Within a few days of my arriving in Rampura village, I heard vague reports of a case of arson in which a poor man's straw-rick had been burnt down by a man from a neighbouring village.
The better-off villagers each gave a head-load of straw to the injured man, and the result was that he obtained more straw than he had lost. The villagers did not give me the details of what had happened, and such facts as I obtained came my way a few months later when there occurred another case of arson. When a dispute occurs, people's memories are stimulated and precedents are quoted. Something like case law exists, though it is not systematized.
At about the same time, a widow brought a complaint against another woman who had accused her of leading an immoral life. I managed to secure a brief account of the incident but not at all in sufficient detail. It was clear that the villagers did not like giving information about the 'seamy' side of village life to an outsider. I felt that this was a challenge to me as a field-worker. Besides, I must confess that like the villagers I found a dispute broke the monotony of village life, and gave people something to talk about. The villagers were quick to see the humorous side of disputes.
Disputes also had a dramatic quality. Thus one afternoon a man walked into my verandah dragging a lamb's skin with him, hurled it before Nadu Gowda, a respected elder, saying, "Mrs.
Siddamma's dog ate up my lamb. You must secure justice for me." Or again, another
afternoon, Mrs. Khasu, a Muslim, was pouring forth a Niagara of words in Kannada as well as Urdu, while laying her case before the Headman. The assembled men were all enjoying her oratory--in fact, some of them had previously expressed a hope that I would get a chance to listen to her oratory before I left the village. (There was a 'master' of abuse in the village, a peasant woman, and a boy offered to steal her fowl so that I could record her abuse!) A good many disputes have a public as well as a private side. The former would take place in the field or street or on a verandah, while the latter inside the house. Only in a few 'partition' cases was I able to witness a private session. The fact of my being kept out of the private sessions spurred me to devise ways and means by which I could get to know what had happened in them.
-112-
Every society has its own preoccupations, and whatever the problem the field-worker is pursuing, he cannot entirely ignore the former. It is only in a village or area which has been
already studied sufficiently intensively that he can ignore the preoccupations of the people to concentrate on his own particular problem. I was insensibly led into paying some attention to disputes even though my main interest was the delineation of inter-caste relations. I am afraid that the amount of time and energy I could spare for disputes was not at all enough. This was especially so when I had to keep track, as I had to occasionally, of two or three disputes each of which ran for a few weeks.
Partition disputes generally tend to drag on. When the idea is first mooted, it is at the end of a series of quarrels for which the women, especially those who have come in by marriage, are usually blamed. The elders who are approached to effect a division of the property among the coparceners usually advise them to stay together and keep their women in control. After a while quarrels again break out, and finally, the elders concede that it is better to divide than to quarrel perpetually. Then a second set of quarrels occur-how should the property be divided and who should get what? There are some conventions regarding this, but they do not prevent quarrels. After the property has been divided, one member feels that he has fared badly and he demands a redistribution. In such a case, adjustments are made with some difficulty and the document registered to ensure that similar demands are not made again. Another set of quarrels arises during the paddy-transplantation season when the bunds separating the flats are trimmed, and brothers, who are usually neighbours, accuse each other of encroachment.
Rights of way across a brother's field and right to irrigation water flowing through it, are other matters over which disputes occur. Such disputes go on for years. The partition of property among brothers does not promote amity and it is frequently found that adult brothers are not on speaking terms with each other. While the members of a lineage show solidarity in relation to other lineages, among themselves there are tensions. The narrower the lineage-span, the greater the tension. An exception to this rule is the elementary family when the siblings are still very young.
Besides the reluctance of the people to discuss the seamy side of their life before a respected outsider, there are other difficulties. Only some of the 'facts' of a dispute are accepted as such by all.
-113-
And even the 'same' facts are fitted into different configurations by different people. The arbitrators as well as the neighbours and onlookers know the disputants intimately, and everyone has his own image of the character and personality of each disputant. This is a pre-existing image and the facts of the dispute are woven into it. But the image is not
unchangeable.
Let me give an example: In a dispute between two Oilmen uterine brothers, the elder brother's wife, a strong personality and an attractive woman, was found walking in the direction of the river Kaveri at about 3 p.m. A farmer saw her and asked her where she was going and she replied that she was going to the river. She was so fed up that she wanted to drown herself in the river. When this was mentioned during the dispute, a few men laughed and said, "Is she the type which commits suicide?" One of those who laughed was an arbitrator. Here the 'objective' fact is the woman's walking to the river and expressing her intention to drown herself. This is interpreted differently by different people. The danger is that interpretation and fact are so closely woven that if the sociologist is not continually on the alert, he is in the danger of accepting some interpretations as facts.
