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The Malabar Hill murder trial of 1925

Sovereignty, law and sexual politics in colonial princely India

Bentley College, Cambridge MA

This article seeks to address issues relating to sovereignty, law and sexual politics in colonial princely India through an examination of the Malabar Hill Murder Trial of 1925 in the Bombay High Court. In this particular case, the Hindu Maratha Maharaja of Indore was charged with the murder of his Muslim courtesan's lover. The ensuing trial illuminates two important developments in late colonial Indian law. First, it reveals how British courts empowered some Indian women as individual agents before the law, despite the restrictions of pardah (or seclusion), to contest and resist indigenous patriarchies. Second, it exposes the complex rela-tionship between Indian kingship and British paramountcy. Due to their position as semi-autonomous rulers, who were not under the restrictions of British Indian law, native princes were exempt from being tried in British Indian courts on the basis of their treaty regulations. This case discusses the extent to which the sexual desires and love unions of the Indian kings were affected by the princely state's fraught relationship with the colonial regime. In this in-stance, the Malabar Hill Murder trial cost the ruler his gaddi (throne) when he was compelled to abdicate.

Indian Economic & Social History Review, Vol. 46, No. 3, 373-400 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/001946460904600305


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