Hindu Law: Stateless Law

Abstract

The connection between law and the State has become an implicit and paradigmatic part of our legal understanding concerning the question about what is valid law and who or what is the legitimate producer of such valid laws. However, during the last 20 years or so the paradigmatic bond between law and the State has slowly eroded due to many reasons. Accordingly, we have started to question the very nature of the relation between the State and law. Globally there are plenty of reasons to doubt the exclusive role of the State in relation to law. Lately, phenomena such as global law and transnational law have caused erosion of our paradigmatic understanding of law. This paper discusses Hindu law as a form of global law or law without the State. After the introduction, chapter 2 looks at how Hindu law is presented in the field of comparative law. Chapter 3 highlights shortly the history of Hindu law. Chapter 4 discusses the place and role of Hindu law today. The final chapter draws conclusions and sketches certain global law related trajectories for the future.