Abstract
Amartya Sen has compellingly argued in The Idea of Justice that far from being a value-neutral term, ‘justice’ is a relative one, with competing claims made on it by different parties in any given context. Does this mean that justice is an empty concept, bereft of any meaning or devoid of self explanatory power? This special issue seeks to find answers to this question. ‘Justice’ came to embrace myriad meanings for the British Empire. Enlightenment thinking that hinged on rationality and logic, discarding superstition and religion, provided a platform for the discussion of rights and justice for the new generations of philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and James S. Mill. The debates that spilled over from such a legacy on collective versus individual rights can be seen unfolding in various discourses from missionaries, indigenous legal thinkers, reformers down to artists, novelists and British officials on the ground in the wider British empire from across India, Burma and Malaysia. So influential was the idea of justice in the template of the ‘civilising mission’ that despite the religious and theological framework of missionary thinking on the idea of ‘mercy’ and ‘justice’, one notices from this collection of essays that missionaries and their African and Asian converts drew more from Enlightenment thought and the Gospels rather than the Old Testament in the new phenomenon called ‘mission Christianity’.
DOI
10.1080/14780038.2017.1358972
Publication Date
2017-08-08
Publication Title
Cultural and Social History
Volume
14
Issue
4
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
ISSN
1478-0046
First Page
419
Last Page
427
Recommended Citation
Anagol, P., & Grey, D. (2017) 'Rethinking Gender and Justice in South Asia, 1772–2013', Cultural and Social History, 14(4), pp. 419-427. Informa UK Limited: Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2017.1358972
