This paper is concerned with the relationship between the law and the practices which came to be known as "untouchability." Part I depicts the way in which the legal system of British India supported certain aspects of the caste order. Part II traces the piecemeal withdrawal of this support in the years preceding Independence and the undertaking by independent India of a commitment to eradicate old patterns of caste relations. Part III describes the constitutional setting of these efforts to abolish disabilities. Part IV reviews the reception of anti-disabilities measures by the higher courts. Part V attempts to assess their effectiveness in operation. Part VI explores the prospects for making the law more effective in abolishing disabilities. For the most part this paper is concerned with the "lawyer's law" ' the official and unauthoritative legal rules found in statutes and in the judgments of the higher courts. There is, of course, no exact correspondence between this higher law and the behavior that it purports to regulate, nor even with the day to day operations of the magistrates, officials, lawyers and police who staff the lower levels of the legal system. Some gap or discrepancy between the most authoritative legal pronouncements and patterns of local practice, both lay and professional, is a typical, perhaps universal, feature of any complex multi-layered legal system. OlDviously many factors other than legal rules in?±uence behavior regarding caste. We shall review the "lawyer's law" as a set of rules for governmental intervention in caste behavior, in order to settle disputes, to maintain patterns or establish new ones. After determining the changing scope and nature of this intervention from the point of view of the lawyer's law, we shall then attempt to ascertain its extent and character in practice.
Bibliographic Citation
The Abolition of Disabilities; Untouchability and the Law' in J.M. Mahar (ed.), The Untouchables in Contemporary India (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972) pp. 227-314. Reprinted in part in W.M. Evan (ed.), The Sociology of Law: A Social Struc
