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Habeas Corpus in Times of Emergency: The Bombay Dispute

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The Rule of Law and Emergency in Colonial India

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Abstract

This chapter examines the cases of habeas corpus (known as the cases of Moro Ragonath and Bappoo Gunness) in Bombay in 1828–1829, the culmination of collisions between the East India Company and the King’s Court over the rule of law and emergency. By reconstructing the historical process of these little known but immensely significant cases, the chapter analyses the political dialectic between the government’s logic of emergency and the court’s logic of law and argues that the cases evoked the government officials’ strong sense of crisis, urging them to curtail the power of the King’s Court.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India c. 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 195.

  2. 2.

    O. P. Bhatnagar, M. P. Jain, and A. G. Noorani outline the cases. M. P. Jain, Outlines of Indian Legal and Constitutional History, 6th edition (New Delhi: LexisNexis, 2006), 105–6; O. P. Bhatnagar, ‘The Case of Moro Raghunath: A Case Illustrating the Conflict between Judiciary and Executive in India in Early Nineteenth Century’, Allahabad High Court (http://www.allahabadhighcourt.in/event/TheCaseofMoroRaghunathOPBhatnagar.pdf, accessed 25 Feb. 2021); A. G. Noorani, Indian Political Trials 1775–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 10–17. See also Jon Wilson, India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire (London: Simon and Schuster, 2016), 193–200.

  3. 3.

    British Library [BL], India Office Records [IOR] L/PS/6/179–81. Corresponding volumes in the Board’s Collection are F/4/1030/28288–28289, F/4/1113/29753A and F/4/1114/29753B–C. In this chapter, I use these compilations instead of Proceedings and Consultations in IOR P. The corresponding volumes in the Maharashtra State Archives are Political Department [PD], 1829/30, 23/347 and 24/348.

  4. 4.

    BL, IOR H/734, 529–30, John Malcolm to S. R. Lushington, Governor of Madras, 21 Oct. 1828.

  5. 5.

    The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck, Governor-General of India 1828–1835, ed. C. H. Philips, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 1:55, J. Malcolm to W. Bentinck, 27 July 1828. Malcolm warned that, if both the powers of the Adalat and the King’s Court were not speedily restricted, ‘their power will soon embrace all India, and be, in my opinion, when so spread, a sufficient cause of the downfall of this empire’. Ibid.

  6. 6.

    Parliamentary Papers [PP] 1831–32 (735-III), Appendix, 87, Lord Moira, minute, 21 Sep. 1815. They appointed special commissioners for that purpose in Lower Bengal by Regulation III of 1828. John Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck: The Making of a Liberal Imperialist 1774–1839 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974), 262; A. F. Salahuddin Ahmed, Social Ideas and Social Change in Bengal, 1818–1835, 2nd edition (Calcutta: RDDHI, 1976), 115–25.

  7. 7.

    PP 1831–32 (735-III), Appendix, 534–35, 538, J. Malcolm, minute, 10 June 1828; BL, IOR P/370/9, BRC 22 Apr. 1829, no. 42, J. Malcolm, minute, 6 Apr. 1829.

  8. 8.

    Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 182–83 and note P, 327.

  9. 9.

    See, for example, Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).

  10. 10.

    Martha McLaren, British India and British Scotland 1780–1830: Carrier Building, Empire Building, and a Scottish School of Thought on Indian Governance (Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2001); Jack Harrington, Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Neeladri Bhattacharya, The Great Agrarian Conquest: The Colonial Reshaping of a Rural World (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2018); Shah Mahmoud Hanafi, ed., Mountstuart Elphinstone in South Asia: Pioneer of British Colonial Rule (London: Hurst, 2019).

  11. 11.

    David Roberts, Paternalism in Early Victorian England (London: Groom Helm, 1979).

  12. 12.

    Douglas M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in India 1819–1835 (London, Tauris, 1995), 8.

  13. 13.

    Peers, Mars and Mammon, 38, 45–6, 53–4, 63–5. See also Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 56–74.

  14. 14.

    John Malcolm, The Political History of India from 1784 to 1823, 2 vols. (London, 1826), 1:145.

  15. 15.

    John McLaren, Dewigged, Bothered and Bewildered: British Colonial Judges on Trial 1800–1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011); P. B. Vachha, Famous Judges, Lawyers and Cases of Bombay: A Judicial History of Bombay During the British Period (Bombay: N. M. Tripathi, 1962; 2011); Abhinav Chandrachud, An Independent, Colonial Judiciary: A History of the Bombay High Court During the British Raj 1862–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). See also Mitra Sharafi, ‘South Asian Legal History’, Annual Review of Law and Social Science 11 (2015), 309–36.

  16. 16.

    Paul D. Halliday, Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire (Cambridge, MA., Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010); Amanda L. Tyler, Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Eric M. Freedman, Making Habeas Work: A Legal History (New York: New York University Press, 2018).

