Behind the mask: the cultural definition of the legal subject in colonial Bengal: 1715-1911 Mukhopadhyay, Anindita

Behind the Mask investigates the deeper area of class antagonism between the privileged and underprivileged classes as they faced the colonial state and its different ideas of legality and sovereignty in colonial Bengal. It explores the ambiguity in the Bhadralok - the educated middle class - response to courts and jails. The author argues that the discourse of superior 'bhadralok' ethics and morals was juxtaposed against the chhotolok - who were devoid of such ethical values. This enabled the bhadralok to claim for themselves the position of the aware legal subject as a class - a 'good' subject obedient to the dictates of the new rule of law, unlike the recalcitrant and ethically ill-equipped 'chhotolok' As the 'rule of law' of the British government slid unobtrusively into the public domain, the criminal courts and jails turned into public theatres of infamy - spaces that the thically bound bhadralok dreaded occupying. The author documents how the colonial legal and penal institutions streamlined the identities of some sections of the lower castes into 'criminal classes'. She also examines the nature of colonial bureaucracy and highlights the social silence on gender and women's criminality.