Hostname: page-component-84c44f86f4-w4mlg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-15T01:39:30.253Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of Custom: Blood Money, Disputes, and Tribal Leadership in Western India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Devika Bordia
Devika Bordia*
Affiliation:
University of Göttingen, Germany
*
Devika Bordia, Unviersity of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany. Email: devikabordia@gmail.com
Get access

Abstract

In this article I trace the events around a murder case in the regions inhabited by the Bhils in Southern Rajasthan. The manner in which the case is addressed reveals the intersection between panchayat (village councils), police and court practices. The case also demonstrates how everyday legal practices make visible political affiliations, loyalties, and associations among tribal leaders, and reveals shifts that have taken place in the local formations of power and authority.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 60 , Issue 3-4: The Boundaries of Law. Justice, Powers, and Politics , November 2013 , pp. 153 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Baxi, P (2010) Justice is a secret: compromise in rape trials. Contributions to Indian Sociology 33 : 207–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berti, D (2010) Hostile witnesses, judicial interactions and out-of-court narratives in a North Indian district court. Contributions to Indian Sociology 44: 235–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, B (1987) An Anthropologist among the Historians and other Essays. Delhi/New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, JL, Roberts, S (1981) Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galanter, M (1984) Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, T, Stepputat, F (2001) States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooja, R, Hooja, M (2007) Democratic Decentralization and Planning: Essays on Panchayati Raj, District Planning and Development Administration. New Delhi: Rawat Publications.Google Scholar
Mathur, PC (1991) Political Dynamics of Panchayati Raj: The Institutional Pendulum of Devolution and Retraction, 1959–90. Delhi: Koark Publishers.Google Scholar
Moore, SF (2015) Customary law in one area of 20th century Africa. The Chagga of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Diogenes. Epub ahead of print 7 July 2015. DOI: 10.1177/0392192115590340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Srinivas, MN (1960) India's Villages. London: JK Publishers.Google Scholar