I've got another article in Slate. I argue that Americans fear so-called "political correctness" because they imagine it as a system of thought control that harshly punishes people who get their words wrong. In fact, the idea behind what I would instead call "inclusive language" because that's a more neutral term is that if you want to be polite you have to learn about people's preferences in communication and so get to know who they are. Showing this kind of respect is an affirmation that the people having the conversation are part of the same community, e.g. a nation. Because I couldn't help myself, I brought in the Persianate idea of adab ("good manners"), which has at its core the idea that respectful words and deeds are important because they connect everyone in society.
14 November 2018
10 September 2018
Where the Indian Penal Code Comes From
The Indian Penal Code, which (with many amendments) is still the basis for criminal law in India, started as a utopian project that was intended to create law that would be neither British nor Indian but universal. Utilitarian thinkers, notably James Mill and Jeremy Bentham, were disillusioned with common law, the haphazard body of legal precedents in Britain. Utilitarian political philosophy required a legal code that spelled out what acts were criminal and what the penalties for committing them were. Everything would be rationally justified and explained.
Such a root and branch reform was too radical to try out in Britain so they used India as their laboratory. (This is not unlike how the modern civil service was developed in British India and later "brought home" to Britain.) Whatever the shortcomings of common law in early nineteenth-century Britain, jurisprudence in colonial India at the time was even more of a mess: The British ran eight different court systems and they all were based on disparate legal principles. If the law was meant to produce consistent results, even colonial officials admitted that things were going very wrong on their watch.
Mill proposed that his frenemy Lord Macaulay chair the drafting committee for the code. Macaulay is a famous villain in Indian history for, among other things, writing a snippy memo proposing that Indians learn English and that the East India Company should stop funding "useless" traditional Indian educational institutions. The committee released its draft code in 1837 and nothing happened for two decades. It took a major rebellion in 1857 and a complete reorganization of colonial government to make legal reform a priority. The Penal Code finally came into force in 1862.
The problem with Section 377 of the code, which criminalized same-sex relations, is not that Lord Macaulay was a racist (he was) or that the penal code was foisted on a colonial population by foreigners (it was). Rather the issue is that it was written at a particular historical moment by people with particular predilections, and we—or at least right-thinking people and as of last week the Indian Supreme Court—disagree with the drafters of the code that “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” is a meaningful phrase. In fact, Macaulay was far more of a prude than Bentham, who argued the surprisingly modern position that consensual sex couldn’t be a crime because there was no injury to anyone and people enjoyed it.
Never significantly amended, Section 377 endured as a Victorian artifact, when the Penal Code as a whole remained fit for purpose as the criminal law of India and other former colonies that adopted it, and has been amended many times. Detaching the Code from the broader evils of colonialism, it is a remarkable achievement. Although the prejudices of the drafters of any law mean that there is no such thing as a "universal" law, the draft code really does not reference any existing legal system in depth except for the Code for Louisiana, which was a similarly idealistic project from the decade before. The Utilitarians got their utopia.
[This is extra historical context for an article I wrote for Slate.]
Such a root and branch reform was too radical to try out in Britain so they used India as their laboratory. (This is not unlike how the modern civil service was developed in British India and later "brought home" to Britain.) Whatever the shortcomings of common law in early nineteenth-century Britain, jurisprudence in colonial India at the time was even more of a mess: The British ran eight different court systems and they all were based on disparate legal principles. If the law was meant to produce consistent results, even colonial officials admitted that things were going very wrong on their watch.
Mill proposed that his frenemy Lord Macaulay chair the drafting committee for the code. Macaulay is a famous villain in Indian history for, among other things, writing a snippy memo proposing that Indians learn English and that the East India Company should stop funding "useless" traditional Indian educational institutions. The committee released its draft code in 1837 and nothing happened for two decades. It took a major rebellion in 1857 and a complete reorganization of colonial government to make legal reform a priority. The Penal Code finally came into force in 1862.
The problem with Section 377 of the code, which criminalized same-sex relations, is not that Lord Macaulay was a racist (he was) or that the penal code was foisted on a colonial population by foreigners (it was). Rather the issue is that it was written at a particular historical moment by people with particular predilections, and we—or at least right-thinking people and as of last week the Indian Supreme Court—disagree with the drafters of the code that “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” is a meaningful phrase. In fact, Macaulay was far more of a prude than Bentham, who argued the surprisingly modern position that consensual sex couldn’t be a crime because there was no injury to anyone and people enjoyed it.
Never significantly amended, Section 377 endured as a Victorian artifact, when the Penal Code as a whole remained fit for purpose as the criminal law of India and other former colonies that adopted it, and has been amended many times. Detaching the Code from the broader evils of colonialism, it is a remarkable achievement. Although the prejudices of the drafters of any law mean that there is no such thing as a "universal" law, the draft code really does not reference any existing legal system in depth except for the Code for Louisiana, which was a similarly idealistic project from the decade before. The Utilitarians got their utopia.
[This is extra historical context for an article I wrote for Slate.]
10 May 2018
What I was thinking about a year ago
5 June 2017 - It is Monday, the day after the day after. I am alone in a gallery in the British Museum with the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II. It is late afternoon and rain is battering the glass panels in the ceiling. The fine weather of the past week is already a distant memory, but that’s how summer works in England. The cuneiform inscription around the king reads, among other things “I am important; I am magnificent” before describing how brutally he used to kill his enemies. He has the best brutality, everybody says so.
Before coming to the museum, I had spent the day up the road at the British Library reading eighteenth-century manuscripts. On Saturday night, three terrorists had driven a van into pedestrians at London Bridge and attacked people with knives at the nearby Borough Market. As I went about my day, reading in the library and meeting with colleagues also going about their day, I followed the thread updating on The Guardian’s website, learning more details as the authorities released them. Mostly though I was concerned with honing an argument about whether comical poetry written in Delhi three hundred years ago was a social critique or just harmless fun. Armed police had shot the terrorists dead in eight minutes. I am not a callow, out of touch academic. I am fighting back.
Before coming to the museum, I had spent the day up the road at the British Library reading eighteenth-century manuscripts. On Saturday night, three terrorists had driven a van into pedestrians at London Bridge and attacked people with knives at the nearby Borough Market. As I went about my day, reading in the library and meeting with colleagues also going about their day, I followed the thread updating on The Guardian’s website, learning more details as the authorities released them. Mostly though I was concerned with honing an argument about whether comical poetry written in Delhi three hundred years ago was a social critique or just harmless fun. Armed police had shot the terrorists dead in eight minutes. I am not a callow, out of touch academic. I am fighting back.
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