WHITE VIOLENCE VERSUS THE RULE OF LAW

Elizabeth Kolsky, Colonial Justice in British India: White Violence and the Rule of Law (Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society) (New York: Cambridge U. Press, 2010, 2011) ("This book demonstrates that the tension between the discourse of a rule of law and the practice of something different snapped around trials of violent Britons, exposing the fact that the scales of colonial justice were imbalanced by the weight of race and the operatives of imperialism. By taking a classic colonial claim--of bringing law and order to pre-colonial chaos any mayhem--and turning it on its head, this study zeroes in on a rather unusual source of lawlessness and disorder: the Briton himself. The unsettling picture that emerges from our investigation of white violence and its handling in the colonial courts should not be brushed off as a list of exceptions, an epiphenomenal sideshow to the main stage of Pax Britannica. The exemplary cases selected for examination in this book represent a small fraction of those chronicled in the historical record." Id. at 4. In a poetic phrase that would be repeated for years to come they affirmed: 'There can be no equality of protection where justice is not equally and on equal terms accessible to all." Id. at 75, citing Letter No. 44 from the Court of Directors to the Government of India, NAL, Home (Public), Letters form Court Directors (1834), No, 98.).