The Concept of Justice Through Ages in India

Few civilizations have grappled with the idea of justice as deeply and as continuously as India. Long before the term “rule of law” entered modern legal vocabulary, India was already asking the same fundamental questions – who deserves justice, how should it be delivered, and what should guide the person delivering it? The answers have shifted dramatically over thousands of years, shaped by religious texts, imperial courts, colonial statutes, and constitutional principles. Understanding how the concept of justice evolved in India is not merely a historical exercise – it is the foundation on which every student of law builds their understanding of why the present system looks the way it does.

Justice in ancient India: dharma as the organizing principle 🔗

Law in India primarily evolved from customary practices and religious prescriptions, and in the earliest phase, the concept of justice was inseparable from the concept of Dharma. Dharma – derived from the Sanskrit root dhr, meaning to uphold or sustain – was not simply law in the modern sense. It encompassed moral duty, ethical conduct, and social order simultaneously. The primary aim of the legal system in the Vedic period was to preserve Dharma, which covered not just court procedures but a wide range of human conduct.

What made this system remarkable was its insistence that even the king was not above the law. The Upanishads declare that law is the king of kings – more powerful than kings themselves – and that through it, even the weak can prevail over the strong. This idea, that no authority is above a higher moral or legal order, is one India articulated millennia before modern constitutional theory did so in formal terms.

Textual foundations: Manusmriti, Arthashastra, and the Smritis 🔗

The intellectual framework for justice in ancient India came from several canonical texts. The Manusmriti (approximately 200 BCE-200 CE) laid out eighteen primary titles of law – covering debt, wages, contracts, inheritance, and more – that bear a striking resemblance to modern civil law categories. The Arthashastra of Kautilya introduced a more administrative and secular understanding of justice, including detailed court procedures, the role of witnesses, and even early forensic methods for investigating crimes like murder and theft. The Yajnavalkya Smriti and Narada Smriti refined these further, providing layered guidance on court conduct, evidence, and judicial temperament.

Judges were required to decide both criminal and civil cases according to law, a task that involved interpreting written texts, reconciling conflicting provisions, and balancing the letter of the law against broader principles of equity and good conscience. Texts like Katyayana’s Smriti specified qualities required in a judge: impartiality between friend and foe, freedom from greed or anger, deep knowledge of the Vedas, and expertise in legal procedure. This was not a casual standard – it was a rigorous ethical benchmark for those entrusted with dispensing justice.

The structure of ancient courts 🔗

Ancient India had a clearly tiered hierarchy of courts. Village councils (Kulani) handled minor civil and criminal matters. Above them were town and district courts presided over by government officers. Trade guilds had jurisdiction over disputes among their members. The Chief Justice (Pradvivaka) presided over a higher court, and at the apex sat the King’s Court – the highest court of both original and appellate jurisdiction. An appeal system existed and functioned: the king was the final appellate authority.

Two noteworthy features distinguished this system. First, a bench of two or more judges was preferred over a single judge – a safeguard against arbitrary decisions that modern courts have since abandoned for practical reasons. Second, there were no professional lawyers. Parties represented themselves, and the court’s duty was to arrive at the truth through witness examination, documentary evidence, and reasoned application of the law.

Kautilya took things a step further by introducing twenty-six procedural sutras for case registration and witness interrogation, and establishing a special court called Kantakasodhana to handle criminal justice matters. The sophistication of these mechanisms challenges any assumption that structured legal procedure is an entirely modern invention.

The medieval period: justice under Islamic law 🔗

The arrival of Islamic rule – particularly during the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughal Empire – brought a fundamentally different conception of justice. Sharia law was introduced, and a dual system emerged where Hindu personal law governed Hindus while Islamic law applied to Muslims. The administrative unit of justice was the Qazi – a trained Islamic scholar who served as the judicial authority in provincial capitals, towns, and larger villages.

The Mughal system introduced a greater degree of administrative organization to the courts. The King remained the highest court of appeal, often hearing petitions directly – Mughal emperor Muhammad bin Tughlaq, for instance, reportedly heard public complaints personally every Monday and Thursday. A key feature of medieval justice was its personalized character: the ruler could exercise discretion, including pardoning offenders, which gave the system a degree of flexibility but also unpredictability.

Importantly, the medieval period did not completely displace the ancient framework. Despite political fragmentation after the Harsha empire, the fundamental legal and procedural concepts of earlier centuries persisted across kingdoms. Legal commentaries like the Mitakshara – still relevant today in Hindu personal law on inheritance – were composed during this period and gained widespread acceptance across the subcontinent.

The British period: codification and the formal judiciary 🔗

The most structurally transformative phase in the evolution of Indian justice came with British colonial rule. Between 1765 and 1772, justice was administered by Indian officers in an often arbitrary manner, but the British systematically replaced this with a centralized, codified structure grounded in English common law.

