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Local Powers and Judicial Constraints in a Case of Rape in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Daniela Berti
Daniela Berti*
Affiliation:
CEH-CNRS, France
*
Daniela Berti, Centre for Himalayan Studies, CNRS, 7 rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Since independence, the Indian State has shown a voluntarist approach in the judicial domain. This has led to the introduction of severe laws against customary relations of exploitation, harassment, and discrimination that rest on caste, gender, or religious differences. While this policy has enhanced a deeper legal culture, and provoked a new legal activism within the Indian population, it has not extirpated the local relations of dominance and exploitation. This paper provides an ethnographic account of how the rape of a young girl from a lower caste in Himachal Pradesh (Northern India) was dealt with in the judicial domain. It will thus provide an analysis of the interplay between traditional power relations and new forces that oppose those power relations through the rule of law. It will show how this interplay is visible in trial, and how it interferes with criminal procedures followed by the court.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 60 , Issue 3-4: The Boundaries of Law. Justice, Powers, and Politics , November 2013 , pp. 97 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2015

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