  17. 17.

    BL, IOR V/27/70/10, 33.

  18. 18.

    Moro was in the third class in the criminal list and the second class in the civil list. Pandoorung was the second-class sardar in criminal and civil lists. BL, IOR, P/399/64, BJC 18 Oct. 1826, no. 29, M. Elphinstone, minute, 5 Sep. 1826.

  19. 19.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 325–36, J. A. Dunlop to J. Malcolm, 11 Oct. 1828.

  20. 20.

    For example, Chaplin referred to the karkoons of the Tasgaum branch of the Patwardhans who attempted to ‘suppress or destroy the will of their late master and to usurp the management of the estate according to a forged instrument’. William Chaplin, A Report Exhibiting a View of the Fiscal and Judicial System of Administration Introduced into the Conquered Territory above the Ghauts under the Authority of the Commissioner in the Dekhan (Bombay, 1824), 160, 164.

  21. 21.

    BL, IOR P/399/35, BJC, 23 June 1824, 3522–81, W. Chaplin to Gov., 9 June 1824.

  22. 22.

    C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North India in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 137.

  23. 23.

    BL, IOR P/399/35, BJC, 23 June 1824, 3522–81, W. Chaplin to Gov., 9 June 1824.

  24. 24.

    BL, IOR P/399/40, BJC, 1 Dec. 1824, 8518, James Farish, secretary, memorandum on the proceeding of the appeal of Moro Ragonath.

  25. 25.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 325–36, J. A. Dunlop to J. Malcolm, 11 Oct. 1828.

  26. 26.

    A. R. Kulkarni, ed., History in Practice: Historians and Sources of Medieval Deccan-Marathas (New Delhi: Books and Books, 1993), 127, 154.

  27. 27.

    BL, IOR P/400/14, BJC 16 Jan. 1828, nos. 38–39, Pandoorung Ramchunder to Gov., 7 Nov. 1827.

  28. 28.

    BL, IOR P/400/17, BJC 14 May 1828, nos. 59–60, P. Ramchunder to Gov., 10 Apr. 1828; BL, IOR P/400/17, BJC 11 June 1828, nos. 1–2, S. Marriott to Gov., 23 May 1828; Ibid., no. 49, W. J. Lumsden to Gov., 26 May 1828.

  29. 29.

    BL, IOR H/736, 749–50.

  30. 30.

    BL, IOR L/PJ/3/918, 55–58, BJL, Gov. to CoD, 27 Sep. 1828, J. A. Dunlop to J. Malcolm, 10 July 1828 and J. Malcolm to J. A. Dunlop, 11 July 1828.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., J. Malcolm, note, n.d. (Proceedings dated 10 Sep. 1828) and Edward West to J. Malcolm, 13 July 1828.

  32. 32.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28288, 216–19, James Dewar to J. Malcolm, 14 Sep. 1828.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 233, J. Malcolm to J. Dewar, 18 Sep. 1828.

  34. 34.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28288, 254–55, J. Malcolm to J. A. Dunlop, n.d.

  35. 35.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 407–32, E. H. Baillie, Northern Concan Judge, to Gov., 13 Sep. 1828, enclosing the court proceedings of 8 May 1828 and J. Dewar’s reports dated 2 Oct. 1828.

  36. 36.

    BL, IOR L/PJ/3/918, 55–58, BJL, Gov. to CoD, 27 Sep. 1828, J. Dewar to J. Malcolm, 21 Aug. 1828.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., J. Malcolm to J. Dewar, 3 Sep. 1828; BL, IOR F/4/1030/28288, 240–41, J. Malcolm to J. Dewar, 18 Sep. 1828.

  38. 38.

    In the trial, Bappoo Gunness was defended by the indefatigable James Morley. BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 444–50, J. Dewar to Gov., 27 Sep 1828.

  39. 39.

    BL, IOR L/PJ/3/918, 55–58, BJL, Gov. to CoD, 27 Sep. 1828, J. Malcolm, minute, 17 July 1828.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., J. Malcolm to Thomas Bradford, Commander-in-Chief, 18 July 1828.

  41. 41.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 21–27, Supreme Court Report, 15 Sep. 1828, 1–7, J. Dewar.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., 70, 73, Supreme Court Report, 29 Sep. 1828, 10, 13, Charles Chambers.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 84, Supreme Court Report, 29 Sep. 1828, 26, John Peter Grant.

  44. 44.

    Ibid.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 95, Supreme Court Report, 29 Sep. 1828, 35, J. P. Grant.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 100, Supreme Court Report, 10 Oct. 1828, 40, J. P. Grant.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 69, 74, Supreme Court Report, 29 Sep. 1828, 9, 14, C. Chambers.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 97, Supreme Court Report, 6 Oct. 1828, 37, C. Chambers.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 78, Supreme Court Report, 29 Sep. 1828, 18, J. P. Grant, emphasis original.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., 66, Supreme Court Report, 29 Sep. 1828, 6, J. Dewar.

