Colonial Laws Still Discriminate Against Hindus

Four distinct yet interlinked domains of legal architecture that originated under the Raj include temple-endowment regulation, religious-offense provisions within the Indian Penal Code, colonial forest governance, and the criminalization of communities under the Criminal Tribes Act.
The state management of Hindu religious endowments continues under statutory regimes that deny Hindu institutions the autonomy available to other religious groups, even as the Islamic Waqf enjoys a comparatively asymmetrical statutory framework.
The long shadow of the Criminal Tribes Act is considered, revealing how its successor legislations continue to stigmatize entire communities.
By situating these domains against the normative guarantees of religious freedom under Articles 25 and 26 of the Indian Constitution, as well as landmark Supreme Court jurisprudence, the persistence of these colonial logics undermines the constitutional promise of equal religious autonomy.

British colonial rule sought to codify and regulate expansive domains of Indian social, economic, and religious life through the machinery of a centralized managerial state. The colonial legal strategy was twofold. First, it consolidated the coercive and extractive powers of governance by strengthening penal law, codifying police authority, and enacting comprehensive forest legislation that facilitated resource extraction while simultaneously criminalizing traditional livelihoods. These measures entrenched a disciplinary regime aimed at maintaining order and maximizing revenue. Second, it restructured indigenous institutions, most notably Hindu temples, by subjecting them to statutory schemes that transformed them into state-supervised “public trusts.” In sharp contrast, Islamic Waqf was recognized under Anglo-Muhammadan law as a protected and internally regulated religious endowment, thereby institutionalizing an asymmetry in the legal treatment of Hindu and Muslim religious property.

These colonial choices have proven remarkably durable. Despite the constitutional transition in 1950, their logics continue to reverberate across contemporary statutes, administrative departments, and judicial precedents. The endurance of state control over Hindu temples, the privileged statutory framework governing Waqf, the survival of colonial penal provisions relating to religious offence, and the bureaucratic continuities in forest governance and community policing all testify to the extent to which the architecture of the colonial state has persisted, albeit in altered form, within the legal order of independent India.

The Colonial Template for Temple Control and Its Modern Avatars

The colonial-era regulation of Hindu temples reached a decisive turning point in the Madras Presidency during the 1920s, when legislation pioneered a framework that fundamentally altered the relationship between the state and Hindu religious institutions. The Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act of 1926, followed by the 1927 amendments and commentaries, institutionalized the treatment of temples not as autonomous centers of religious life but as “public charitable trusts” subject to state oversight.[1] This legal architecture authorized the creation of a state-nominated board empowered to supervise temple finances, lands, and administrative practices. By subsuming religious institutions within a regime of charitable trust law, the legislation reduced the autonomy of temple communities and placed them within a managerial framework designed to reflect the imperatives of colonial governance. Subsequent statutes across different provinces and presidencies would replicate this model, thereby establishing a durable precedent.

Following Independence, the state of Tamil Nadu operationalized and expanded this colonial lineage through the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Act of 1959. [2] Administered by a dedicated HR&CE Department, this legislation consolidated state control over an unprecedented range of religious institutions. The Department’s statutory remit today includes oversight of temple lands and immovable property, financial administration, the appointment of trustees and staff, and the supervision of rituals and festivals under the rubric of “secular” management. Policy notes and official departmental portals consistently frame this apparatus as one of guardianship and public accountability, thereby legitimizing continued state intervention in domains historically governed by religious communities.

The scale of this apparatus is striking. Government sources and departmental listings indicate that the Tamil Nadu HR&CE Department currently administers over 36,000 temples, in addition to numerous mutts, endowments, and charitable institutions. [3] This figure illustrates not only the bureaucratic reach but also the normalization of state management over Hindu religious life. What began as a colonial experiment in the Madras Presidency has thus evolved into one of the most comprehensive regimes of state supervision of religion anywhere in the democratic world, raising enduring questions about constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and the asymmetry in legal treatment vis-à-vis other communities’ religious endowments.

