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From Stamp Paper to Brass Bells: Procedures of Petition and
Justice in Golu Devs Territory
MEERA BAINDUR
Golu is called the supreme deity of justice by his believers. This deity is
territorially placed in a juridical relation with his subjects, those who reside
in the districts of Almora and Nainital and also his believers who are
sometimes not resident in his juridical region. He is often considered to be
the supreme court above the Supreme Court [of the Republic of India].
While Golu is clearly seen as a divine being operating above and beyond
the state legal system, yet it is in the presuppositions of his devotees that
he is placed within the same state system of justice. This is clear from my
on-going field work in Chitai, Almora. I found that a non-state legal
practice of petitioning the divine is contemporaneous with the procedures
of state legal practices. Practices such as petitions through stamp paper, a
practice of summons (called maath) and also punitive justice, retribution
and fines are to be found in Chitai. In case of Golu, a legal stamp paper
(until recently, now they are e-stamped) is used to petition the deity and
the post-case payment (in kind) of the petitioner is made through the
donation of a bell.
Theoretically, it seems that three main principles of ethics and justice are
in operation here truth telling, confession and the idea of the feared
curse. I posit that this system of justice is a self-regulating practice that
intercedes on behalf of the wronged person through a visitation of
calamity on the accused, particularly ill-health, in other words a curse.
Confession of the accused happens through the form of ritual called the
Jagar or through the sacrifice of a goat. While in most cases the Jagar is a
possession ritual where the deity communicates with the devotees and
listens to their petitions, here in case of Golu it is particularly different.
The petition is already given in writing. Therefore Jagar for the Golu mostly
is a healing ritual where the accused holds a story telling session and a
performance, at the end of which he/she confesses and is forgiven. The
ailing person who may be the accused or his/her kin is healed. Others may
also seek healings and blessings during the ritual. If Golu helps a case in
the state legal system to be resolved in his/her favour, the petitioner after
gifting of the necessary bell may also hold a Jagar performance in thanks.
I posit that the layering of the relationship between the benevolent deity,
his ability to punish wrong doers and interfere in the state legal system,
and the stylised ritual practices of written petitions that are modern,
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concerns with Giorgio Agamben about the notions of ban and exclusive
inclusion or with Alain Badiou imagery of necessary reduction of
multiplicity to do mathematics or axiomatic sciences: I do not know
whether what is good for mathematics or pure science is good for the
political and the politics. All I know (with a few anthropologists who take
social suffering seriously) are voices of social and human suffering-- the
marginalized, vulnerable, and the oppressed- who tell me how they
negotiate lives alongside with many discrete, even intergenerational,
costs of various legal pluralisms. How may we preserve our fighting faiths
while listening to voices of suffering is then among the problems that
invite serious engagement.
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themselves not only for the narrator but also for the fellow audience and
jury. The mistrust based procedural banishment of marginalized hence
finds avenues in Jan Sunwais where new modes of assertions, solidarity
and resistance is forged at every step. In such a platform, the
victims/survivor not only resists in solidarity but also recover in
solidarity. Jan Sunwais as such generates egalitarian aspirations among
women, Dalits, Tribals and creates liberating body language as opposed
to the constrained atmosphere of the panchayats, police stations or
courts. Jan Sunwais therefore offers exciting grounds of interrogating not
only the failure of institutional forms of constitutional commitments and
justice, but also all levels of governance, be it the criminal justice system,
elected representatives of the country, the civil society and the morally
bankrupt middle classes.
Multiple Legitimacies: Justice, Legality and Indigenous Systems of
Law in India
VIDHU VERMA
The thesis that law is open to not just from outside but from within the
system of law itself is central to discourse theories of law proposed by the
German philosopher Habermas in his early writings. Habermas starts with
the thesis that law has a reference to validity built into it and he calls this
laws claim to legitimacy. Relying upon Weber, he argues that the
rationalization of society undermines religious and metaphysical
justifications for law and differentiates law from politics and morality. But
unlike the legal positivists, which include Weber, Habermas wants to
legitimate the procedural requirements the former had found so central to
validate law along with a subjective belief in the legitimacy of existing
procedures. For Habermas, it is the discourse principle that claims
intersubjective agreement by all affected by a legal norm as the basis for
its legitimation. He also introduces the conceptual polarity between sheer
facticity of the law and its normative claim to validity which is caused by
modernization of society. In traditional society there was no gap as social
action was based on conventional morals and mechanical solidarity based
on similar world views. Hence in modernity the unity of law and justice is
eroded as norms can no longer be founded on some kind of a shared
based as in premodern society, neither on god or will of any ruler. Social
integration of people is supposed to be based on positive law in modern
societies.
In 1992, Habermas systematically addressed some of the problems in his
book Between Facts and Norms. Habermas now addresses most
extensively the ways in which modern law can be justified rationally on
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the basis of rights. This conceptualization relies on the argument that both
moral and legal norms are driven to resolve problems of social integration
in the lifeworld. Moral norms are deeply embedded in the lifeworlds of
different communities but lack the coercive power and enforceability of
law. To assure its authority law remains connected to the political system;
hence combine claim to legitimacy and guarantee of legality. Besides
seeking to reconstruct modern law in terms of its relationship to morality
and right, he spends time in connecting law and politics under conditions
of democratic regimes.