These interpretations are not haphazard but are related to other factors. Thus, a decision of the village or caste council is often explained by saying that the Headman or another powerful arbitrator wanted to favour his kinsman or casteman or friend or client. In "The case of the Potter and the Priest" the Headman was stated to have changed his decision overnight about the punishment to be meted out to two people accused of fornication because an agnatic kinsman of his was suddenly brought before him accused of attempted rape. 1 He could not pass a harsh sentence on one and a lenient one on the other. The interests of a powerful man
like the Headman spread everywhere and he is likely to remember his interests while judging cases. An arbitrator also has his prejudices. Thus Nadu Gowda, normally a fair man, disliked one Untouchable in particular, and this came out sharply whenever a matter concerning him came up for discussion. Friendships are common and occasionally cut across caste lines, and they influence the interpretation put upon events by witnesses as well as arbitrators. Finally, the solidarity of the dominant caste and the kind of local leadership which it has, are relevant facts in the dispensation of justice.
____________________
1 Man in India, Vol. 39, No. 3, 1959, pp. 190-209.
-114-
Where the defendant is a powerful leader of a large faction, the arbitrators tend to be lenient because the defendant is capable of defying them and thus endangering the entire fabric of village law and order. (I am assuming here that factions are not so deep that the village council no longer functions.) There are saws which elders quote: "We floated the matter away"
(winked at it), "We let it slip through our fingers" (ignored inconvenient facts), and so on. One arbitrator mentioned how when he raised a point during the settlement of a dispute, the Headman's son winked at him to make him keep quiet. The poorer villagers are heard complaining about the corruption of arbitrators.
I must hasten to add here that this does not mean that the arbitrators can do just what they like. The ideal of justice (nyāya, dharma) is there, supported by moral and religious sanctions.
The arbitrators cannot entirely and consistently ignore public opinion. There are also unwritten rules of evidence. In "A Caste Dispute among the Washermen of Mysore", the defendant trapped the plaintiff by making him eat food handled by her, and also took care to see that a witness was present on the occasion. 2 This was one of the crucial facts in the case. As I mentioned earlier, one of the tasks of village councils is to determine what are the facts of the case. Evidence is insisted upon, and a distinction is made between direct and hearsay
evidence. The reputation of a witness is important in evaluating the truth or falsity of his statements. A person is sometimes made to swear to the truth of a statement in a temple. But this is an extreme measure.
The tutoring of witnesses seems to occur frequently and this makes the arbitrator's task all the more difficult. In some cases, tutoring is not necessary as the man has an interest in
suppresio veri and suggestio falsi.
It is usual for a man to know only some of the events which have occurred, but he maintains that what he knows is not only true but is the whole truth. This was brought home to me when I was taking notes of the dispute between the Potter and the Priest. What I did then was to confront one informant with another's version. It is obvious that several versions are more likely to yield the truth than a single version.
Then there are men who have a vested interest in disputes. They try to further their interest which may be monetary gain, or a
____________________
2 Eastern Anthropologist, Vol. VII, Nos. 3-4, 1954, pp. 149-68.
-115-
trip to a town ostensibly to see a lawyer or official, or to further their sense of self-importance.
The existence of such men is not only recognized, but they are credited with having even more influence than they actually do. (They also provide convenient scapegoats.) The words
'chitāvaṇi' (instigation) and 'kitāpathi' (love of creating quarrels) are frequently heard in the
village. My invaluable friend and assistant Kulle Gowda was active whenever a dispute occurred. His capacity for making mischief was widely recognized.
Once the sociologist has obtained an idea of the prevalent pattern of antagonisms in the village, he can use this knowledge for obtaining better information. Thus the friends of a man will provide one version of events while his enemies provide another version. And there are a number of marginal people who may provide a third version.
For a period of two years after leaving Rampura I was unable to so much as glance at my field-notes. When I finally came round to writing up a few disputes for a field-work class I experienced a certain amount of difficulty in achieving a completely coherent account. This was specially so with the partition disputes which usually ran for a few weeks and involved much acrimonious discussion. Some of my entries were vague or mutually inconsistent, and in the process of producing a coherent account of the dispute, I had to omit, change and
reinterpret some parts of my notes. I mentioned this fact in my first published account of a dispute. 3
Social anthropologists have in recent years stressed the fact that their descriptive monographs are a contribution to history. They claim that these monographs provide better data for future historians of primitive and peasant life in different parts of the world, than are available for any country and for any period in the past. This is no doubt true but it is essential to state that a social anthropologist's note-books occasionally contain entries that are wrong, vague or partial. This is specially true of the data collected in the first few months. When he is writing up, the social anthropologist discards the entries which he knows or suspects to be wrong. But he rarely mentions that his clear and coherent accounts of various aspects of the life of the people he has studied are occasionally produced from notes which are far from clear and consistent.
