BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:'Justifiable' Homicide? Responses to Wife-Murder in Nineteenth-Cen
 tury India and Britain - Daniel Grey (University of Oxford)
DTSTART:20111130T161500Z
DTEND:20111130T180000Z
UID:TALK33826@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Elaine Giles
DESCRIPTION:In July 1825\, the Supreme Criminal Court for Bengal\, known a
 s the Nizamat Adalat\, reviewed the case of Chait Ram\, a man who had been
  charged at the Bareilly sessions with the murder of his wife\, Mussumaut 
 Dhunkeeah. Ram freely admitted killing her and even identified the weapon 
 he had used\, but claimed the murder was the result of his wife's adultery
  with a neighbour. Since the killing of a wife caught in the act of adulte
 ry was not a crime under Islamic law\, the qadis (Islamic judges) of the N
 izamat Adalat recommended he be released from custody at once. While one o
 f the three officiating British judges argued that Ram had not sufficientl
 y proven that his wife had indeed been conducting an affair\, and suggeste
 d that a sentence of life imprisonment would be appropriate given the circ
 umstances\, his two colleagues disagreed and upheld the qadis ruling. Ram 
 was freed immediately 'without further punishment.' At one level\, the cas
 e of Chait Ram and the decision of the British officials to follow the rec
 ommendation of the Muslim legal scholars who reviewed it can perhaps be se
 en as part of the wider policy of early colonial rulers to attempt to main
 tain the appearance of benevolent rule by not interfering overtly with est
 ablished legal practice. Yet British judges had few qualms dismissing repo
 rts by the qadis when they disagreed with what had been said. Moreover\, a
 n approach which focuses exclusively on what such verdicts meant in terms 
 of the perception of violence in India ignores the fact that remarkably si
 milar cases – and remarkably similar outcomes – were by no means unusu
 al back in Britain.\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room (Department of Geography\, Downing Site)
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR