Sir John Shore and the Progress of the Adalat System
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Syllabus topic 1.4, "Progress of Adalat System under Sir John Shore"
Pages 136 to 140 of 491
In one line
Cornwallis left in 1793 and Sir John Shore inherited a beautifully designed system that was too slow, too expensive and too English for the country it served.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: Sir John Shore, who succeeded Lord Cornwallis as Governor-General in 1793, administered the new judicial system without altering its principles; the years that followed exposed its practical defects, principally the accumulation of arrears in the zillah courts, the cost and delay of proceedings conducted exclusively by covenanted English judges, and the exclusion of Indians from all but the lowest judicial offices, and the remedies adopted were the multiplication of courts, the extension of the jurisdiction of Indian judicial officers, and the reconstitution of the Sadar courts with professional judges by Regulation II of 1801.
Who Sir John Shore was
Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, had been a servant of the Company in Bengal for many years before he became Governor-General in 1793. You have already met him in this book: in the late 1770s he was asked to take charge of an adalat and asked to be excused, because of his fear of vexatious prosecutions in the Supreme Court.
His minute of that period is worth recalling here because it is the best contemporary statement of what it was like to be a judge in the Company's courts. The more effectually he performs his duty, he wrote, the more he maintains the dignity of his office and enforces his decisions, the more he is liable to prosecution; if in procuring the attendance of witnesses he exercises any compulsory power, or if to restrain trivial complaints and detect chicane he uses the discretionary powers the regulations give him of imposing a moderate fine or inflicting a mild corporal punishment, he may become subject to a suit that may end in his ruin. He added that the mode of transacting business in India was so fundamentally different from that in England, and so contrary to the letter and form of English laws, that scarcely any transaction tried by their standards would admit of a justification.
The man who wrote that in the 1770s was the man who had to make the Cornwallis system work in the 1790s, and it explains the character of his administration: cautious, unwilling to disturb what Cornwallis had settled, and preoccupied with the practical working of the courts rather than with their design.
What "progress of the Adalat system" means
MU's phrase is not a compliment or a criticism; it means simply the working out of the system in the years after 1793. Four things happened, and they are what the topic asks for.
Arrears. The zillah Diwani Adalats had one covenanted English judge apiece and the whole civil litigation of a district. Suits accumulated faster than they could be heard. Every subsequent change in this period is a response to that single fact.
Sir John Shore and the Progress of the Adalat System
Multiplication of courts and of judges. More courts were created and the number of judges increased. The Sadar Diwani Adalat, reconstituted in 1801 with a Chief Judge and two judges, was enlarged again by Regulation XII of 1811 to a Chief Judge and as many puisne judges as the Governor-General in Council should think necessary, and the same happened on the criminal side.
Indian judicial officers. Because there were never enough covenanted English judges, and because they were expensive, Indian judicial officers were given work at the bottom of the structure. The register of a zillah court, the sadar ameen and the munsif were empowered to try suits of small value, and their jurisdiction was extended by stages over the following decades. A munsif is a judge of the lowest civil court; a sadar ameen was the next grade above. Those two words are still in use in Indian district judiciaries, and they enter the system here.
The separation completed at the top. By Regulation II of 1801 the Sadar Diwani Adalat and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat ceased to be the Governor-General and the members of Council and were given a Chief Judge and puisne judges, and from that time both courts exercised their functions distinct from the legislative and executive authority of the State. The requirement that their proceedings be kept in English was relaxed, and copies of their proceedings ceased to be required except on appeal to His Majesty in Council or on a reference to the Governor-General in Council.
The criticism that mattered
The standing complaint against the Cornwallis system, made from within the service almost as soon as it was made, was that it was too English for the country.
Its procedure was elaborate; its judges were foreigners who did not speak the languages of the litigants; its costs were high; its delays were long; and its exclusion of Indians from every office above the lowest meant that the men who understood the country had no share in deciding its disputes. A cultivator with a small claim had, in practice, no court at all: the zillah court was distant, slow and expensive, and the munsif's jurisdiction was tiny.
Set against that is what the system achieved, and a fair answer says both. For the first time there were courts in the districts that were not the revenue department, presided over by judges with no financial interest in the outcome, applying a printed code with the reason for each rule stated in it, with an appeal that ran to a court which by 1801 was itself independent of the government. That is a real achievement and nothing like it had existed in Bengal before.
Sir John Shore and the Progress of the Adalat System
A worked example
A cultivator in 1800 has a claim for forty rupees against a neighbour.
Where does he go? The zillah Diwani Adalat is the court of general jurisdiction. It sits at the district headquarters, perhaps forty miles away; its judge is an Englishman; its procedure is written; its costs will exceed the claim; and its list is years long.
What does he do? In practice, not sue. He takes the dispute to the village, to the caste, to arbitration, or he abandons it.
What is the remedy the system found? The munsif: an Indian judicial officer, sitting locally, with jurisdiction over small suits, cheap and quick. The whole later history of the Indian civil judiciary is the progressive enlargement of that office, and it begins in the years this topic covers.
Distinctions worth having straight
| The design of 1793 | The working of it under Shore and after | |
|---|---|---|
| Judges | Covenanted English servants only | Indian munsifs and sadar ameens added at the bottom |
| Sadar courts | Governor-General in Council | Chief Judge and puisne judges, by Regulation II of 1801 |
| Number of courts | One zillah court per district | Multiplied, and judges increased, by Regulation XII of 1811 and after |
| Complaint | None yet | Arrears, cost, delay, distance, and a foreign procedure |
What beginners get wrong
"Sir John Shore introduced a new judicial plan." He did not. He administered the Cornwallis system, and the changes of this period are adjustments to it rather than a fourth plan. If a question asks for Shore's plan, the honest answer is that there was none, and to describe what actually happened instead.
"Indians were excluded from the judiciary until the British left." They were excluded from the higher offices for a long time, and admitted to the lower ones from this period onwards through the munsif and sadar ameen. The progressive enlargement of those offices, and eventually the admission of Indians to the higher grades, is a continuous story from here to the district judiciary of Module III.
"The system failed." It was too slow and too expensive, and it survived, with continual amendment, until the courts were reorganised after 1861. Failure is the wrong word for a structure that lasted seventy years and whose vocabulary, zillah judge, munsif, district judge, sessions, is still in use.
Limits and criticism, and the handover to Module II
The last thing to notice in Module I is what the Cornwallis system did not touch, because that is what Module II is about.
Everything in this chapter concerns the mofussil: the Company's courts, the Regulations, Hindu and Muslim law, the Sadar Adalats. Alongside it, unchanged, stood the Supreme Court at Calcutta, a King's court applying English law, with its own appeal to the King in Council, subject to none of these Regulations and bound by none of this Code.
Sir John Shore and the Progress of the Adalat System
Two systems, side by side, in the same provinces, for another sixty-eight years. The struggles between the civil and revenue courts that this chapter describes were internal to one of them. The struggle between the two systems is the subject of the next chapter, and its resolution is the Indian High Courts Act 1861.
Quick revision
- Sir John Shore succeeded Cornwallis as Governor-General in 1793 and administered his system without changing its principles.
- The practical defects that emerged: arrears, cost, delay, distance, and a procedure and a bench that were foreign to the litigants.
- Remedies: more courts and more judges; the extension of the jurisdiction of Indian judicial officers, the register, the sadar ameen and the munsif; and the reconstitution of the Sadar courts.
- Regulation II of 1801: the Sadar Diwani Adalat and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat given a Chief Judge and puisne judges, exercising their functions distinct from the legislative and executive authority of the State.
- Regulation XII of 1811: a Chief Judge and as many puisne judges as the Governor-General in Council thought necessary.
- Shore's own minute of the 1770s explains his caution: a judge who does his duty makes himself liable to prosecution, and scarcely any Indian transaction tried by English standards would admit of a justification.
Test yourself
1. What was Sir John Shore's judicial plan? There was none. He administered the system Cornwallis had established in 1793, and the changes of the period are adjustments to it: more courts, more judges, wider jurisdiction for Indian judicial officers, and the reconstitution of the Sadar courts by Regulation II of 1801.
2. Name the four practical defects that the working of the Cornwallis system exposed. Accumulating arrears in the zillah courts; high cost; long delay and distance for the litigant; and a procedure and a bench foreign to the people who used them, with Indians excluded from all but the lowest judicial offices.
3. What did Regulation II of 1801 do, and why does it complete the reform of 1793? It directed that the Sadar Diwani Adalat and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat, which until then consisted of the Governor-General and members of Council, should be composed of a Chief Judge and puisne judges, so that from that time both exercised their functions distinct from the legislative and executive authority of the State. It completes 1793 because Cornwallis had separated revenue from justice everywhere except at the top.
Sir John Shore and the Progress of the Adalat System
4. What is a munsif, and why does the office matter? The judge of the lowest civil court. It matters because it was through the munsif and the sadar ameen that Indians entered the judiciary at all, and because the progressive enlargement of that jurisdiction is the beginning of the district civil judiciary that exists today.
5. What did the whole Cornwallis system leave untouched, and why does that matter for the next module? The Supreme Court at Calcutta and the other King's courts in the Presidency Towns, which applied English law, were subject to none of the Regulations and had their own appeal to the King in Council. Two systems therefore continued side by side until the Indian High Courts Act 1861, and that is the subject of Module II.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.