____________________
3 "A Joint Family Dispute in a Mysore Village", Journal of the M. S. University of Baroda, Vol.
I, No. 1, 1952, pp. 7-31.
-116-
These difficulties exist in all cases excepting where the field-worker has periodically taken time off from the field to read and ponder over his entries and resolves his doubts and difficulties by discussing them with his informants. They are particularly prone to occur where the field-worker is spending a year or less in the field and also when he is recording disputes which occur over several weeks. I am not concerned here with the other limitations of field-notes as historical documents, namely, the subjectivism imposed by the field-worker's interests, his limited energy and the degree of his conscientiousness. It is obvious that where the social anthropologist uses an interpreter, as he frequently does, the notes do not have the same value as when he has enough mastery over the language of the people he is studying.
Recent research has shown that even the genealogies recorded by an anthropologist do not always provide an accurate record of descent. This is especially so in segmentary societies where the genealogies regularly adjust themselves to the dynamics of the lineage system. 4 Even where there is a caste of genealogists whose business it is to record genealogies and bring them up to date periodically, genealogies do not always provide an accurate record of descent at all levels. 5 Generally speaking, the remoter the past, the less reliable are the memories of informants. Even with regard to events which happened a year or two ago, informants' memories are not particularly reliable. But where a large number of people are involved, several can be questioned to obtain an account which is broadly true. And where documents exist, informants can be questioned on the basis of the documents. I used the first technique in gathering facts about a dispute which had occurred in October 1947 between Kere and Bihalli, and the second in my account of the Washerman dispute.
It was while collecting the facts of the dispute among Washermen that the idea occurred to me to look for documents referring to settlement of past disputes. I was told that caste and village headmen in the big villages had such documents. I had no luck, however, with the Peasant Headman of Hogur, the hobli to which Rampura belongs, but I fared better with the Peasant Headman
____________________
4 Evans-Pritchard E. E., The Nuer, Oxford, 1940, p. 246.
5 See A. M. Shah and R. G. Shroff, "A Caste of Genealogists and Mythographers--the
Vahivancha Barots of Gujarat", in Traditional India: Structure and Change, edited by Milton Singer, Philadelphia, 1959, pp. 40-70.
-117-
of Kere, at a distance of three miles from Rampura. In the summer of 1952, I made several trips to him and finally obtained loan of over 70 documents, some of which referred to settlement of disputes which had occurred in Kere Hobli during the year 1900-1940. The documents referred to a wide variety of matters, and I am convinced that where such documents exist, they are invaluable for the study of rural social history. My own analysis of the concept of the dominant caste owed much to these documents. I do know that such documents also exist elsewhere. The people with whom these documents exist do not take enough care to preserve them, and white ants, roaches, rats and the monsoon are steadily diminishing the quantity of documents available to the anthropologist. These remarks also apply to village records lying in the taluk offices everywhere. These documents have, somehow, failed to attract the attention of historians in spite of their obvious importance.
The systematic study of disputes in rural areas and their settlement by non-official panchayats constitute an important field of research. It is completely neglected at the present moment by sociologists as well as lawyers. The latter confine themselves to laws passed by the State and Central Parliaments. Customary law as observed in the villages is not regarded as law even though it govern the lives of millions. Convenient myths exist to the effect that the
introduction of British law destroyed the laws and customs followed by the village panchayats.
Indian villagers are really 'bi-legal' using both their traditional system as well as
Britishintroduced law administered by the official courts situated in towns. I have been told of cases withdrawn from the latter to be settled before the unofficial panchayats. The study of the effects of introduction of British law on the indigenous system and on Indian society needs to be investigated by historians, anthropologists and lawyers. (Dr. Bernard Cohn of Rochester is studying this problem in Uttar Pradesh.)
The concentration on formal and written law has distorted the perspective of Indian lawyers and intellectuals. It has led to even pretending that the law enforced in the unofficial panchayats is not law.
I am convinced, however, that the study of the submerged legal system is extremely
important and will be one of the things which will have to be undertaken if we plan to develop a much-neglected
-118-
field of studies, namely, the sociology of law and legal institutions. Such a study will also throw light on a historico-legal riddle, the relation between the law as embodied in the sacred books of the Hindus and the law as actually observed and obeyed by the bulk of the people living in villages. Finally, the study of this problem is not unrelated to the policy of devolution which finds much vocal support among modern India's leaders.
-119-