Acharya wrote:heard of
Acharya wrote:Anybody heard of him
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rash_Behari_Bose
Yes! Beyond what you have posted I remember one trivia that to escape the British he took Japanese citizenship through marriage.
Macaulay and the Indian Penal Code of 1862: The Myth of the Inherent Superiority and Modernity of the English Legal System Compared to India's Legal System in the Nineteenth Century
David Skuy
Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), pp. 513-557 (article consists of 45 pages)
Published by: Cambridge University Press
not working id: so here goes...ramana wrote:X-posted...
Has anybody read this paper ? How is it ?
http://www.jstor.org/pss/313159
Macaulay and the Indian Penal Code of 1862: The Myth of the Inherent Superiority and Modernity of the English Legal System Compared to India's Legal System in the Nineteenth Century
David Skuy
Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), pp. 513-557 (article consists of 45 pages)
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Pardon me for being cynical, but while the above is true, these days it has become a classic and convenient excuse for the NDA and UPA to hide their shortcomings, corruptions and utter and pathetic lack of national interest. When questioned on any topic, their apologists in the media, and places like NDTV talking heads invariably say "what to do saar, we are representatives onlee... people get the govt they deserve."The people get the govt they deserve.
ramana wrote:X-posted...
Has anybody read this paper ? How is it ?
http://www.jstor.org/pss/313159
Macaulay and the Indian Penal Code of 1862: The Myth of the Inherent Superiority and Modernity of the English Legal System Compared to India's Legal System in the Nineteenth Century
David Skuy
Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), pp. 513-557 (article consists of 45 pages)
Published by: Cambridge University Press
I began this paper by asking why historians accept that English law was superior to India's; or stated another way, why Britain was assumed to have a modern system and India's indigenous legal sys- tems to be primitive in comparison. Historians are keen to study the ramifications of the introduction of British law to India; and a con- sensus of opinion seems to exist that the imposition of British law eventually destroyed India's indigenous legal systems.160 That con- sensus, however, ignores two more fundamental questions: did Eng- land have a modern legal system, and exactly what does English law mean? We have seen that England's criminal law was certainly not modern in any real sense prior to the last third of the nineteenth century; and the English reform movement completely determined the procedure and substance of the Indian Penal Code; therefore, when the British introduced their criminal justice system to India in 1862, India received a set of legal principles within a particular form that reflected the needs of English society after the 183os. How can we determine the effect the introduction of English criminal law had on India unless we understand the state of English criminal law at the time of its introduction and the history behind it.
I have put some thinking on this. Only way is for the ordinary people who care to join these parties and change them.Tanaji wrote:Pardon me for being cynical, but while the above is true, these days it has become a classic and convenient excuse for the NDA and UPA to hide their shortcomings, corruptions and utter and pathetic lack of national interest. When questioned on any topic, their apologists in the media, and places like NDTV talking heads invariably say "what to do saar, we are representatives onlee... people get the govt they deserve."The people get the govt they deserve.
Ramana,ramana wrote:X-posted...
Has anybody read this paper ? How is it ?
Now most of India at that time followed Mitakshara, written by Vijnanesvara a law giver in the Western Chalukya court in the 12 century. The Dayabhaga, written by Jimutavahana was only in vogue in Bengal and Assam. Of course Colebrooke translated these works into English.The last source of Hindu law, which is, however, the original basis on which all decided cases rest, is to be found in the ancient authorities, which must be consulted upon any point not yet illustrated by judicial decision. These authorities are the Smrithis-i.e., recollections handed down by the Rishis or sages of antiquity, the Code of Menu, the works of Yajnavalkya, Narada and others. Practically the commentaries on these works are the starting point of Hindu law, the chief of which are the Mitakshara, by Vijnanesvara, and the Dayabhaga, by Jimutavahana.
This is patently untrue. Hindus could indeed change the school of law only under special circumstances, such as migration to another territory, excommunication from ones own school, etc.It must be observed that Hindus can change the school of law by which they are governed as readily as they can change religion
There was this story about how Australian PM Rudd's ancestors were convicts deported to Australia and there was a description of the crimes and the ages and punishments. It seems most of them were children who committed economic crimes and were to be hanged or deported. In modern days such sentences are considered barbaric. And this was English law in late 18th/early 19th century.