The Regulating Act of 1773 established the Supreme Court in Calcutta – the first formal, institutionalized court in India operating under defined jurisdictional rules. This period introduced concepts like separation of powers, judicial independence, and the principle of legal precedent – where earlier decisions guide future ones, creating consistency in legal outcomes. Cornwallis’s Code of 1793 separated revenue collection from civil justice, establishing the rule of law over government officials themselves.

Lord Macaulay’s drafting of the Indian Penal Code (enacted in 1860) was perhaps the single most consequential legal reform of this era. It represented one of the world’s first comprehensive criminal codes, replacing the patchwork of customary and religious penal systems across regions with a uniform set of laws. This was followed by the Indian Evidence Act (1872) and the Code of Criminal Procedure. The establishment of High Courts in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras in 1862 gave the judicial hierarchy its modern shape.

However, the British system was not neutral. Racial privilege for British rulers remained embedded in criminal courts, and the concept of equality before the law frequently applied only to some. The system served colonial interests and was shaped by those priorities – a legacy that post-independence legal reformers had to consciously grapple with.

Post-independence: justice as a constitutional commitment 🔗

When India became a republic in 1950, the Constitution of India did not start from scratch – it absorbed and restructured what came before it, while grounding justice in a set of guaranteed rights and institutional safeguards. The Constitution established the Supreme Court at the apex of a clear judicial hierarchy, with High Courts in each state and subordinate courts at the district level. Article 124 provided for the establishment and constitution of the Supreme Court, with judges removable only by Parliament on grounds of proven misbehaviour or incapacity – a provision designed to insulate the judiciary from political pressure.

One of the most transformative post-independence developments has been Public Interest Litigation (PIL). The Supreme Court’s willingness to allow individuals to file PILs on behalf of the public – addressing human rights violations, environmental harm, and social injustice – fundamentally democratized access to justice. Landmark judgments such as Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978), which expanded the right to life under Article 21, and Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973), which established the Basic Structure Doctrine protecting the Constitution’s core features, reflect how the judiciary has actively shaped the meaning of justice beyond merely applying the law.

The reformative approach to punishment also gained traction in this era. The Supreme Court has consistently stressed that a reformative approach to punishment should be the object of criminal law, moving away from purely punitive or retributive models toward rehabilitation. This reflected a philosophical evolution – from the ancient idea of danda (the rod of punishment) as the king’s tool for maintaining order, to a constitutional vision of the criminal as someone who can be reformed and reintegrated into society.

Recent reforms: the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and beyond 🔗

In 2023, India enacted three landmark laws – the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam – replacing the colonial-era IPC, CrPC, and Indian Evidence Act respectively. These new laws modernize criminal justice procedures and address contemporary crimes like cybercrime, while also recognizing digital evidence as admissible in court. The renaming itself carries significance: moving away from legislations drafted under British rule to laws with Indian names signals an effort to reclaim ownership of the legal framework.

Modernization efforts such as e-courts, virtual courts, and digital case management systems reflect the same intent – making justice more accessible, efficient, and transparent for a diverse population of over a billion people. The challenge is no longer only to define justice philosophically but to deliver it practically, at scale.

The thread running through it all 🔗

What is striking about India’s long journey with justice is not the changes but the continuities. The insistence that the powerful are not above the law – present in the Vedic concept of Dharma and equally present in the Basic Structure Doctrine – has remained a constant. The preference for multi-member benches in ancient courts echoes in the collegium system of judicial appointments today. The Arthashastra’s procedural rigor finds its modern counterpart in the Evidence Acts. And the ancient Indian jurisprudence’s evolutionary concept of law – which rejected static, absolute rules in favor of living law that responds to changing customs – is precisely what judicial interpretation under the Constitution continues to do.

India’s concept of justice has never been a single, fixed idea. It has been a conversation across centuries – between Dharma and statute, between king and subject, between colonial imposition and indigenous recovery, between retribution and rehabilitation. That conversation is still going on.

What do you think? Given that ancient India’s concept of justice was rooted in Dharma and moral duty, while modern justice is rooted in constitutional rights, do you think these two frameworks are fundamentally in tension – or do they complement each other? And with the 2023 criminal law reforms replacing colonial-era codes, has India moved closer to a system that reflects its own legal identity, or is the change more symbolic than substantive?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indian_law
2. https://www.legalservicesindia.com/article/1391/The-Legal-system-in-ancient-India.html
3. https://www.iilsindia.com/blogs/judiciary-in-ancient-india/
4. https://blog.ipleaders.in/development-jurisprudence-ancient-india/
5. https://www.lloydlawcollege.edu.in/blog/history-of-indian-judiciary.html
6. https://ijesrr.org/publication/50/1.%20dec%202017%20ijesrr.pdf
7. https://www.nextias.com/blog/judicial-system-in-british-india/
8. https://polsci.institute/india-democracy-development/evolution-of-judiciary-system-india/
9. https://www.eelet.org.uk/index.php/journal/article/download/3747/3355/4247
10. https://doonlawmentor.com/evolution-of-the-indian-legal-system/
11. https://allahabadhighcourt.in/event/TheIndianJudicialSystem_SSDhavan.html