Constitutional Tension and the Shirur Mutt Doctrine

The constitutional framework and its early judicial interpretation critically shaped the trajectory of state control over Hindu religious institutions. Soon after the Constitution came into force, the Supreme Court in The Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras v. Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Shirur Mutt (1954) delivered a landmark ruling that remains foundational to Indian religious jurisprudence.[4] The Court articulated a doctrinal distinction between “matters of religion,” which fall within the protective ambit of Articles 25 and 26, and “secular” matters associated with the administration of property, which the state may legitimately regulate. In striking down parts of the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 1951, the judgment reaffirmed the autonomy of religious denominations in matters of doctrine and ritual. At the same time, however, it upheld the state’s competence to oversee the secular administration of temple property, thereby entrenching an administrative foothold that has since expanded into comprehensive bureaucratic oversight.

The constitutional text itself is ambivalent. Article 26(b) guarantees every religious denomination the right “to manage its own affairs in matters of religion,” while Article 26(d) confers the right “to administer such property in accordance with law.” The latter clause, particularly the phrase “in accordance with law,” has been interpreted as an enabling provision, allowing legislatures to impose extensive regulatory regimes over Hindu temples and endowments.[5] In practice, this textual opening has functioned as the jurisprudential gateway through which HR&CE-style legislation has survived successive constitutional challenges. Crucially, this model of control has been applied asymmetrically. While Hindu institutions have been placed under the purview of specialized statutory departments exercising expansive authority, no equivalent state-run machinery exists for the administration of churches or mosques.[6] Christian and Muslim institutions retain a greater degree of autonomy in managing their internal property regimes, safeguarded under the Waqf Act and denominational self-governance of churches, respectively.[7]

The result is a constitutional paradox. A provision designed to secure denominational autonomy has, through judicial interpretation and legislative practice, become the foundation for the continued state management of Hindu religious institutions, reflecting both the colonial legacy of public trust regulation and the selective application of constitutional guarantees.

Asymmetry by Design? The Waqf Exception and Its Expansion

Colonial Recognition of Waqf: In contrast to its interventionist approach toward Hindu temples, the colonial state adopted a markedly different legal strategy in relation to Muslim religious and charitable endowments. The Mussalman Waqf Validating Act of 1913,[8] followed by supplementary enactments in 1923 and 1930, regularized and fortified the institution of Waqf as a distinct legal form. These statutes overturned earlier judicial skepticism, particularly the Privy Council’s disapproval of family-oriented Waqf-alal-aulad, by explicitly validating Muslim family and charitable endowments as legitimate religious trusts under Anglo-Muhammadan law.[9] The 1913 Act thus recognized Waqf as a protected juridical category, embedded in Islamic jurisprudence, and insulated from the forms of bureaucratic restructuring applied to Hindu endowments.

The management of Waqf properties remained within the domain of Muslim trustees (mutawallis) and, later, statutory boards constituted to represent community interests, rather than being absorbed into the machinery of the colonial (or postcolonial) state. While the 1923 and 1930 amendments introduced measures for registration and supervision, they reinforced the principle of internal community governance rather than transferring authority to state departments.[10] The legal recognition of Waqf thereby entrenched an asymmetry: Hindu religious institutions were gradually reclassified as public charitable trusts subject to administrative oversight, while Muslim endowments were validated as autonomous religious institutions managed within the framework of Islamic law.

This differential colonial codification has had long-term effects. Independent India inherited not only the HR&CE model for Hindu temples but also the legally fortified Waqf system, which the Waqf Act of 1954 [11] (and subsequent revisions in 1995 and 2013) expanded into one of the largest systems of religious landholding under autonomous boards. The juxtaposition highlights how colonial policy choices, one of bureaucratic absorption and the other of juridical validation, produced enduring asymmetries in the governance of religious endowments across communities.

