3 - Order out of Trouble: Jurisdictional Tensions in Catholic and Islamic Empires

Summary

An Augustinian friar traveling through Bengal in 1640 found himself in the uncomfortable middle of a criminal case. One of his Muslim attendants had killed a peacock while the traveling party was stranded overnight in a Hindu village. After making a meal of the bird, the party had been unsuccessful in hiding the deed from the villagers, who were predictably scandalized at the killing of a sacred bird. The group reached the safety of a nearby town, but there the Hindu guides denounced the killing to local Mughal authorities, and all the travelers were immediately thrown in jail. Later, the shiqdar, a revenue collector responsible for the local administration of justice, decided to punish just the man who had killed the bird. The Augustinian argued the defense; surely the man had “committed no fault against God or against His precepts or those of your Alcoran [Quraʾn].” But the shiqdar was adamant. Bengalis were to “live under their own laws and customs.” Muslims in a Hindu district had to follow the laws and practices of Hindus.

The principles guiding the Mughal official certainly would have been less foreign to the friar than he let on. As the last chapter shows, it was more common than not for both colonizing and colonized in early modern polities to recognize the existence of multiple legal authorities.