Promises and Perils of Macaulay's Preface to the Indian Penal Code

When the Indian Law Commissioners drafted the first Indian Penal Code in 1837, they pitched the document as a triumph of modern law, an orderly code that categorized hundreds of criminal offenses into roughly two dozen chapters. Praising the drafters’ accomplishments, Thomas Macaulay, who led the commission, lauded the code for being “not a digest of any existing system” but something entirely new. Following further amendments and revisions, the code was presented to the Legislative Council in 1856 and passed into law on October 6, 1860, and today, the code not only serves as the basis for criminal law in postcolonial India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh but also continues to provide legal scholars and practitioners with fodder for study, analysis, and…