Paper short abstract:

The paper proposes that for Dalit victims of violence in Rajasthan, India legal social protection measures, like the 1989 Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe Prevention of Atrocities Act can come to represent idealised, fixed and potentially accessible horizons of hope in moments of social breakdown.

Paper long abstract:

Clifford Geertz famously argued that law represents 'a distinctive manner of imagining the real' (1983:167). Later generations of anthropologists have shown that individuals and groups frequently consider state and human rights law allies in personal struggles, as potent, yet opaque instruments that have the power to create or restore moral order (Merry, 1990; Conley& O'Barr, 1990). However, authors have, thus far, paid little attention to the circumstances under which legal imaginaries arise as powerful, aspirational horizons for socio-political change.

My paper considers this question, drawing on fieldwork in Rajasthan, India, which focused on Dalit engagement with the 1989 Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA), a legislation aimed to alleviate inter-caste violence against historically discriminated minorities.

I propose that for marginalized communities, like Dalits in India, legal concepts, terminology and practice often emerge as imagined pathways to a better future against the backdrop of violence and social ostracism. Not only can experiences of violence lead to a loss of faith in the grammar of the ordinary (Das 2006) but also, simultaneously, produce a need for new social networks and perspectives of hope. Therefore, legal social protection measures, like the PoA can come to represent idealised, future imaginaries of a stable and fair sociality for victims whose ordinary social setting has lost its meaning and sense of refuge. In moments of violent breakdown state law promises to transform visions of moral community living into 'the hard cash of law' (Habermas, 2010: 345).