ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview and analysis of the debates surrounding the relationship of state law and non-state actors as perceived by the Indian judiciary and socio-legal activists. It presents an outline of the literature on non-state dispute processing in India generally. It provides an ethnography of how disputes are handled in rural Indian societies and the nature of engagement with state law that such processing involves. Discourses within anthropology have long debated the dichotomy between that which constitutes the “state” and the “non-state”. Non-state forums of dispute processing have been variously referred to as informal systems of justice, informal systems of dispute settlement, and unofficial systems, in different pieces of literature, often being used interchangeably. Relevant to the study of non-state forums of dispute processing is the context of their position vis-a-vis the state. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
