Imperial structures and insurgent agents: Historical reflections on lawyers and social movements in South Asia

Cynthia Farid

Chapter 6 in Research Handbook on Law, Movements and Social Change, 2023, pp 87-101 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter argues that lawyers under British colonial rule actively advanced the cause of greater Indian participation in governance by leveraging symbolic capital through their association with the legal field, and through their associational efforts in other important arenas, including the press and the political system. The chapter demonstrates the significant contribution of lawyers to a broader political movement by focusing on the formation and trajectory of the Indian National Congress. Colonial legal institutions provided significant discursive and institutional political opportunities and threats that structured the emergence of social movements. The history of lawyers and social movements in South Asia illuminates the repressive and redemptive qualities of the law, and the successes and failures of tools of resistance. The productive alliances between colonial legal professionals and adjacent fields such as the press in constructing movement frames remain relevant for informing contemporary theories of law, social movements, and organizations under authoritarian conditions. It also showcases how the colonial reproduces itself in postcolonial cultures of power, law and resistance.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Law - Academic; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781789907674.00013 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:19296_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().