ABSTRACT
The inheritance of family property in South India often triggered disputes that resulted in extensive litigation. At stake were not merely the passing of ancestral property, but also the passing of social and religious identity. Within British India, disputes over inheritance were complicated by the fact that there was no universal law of inheritance, no lex loci, but many laws, defined by the unique customs of various communities. Where would Christians fall within this arena of legal and cultural pluralism? This chapter describes how the Madras judiciary had originally recognized the diverse and highly indigenous cultural practices of “Native Christians,” but later grouped them together with Europeans under a single law of inheritance, the Indian Succession Act (X of 1865). By enforcing the Succession Act, the judiciary isolated many Christian families from their caste customs and further reified them as a “foreign” community.
