State Law, Dispute Processing, and Legal Pluralism: Unspoken Dialogues from Rural India

This book presents an ethnography of dispute processing by non-state forums and actors in rural India. As such it sheds light on a much neglected and contested topic. Arising in the context of recent legal and political debates that question the legitimacy of non-state actors engaged in dispute processing, the book explores the nature, form, and functioning of such forums and actors in two locations in rural India. Focusing on a fishermen’s community belonging to the caste of Hindu Machimār Koḷīs in coastal Maharashtra and an agrarian community in Uttarakhand with members from the Pandit, Thakur, Bhotiā, and Harijan caste groups, this study shows the manner in which non-state forums and actors engage with state law and its regulatory systems.

Dr Kalindi Kokal is a post-doctoral fellow in the Centre for Policy Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai, India. She completed her doctorate in law from the Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany, with a fellowship from the Department of Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Kokal’s interest in exploring law as a social process stems from her earlier experience as a practising lawyer in the Bombay High Court. Her current work broadly focuses on themes related to law and society in India in particular and in South Asia more generally.