Caste and the Law

Manoj Mitta makes this argument by tracing the history of how caste has featured in legislation and in judicial decisions, first under colonial rule and then after Indian independence. He begins with the 1816 Madras Regulation XI, which permitted village heads in the state of Madras to impose two different categories of penalties, based on the caste of the perpetrator, for petty offences. The law was only repealed in 1919. Mitta then works through the prohibition on oppressed caste women from covering their breasts in Travancore and the struggle to prohibit sati in the North and East of the subcontinent. He discusses the Caste Disabilities Removal Act of 1850, which permitted Hindus the right to inherit ancestral property even if they converted to Islam or Christianity.