MOHAMMEDAN LAW IN INDIA.
[To ran Eorroa or roe "SrearAros."J
SntrYour "impression that under Indian legal practice any question not settled by the Codes, or by special statute, is decided by Mohammedan law " (Speetaior,May 184) is hardly accurate. And it would be better to say that, in the absence of statutory direction, the rule of decision followed by the Courts of British India in certain questions, such as succession, inheritance, marriage, and religious usages or institutions, is generally the Hindu law where the parties are Hindus, and the Mohammedan law where the parties are Mohammedans ; and in other questions is equity and gold conscience. It is true that, on grounds of equity, Mohammedan law is some- times applied to the solution of the latter class of questions ; but the same may be said of Hindu or English law, the application of Mohammedan law to questions not determined by statute being neither exclusive, as you seem to suppose, nor even predomi- nant. The claim, therefore, that Mohammedan law is "the common law of the entire peninsula" is clearly inadmissible I thought, however, that by the words last quoted, which, as you say, "have perhaps too broad a meaning." you might be referring to those modifications of the customary law of India which bave been attributed to the introduction of Moham- medan law, such as pre-emption, which, originally a custom of the pre-Islamic Arabs, then incorporated into Mohammedan law, and thus imported into India, now prevails to a consider- able extent among non-Mohammedans, and, though judicially stigmatised as " Mconvenient and sometimes oppressive," has succeeded in obtaining some local and particular statutory recognition. And by asking "in what matters Mohammedan law is the common law of all India" I hoped to elicit from you and your correspondents, whose experience extends over the whole country, some valuable information on this interest-
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