1. INTRODUCTION
There has been a general recognition, both in sociology and in jurisprudence, of the fact that most societies are multi-legal; that is, in addition to the state law they display kindred regulatory system of norms, institutions and culture performing functions similar for social groups that the state law aspires to perform for the entire society.
But this recognition is usually obscured by the fact that jurisprudents and sociologists are not comfortable in characterizing the group regulatory systems as “law” or “legal systems”. This in itself represents both logical and ideological problems which cannot be explored here (see Baxi, 1979c).Indian society too is multi-legal, comprising congeries of NSLS in dynamic interaction with SLS. But we still need to know the extent of reciprocal relations of exchange and support among these systems and the extent of their autonomy. Moving away from the “pure” types of village and customary law, we need to focus on the interaction between the numerous local and national systems, and the mutuality of cross-systematic influence/impact, including a systematic description of key points of tension and conflict between the systems (cf. Cohn, 1965; 103–109; Khare 1972; see also Chakravarty, 1975; Sharma, 1979).
In addition, we need to explain the persistence of the plurality of the legal systems. To understand reasons for persistence of the “village” law and justice is also to understand some of the limits of effectiveness of planned social change through the instrumentality of the national legal system. Description and explanation of NSLS/SLS interaction naturally raise the problem of evaluation: Is the discovered pattern of relations (maybe of complementarity or conflict) between the good or bad in terms of the attainment of the constitutionally proclaimed social order?