Post-Independence Consolidation: Waqf Act, 1995 and 2025 Amendments. Independent India extended and centralized the colonial legacy of Waqf recognition through the Waqf Act of 1995, a comprehensive statute that consolidated earlier enactments and created a multilayered governance structure. The Act established the Central Waqf Council, chaired by the Union Minister for Minority Affairs, and mandated the creation of State Waqf Boards with extensive supervisory powers over the registration, management, and protection of Waqf. These boards were vested with quasi-judicial authority to oversee the appointment and removal of mutawallis, to safeguard endowed properties, and to adjudicate disputes relating to encroachments and alienation. The Act thus entrenched a statutory regime that not only preserved the autonomy of Waqf from direct state management but also enhanced its institutional resources under community-governed frameworks.

Parliamentary developments illustrate the dynamism of this regime. The Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025, introduces additional provisions concerning digital land records, dispute-resolution mechanisms, and oversight of the board’s functioning. While the Bill has faced judicial scrutiny over its potential implications for property rights and minority governance, its trajectory underscores the state’s continuing commitment to refining rather than dismantling the Waqf system. Official texts, India Code repositories, and government briefings highlight the evolving statutory architecture, while contemporary reporting places the scale of Waqf assets at hundreds of thousands of registered properties spanning millions of acres nationwide. This makes Waqf one of the largest institutional landholders in India, an endowment class whose colonial-era legal validation has been robustly preserved and expanded under postcolonial law.

The net effect is a structural asymmetry in the governance of religious endowments. Hindu temples, in many states, remain under direct state management through HR&CE-style departments, where bureaucratic control extends to finances, land, and administrative appointments. By contrast, Waqf institutions operate within a bespoke, community-governed statutory framework, enjoying autonomy of management under the supervisory umbrella of Waqf Boards. Both systems bear colonial origins: one born of reclassification and bureaucratic absorption, the other of juridical validation and protection. Yet their divergent trajectories in independent India, one toward state capture, the other toward community self-governance, continue to shape the contemporary politics of religious freedom, property rights, and constitutional equality.

Criminal Law: “Outraging Religious Feelings” from IPC (1927) to BNS (2024–25)

The Colonial Birth of IPC Section 295-A: The addition of Section 295-A to the Indian Penal Code in 1927 must be read against the backdrop of the Rangila Rasul controversy,[12] where provocative religious pamphleteering triggered widespread unrest. The colonial government responded by enacting Section 295-A, criminalizing “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings.”[13] This was not merely a neutral expansion of penal law but a targeted, speech-restrictive provision designed to contain communal volatility by policing intercommunal insult. Scholarship underscores its function as a tool of pacification rather than principle, embedding a logic of censorship into Indian criminal law that persists to the present.

The New Penal Code: BNS Section 299: India’s criminal law overhaul, culminating in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, replaced the IPC (effective 2024).[14] Yet, in substance, the colonial-era “blasphemy” provision has survived intact: IPC Section 295-A was re-codified as BNS Section 299. Comparative tables issued by state police and training academies explicitly map this continuity, noting only cosmetic drafting updates. The BNS also recasts IPC Section 298 as BNS Section 302, thereby retaining the prohibition against insulting religious beliefs through speech or gesture. The persistence of these offences reflects the tenacity of colonial design: a communal-order logic of “religious insult” now transposed into republican legislation. Contemporary scholarship warns of the risks, selective enforcement, chilling of legitimate expression, and majoritarian/minority asymmetries associated with this continuity.

The Indian Forest Act (1927): Expropriation as Policy

The Indian Forest Act of 1927 [15] consolidated earlier ordinances to vest expansive powers in the colonial state over “reserved” and “protected” forests. The statute criminalized customary access and delegitimized traditional uses, displacing pastoralists, tribal groups, and communities whose sacred groves were reclassified as state property. Though the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 [16] sought corrective recognition of customary rights, the 1927 framework remains in effect. Its presumptions continue to shape enforcement manuals, bureaucratic discretion, and recurring conflicts over access, thereby reproducing colonial forms of ecological governance.

