Customary Laws and Usages Among ST Communities Of Odisha And Their Implications For Making Modification In Land Laws Relating To Property, Inheritance And Land Tenure (Tribes: Dangria Kandha & Paudi Bhuyan)

Abstract

Tribal Customary Law has been studied as part of the study of tribal society. In the process a distinction has been made between sanction in primitive society and the law of the more advanced society; between the uncodified, unwritten customary rules recognized as binding by a tribal community and the larger corpus of the laws enacted and enforced by formal state system. The critical role of tribal customary law in the maintenance of tribal solidarity - and now tribal identity has generally been overlooked. With the growing understanding of our pluralism there is now an awareness of the need to know more of the tribal customary laws. KS Singh provided a comprehensive account on tribal ethnography, customary law and change. Colonial administrators-turned-ethnographers in their monographs on tribal people dealt with the administration of justice, land rights, rules of inheritance and succession, chieftain-ship, bride price, family, marriage and divorce rules, etc. for instance, C.G. Crawford in Handbook of Kuki Custom covered such matters as inheritance, land hire, divorce price, seduction, slave price, loans and oaths. Of all the tribes of the North East, the Garo laws were studied most systematically in the per-independence period. A major work was undertaken by W.G. Archer on the compilation of Santal laws in the mid-1940s. it is the most comprehensive work on tribal customary law. It covers a much larger canvas of tribal civil law and administration of justice among the Santal than any other work of the colonial period. The makers of Indian Constitution recognized the need for a separate political and administrative structure for the tribes. Special provisions were made to prevent encroachment on tribals land, uphold tribals land rights and other customs, etc. there was an appreciation of the need for the codification of tribal customary laws in different parts of India.