As an illustration of the increasing rapidity of legal change, let me refer to
the debates within Indian legal scholarship on the systematization of legal
norms and regulations. Early modern codifications could be conceived of
as authentications and affirmations of pre-existing customary law and
played a major role in transmitting the laws past into the future. The
rationality of many court judgments in postcolonial India on rights of
religious minorities emphasize shifts from the continuity of the past even
though remaining deeply embedded within it. The last two decades has
seen many more changes as legal culture and traditions have been
interpreted in statutes, laws and courts. One of the crucial features of the
present day legal experience is the breakdown in the dominance of the
nation state perspective. In its place what we are witnessing is pluralism
of sources of law and even its legal orders. In this paper, I throw some
light on powers and functions of indigenous legal systems the Khap
panchayats and Nyaya panchayats. Khap is a system of administration
peculiar to the Jat community of Haryana, Rajasthan and UP. Thus, Khap
panchayats constitute a separate legal order which cannot be simply
added to the inherited system of national state centered on independent
fields of law. Khap panchayats ignore the distinction between public and
private law and develop a law without a state, even as they receive new
impetus from the revolution in information and communication
technology. All this affects the laws surface of explicit normative material
but also its bare life. The legal culture from which actors draw preunderstanding is rapidly going beyond the nation-state perspective as its
memory becomes shorter than before. Democratic law is needed to
guarantee that norms can coordinate social action and secure integration
in view of the preservation of diversity of values in plurality of life-worlds.
Indeed these problems have led to periodic legal reforms that have led
many to demand that the Indian legal system return to its traditional roots
specifically by the creation of panchayats. Created in the 1950s, Nyaya
Panchayats have the judicial power to deliver justice in villages falling
under their jurisdiction. They are mainly involved with civil jurisdiction and
they have proper rules and regulations under the law. The Law
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commission in its fourteenth report, made the point that disputes before
them, become easier to secure when the person clothed with the
authority of deciding them have the advantage of knowing the disputants,
the subject matter of the dispute, the way in which the dispute arose and
other interesting facts relating to them.
As global India witnesses assertion by increasing variety of groups, each
having its own distinct traditions, values and world views, more conflicts
are reached by agreements on contestable matters and not on conditions
in which a shared basis is possible. To what extent can practices in these
societies bridge the growing gap between discrimination, legitimation and
actual norms? What is the role of customs and their effect on law and
justice? Are Dharmashastras a social norm making medium for Indian
society? Are Dharma problems different from law problems? Addressing
some of these questions, the paper sets out to critique Habermas notion
of law in the context of legality and legitimation in India today. Habermas
interventions and revisions are welcome but the epistemological attack on
tradition of modern legal theory undermines the basis for reform. Even
though Habermas sees facticity as factual norms that have status of social
acceptance in tension with social validity, it is unclear whether they can
be reconciled through democratic discursive will formation. The
conceptual tension between facticity and validity that action norms are
valid to those who could agree as participants in rational discourse, are
major challenges to be overcome if information and reason need to be
seen in the public space as constituted by illocutionary obligations.
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are also some very peculiar examples of legal practice which completely
refrain from using force. The enforcement of laws is completely delegated
to beings like daivas or bhutas, devtas or jinns, who are believed to share
this world with us. The important thing is that this is essentially a pre-axial
belief system, i.e. that there is no reference to a transcendent world.
Perpetrators are brought to reason because they share the belief in these
sprits, which are known to be capable of inflicting great harm to the
perpetrator and his family. Looking at the arms of the Bhutas of Dakshina
Kanara, we are reminded of the Christian doctrine of the two swords of
justice. In the case of a post-axial religion like Christianity, the divine
sword will be applied only in the time after times. Meanwhile the temporal
sword is used by the secular authorities. In the case of the Bhutas,
matters are slightly different. Since the spirits are among us, divine justice
does not have to wait for a time after times. It can be executed in this
very world and age. Hence there is no need for worldly powers to wield
the temporal sword of justice. They can completely leave matters to the
gods. That this is not a tale from One Thousand and One Nights is evinced
by four local phenomena that in their combination and regional
distribution point to a pan-Indian and community-transcending
phenomenon. From the Golu Devta of Chitai to the Bhutas of Dakshina
Kanara, from the Hegade of Dharmasthala to the Jinns of Feroz Shah Kotla,
all over India spirits are petitioned for justice. I will argue that these spirits
are efficacious social institutions that help catalyse in the consciousness
of the perpetrator a sense of justice that compels him/her, by the subtle
force of conscience, to comply with the demands of justice.
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Justice in Vacanas
A Performance by VIDWAN SHRI MADHUR P BALASUBRAMANYAM &
TEAM
Vacanas are rhythmic writings in Kannada which emerged and developed
during the 11th and 12th centuries. Starting from Allama Prabhu ,
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The second is to describe how the reforms are constructed to insist that
commercialization and privatization of water services, whether private or
public, lead to realization of the right to water by the poor and empower
them to exercise their client power to make service providers accountable,
triggering a virtuous spiral of participatory democracy.
The third aspect is to highlight how the dominance of the good
governance discourse in the water sector is being resisted and to explore
opportunities and limitations offered by this struggle in the deepening of
democracy and the emergence of new forms of water governance that is
socially just, culturally sensitive, economically prudent and ecologically
sustainable.
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