Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:26:01.042Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Campaign for Islamic Law in Fiji: Comparison, Codification, Application

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2014

Riyad Sadiq Koya
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In September 1939, Fiji's Legislative Council debated a testamentary disposition bill, patterned after the English Inheritance (Family Provision) Act of 1938. The bill's introduction followed a routine procedure of the transplantation of English legislation to colonial jurisdictions. The bill empowered the court to modify wills in which the testator had deprived the spouse and children of reasonable maintenance. As debate ensued, Said Hasan, the recently nominated Muslim Member of the Legislative Council, rose to offer his support. He noted that the bill gave partial effect to “the underlying principle of Mohammedan law.” The “policy” of Mohammedan law, he argued, was to prevent the testator from interfering with the devolution of property to family members in “fixed and definite shares.” A testator was entitled to will only a “bequeathable third” of the estate beyond the fixed shares assigned to dependents. Hasan further declared that the bill was a “tacit admission” of the injustice suffered by dependents excluded from their rightful share in family property.

Type
Articles
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 853 - 881
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. For the concept of a legal “transplant,” see Watson, Alan, “Introduction to Legal Transplants,” in Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law, 2nd ed. (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1993), 21–29Google Scholar; and Watson, Alan, “From Legal Transplants to Legal Formants,” American Journal of Comparative Law 43 (1995): 469–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Fiji Legislative Council Debates, September 7, 1939, 112–13.

3. Under the English Act, the beneficiaries entitled to maintenance included the surviving spouse, an infant or otherwise incapacitated son, and an unmarried or incapacitated daughter. “Inheritance (Family Provision) Act, 1938,” Modern Law Review 3 (1939): 53Google Scholar.

4. Fiji Legislative Council Debates, September 7, 1939, 112–15.

5. Ibid., September 11, 1939, 136–37.

6. Letter from the acting colonial secretary to Hasan, dated August 31, 1939, excerpted in a letter from C.R.W. Seton to attorney general, dated August 29, 1946, located in the National Archives at Kew (hereinafter, “NA”), Colonial Office (hereinafter “CO”), 83/240/6.

7. For discussion of the campaign, see Ali, Ahmed, “Muslim Separatism,” in Fiji and the Franchise: A History of Political Representation, 1900–1937 (New York: iUniverse, Inc., 2008)Google Scholar, 195; see also Mayer, Adrian, Peasants in the Pacific: A Study of Fiji Indian Rural Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961)Google Scholar, 152. There is brief mention of the demand for recognition of “separate Islamic law” by Sharma, Guru Dayal in Memories of Fiji: 1887–1987 (Suva: Guru Dayal Sharma, 1987), 112Google Scholar. Kelly, John D. discusses the earliest stages of the campaign in A Politics of Virtue: Hinduism, Sexuality, and Countercolonial Discourse in Fiji (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991)Google Scholar, 189.

8. Metcalf, Thomas R., “Governing Colonial Peoples,” in Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2007), 26–27Google Scholar.

9. For a further account of Indian codification, see Jain, Mahabir Prashad, “Codification of Law (1833–1882),” in Outlines of Indian Legal and Constitutional History, 6th ed. (New Delhi: LexisNexus Butterworths Wadhwa Nagpur, 2012), 417–62Google Scholar.

10. Metcalf, “Governing Colonial Peoples,” 31.

11. Ibid., 30.

12. Fyzee defines “Muhammadan law” as “that portion of the Islamic Civil Law which is applied to Muslims as a personal law.” Fyzee, Asaf A.A., Outlines of Muhammadan Law, 4th ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, 2. In this article, I hew to the language of various officials and petitioners in employing terminology such as “Mohamedan law,” “Muhammadan Law,” “Sheria,” “Shariat,” “Muslim Personal Law,” and “Islamic law.” A fulcrum point for this usage was the passage, in British India, of the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937, which began, but did not necessarily complete, a shift from “Muhammadan” to “Muslim” and “Islamic” in legal debates.

