ABSTRACT
Chiba’s hypothesis that certain postulates within every community help it develop a sense of order that enables it to preserve its cultural identity in law, helped the present project. The community’s experience of interconnectedness expressed through an emphasis on these values controlled its interaction with state law, sometimes bridling and sometimes encouraging, thus resulting ultimately in different perceptions and pronunciations of state law. The embracement of state law did not occur on fixed understandings of state law, but rather involved multiple processes of translation of it. The dynamics in the processes of embracement of the values of state law in context of the community’s sense of order also question the alleged dichotomy between the effective securement of “rights” and mechanisms of reconciliation that is so often adopted or emphasised in non-state mechanisms of dispute processing. The language of rights and the values of state law still remain largely unfamiliar for the rural communities in Gonjhe and the Dharamgarh valley.
