belmekki

The emergence of a separatist tendency among the majority of the Muslim community in British India in the wake of the happenings of 1857 has been a bone of contention among scholars concerned with the history of the Indian Subcontinent. In this regard, various theories and explanations have been put forward. While some claim that this separatism was in fact a ploy used by the elite of the Muslim community to safeguard their interests, others consider the fear of the overwhelming Hindu majority as a bona fide factor that triggered alienation with the latter, and still others evoke the many religious cum cultural divergences that exist between the Muslims and Hindus. Nevertheless, the present article seeks to set out another element of equal importance, namely British rule, whose role was to a large extent instrumental in polarizing the Indian society, dividing it into two main separate communities, Muslim and Hindu.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Keck

British Burma has never beenadequately or even systematically studied as both students of modern Burmese history and British empire historians have given it relatively short shrift. Nonetheless, imperial rule lasted for nearly five generations and helped to produce the nation which now identifies itself as Myanmar. By the end of the nineteenth century, Burma was crucial to the wider South Asian economy, supplying oil, minerals, teak, and, above all, rice to destinations around the Indian Ocean. Yet, it took three Anglo-Burmese Wars to make Burma a part of British India. These conflicts are largely forgotten but they determined not only the fate of the country, but helped to shape its future trajectories. Military conflict proved more durable than colonization as independence brought with it a situation in which the “state has been continuously at war with the population mapped into its territorial claim” (Callahan 13). Nonetheless, the intellectual and cultural history of British Burma is rich and fascinating: colonial authors made the country their subject matter and they left behind a diverse corpus which bore the stamp of Victorian civilization. The experience of writing about Burma – particularly by those writers who identified with Burmese culture – produced some forgotten masterpieces. However, the dominant British understanding of the country arose from military conflict and occupation; this paper focuses on four British war narratives (which followed each of the Anglo-Burmese Wars) because they disclose more than their recounting of these conflicts might suggest. By exploring the works of John James Snodgrass, Henry Gouger, William F. B. Laurie, and Major Edmond Charles Browne, it will be possible to trace the beginnings of the colonizing narrative which helped to shape British rule. These writers experienced the Anglo-Burmese Wars directly and their narratives illustrate that they were “involuntary sightseers” recording not only the details of conflict, but their assessments of Burma and the Burmese.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 606-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
REEJU RAY

AbstractThe Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo Hills in the North East Frontier of British India were subject to shifting and differentiated forms of colonial governance. Defying notions of coexistence with or autonomy from colonial rule, the colonial history of this region was bound up with specific spatio-temporal constructions. By examining the nature of jurisdictional and political encounters in the Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo Hills, this article addresses the interruptions to imperial sovereignty in the Frontier. Imperial sovereignty moved in juridical forms, affecting and being affected by classificatory challenges such as hills and plains, hill tribal, and settler. The relationship between jurisdictional boundaries, plural authority, and imperial sovereignty appears in judicial and revenue files of different levels of the English East India Company government and the British government. Recurrent boundary disputes between the spatio-temporal units of hills and plains during the late eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries point towards contingent strategies of governance. The unfolding of these disputes over the course of the nineteenth century also show that law and jurisdiction as carriers of imperial sovereignty were spatially and temporally uneven. The historical processes highlighted in this article concern the sub-region of Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo Hills and parts of the Sylhet district of British Bengal, which, at present, constitute the Indian state of Meghalaya and parts of northern Bangladesh, respectively.


2019 ◽  
pp. 396-457
Author(s):  
Elspeth Berry ◽  
Matthew J. Homewood ◽  
Barbara Bogusz

Titles in the Complete series combine extracts from a wide range of primary materials with clear explanatory text to provide readers with a complete introductory resource. This chapter begins with a brief history of human rights protection in Europe, including the separate role of the Council of Europe and the ECHR, as well as that of the EU and EU law. It then discusses the development of human rights protection by the EU; the need for human rights protection against the EU and its Member States; the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU; the enforcement of human rights in EU law; and the possibility of EU accession to the ECHR.


2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Bercusson

This article explores the potential contribution of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to building a system of industrial relations at EU level, in particular, by introducing fundamental trade union rights into the legal order of the European Union. The first part of the article describes the role of the EU Charter in the context of the history of European integration. The second part explores the legal prospects of the EU Charter as a political declaration and if it is incorporated into the Treaty. The role of the European Court of Justice in developing the fundamental trade union rights provided in the Charter is analysed and the potential scope of these rights in the context of an EU system of industrial relations is examined. The third part of the article explores the potential of the EU Charter to act as a catalyst by stimulating initiatives for measures implementing Charter rights which would support a system of industrial relations system at EU level. Two central issues are analysed. First, the scope of EU competences to create a system of industrial relations at EU level and, secondly, the institutional framework for such a system of industrial relations at EU level.


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