Beyond ideology: scandal, state, and the political origins of extensive criminalisation in post-colonial Indian company law

Amending the Companies Act 1956 in India, the Companies (Amendment) Act 1960 represented an abrupt departure from the free-market policy of the colonial-era towards greater state control. It also extensively criminalised the Act, leading to a dramatic expansion of penal control over companies, the focus of this study. Relying on popular characterisations of post-colonial Indian economic history, company law scholarship attributes this policy shift to the state's intensifying socialist and dirigiste tendencies. Despite the Amendment's significance, this reliance has led to a limited analysis of its legislative history and the political-economic factors that triggered the shift. By contextualising the Companies (Amendment) Act 1960 within debates on post-colonial economic historiography, this study reinterprets the existing narrative in company law. It argues that while ideological considerations played a role, the expansion of penal control in 1960 was largely politically driven, particularly in response to the Mundhra Scandal that erupted in 1957.