Underground Justice: Dispute Resolution by Armed Groups in India's Northeast

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries I

Abstract

Why do some armed groups in civil war adjudicate quotidian disputes while others do not? To answer this puzzle, I compare four similar indigenous communities located in Northeast India that supported armed conflict to gain independence from India. Ubiquitously called ‘underground’, armed groups organized ‘parallel governments’ with separate military and civil wings. These underground governments collected taxes, and regulated social norms like prohibition against alcohol consumption and outside cultural influences. They also ran courts that tried defectors and insubordinate cadres. This is where the similarities ended. Quotidian disputes, or in more legal parlance, civil and criminal suits, were routinely brought to underground courts among members of the Naga and Kuki hill community. The Mizo and Meitei community experienced other aspects of armed-group governance but did not petition their cases to underground courts. Why?

I argue that armed groups administer justice in social milieu where, prior to civil war, juridical activities were mostly performed by the social institution of indigenous customary law and not the state’s legal institutions. The findings are based on more than 250 interviews that I conducted across ten districts in the states of Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram, as well as elite interviews in New Delhi. The participants included practitioners of both customary and formal law, members of nine armed groups, state bureaucrats and military officers, community leaders, politicians, NGOs, and ordinary citizens.

My research makes three contributions to the emerging field of rebel governance. First, I show that armed groups can administer justice even in the absence of firm territorial control (Kalyvas 2006, Mampilly 2011, Kasfir, Frerks and Terpstra 2018). This expands the universe of cases beyond paradigmatic examples like Columbia, Sri Lanka, and Syria that feature de facto borders between state and armed groups. Second, I build on recent research which stresses on the condition of institutions prior to war and its influence on wartime behaviour of armed groups. Existing literature indicates that armed groups fill a void left by poor quality institutions (Arjona 2017, Mampilly 2011). I suggest that it is not the quality of legality, but rather the nature of legality that influences ‘underground’ litigation. I describe legality as a collection of laws, procedures of justice, nature of evidence, methods of attaining legal knowledge, and finally, social expectations of justice. Where customary law is practiced, each element of legality is located in the social realm; it does not rely on the state’s resources or bureaucratic knowledge. For instance, customary law relies on oral history, testimonies, and oaths; it does not rely on legal documents like land titles and cadastral maps that require formalized training for its production and interpretation. Finally, I challenge the common perception that rebels lack knowledge of law and run kangaroo courts through the barrel of the gun. Instead, armed groups are sensitive to social expectations of legality.

Author

• Kaustav Chakrabarti, Brown University