f Secularisation and Theologisation

The formation of Hindu law has been chronicled by historians and others as a complex process involving the negation of customary law and the upholding of sacred texts, upon which codes of law were formulated. This paper seeks to interrogate the truth behind this narrative by examining the category of Hindu law and the processes that allowed it to emerge within the British colonial legal imagination. It argues that the making of Hindu law was a process of theologisation within an outer framework of secularisation i.e. the Christian theological framework embedded in the secular framework of Western legal epistemology was the background by which “Hindu law” emerged in the eyes of the colonisers. It examines Western legal notions of divine law, natural law, and human law and the role of historical jurisprudence in this process. It finally concludes by examining the implications of the argument for the formation of secular legal systems.