Property, Authority and Personal Law: Waqf In Colonial South Asia

Abstract

British rule in South Asia transformed the economy and society of the subcontinent, in large part by revamping the status of landed property. Colonial law was founded on the notion that ostensibly religious personal law was outside state jurisdiction. The boundary between state law and personal law, however, was blurry and some elements of ‘religious’ law had major implications for matters at the core of colonial policy, such as property control. This ambivalence produced a scenario in which legal debates became authorised spaces for colonial subjects to pursue their agendas. Taking the Muslim charitable trust, or waqf, in late colonial British India, this article argues that advocacy of substantive and procedural changes in waqf laws by Muslim legal activists repre-sented a pointed critique of colonial policies. Through a brief history of the articulation between charitable trusts and colonial property policies, the article draws from the work of two late colo-nial Muslim judges, Syed Ameer Ali and Faiz Badrudin Tyabji, to demonstrate the role waqf debates played in refashioning colonial legal culture. It is suggested that claims about waqf were both instrumental attempts to advance claims to property, and instances for articulating broader ideological critiques of the interpretative authority of British judges.