Criminal Proceedings in India and the Question of Culture. An Anthropological Perspective

Daniela Berti (1) , Gilles Tarabout (2)

1 CEH - Centre d'Études Himalayennes
2 LESC - Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de sociologie comparative

The history of the Indian legal order shows an intricate construction of institutions and codifications which relate to the British legal system, to Hindu or Muslim traditions (partly reinvented), and, since independence, to various international interactions. The question of culture - local, religious, or national- has thus regularly been at the core of juristic concerns, whether to leave place to aspects of personal law according to more or less reified representations of culture, or to impose a reformist legal agenda. Scholarship in this domain has followed two main trends: one is the study of the cultural components of Indian law; the other is the study of the cultural use of the Courts. The present chapter aims at presenting another, less explored, approach, focusing on Court proceedings and how they tackle with the cultural components of the cases to be decided in practice.

Mots clés: Anthropology; Legal Anthropology; India

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Droit

Daniela Berti, Gilles Tarabout. Criminal Proceedings in India and the Question of Culture. An Anthropological Perspective. Werner Gephart. Rechtsanalyse als Kulturforschung, Vittorio Klostermann, pp.193-206, 2012, Recht als Kultur, 978-3-465-04147-4. ⟨halshs-00870593⟩