The Criminal Tribes Act (1871): Repealed Statute, Living Stigma

Few colonial statutes epitomized the criminalization of identity more starkly than the Criminal Tribes Act (1871) [17], which declared entire communities as “hereditary criminals.” Subject to registration, surveillance, and restrictions on movement, such groups were legally stigmatized across generations. Although the Act was repealed in 1949–1952, it was replaced by the Habitual Offenders Act [18], which carried forward aspects of the same logic. Scholarship documents the endurance of stigma, with denotified and nomadic tribes continuing to face disproportionate policing and social exclusion. Recent state commemorations of “denotification day” reflect an ongoing, if halting, reckoning with this colonial injustice.

Education Policy as Cultural Engineering

Colonial interventions in education policy exemplify a subtler yet equally consequential form of legal and cultural engineering. Macaulay’s Minute (1835) and Wood’s Despatch (1854) explicitly shifted state patronage away from Sanskrit, Persian, and vernacular traditions toward English-language instruction. [19] The objective was to cultivate an intermediary class, loyal to colonial governance and alienated from indigenous epistemologies. This Anglicized template has had a remarkable afterlife: debates over curricula, historiography, and language policy in independent India still revolve around the Macaulay–Wood lineage, with the state serving as the arbiter of cultural transmission.

A Postcolonial Paradox: Articles 25–26 vs. Colonial Governance Modes

The Indian Constitution enshrines freedom of conscience (Article 25) and denominational autonomy (Article 26). Yet, in practice, administrative continuities reproduce colonial governance logics. HRCE-style regimes keep Hindu temples under state departments, while Waqf institutions enjoy community-led autonomy under a statutory framework preserved and expanded since colonial validation. Penal provisions rooted in colonial communal management (now BNS Section 299, 302) continue to chill expression. Forest law remains tethered to 1927-era expropriatory presumptions. Even judicial interventions, beginning with Shirur Mutt (1954), while protective in part, legitimized state oversight of the “secular” administration of Hindu property, thereby entrenching a regulatory asymmetry unmatched in the governance of churches or mosques.

Policy Options and Reforms

Restore Denominational Autonomy for Hindu Temples (Parity Principle). Amend HRCE-style laws to vest management boards in devotees/denominations, with transparent auditing. Reserve state intervention only for narrowly defined fiduciary failures, thereby aligning temple autonomy with the self-governing model long accorded to Waqf.
Rationalize Endowment Laws Across Religions. Move toward a neutral, uniform endowments code, featuring routine fiduciary duties, audit standards, and protections from encroachment, without requiring day-to-day bureaucratic management.
Revisit BNS Section 299 (ex-IPC Section 295-A). Narrow the offence to imminent incitement or violence standards, pruning vague formulations that invite selective enforcement, and aligning it with constitutional speech protections.
Modernize Forest Governance with Rights-First Implementation. Prioritize the Forest Rights Act, community forest management, and recognition of sacred groves; sunset or substantially amend 1927-era presumptions.
Complete Justice for Denotified/Nomadic Tribes. Repeal residual Habitual Offenders frameworks, and fund rehabilitation, documentation, and stigma-reduction initiatives, acknowledging the unique harms of the CTA.

India’s constitutional vision of religious freedom and equality sits in uneasy tension with the afterlives of colonial law. The persistence of HRCE regimes that subject Hindu temples to micro-management, the parallel preservation of Waqf as a privileged and autonomous endowment system, the transplantation of colonial-era blasphemy provisions into the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the endurance of forest governance structures rooted in expropriation, and the lingering stigmatization of denotified tribes all testify to the resilience of a colonial legal habitus within a formally republican framework. These continuities underscore not merely administrative inertia but a deeper structural paradox: a Constitution that promises denominational autonomy and civilizational plurality coexists with laws that reproduce colonial asymmetries of control and recognition.