  51. 51.

    Ibid., 69–70, Supreme Court Report, 29 Sep. 1828, 9, 10, C. Chambers.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 70, Supreme Court Report, 29 Sep. 1828, 10, C. Chambers.

  53. 53.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 26–27, J. Malcolm, minute, 2 Oct. 1828.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., 37.

  55. 55.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 79–80, J. Malcolm, minute, 3 Oct. 1828.

  56. 56.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 77–79, Supreme Court Report, 6 Oct 1828, 17–19. The petition was also printed in John Malcolm, The Government of India (London, 1833), Appendix C, 118–20.

  57. 57.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 96–100, Supreme Court Report, 6 Oct 1828, 36–40, C. Chambers and J. P. Grant.

  58. 58.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 265–69, J. Dewar to Gov., 10 Oct. 1828.

  59. 59.

    Malcolm, Government of India, Appendix C, 115–28, J. P. Grant’s petition to the Privy Council, Nov. 1828.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., 136–43, J. Malcolm, minute, 30 Nov. 1828.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 146–51.

  62. 62.

    BL, IOR F/4/1036/28549(7), J. A. Dunlop to Gov., 26 Nov. 1828, enclosing a letter from Moro Ragonath to the Governor, dated 5th Jemadee ool Awul.

  63. 63.

    Ibid., J. Malcolm, minute, 29 Nov. 1828.

  64. 64.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 323–26, BPC 21 Jan. 1829, J. Dewar to Gov., 9 Dec. 1828.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., 498–503, BPC 4 Mar. 1829, no. 8, J. Dewar to Gov., 27 Feb. 1829; Ibid., 504–16, SC to Gov., 9 Mar. 1829, BPC 18 Mar. 1829.

  66. 66.

    Ibid., 519–28, BPC 18 Mar. 1829, J. Malcolm, minute, 12 Mar. 1829, and Gov. to SC, 13 Mar. 1829; Ibid., 666–76, BPC 22 Mar. 1829, SC to Gov., 21 Mar. 1829; Ibid., 676–81, BPC 22 Mar 1829, J. Malcolm, minute, n.d., and Gov. to SC, 22 Mar. 1829.

  67. 67.

    Bombay Courier Extraordinary, 2 Apr. 1829; BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 874–79, Supreme Court Report, 1 Apr. 1829.

  68. 68.

    Bombay Courier Extraordinary, 7 Apr 1829; BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 706–7, BPL, Gov. to CoD, 8 Apr. 1829, and BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 880, proclamation.

  69. 69.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 749–50, 753–54, BPC 8 Apr. 1829, J. Dewar to Gov., 2 Apr. 1829.

  70. 70.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 344–54, J. Malcolm, minute, 12 Oct. 1828; Ibid., 375–82, J. Malcolm, minute, 14 Oct. 1828, Government notice, 17 Oct. 1828.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., 399–406, J. Malcolm, minute, 20 Oct. 1828; BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 319–22, BPC 14 Jan. 1829, W. Clerk, Acting Persian Secretary, to Gov., 6 Jan. 1829.

  72. 72.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 84–85, J. Malcolm, minute, 3 Oct. 1828.

  73. 73.

    BL, IOR H/734, 652–3, J. Malcolm to C. T. Metcalfe, 23 June 1829.

  74. 74.

    BL, IOR F/4/1241/40865, 13–26, BGC 28 Oct. 1829, no. 11, J. Malcolm, minute, n.d.

  75. 75.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28289, 235–37, J. Malcolm, minute, 8 Oct. 1828. The Judges and Magistrates were instructed not to visit Bombay. Ibid., 233, 239–40, circular, 10 Oct. 1828. Barnwall had ample knowledge on the harmful effect of legal proceedings on chiefs and sardars as the Political Agent of Kathiawar. He worked under Alexander Walker when Gujarat was first annexed to the British territory. Malcolm, Government of India , 77.

  76. 76.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 339–482, BPC 21 Mar. 1829, Gov. to CoD, 9 Feb. 1829; BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 794–838, BPC 15 Apr 1829; same one in 992 ff., Gov. to Bengal Government [Ben. Gov.], 15 Apr. 1829.

  77. 77.

    Bentinck Correspondence, ed. Philips, 1:93, W. Bentinck to J. Malcolm, 12 Nov. 1828.

  78. 78.

    For example, see BL, IOR H/734, 311–13, J. Malcolm to the Duke of Wellington, 5 Apr. 1829; BL, IOR H/734, 314–16, J. Malcolm to the Earl of Ellenborough, 5 Apr. 1829.

  79. 79.

