Social Roles and Legal Rights: Three Women in Early Nineteenth-Century India

In the early decades of the nineteenth century the small European societies in Madras (now Chennai) and Bombay (now Mumbai) were divided by disputes of such intensity that the authorities in London feared for the future of British power in India. The divisions were legal and social. In law, the Governors and the Supreme Courts of both cities contested the scope of their respective roles with the arguments focusing on the rights of Indians. Again and again, government took alarm at the ‘pro-Indian’ views of reforming judges. The debates were reflected in European social divisions, thereby making them all the more intransigent; legal allegiance became linked to social allegiance. It was this mixture of the legal and the social which gave the wives and other female relatives of the judges a role in the process of reform. Normally confined to multiple pregnancies and restrained social functions, the divisions in European life gave these women an opportunity to influence legal change. Without making official public statements they took part in the development of ideas about Indian rights.