A principled reform agenda is thus imperative. Anchored in the values of parity, autonomy, and constitutionalism, such an agenda would restore genuine denominational self-governance to Hindu institutions, rationalize the law of endowments across communities, recalibrate speech offences in line with constitutional standards, and dismantle frameworks of dispossession and stigma inherited from the Raj. Only by disentangling these legacies can Indian law align more authentically with the civilizational diversity it purports to safeguard, and move beyond the shadows of colonial governance toward a jurisprudence rooted in the promise of the Constitution itself.

Citations

[1] Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 1951; https://indiankanoon.org/doc/159440761/

[2] The Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 1959, Act 22 of 1959; https://prsindia.org/files/bills_acts/acts_states/tamil-nadu/1959/1959TN22.pdf

[3] Government of Tamil Nadu – Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowments Department; https://hrce.tn.gov.in/hrcehome/hrce_portalpolicy.php?searchcase=termsofuse

[4] The Commissioner, Hindu Religious … vs Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar Of Sri … on 16 April, 1954; https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1430396/

[5] Article 26: Freedom to manage religious affairs – Constitution of India; https://www.constitutionofindia.net/articles/article-26-freedom-to-manage-religious-affairs/

[6] A Critical Analysis of Imbalance Influence on Hindu Temples in India Compared to Other Religious Places; https://tijer.org/tijer/papers/TIJER2402066.pdf

[7] Right to freedom of religion – iPleaders; https://blog.ipleaders.in/right-to-freedom-of-religion/

[8] The Mussalman Wakf Validating Act, 1913; https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1852964/

[9] Waqf – History and Evolution | अखिल भारतीय विद्यार्थी परिषद; https://www.abvp.org/article/waqf-history-and-evolution#:~:text=waqf%2C%20particularly%20family%20waqfs%20(waqf%2Dalal%2Daulad).%20The%20Privy,a%20waqf%20was%20family%20benefit%20and%20the

[10] Waqf Amendment Bill, 2025: The History of Waqf in India; https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2118415#:~:text=The%20Mussalman%20Wakf%20Act%2C%201923,backing%20to%20the%201913%20Act.

[11] WAKF ACT 1954; http://www.keralastatewakfboard.in/forms/act1954.pdf

[12] A Pamphlet and its (Dis)contents: A Case Study of Rangila Rasul and the Controversy Surrounding it in Colonial Punjab, 1923–29; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2230807515572213#:~:text=132/III/1927%2C%20GoI,(Poll.)%2C%201927.&text=Secretary%20to%20the%20Government%20of,November%201929%2C%20NAI%2C%20Delhi.&text=Muslims%20of%20Lahore%2C%20led%20by,Sikh%20in%20defence%20of%20Islam.

[13] SECTION 295A AND ITS ARBITRARINESS; https://indianlegalsystem.org/section-295a-and-its-arbitrariness/#:~:text=History%20of%20Section%20295A,Code%20for%20the%20first%20time.

[14] THE BHARATIYA NYAYA SANHITA, 2023 NO. 45 OF 2023 An Act to consolidate and amend the provisions relating to offences and for mat; https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/250883_english_01042024.pdf

[15] THE INDIAN FOREST ACT, 1927; http://nbaindia.org/uploaded/Biodiversityindia/Legal/3.%20Indian%20forest%20act.pdf

[16] India Code: Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006; https://www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/2070?view_type=search#:~:text=An%20Act%20to%20recognise%20and, Show

[17] Criminal Tribes Act, 1871; https://indiankanoon.org/doc/17412906/#:~:text=14.,any%20other%20place%20of%20residence.

[18] HABITUAL OFFENDERS (CONTROL AND REFORM) ACT, 1956 | India Code; https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/16474/1/habitual_offenders_%28control_and_reform%29_act%2C_1956.pdf

[19] History for UPSC, Macaulay’s Minute 1835, Woods Despatch 1854, Hunter Commission 1882; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJE7TCKFNTA