    BL, IOR F/4/1036/28549(7), SC to Gov., 21 Oct. 1828 and SC to Gov., 3 Nov. 1828.

  80. 80.

    William Hook Morley, An Analytical Digest of All the Reported Cases Decided in the Supreme Courts of Judicature in India, in the Courts of the Hon. East India Company, and on Appeal from India, by Her Majesty in Council, 2 vols. (London, 1849–50), 2:662, 683, Supreme Court charter, ss. 38, 71.

  81. 81.

    H. V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain 1756–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 10–11.

  82. 82.

    BL, IOR F/4/1030/28288, 43–44, BPL Gov. to CoD, 20 Oct. 1828.

  83. 83.

    BL, Eur Mss F523/59.

  84. 84.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 964–88, J. P. Grant to Ben. Gov., 2 Apr. 1829.

  85. 85.

    BL, IOR H/734, 503–5, J. Malcolm to G. Norton, 9 Sep. 1828; Bentinck Correspondence, 1:68, J. Malcolm to W. Bentinck, 19 Aug. 1828.

  86. 86.

    John William Kaye, The Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir John Malcolm, 2 vols. (London, 1856), 2:528–30, Ellenborough to J. Malcolm, 21 Feb. 1829.

  87. 87.

    Ellenborough to W. Bentinck, 23 May 1830, quoted in D. N. Panigrahi, Charles Metcalfe in India: Ideas and Administration 1806–1835 (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), 170.

  88. 88.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/181, 135–41, BPC 11 Aug. 1829, R. Mills to Gov., 1 Aug. 1829.

  89. 89.

    Ibid., 499–625.

  90. 90.

    BL, IOR H/734, 419–22, J. Malcolm to Wellington, 7 June 1829; Ibid., 208–9, J. Malcolm to Ellenborough, 12 June 1829.

  91. 91.

    1 Knapp, 1–59.

  92. 92.

    Ibid., 51–59.

  93. 93.

    BL, IOR H/734, 691, J. Malcolm to S. R. Lushington, 10 Sep. 1829.

  94. 94.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/180, 1052–65, BPC 25 May 1829, nos. 1–3, petition dated 2 May 1829, and J. Malcolm, minute, 12 May 1829.

  95. 95.

    Ibid.

  96. 96.

    Asiatic Journal, new series, 5 (1831), 71.

  97. 97.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/181, 799–844, BPL, 20 Oct 1830, address and Grant’s reply, 10 Sep. 1830.

  98. 98.

    Ibid., 849–71, BPL, 20 Oct 1830, address and Grant’s reply, 13 Sep 1830.

  99. 99.

    Lakshmi Subramanian, ‘Seths and Sahibs: Negotiated Relationships between Indigenous Capital and the East India Company’, in H. V. Bowen, Elizabeth Mancke, and John G. Reid, eds., Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds c. 1550–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 311–39; Sheila Smith, ‘Fortune and Failure: The Survival of Family Firm in Eighteenth-Century India’, Business History 35, no. 4 (1993): 44–65.

  100. 100.

    Mitra Sharafi, Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture 1772–1847 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 8–9; Jesse S. Palsetia, The Parsis of India: Preservation of Identity in Bombay City (Leiden: Brill, 2001), chapters 3, 5.

  101. 101.

    Jesse S. Palsetia, ‘Mad Dogs and Parsis: The Bombay Dog Riots of 1832’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 11, no. 1 (2001): 28; Dobbin, Urban leadership in western India, 24.

  102. 102.

    Christine Dobbin, Urban Leadership in Western India: Politics and Community in Bombay City 1840–1885 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), chapters 1–2; Bayly, C. A., Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 135–37.

  103. 103.

    Mridula Ramanna, ‘Social Background of the Educated in Bombay City 1824–58’, Economic and Political Weekly 14, no. 4 (1989): 203–5, 207–11; Mridula Ramanna, ‘Profiles of English Educated Indians: Early Nineteenth Century Bombay City’, Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 14 (1992): 716–21, 723–24.

  104. 104.

    BL, IOR L/PS/6/181, 969–80, BPC 29 Sep. 1830, no. 6, William Newnham, minute, 13 Sep. 1830.

  105. 105.

    Ibid., 983–1029, J. Malcolm, minute, 16 Sep. 1830, BPC 29 Sep. 1830, no. 8.

  106. 106.

    It was held on 17 September. Ibid., 923–39.

  107. 107.

    Ibid., BPC 29 Sep. 1830, nos. 21–24, J. Malcolm, minute, 18 Sep. 1830.

  108. 108.

    Ibid., 943–45, Government notice, 27 Sep. 1830.

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    Haruki Inagaki

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Inagaki, H. (2021). Habeas Corpus in Times of Emergency: The Bombay Dispute. In: The Rule of Law and Emergency in Colonial India. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73663-7_5

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