13. Ilbert, Courtenay, “Application of European Law to Natives of India,” Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation 1 (1896–1897): 225Google Scholar.

14. For an individual breakdown by recipient colony, see Clarke, Colin, Peach, Ceri, and Vertovec, Steven, “Introduction,” in South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity, ed. Clarke, Colin, Peach, Ceri, and Vertovec, Steven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, 9.

15. Lal, Brij V., Girmitayas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians (Canberra: Journal of Pacific History, 1983)Google Scholar, 2, 104. Lal's study is based on emigration passes from Calcutta. For a study of South Indian Muslim migration through the port of Madras, see Brennan, Lance, McDonald, John, and Shlomowitz, Ralph, “The Origins of South Indian Muslim Indentured Migration to Fiji,” Journal Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 13 (1992): 402–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Gillion, Kenneth L., “The Sources of Indian Emigration to Fiji,” Population Studies 10 (1956): 139–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. The background of the Keralite Muslim community of Fiji is elaborated in a Golden Jubilee publication of the Ma'unatul Islam Association of Fiji (1995).

18. On Muhurram or “tazia,” see Mishra, Sudesh, “Tazia Fiji!: The Place of Potentiality,” in Transnational South Asians: The Making of a Neo-Diaspora, ed. Koshy, Susan and Radhakrishnan, R. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 71–94Google Scholar. Kelly, John D. contrasts tazia to Hindu festivals in “From Holi to Diwali in Fiji: An Essay on Ritual and History,” Man, New Series 23 (1988): 40–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. For assessments of Fiji's Muslim population, see especially the work of Ali, Ahmed, including “The Emergence of Muslim Separatism in Fiji,” Plural Societies 8 (1977): 57–69Google Scholar; “Muslims in Fiji: A Brief Survey,” Journal Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 2 (1980–1981): 174–82Google Scholar; “Remembering,” in Bittersweet, ed. Lal, Brij V. (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004), 71–87Google Scholar; and “Muslim Separatism” in Fiji and the Franchise: A History of Political Representation, 1900–1937 (New York: iUniverse, Inc., 2008), 185–201Google Scholar. See also Haniff, Ghulam M., “The Status of Muslims in Contemporary Fiji,” Journal Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 11 (1990): 118–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ali, Jan, “Islam and Muslims in Fiji,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 24 (2004): 141–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Among these Anjumans were the Anjuman-i-Hidayat-Islam (1915), the Anjuman Ishait El Islam (1916), and the Anjuman-e-Islam (1919). Ali, “The Emergence of Muslim Separatism,” 59.

21. For a contemporary account, see Lal, Brij V. and Yadav, Yogendra, “Hinduism Under Indenture: Totaram Sanadhya's Account of Fiji,” Journal of Pacific History 30 (1995): 99–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. From the perspective of a Methodist missionary, see Burton, John Wear, The Fiji of Today (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1910)Google Scholar.

22. “Din Mohammed,” in Girmit: The Indenture Experience in Fiji, ed. Ali, Ahmed (Suva: Fiji Museum, 1979)Google Scholar, 13.

23. Mishra, Vijay, The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary (London and New York: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar, 32.

24. Al Haj Sher Mohammed Khan, History of Islam and the Muslims in Fiji (Suva: Fiji Muslim League, 197-), 37. The History is available at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand. Unconventional in style, Khan's History is an interesting source on early Muslim religious activity in Fiji. In a “Preface” to the volume, Fiji Muslim League President S.M.K. Sherani indicates that Khan relied on oral testimony from early “pioneers.” My thanks to Teresa Teaiwa for retrieving a copy of the work.

25. Khan, History of Islam, 14–21.

26. See especially Ali, “The Emergence of Indian Separatism.” See also Gillion's, Kenneth L.The Fiji Indians: Challenge to European Dominance (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; John D. Kelly's discussion of the Arya Samaj–Sanatan Dharm rivalry in A Politics of Virtue; and Lal, Brij V., Broken Waves: A History of Fiji in the Twentieth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press, 1992), 77–79Google Scholar.

