This paper will be concerned with the history of law in India, and will emphasize the ways in which that history has affected India's current political and legal structure. The earliest laws in India were grounded in Hinduism, a religious belief which was introduced to the area prior to 2,000 B.C. However, it was not until the first two centuries A.D. that the elements of Hindu law came to be codified in a written text known as Manu Samhita (Moorhouse 256). The next major historical influence on Indian law began in the sixteenth century A.D., with the establishment of the Delhi Government, also known as the Mogul Empire. This government introduced various concepts of Islamic law to the nation. In the late seventeenth century, the East India Company was founded, and thus began the rise of British law in India. The British Empire continued to hold dominance in India until the latter obtained its independence in 1947. As a result of the British presence during that time, British parliamentary law has had the strongest influence on the constitutional form of government which exists in India today.
In the late 1700s, the first British Governor-General in India, Warren Hastings, sought to update the existing laws of India by incorporating British ideas into them. His plan was to retain the Hindu and Muslim laws which had already been formulated, but to impose a British court system in order to interpret those laws. Hastings intended to merge British authority and traditional Indian laws in order "to point the way to rule this people with ease and moderation according to their own ideas, manners and prejudices" (Moorhouse 60). However, Hastings' plan did not work out to his expectations, because neither the Hindu law nor the Muslim law had been "codified like that of the English, based upon precedents established by earlier cases" (60). Hastings' successor, Lord Cornwallis, continued to seek ways to improve the legal system of I...