ABSTRACT
The previous chapter described and analysed the various types of non-state actors that are working in the sphere of dispute processing. Laws encompassing the postulational values that enable the community to preserve its identity in law find prominence in the processing of disputes at the level of the community, incidental to which are mechanisms that result in resistance to state law, its systems and values. Despite this, however, as the diagrams produced earlier made clear (see Chapter 3, Figure 3.1 page 69 and Figure 3.2 page 70), the values of state law are not and do not become completely absent in the layers of legality dominated by non-state actors, including the self. I argued that in locations such as Gonjhé, where there were several layers of legality, the values of state law became very thin as they travelled inwards to the individuals. However, in the village communities of Dharamgarh valley, the lesser number of layers allowed the values of state law to travel in a fairly uncondensed form to the self. This was rather evident from the many and diverse ways in which individuals “made themselves heard” (Basu 2015, 60) through interacting actively with state law. They were producing several translations of state law through the embracement of its values. Of course, individual behaviour that emphasised the postulational values of state law was often perceived as a challenge to the postulational values that the community cherished, demonstrating a typical situation of conflict in law (Chiba 1998). This placed individuals making such choices in a fairly precarious position. The case studies in the next section reveal how people became rather innovative in emphasising the postulational values of state law that they as individuals may have identified with, without disturbing the postulational values of community laws to the greatest extent possible.