27. Ali, “The Emergence of Muslim Separatism,” 61.

28. Khan, History of Islam, 23–24.

29. Kevin Luke Daley, “Communalism and the Challenge of Fiji Indian Unity,” (PhD diss., University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 1997), 306.

30. “Extract from Debate in Legislative Council, November 5th, 1929,” National Archives of India (hereinafter “NAI”), Education, Health and Lands Department, Lands & Overseas Branch (hereinafter “EHL-L&O”), 1932, File No. 276.

31. “The Question of a Separate Muhammadan Representation in the Legislative Council,” NA, CO 83/192/11.

32. Victor McGusty here paraphrases Hasan's report on the meeting in “Note on an Interview with the Acting Colonial Secretary,” May 12, 1936, NA, CO 84/215/1.

33. Ali, “The Emergence of Muslim Separatism,” 68; and Lal, Broken Waves, 91–97.

34. For an important argument regarding the centrality of community to British rule, see Kelly, John D. and Kaplan, Martha, Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

35. Chief Justice Seton suggested that they arrived in Fiji at the end of 1930. Seton to Alexander Grantham, December 28, 1945, NA, CO 83/240/6.

36. Khan mistakenly dates their arrival from Amritsar, Punjab to 1936. Khan, History of Islam, 26.

37. Ali, “The Emergence of Muslim Separatism,” 67.

38. A.R. Sahu and others to Governor Fletcher, March 4. 1935, NA, CO 83/210/7. See also Ali, “Muslim Separatism,” 195.

39. Snow, Philip, Years of Hope: Cambridge, Colonial Administrator in the South Seas, and Cricket (London: The Radcliffe Press, 1997)Google Scholar, 39. Hasan's status as a superior “legal scholar” is also confirmed by Fiji lawyer Karam Chand Ramrakha, a former member of the colonial Legislative Council. Lal, Brij V., A Vision for Change: A.D. Patel and the Politics of Fiji (Canberra: Australia National University E Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 31.

40. Mitchell to Secretary of State for the Colonies (hereinafter “SSC”), September 23, 1943, NA, CO 83/235/5.

41. “Memorandum on Proposed Constitutional Changes, Reorganisation of Native Affairs Administration, and abolition of post of Secretary for Indian Affairs,” NA, CO 83/235/5.

42. Gillion terms them “Punjabi brothers.” Gillion, The Fiji Indians 113.

43. Manto, Sadaat Hasan, “Nur Jehan,” in Stars from Another Sky: The Bombay Film World of the 1940s, trans. Hasan, Khalid (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2010)Google Scholar, 161. I thank Rohit De for this reference.

44. Ayesha Jalal mentions the two brothers briefly in her biography of Manto, The Pity of Partition: Manto's Life, Times, and Work across the India–Pakistan Divide (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013)Google Scholar, 30. On the Kashmiri origins of the family, see page 29.

45. Wadhawan, Jagdish Chander (trans. Ratan, Jai), Manto Naama: The Life of Sadaat Hasan Manto (New Delhi: Roli Books, 1998)Google Scholar, 16.

46. “Fijian Muslims want to be governed by Islamic Laws,” Dawn, December 12, 1954.

47. Khojas were governed partially by customary law, with the capability to testate the whole of their property at death. Fyzee, Outlines, 65. For recent treatments of Khoja custom, see Purohit, Teena, The Aga Khan Case: Religion and Identity in Colonial India (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shodhan, Amrita, A Question of Community: Religious Groups and Colonial Law (Calcutta: Samya, 2001)Google Scholar; and Sturman, Rachel, The Government of Social Life in Colonial India: Liberalism, Religious Law, and Women's Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 198–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. Sharafi, Mitra, “A New History of Colonial Lawyering: Likhovski and Legal Identities in the British Empire,” Law and Social Inquiry 32 (2007): 1062CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49. Said Hasan, “Preliminary Observations,” NA, CO 83/211/12.

