LUMS Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law (SAHSOL) faculty, Dr. Zubair Abbasi presented a paper titled "Law and Economic Efficiency: English Private Property Law and Muslim Family Endowments (awqaf) in British India" at the Annual Economic History Society Conference held on April 1-3, 2016 at Cambridge University.
Dr. Abbasi’s paper studies the transformation of indigenous legal norms into state service under colonialism. Speaking at the conference, Dr. Abbasi said “Relatively lesser attention is paid to the response of the natives who were subjected to the transformed law. This paper measures the response of Indian Muslims to the private property law regime for land introduced by the British in India in the late nineteenth century. It is based on the cases decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the highest court of appeal in the British Empire. It analyses the origins of various types of Muslim endowments (awqaf, singular waqf) in the social and political context of various Indian provinces which were subjected to different property law regimes.”
The research also shows that the pattern of the creation of endowments was affected by multiple factors. Dr. Abbasi shared that the land policy of the East India Company and confiscation of properties after the 1857 uprising were important political factors which affected the establishment of endowments. He further explained that the pattern of the creation of endowments was also influenced by the differences in private property regime in various Indian provinces. Changes in relevant case laws and statutes also impacted upon the creation of these endowments. Ordinary Indian Muslims adjusted their modes of disposal of landed property by taking into account political and legal developments.
