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Hindu law, as a historical term, refers to the code of laws applied to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs in British India. [1] [2] [3] Hindu law, in modern scholarship, also refers to the legal theory, jurisprudence and philosophical reflections on the nature of law discovered in ancient and medieval era Indian texts. [4]
Thus, the common source of classical Hindu law was the community and, therefore, laws on a whole were highly decentralized and diverse. [3] These laws were dictated by various corporate groups such as merchant leaders, heads of caste, and kings, and because of the diverse leadership, these laws were particular to a set place. [ 4 ]
Modern Hindu law is one of the personal law systems of India along with similar systems for Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, and Christians. This Hindu Personal Law or modern Hindu law is an extension of the Anglo-Hindu Law developed during the British colonial period in India, which is in turn related to the less well-defined tradition of Classical Hindu Law.
The [British] colonial administration began the codification of Hindu and Muslim laws in 1772 and continued through the next century, with emphasis on certain texts as the authentic "sources" of the law and custom of Hindus and Muslims, which in fact devalued and retarded those dynamic social systems.
Because of the social implication revolving around the importance of the household and the community in the creation and administration of law, Hindu law jurisprudentially subordinated state law to the law of castes and life-stages (varnasramadharma). [3] In this manner, each caste and life-stage was responsible for highly localized occupations.
The Constitution of India is the longest written constitution for a country, containing 395 articles, 12 schedules, 105 amendments and 117,369 words.. Law in India primarily evolved from customary practices and religious prescriptions in the Indian subcontinent, to the modern well-codified acts and laws based on a constitution in the Republic of India.
The root texts of ancient Hindu jurisprudence and law are the Dharma-sūtras. These express that Shruti, Smṛti and Acara are sources of jurisprudence and law. [30] The precedence of these sources is declared in the opening verses of each of the known, surviving Dharma-sūtras. For example, [30]
Dharmaśāstra became influential in modern colonial India history, when they were formulated by early British colonial administrators to be the law of the land for all non-Muslims (Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs) in the Indian subcontinent, after Sharia set by Emperor Aurangzeb, was already accepted as the law for Muslims in colonial India.