Abstract
Abstract In the Persianate world, a mukhtār-nāma (deed of representation or a power of attorney) was a legal instrument that enabled people to transact business through a representative or agent (mukhtār or wakīl). This is a study of one such document written in Surat in 1821. It analyses the document for its socio-cultural, legal, and commercial significance as well as to explore the transition in the adjudication of commercial disputes and civil cases from Mughal to East India Company courts. It shows that there was a strong tradition of documenting business transactions in early modern South Asia and that such practices have continued into the colonial and postcolonial periods.
Highlights
In early modern South Asia and elsewhere in the Persianate world, there were mechanisms in place which enabled people to make formal and informal commercial and non-commercial transactions through a representative.1 Merchants, in particular, benefited from this institutional provision because via free accessThe Text, Context, and Meaning of a Mukhtār-nāma of 1821 it enabled them to appoint a legal representative to transact business on their behalf at ports and places where they could not be physically present
In the early modern and colonial Persianate world, a deed of representation or a power of attorney known as wakāla-nāma or mukhtār-nāma was prepared and preserved as a legal document that could be used in a court of law
Through an in-depth analysis of a mukhtār-nāma issued in Surat in 1821, this paper aims to examine how business transactions were documented, what was their legal status, and how people used this mechanism to resolve disputes in a court of law under the English East India Company’s colonial rule
Summary
In early modern South Asia and elsewhere in the Persianate world, there were mechanisms in place which enabled people to make formal and informal commercial and non-commercial transactions through a representative (wakīl). Merchants, in particular, benefited from this institutional provision because via free accessThe Text, Context, and Meaning of a Mukhtār-nāma of 1821 it enabled them to appoint a legal representative to transact business on their behalf at ports and places where they could not be physically present. In the early modern and colonial Persianate world, a deed of representation or a power of attorney known as wakāla-nāma or mukhtār-nāma was prepared and preserved as a legal document that could be used in a court of law This and many other forms of documented transactions, such as correspondence between merchants and their distant family members, partners, agents, and brokers, as well as petitions (ʿarżdāsht), deed of mortgage (rahn or girwī), and so on, underpinned social and commercial networks in early modern and colonial India. The deed of representation is an example of remarkable historical continuity of a precolonial institution during the colonial period and in postcolonial India as well
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