You Can’t Trust Them

If colonialism is a system of forced rule by an outside entity, why did the British introduce jury trials in India? Were they fair? This episode looks at two remarkable trials: the first is a murder trial over the killing of a British tea plantation owner by his workers, and the other is the 1908 trial of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Tilak was the publisher of the most widely read newspaper in Western India and faced charges of sedition, that is, promoting “disaffection” for the king. Taken together, the trials show that the jury trial was meant to legitimize the British as an empire of law, but the way the trials were conducted revealed something more sinister.

Further reading

• Kolsky, Elizabeth. Colonial Justice in British India: White Violence and the Rule of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.cambridge.org ↗
• McClure, Alistair. Trials of Sovereignty: Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.cambridge.org ↗
• Jaffe, James. Trial by Jury in India: A History, 1862–1973. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026.cambridge.org ↗