What laws governed the Punjab under British rule during the Board of Administration between 1849 and 1853?
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The best answer I could find was from Volume 1 of the "Punjab Customary Law" series which contained "a selection of the records from the Punjab Government".
In the book the author printed an extract of a letter (Page 49) written in 1849 from the "Secretary of the Government of India" (H. M. Elliot) which would have been the East India Company to the President of the Board, H. M Lawrence.
In it the Secretary communicated the wishes of the Governor General (The Earl of Dalhousie) to keep things simple by saying the "Governor General would wish to uphold Native institutions and practices, as far as they are consistent with the distribution of justice to all classes;" he then clarified this idea by saying:
With the knowledge now generally prevalent respecting village coparcenaries, there is no apprehension that our officers will not exert themselves to maintain those important bodies in all their integrity. In this and other respects, such as the local laws which regulate the tracing of criminals and the responsibility of landholders for their pursuit and apprehension, the popular institutions will be improved and consolidated by our measures, and the Native system of accounts and reports may also be adhered to, without any great and radical deviation; so that the only material alteration will consist in the introduction of Europeans as supervisors and executive officers.
He went on to specify that the policing were not be receiving any new laws:
With respect to the introduction of our System of police, the Governor General has no wish that our voluminous laws should be introduced into this new country. The several abstracts of our Regulations may be considered to contain sufficient for the guidance of our Magistrates, to whom necessarily a larger discretion must be left than they have in our older provinces.
The next letter in the book was written in 1853, after the Board was disbanded. This suggests the Board governed in a way that enhanced the police force and enforced the laws that were already in place.
What this meant for the people on the ground was most likely a continuation of the legal systems set in place by the Mughal Empire and as the British later discovered (Page 61) a mix of Hindu, Muhammadan and Lex Loci (the law of the place) Laws with the British commenting that people of the "Sikh persuasion, are in civil and secular affairs, generally bound by Hindu law".
This seems to suggest that any previous proclamations by John Lawrence on cultural and religious practices that were seen as harmful and to be met with "the severest penalties" were most likely lost.
What was also interesting, is how much control the General Governor of India had over a "Non-Regulation Province" which goes against the idea the Board had "absolute and supreme executive" control over the Punjab.
At this point it feels like if I want to know more I would need to start reading letters to and from Robert Montgomery who was the first Judicial Commissioner and C. G. Mansel who was entrusted with the administration of justice and the police.
After 1853 the Punjab Civil Code was created and became part of a whole history of Anglo-Muhammadan Law.
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