50. On Ali's apologetics, see Powell, Avril A., “Islamic Modernism and Women's Status: The Influence of Syed Ameer Ali,” in Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and the Colonial Experience in South Asia, ed. Powell, Avril A. and Lambert-Hurley, Siobhan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 282–309Google Scholar.

51. For a cautionary account of the difficulties for Indian women claiming property rights, see Basu, Srimati, She Comes to Take Her Rights: Indian Women, Property, and Propriety (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

52. I distinguish the case of the mobility of law for Indian indentured laborers from the typical “encounter” between European and indigenous law described by scholars of legal pluralism. Hooker, M.B., Legal Pluralism: An Introduction to Colonial and Neo-colonial Laws (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)Google Scholar, 2; see also the edited volume by Mommsen, Wolfgang J. and de Moor, Jaap A., European Expansion and Indigenous Law in 19th- and 20th-Century Africa and Asia (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1992)Google Scholar. Hallaq, Wael B. also uses the term “encounter” to describe the interaction of the European nation-state with Sharìa: Sharìa: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 359–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. For discussion of legislation in British Guiana and Trinidad, see Mohapatra, Prabhu P., “‘Restoring the Family’: Wife Murders and the Making of a Sexual Contract for Indian Immigrant Labour in the British Caribbean Colonies, 1860–1920,” Studies in History 11 (1995): 227–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Patchett, Keith W., “Some Aspects of Marriage and Divorce in the West Indies,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 8 (1959): 632–77Google Scholar; and Jha, Jagdish Chandra, “The Background of the Legalisation of Non-Christian Marriages in Trinidad and Tobago,” in East Indians in the Caribbean: Colonialism and the Struggle for Identity, ed. Brereton, Bridget and Dookeran, Winston (Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1982), 117–39Google Scholar. For Mauritius, see Carter's, MarinaLakshmi's Legacy: The Testimonies of Indian Women in 19th Century Mauritius (Rose-Hill, Mauritius: Editions de L'Ocean Indien, 1994)Google Scholar; and Servants, Sirdars & Settlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834–1874 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

54. Kelly, John D., “Fear of Culture: British Regulation of Indian Marriage in Post-Indenture Fiji,” Ethnohistory 36 (1989): 375CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See the remarks of Diwan Bahadur M. Ramachandra Rao and Acting Advocate General S. Srinivasa Iyengar, respectively, for this position, in NAI, Commerce and Industry Department, Emigration Branch, June 1916, Nos. 10–23.

55. Hart, Herbert L.A., The Concept of Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, 21, 24.

56. Kelly, A Politics of Virtue, 176. McElwaine to colonial secretary, June 2, 1928, NAI, Education, Health and Lands Department, Overseas Branch (hereinafter “EHL-OS”), February 1929, Nos. 32–33.

57. Kelly, A Politics of Virtue, 176.

58. NAI, EHL-OS, August 1926, Nos. 7–11.

59. NAI, EHL-OS, May 1930, Part B, Nos. 107–10.

60. Kelly, A Politics of Virtue, 187.

61. Those consultations are summarized in a memo from the McElwaine to the colonial secretary, dated April 4, 1930. Copy in NAI, EHL-OS, January 1932, Part B, Proceedings Nos. 21–27.

62. This position was outlined in Ram Chandra, joint secretary to the Government of India (hereinafter, “GOI”) to the under-secretary of state, Economics and Overseas Department, India Office, dated January 5, 1931, in NAI, EHL-OS, January 1932, Part B, Proceedings Nos. 21–27.

63. Quoted in Daley, “Communalism,” 299.

64. Fletcher to SSC, January 26, 1932, NA, CO 83/196/13.

65. Fletcher to SSC, January 26, 1932.

66. E.J. Turner, secretary, Economic and Overseas Department to secretary to GOI, Department of Education, Health and Lands, April 12, 1932, NAI, EHL-L&O, File No. 292.

