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From 1865, matrimonial disputes among Parsis were decided by what was effectively a  jury of co-religionists. The Parsi jury was an anomaly. No other South Asian community had the right to a jury in marital cases – nor, for that matter, did Europeans living in British India. Although personal law governed most other religious communities in matrimonial disputes, colonial judges (typically European) applied these bodies of law. Furthermore, the jury was not used in any other area of civil law. Juries were employed in particular types of criminal trials, having been introduced in piecemeal and ambivalent fashion at the local level. Debates over the value of using Indian jurors highlighted colonial anxieties: many Europeans worried that the jury gave South Asians too much power.
The existence of the Parsi jury reflected the community’s reputation for loyalty to British rule. One colonial administrator declared himself "no friend of exceptional legislation for the creeds and classes of India,” but regarded the Parsis as special due to their "unwavering loyalty, integrity and public spirit.” In the words of Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, "the Government of India evinced a wise and benign consideration for the special position of the Parsi community in India” in approving the creation of the Parsi matrimonial courts. One could speculate that the court’s existence exemplified classic divide-and-rule strategy. Equally, though, the creation of the matrimonial jury system reflected the skill of Parsi lobbyists. This unique, community-specific civil jury was introduced by the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act of 1865 which was drafted by the Parsi Law Association. If the community’s colonial legal history suggested Parsi exceptionalism in the legal domain (how Parsis differed from other communities in British India), it did so most clearly through the existence of the Parsi matrimonial jury.

 

 

 

 

 

The British model of the personal law system disempowered South Asian male elites: juryless courts, not community bodies, applied personal law. The Parsi jury was the exception, effectively creating an Ottoman-style "millet” system (independent court of law pertaining to personal law) for the Parsis alone. The delegates of the Parsi matrimonial court had the opportunity to replicate and reinforce their social influence in the community in ways denied to the senior men of other communities. Those who ran for election may have been motivated by a charitable impulse to perform a much needed service for their community; they were not paid for serving as delegates. They may equally have been driven by prurience. Most of all, however, the desire to exercise intragroup influence probably drew them to the job.
A distinct dynamic developed between the Parsi jury and matrimonial litigants. The former were almost exclusively senior Parsi men, drawn from Bombay’s mercantile, professional and intellectual elites. Plaintiffs, by contrast, were disproportionately women. In divorce suits, female plaintiffs outnumbered male by a factor of two or three. Many of these women were working class, and they usually won their suits. In the vast majority of cases, the jury of senior elite males released poorer females from their marriage, disciplining these women’s husbands, invariably non-elite men. The pattern was particularly pronounced in cases of arranged marriage induced by fraud.
Once Parsis became judges in the Bombay High Court, the cultural autonomy of the Parsi matrimonial court increased. It became customary that any Parsi judge on the Bombay High Court bench would also be named the presiding judge of the Parsi Chief Matrimonial Court. With such appointments, even the pretense of supervision by an outsider disappeared.