An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

Pride of place to the legacy of British imperialism in India is often given to the Empire giving India its penal code, drafted by Macaulay with the avowed purpose of ‘legislating for a conquered race, to whom the blessings of our constitution cannot as yet be safely extended’. Macaulay sat for three years behind high walls, completely disconnected from the people he was ostensibly working for, and created a code of criminal law that was ‘a body of jurisprudence written for everyone and no one, which had no relationship to previous Indians laws or any other form of government at all’. Even the British were uncertain about his effort, and Macaulay’s penal code sat un-enacted for twenty-four years after he finished it in 1837. Finally enacted in 1861, it is still largely in force in all its Victorian glory. In addition, the British introduced their ideas of trial by jury, freedom of expression and due process of law. These are incontestable legal values, except in their actual manner of working, for in its application during the colonial era, the rule of law was not exactly impartial. Justice, in British India, was far from blind: it was highly attentive to the skin colour of the defendant. Crimes committed by whites against Indians attracted minimal punishment; an Englishmen who shot dead his Indian servant got six months’ jail time and a modest fine (then about 100 rupees), while an Indian convicted of attempted rape against an Englishwoman was sentenced to twenty years rig...