67. Pearson to Bajpai, July 20, 1931, NAI, EHL-OS, Part B, January 1932, Nos. 21–27. In a reply to Pearson, dated January 6, 1932, Ram Chandra of the Overseas Branch noted that such information “does not appear to have been collected.”

68. For Pearson's request, see NAI, EHL-OS, Part B, February 1932, Nos. 102–5. The GOI supplied information for the purchase of the fifth edition of Ameer Ali's two volume treatise. The fourth edition is entitled Mohammedan Law: Compiled from the Authorities in the Original Arabic (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1912–1917)Google Scholar.

69. Kelly, A Politics of Virtue, 188–189.

70. J.R. Pearson, “A Survey of the Position of Indians in Fiji, September 1932,” NA, CO 83/199/14.

71. This paragraph draws from a “Memorandum” summarizing the longer campaign for the application of Islamic law enclosed in Grantham to SSC, October 2, 1946, NA, CO 83/240/6.

72. Accounts of this meeting also drawn from the memorandum enclosed in Grantham to SSC, October 2, 1946. Kunwar B. Singh, elected to the Council in 1932, also attended the meeting.

73. Here quoting from the Guardian and Ward Ordinance. The bills, Hasan's covering letter of October 31, 1934, and his memorandum entitled “Preliminary Observations” are located in NA, CO 83/211/12.

74. On the rules of decision for civil courts, see Mahmood, Tahir, Muslim Personal Law: Role of the State in the Subcontinent (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1977), 12–15Google Scholar.

75. A.G. Sahu Khan, “Memorandum on ‘Divorce,’ ‘Marriage,’ and ‘Inheritance’ as affecting the Moslem community in Fiji,” NA, CO 83/211/12. Sahu Khan apparently had now reversed his earlier approval of Ordinance No. 1 of 1930.

76. Rahim, Abdur, The Principles of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, According to the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i and Hanbali Schools (London: Luzac and Co., 1911)Google Scholar; Mulla, Dinshah F., Principles of Mahomedan Law, 9th ed. (Bombay: J.M. Pandia & Company, 1929)Google Scholar; Ameer Ali, Mohammedan Law; Ali, Mohammed, The Holy Qur-án, containing the Arabic Text with English Translation and Commentary (Lahore: Ahmadiyya Anjuman-I-Ishaat-I-Islam, 1920).Google Scholar The editions I cite here are approximated; referencing within the correspondence cited is limited.

77. Ram Chandra, Joint Secretary to GOI to under-secretary of state for India, January 5, 1931, NAI, EHL-OS, Part B, January 1932, Nos. 21–27.

78. Ransley S. Thacker, “Minute,” December 12, 1934, NA, CO 83/211/12.

79. See “Minute by the Attorney General,” ND, NA, CO 83/211/12.

80. Draft letter from R. Peel to the secretary of the Education, Health and Lands Department, January 6, 1934, in India Office Records, Public & Judicial Department, 8th Series, File No. 232 of 1935. (Format for citation hereinafter: “IOR L/PJ/8/232–35”; all such files held at the British Library.)

81. No. F. 73/36, Girja Shankar Bajpai to under-secretary of state for India, India Office, December 17, 1936, NA, CO 83/217/8.

82. Extract of letter No. 248-I from the Government of the United Provinces, July 1, 1936; Shah Muhammad Sulaiman, “Opinion,” May 26, 1936, NA, CO 83/217/8. The full range of consultations made by the GOI is not evident in the Colonial Office file. Parallel files at the National Archives of India were not located upon request in 2010.

83. Sulaiman, “Opinion,” May 26, 1936.

84. Letter from the Government of the United Provinces, July 1, 1936.

85. See NA, CO 83/223/2.

86. Indian Reform League to colonial secretary, December 20, 1928, NAI, EHL-OS, January 1930, Part B, Nos. 20–23. India's Child Marriage Restraint Act, passed in 1929, set the minimum ages of marriage at 18 and 14. Forbes, Geraldine, Women in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, 88.

