Examples of Alternative Legal Systems in India

There are systems of law within the Indian jurisdiction that either do not rely on the state legal system at all or rely on it only partially. These include systems of religious personal law, tribal customary law, and other similar indigenous mechanisms of administering justice and settling disputes. The formal definition of law in India, along with constitutional provisions which guarantee religious and cultural freedom and allow for modes of self-governance, accommodates different legal systems with indigenous or traditional roots. Moreover, local and village bodies such as traditional or caste councils operate in independent India as well, further questioning the rhetoric of uniform law in India.

Tracing the History of the Legal System in India

Examination of Indian legal history illustrates the presence of multiple legal orders that coexisted in India through the ages. Moreover, certain ‘modern’ conceptions of law were present in similar forms in India before the medieval period, contrary to Western assumptions. Largely ignoring these legal traditions, the British attempted to re-give law and legal systems to the Indians. This was part of the larger project of ideologically justifying the presence of the British Raj in India. The British used India’s extant legal diversity to argue for the lack of a dominant legal tradition, leading to the introduction of British common law as the law of the land.

Conclusion

India, being a recipient of a largely forced legal transfer, necessarily suffers the issues of a gap between law and society. While measures have been taken to reduce this gap and achieve an ‘integrated’ approach to law, which attempts to take into consideration those indigenous forms of law that exhibit closer congruency with society, they continue to be top-down and state-centric. The broad implications of this study are to re-evaluate India’s common law identity, to question the applicability of ‘uniformalization’ in the Indian context, to examine how constitutionally recognized heterogeneity interacts with other constitutional ideals of national unity and integrity, and to examine the interact of regional and cultural safeguards with universal values of human rights.

Historical and Contemporary Deviations from the State Legal System in India

In late colonial and early independent India, with the consolidation of the modern Indian state, the two domains of the state and the non-state legal systems took shape. The pan-Indian drive to create one uniform legal system was rife with exceptions and contradictions. This set the base for continued operation of informal systems of law outside the state domain. The colonial attitude towards informal or non-state law in India could be seen post Independence as well. Both the colonial and the newly independent Indian state attempted to maintain a rhetorical stance of national unity, but could not do so effectively.