Thomas Babington Macaulay – The Father Of The Indian Penal Code

The Story

India was a land of Kingdoms. In the realm of Kingdoms, the king had the ultimate say on most of the criminal matters including but not limited to what even constituted a crime. Most of the cases were handled by court hearings which were set up on a timely schedule and all the grievances were taken care of upon a short trial. The right and the wrong depended on the whimsy of the king or the set of rules and regulations that the ruler believed to be right. Kings were mostly supported by the ministers of the court who would suggest to the king potential measures and consequences of the rulings. 

Anyway, that was way in the past. Then came colonialism. The Britishers were ruling the nation. Under the British paradigm, the rule of law needed to be revised. This is because of the complex societal, religious, and beliefs that exist here in India. Society was divided in terms of beliefs but united as a religion. Prior to the British, Muhammedan law existed in India. This set of laws applied to both Hindus as well as Muslims. Initially, the Britishers left the rule of law as is and decided not to interfere. However, during their reign, they did make notable amendments to it up until 1860. 

So, where was Thomas Babington Macaulay in all of this?

Well, in 1834, the First Law Commission which was chaired by Mr. Macaulay, took forth the responsibility to create the first draft of the Indian Penal Code. The draft was ready by the next year, 1835, and was submitted to the Governor-General of India Council. However, the IPC required many revisions and the Final Draft was submitted by 1850. Although much effort went into creating this, the code wouldn’t actually make it to the statute of British India until very much in the future. 

In fact, the man who actually created the IPC, who can rightly be called the Father of the Indian Penal Code, actually did not live long enough to watch his document come into operation. Macaulay died toward the end of the year 1959 whereas the document he created came into operation on 1 January 1862. 

What does the IPC constitute?

Mohammedan law was prevalent in the country when the British arrived here. Although this was a fine system, there were many inherent flaws associated with this system. There seemed to be religious bias imbibed within the text even though the entire point of having a law-based society is to have a punishment-based system that upholds equality in every term regardless of the beliefs of any individual. 

But religion is deep-rooted in the Indian society. 

In order to ensure that the beliefs of the people of the nation were not undermined, the commission under Thomas Macaulay carefully crafted the system such that it treated every individual equally. The simplest solution that occurred to them was to codify the law of England and customize it to India. They also introduced many elements from the French Code of 1804 also known as the Napoleonic Code and the Code of Louisiana which was enforced in the United State’s province of Louisiana in 1825. The IPC was drafted keeping the global laws in mind. Laws spanning across continents were studied and carefully implemented in India. It is notable that the states that were under the rule of kingdoms, known as the princely states in terms of British India, were not forced to follow this system and were exempted. These states actually had their own systems, and their systems were recognized and allowed to remain as they had existed even until the 1940s. 

Why is this Significant?

Even though this document was created to serve Indians, many iterations of IPC are prevalent in many countries worldwide. You may think that this cannot be possible as every nation in the world has its own version of the rule of law, right? That might be the case. But the initial Code that the primary draft is based on can still be from another code that existed before it. Just as the IPC was drafted upon consideration of other Codes that existed prior to it, the IPC has served as the draft for Pakistan’s Penal Code as well.  Most of the British colonies here down south adopted this legal system. Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan and adopted the same legal system. The Ceylon, Burma, Brunei, and the settlements in the straits, most of which belong to modern Singapore, all have the same base legal systems. Over the years, they have definitely undergone a vast number of revisions suiting the law to the nation’s beliefs and interests, but the underlying basic legal structure continues to remain the same. 

The Outcome

IPC has gotten acclaim worldwide as a legal system that has stood the test of time. Why is that the case? This is because the world seems to think that the final draft that was put out was so thorough that it was really ahead of its time. This is a highly commendable achievement by all the members who worked under Mr. Thomas Babington Macaulay. 

Regardless of which, India still has to think about why it makes sense to actually follow a legal system that was drafted in colonial times. Even after 75 years of independence, the crux of our legal system relies on a draft created by a man who worked for the Crown which colonized our country. There have been numerous occasions where this very issue has been debated by the central government. Recently, there has been a bill that aims to replace IPC with BNS which stands for Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita. This seems to be a step in the right direction as an Independent Nation capable of being the fourth-ever country able to successfully land on the Moon deserves an independent legal system that upholds the sanctity of India and its citizens.