87. Richards to SSC, February 25, 1938, NA, CO 83/223/2.

88. Office note, October 7, 1938, NA, CO 83/223/2.

89. See NAI, EHL-L&O, 1936, File No. 18 for a copy of the ordinance.

90. As indicated in W. Ormsby Gore to Arthur Richards, February 13, 1937, IOR, L/PJ/8/232-5.

91. McDonald to Fiji governor, October 14, 1938, NA, CO 83/223/2. Office notes in that file contained objections to the compulsory application of Muslim personal law in both guardianship and inheritance.

92. Office note dated May 15, 1938, NA, CO 83/223/2.

93. “Extract from the Minutes of a Meeting of Executive Council Held on the 5th of August …,” NA, CO 83/232/3.

94. Frost, Richard, Enigmatic Proconsul: Sir Philip Mitchell and the Twilight of Empire (London and New York: The Radcliffe Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

95. Philip Euen Mitchell to SSC, January 21, 1944, NA, CO 83/236/1.

96. Draft letter from J.B. Sidebotham to Grantham, December 13, 1944, NA, CO 83/240/6.

97. Seton to Grantham, December 28, 1945.

98. Note by A. Bevir, June 7, 1938, NA, CO 83/223/2.

99. Note by Kenneth Roberts–Wray, June 15, 1938, NA, CO 83/223/2.

100. Draft letter from McDonald to Richards, October 14, 1938, NA, CO 83/223/2.

101. Note by Roberts–Wray, June 15, 1938.

102. McDonald to Richards, October 14, 1938. “Assessors” here refers to local experts.

103. Letter from Hasan, ND, excerpted in the “Memorandum” enclosed in Grantham to SSC, October 2, 1946.

104. Here recalling Kelly's discussion of the refusal to admit Indian “custom” while facilitating institutions of “indirect rule” for native Fijians. Kelly, “Fear of Culture.”

105. “Minutes of a Meeting of Executive Council Held on the 5th of August …”

106. Governor's Deputy to SSC, November 20, 1944, in NA, CO 83/232/3.

107. “Memorandum” enclosed in Governor Grantham to SSC, October 2, 1946.

108. Fiji Legislative Council Debates, August 26, 1943, 62.

109. Ibid., 64.

110. Ibid., 69.

111. Ibid., 73–74.

112. Ibid., 66–67.

113. Hasan et al. to Mitchell, September 2, 1943, in NA, CO 83/236/1. Mirza Salim Buksh, who would succeed A.R. Manu as the nominated Muslim member in 1947, was a signatory to the letter.

114. Mitchell to SSC, January 21, 1944.

115. Mitchell to SSC, May 13, 1933; Mitchell to SSC, July 14, 1944, in NA, CO 83/240/6.

116. Telegram from M.S. Buksh to Governor, March 13, 1944, in NA, CO 83/240/6.

117. Mitchell to SSC, September 19, 1944, NA, CO 83/240/6.

118. Owen C.K. Corrie to Governor's Deputy, September 1, 1944, NA, CO 83/240/6.

119. Grantham to Sidebotham, March 25, 1946, in NA, CO 83/240/6.

120. The “Memorandum” enclosed in Grantham to SSC, October 2, 1946, in NA, CO 83/240/6, suggests that Vaughan drafted the bills in “consultation” with Hasan. Sahu Khan took a more “liberal” position on inheritance, arguing that application in cases of intestacy was sufficient. See also Vaughan to Seton, August 12, 1946, NA, CO 83/240/6.

121. MacMillan, A.W., Notes on Indians in Fiji (Suva: Government Printer, 1944), 9–12Google Scholar. An article from the Fiji Times and Herald of December 21, 1944 attached to the volume indicates that Vishnu Deo asked for the withdrawal of the “booklet” as it promoted “ill-will and hostility” between peoples.

