Re-Interpreting Anglo-Indian Law in Colonial Burma

• In Event: Legal Regimes and Courtroom Drama

Abstract

In a case brought to the civil appellate court in August 1924 in Rangoon, Burma, the plaintiff(s): children of a deceased Burmese man brought a suit declaring that the family property was not to be bequeathed to the second wife of their late father, as the deceased in his lifetime had devised the property to them by a Will. The question had been in discussion in official administrative circles for some time: did the Burmese Buddhist law allow for a Will? Was it comparable to the British Indian Succession Act of 1865? Was it possible for the male head of the family to dispose of his property as he wished or a strict practice of Buddhist Burmese law for the partitioning of the property was to be followed? British administrators argued that such an instrument of law needed to be “invented” in the absence of a clear definition of a Will in the Buddhist Burmese law, as there had been a tremendous increases in property disputes especially in lower Burma. This paper focuses on legal disputes, particularly property litigation in the Rangoon court in late nineteenth and early twentieth century colonial Burma to understand how the British jurists, Burmese legal experts, administrators and litigants re-interpreted the Anglo-Indian law in this context.

Author

• Rajashree Mazumder, Union College