Indian Evidence Act

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Indian Evidence Act, act passed by the British Parliament in 1872 that set forth the rules of evidence admissible in Indian courts and that had far-reaching consequences for the traditional systems of caste government in India.

Since ancient times, the way of resolving intracaste disputes had been by discussing the grievances in open meetings of the caste council. All information that might possibly bear on the case, however indirect, was allowable. Because the persons involved normally knew one another well, possible partiality could easily be identified and obviated. The defendant knew and approved of the circumstances and procedures of his trial. But much of the evidence was hearsay, the entire proceedings were oral, and there was no documentary evidence at all.

The procedures of state justice under the Indian Evidence Act put in the place of caste justice an unfamiliar system in which an outsider (a British judge) with no knowledge of the caste and the circumstances of the case would sit in judgment and adjudicate it according to rules that were often incomprehensible to the litigants. Though the act represented an attempt to introduce greater efficiency and uniformity into judicial procedures, it enabled relatively wealthy Indians (who could afford to hire lawyers) to bypass the caste court entirely and take their cases directly to the state court of justice. This undermined, to a certain extent, the judicial functions and authority of the panchayats, the governing councils of the castes, and resulted in a kind of tug-of-war between custom and law. A number of castes continue to hold their own trials of caste members, independent of the verdicts handed down in state courts.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Maren Goldberg.