122. Seton to Grantham, December 28, 1946.

123. Grantham to SSC, October 2, 1946, NA, CO 83/240/6.

124. Vaughan, “Memorandum on the Succession (Islamic Law) Ordinance, 1946,” NA, CO 83/240/6.

125. A.R. Sahu Khan had made this request in consulting with Vaughan and Hasan on the draft bills. See “Memorandum” enclosed in Grantham to SSC, October 2, 1946.

126. Wilson, Roland Knyvet, Anglo-Muhammadan Law, A Digest (Calcutta and Simla: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1921)Google Scholar; Ilbert, “Application of European Law,” 226. The first edition referred to by Ilbert was published in 1895.

127. Vaughan, “Memorandum on the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Bill, 1946,” NA, CO 83/240/6.

128. Vaughan, “Memorandum, The Succession (Islamic Law) Ordinance, 1946,” NA, CO 83/240/6.

129. Draft letter from Creech Jones to Fiji governor, May 7, 1947, NA, CO 83/240/6.

130. The petitions are available in NA, CO 83/240/6.

131. A point emphasized by Ali, Azra Asghar in The Emergence of Feminism Among Indian Muslim Women, 1920–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 146–52Google Scholar. See also Saiyid, Dushka, Muslim Women of the British Punjab: From Seclusion to Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 29–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Minault, Gail, Gender, Language, and Learning: Essays in Indo-Muslim Cultural History (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2009), 77–78Google Scholar; and Lateef, Shahida, Muslim Women in India: Political and Private Realities (London and New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd., 1990), 70–71Google Scholar.

132. Hasan to acting colonial secretary, September 2, 1947, in CO 83/247/3.

133. Office Note, November 13, 1946, NA, CO 83/240/6.

134. Arthur George Lowndes stresses the “sound and economic size” of individual family farm plots as opposed to the excessive fragmentation of estates in impoverished Asia. Lowndes, “The Sugar Industry of Fiji, in South Pacific Enterprise: The Colonial Sugar Refining Company Limited (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1956)Google Scholar, 72. Michael Moynagh argues that the “settlement” of Indians on individual farms relied upon uncompensated family labor. Moynagh, Brown or White?: A History of the Fiji Sugar Industry, 1873–1973 (Canberra: Australia National University, 1981)Google ScholarPubMed, 115.

135. Majumdar, Rochona, “Nationalizing the Joint Hindu Family: The Hindu Code Debates, 1955–1956,” in Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009), 206–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

136. For Hugh H. Ragg's remarks recalling Hasan's speech, see “Debate in Fiji Legislative Council on Motion to Amend the Constitution,” December 21, 1946, NA, CO 83/239/4. A.R. Sahu Khan endorsed and amplified Hasan's remarks in that same debate, whereas H.B. Gibson claimed that Europeans and Muslims were both minorities needing to advance their own rights against the threat of Indian agitation. Buksh excerpted the speech in 1948; see Extracts from Debates of September Session, 1948, September 22, 1948, NA, CO 83/245/6. Deo recalled the debate at the Toorak mosque in Fiji Legislative Council Debates, December 9, 1949, at 365. A.D. Patel's rebutted Hasan's speech in “In Defense of Democracy, 2 December 1948,” in A Vision for Change: Speeches and Writings of A.D. Patel, 1929–1969, ed. Lal, Brij V. (Canberra: Australia National University E Press, 2011), 24–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This list is not exhaustive.

137. Mohammed Hanif Khan, “Memorandum on Constitutional Changes in Fiji,” in NA, CO 1036/1126. The memorandum dates from 1965.

138. See correspondence in NA, CO 1036/1124.

139. See NA, Foreign and Commonwealth Office File No. 32/584.

140. Norton, Robert, “Reconciling Ethnicity and Nation: Contending Discourses in Fiji's Constitutional Reform,” The Contemporary Pacific 12 (2000): 95–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.