Colonial engagement with the Manusmriti was marked by a strong tendency to treat it as a single, authoritative code, rather than as one voice within a broader and more fluid dharmic tradition. British administrators elevated it to the status of the primary Hindu law book, using it as a key to understanding what they imagined to be a uniform “Hindu law.” In doing so, they often overlooked the plurality of Smritis, the role of commentaries, and the importance of regional customs and lived practice. This move transformed a flexible, interpretive tradition into something closer to a rigid legal code, more easily grasped and controlled by an external power. The text thus acquired a prominence and legal weight that it had not necessarily held in earlier practice.

Within the colonial legal system, Manusmriti became a central administrative tool for governing Hindu personal matters such as marriage, inheritance, caste disputes, and other civil issues. Courts and officials relied on translations and on pandits’ interpretations to adjudicate cases, codifying and systematizing its provisions into uniform standards across large territories. This process effectively institutionalized one particular reading of dharma, marginalizing alternative texts and local traditions that did not fit neatly into the emerging Anglo-Hindu legal framework. By standardizing law in this manner, colonial rule reinforced certain Brahmanical and hierarchical norms, often “freezing” social relations that had previously been more negotiable and context-dependent.

At the same time, the text was used discursively to shape how Hindu society itself was perceived and represented. Missionaries and some colonial officials highlighted verses on caste, gender, and punishment as evidence of moral and social “backwardness,” thereby justifying a civilizing mission and claims about the need for Western reform. Selective interpretation played a crucial role here: passages that supported existing power structures or confirmed colonial stereotypes were emphasized, while more complex or mitigating elements were downplayed. In this way, Manusmriti became both a legal resource and a rhetorical instrument, used to classify, critique, and govern.

The overall effect of this engagement was the production of a more “scriptural” and standardized image of Hinduism, centered on a single text that was treated as normative for an entire civilization. By privileging Manusmriti in law and scholarship, colonial powers contributed to a reconfiguration of Hindu self-understanding, encouraging the view that social order and moral norms were dictated primarily by a fixed written code. This historical episode illustrates how a text can be drawn into the service of political authority, its meanings narrowed and hardened in the process, even as it continues to be a site of debate and reinterpretation within the broader spiritual tradition.