This discussion contributes to the history of the colonial rule of law that governed market practice in India using the South Asian indigenous credit institution known as hundi. A centuries-old artery of credit for Indian merchant networks, and a living institution that has largely been driven underground by 21 st century laws, hundi provides a window into the dynamics of colonial law from the commercial and financial legislation of the 1880s to the final attempt to codify hundi in the 1960s

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... 70s in a bid to bridge the growing disconnect between the Indian indigenous banking sector and modern banking. I chart the British colonial and postindependence history of hundi as means of understanding the wider political, legislative and economic dynamics of colonial state formation and the legacies of legislation.