We have seen that England's criminal law was certainly not modern in any real sense prior to the last third of the nineteenth century; and the English reform movement completely determined the procedure and substance of the Indian Penal Code; therefore, when the British introduced their criminal justice system to India in 1862, India received a set of legal principles within a particular form that reflected the needs of English society after the 183os. How can we determine the effect the introduction of English criminal law had on India unless we understand the state of English criminal law at the time of its introduction and the history behind it.
If there is a way to share the work, please do. It is important to preserve and continue such works.ramana wrote:Pullekishi thanks for the comments. My grandfather wrote book on Hindu Law of Adoption and won a gold medal from Uty of Madras around 1905. Will get the family copy and read it next time am in desh.
I though there was a "Indian" commission that Macaulay headed to re-write the criminal code for India. The statement above seems to indicate that Macaulay himself wrote the Indian Criminal Code.In my view, the missing element is the English criminal law reform movement in the nineteenth century. We have seen how Indian law reform mirrored developments in England: court reforms in the 182os and 183os in India occurred while the Peel Acts were passed; Macaulay wrote a criminal code for India while a Royal Commission wrote one for England; Macaulay submitted his Code to Parliament the same year Parliament passed the 1837 Acts; the Indian Law Commission reviewed Macaulay's Code in 1847-48 just as the second Royal Commission finished its draft criminal code; and a few months before the Indian Penal Code became law, the British Parlia- ment passed the 1861 Acts. In substantive and procedural terms, the Indian Penal Code reflected developments in English law. So to answer the question of why there was such a long delay in enacting the Indian Penal Code, one need only examine developments in England. Moreover, the delay in passing the Indian Penal Code is not really that long if one considers those developments. I have argued that Macaulay began to write a code for India because England's legal institutions had begun to reform English criminal law, and not because of the state of Indian law. Only when the Bloody Code began to disappear was English jurisprudence sophisticated enough to stimulate a penal code like Macaulay's. Only by the 185os was England in a position to enact its own criminal code, so the delay to this point in the passage of Macaulay's Code should come as no surprise.
Therefore, we are left with only a decade during which it is reason- able to assume Britain could have passed the Indian Penal Code, and perhaps only during this period is it fair to say that the Rebellion ended British indifference.
Even on BR the hubris of retired officials was questioned often.Ignorance, arrogance retard India’s battle against terror
By Arun Kumar Singh
A day after the nation celebrated Independence Day last week, the Gujarat police announced it had cracked the July 26 bomb blasts case with the arrest of 10 Simi activists from Uttar Pradesh. This was a welcome development, as was the decision to set up an anti-terrorist academy in Gandhinagar. But one cannot but be bewildered by a series of recent events:
* The narrow escape of Surat, where 29 unexploded bombs were found;
* The disastrous incidents in Jammu and Kashmir in the past six weeks, after a new governor was installed;
* The statement on August 12 by the national security adviser that since 2004, about 800 terror modules had been unearthed (given a rough thumb rule of five undiscovered modules for every one unearthed, some 4,000 sleeper cells are still unaccounted for);
* In Uttar Pradesh, counterfeit rupee notes worth thousands of crores found in SBI branches;
* At the Beijing Olympics, a nation of one billion-plus finally got its first individual gold medal since the modern Games started in 1896;
* Inauguration of the same Olympic Games was attended by Sonia Gandhi, making this her second visit to China in a year despite ongoing Chinese incursions along the border;
* Pakistan, despite its ongoing war on terror along the Afghan border, and its preoccupation with impeaching President Pervez Musharraf, found time to violate the four-year-old ceasefire on the Line of Control almost on a weekly basis;
* Russia, alarmed by the eastward expansion of Nato, sent its armed forces into Georgia;
* India remained focused on the progress of the nuclear deal with the US despite various American spokespersons saying there were no inconsistencies between the 123 Agreement, the Hyde Act and the 1954 US Atomic Energy Act.
I have been astounded by some recent statements by so-called experts and retired government bureaucrats. Here are a few samples: A retired bureaucrat told me that "changing borders or creating new nations was no longer possible, and the 1971 creation of Bangladesh was an aberration." He was stumped when I reminded him about the breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 states, and Yugoslavia into another four. But with typical arrogance, borne out of spending years in the "corridors of power", he stated these too were "aberrations".
He got rather upset when I mentioned East Timor, because he was not even aware of this new nation which had been carved out of Indonesia!
There was another retired bureaucrat who said that despite the recent bomb blasts, "India had nothing to learn from the United States, the UK, China, Russia or Spain, because we were too big, too complex... And in any case, we had taught these nations how to build computerised terrorist data banks. Yes, there will be terror attacks, but we have the resilience to withstand these." He had no answer when I told him: "No human being likes to get blown up or see his family killed or maimed, and it’s only a matter of time before the people of India demand accountability from politicians, bureaucrats and policemen in this undeclared war on terror. After all, following the 1962 war with China, the Army Chief and a corps commander were sacked, and defence minister Krishna Menon was shifted to another ministry."
Let me give you the example of the US, which officially declared war on terror after 9/11.
The US set up the department of homeland security and passed the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Yes, there were some complaints against this draconian but effective law.
So in July 2005, a few cosmetic changes were made. In addition, the homeland security department added a few new sections to deal with "privacy, civil rights, civil liberties." This law now has 25 sections covering every conceivable field, electronically connected by instant data link — these include data banks, airports, seaports, roadways, inland waterways, nuclear, medical, narcotics, immigration, customs, emergencies, US Coast Guard, transportation, border management, intelligence, and emergency management, among others. In India, as in any democracy, the war on terror requires democratically-elected politicians to be advised by bureaucrats, police, intelligence and paramilitary units; the armed forces are only called in as a last resort. The problem is that amongst the "advisers" we have a disastrously lethal combination of ignorance, arrogance, non-accountability and unwillingness to either learn from others or from our own past mistakes.
The concept of "real-time electronic-based situational awareness, from the top to the field operative" is simply unknown to most of these people. It must be realised that the "policeman on the beat" can only deter petty criminals and not fanatic, suicidal jihadis. The proposed police reforms were framed in the pre-global terrorism era, and its results are there for all to see in Jammu and Kashmir, the 13 Naxalite-infested states, the seven Northeast states, and by the recent terrorist strikes. Added to this is the situation on our borders with China and Pakistan, and the estimated 20 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants — all of which present a clear security threat to this nation. By now, even the most broadminded and secular Indian will agree that we have a fifth column operating in India. Given the present state of affairs, it is imperative that the government officially declares that India is in a state of prolonged war with faceless and stateless terrorists, and that a policy of "zero tolerance" would be adopted to counter them. Once a state of war is declared, certain ruthless wartime measures can be taken, some restrictions can be placed, new ordinances and laws passed, a new wartime integral organisation can be instituted, forces raised and equipped under an unified command, fast-track courts set up and accountability introduced.
The time has come to forget votebank politics and do something different, because the people of India are not sacrificial goats.
Vice-Admiral Arun Kumar Singh retired as Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam
This I found disturbing but essentially true.Contrast that with the Indian experience. While there are many exceptions, and at the considerable risk of over-generalising, the Indian state despite rapid economic growth has deteriorated over time. Whether it is providing basic law and order, or ensuring sanctity of contract, or delivering public services, the stench of decline is hard to ignore. For example, on a crude measure of government effectiveness on which I compiled data across time, India’s performance declined sharply: in the early 1960s, India was in the top 5th percentile of countries in the sample, slipping to the middle of the pack in recent years (http://www.petersoninstitute.org/public ... n0407b.pdf). The education example discussed earlier is an exception to the growth-institutions dynamic, made possible only because of private alternatives to state supply. For the core public sector functions, where such an alternative does not exist, the growth-institutions dynamic has been weak or non-existent.
So, growth in India has come with a more entrepreneurial private sector but accompanied by deteriorating state capacity. China has a vastly superior state capacity but an indigenous private sector that is still finding its feet. Which combination augurs better for the future?
There is a fundamental asymmetry between state and markets. It is easier to create markets than it is to create state capacity or to prevent its deterioration. Creating markets is a lot about letting go, establishing a reasonable policy framework, and allowing the natural hustling instinct to take over. In other words, hustling is the natural state. Building state capacity, on the other hand, is quite different. It involves overcoming collective action problems, mediating conflict, creating accountability mechanisms where outputs are multiple and fuzzy and links between inputs and outputs murky, and contending with the deep imprints of history. In Weber’s memorable words, building public institutions is like the “slow boring of hard boards”.
In that light, China’s task of improving its private sector seems easier to accomplish than India’s task of arresting institutional decline. So, while China and India can probably both count on more years of high growth, the odds still favour China pulling off that feat than India. That, and not just the meagre medal tally, should be what India mulls over as the curtain descends on the Beijing Olympics.
. Incidentally, the review of the translated Buddhacarita (Asvagosha) by these guys was positively gushing in Time magazine (that's how I first came across Clay).
