This introductory article picks up the key themes developed by the three articles in this Special Issue and wraps them into a wider discussion about creating new opportunities for productive use of the internal pluralities of ‘law’, especially concerning the complex relationships arising from ‘law and society’, ‘law and development’ and ‘law and governance’ debates. That is of course a tall order. To do this properly, ideally without losing focus, one needs to be aware, first of all, that law itself is internally so deeply plural that it is necessarily subject to interdisciplinary enquiry, not only while analysing foreign jurisdictions or examining state laws in today’s context of globalisation, as the pluralities go much deeper and are ancient. One could extensively theorise this rich plurality of pluralities, as I tend to call it these days, to bring out the internally plural scenario of legal pluralism in relation to the three subject areas discussed. However, legal pluralism is today increasingly acknowledged as a fact and is ‘no longer viewed as an arcane area of study’, especially when we include within our radar the legal systems of Asia and Africa. Hence we might proceed swiftly towards related problematics of implementation, or lack of it, as the case may be, since all three articles presented here identify and critique perceptions of lack of progress and search for remedies. In that context, I return to one particular image used earlier, when it struck me that reform-oriented activists tend to ask for the moon, in other words, to lobby fiercely for or simply demand an ideal scenario of development, progress and rational order, not to speak of justice, only to be irritated and disappointed when reality yields merely a mirror image of what was desired. Maybe one even finds unforeseen, unintended elements in the mirror image. I suggest here that Mother Yashoda’s ancient trick is much more than the loving kindness of the Mother Cow (vātsalya) for her offspring. It is also a non-verbal strategy of diversity management, deeply relevant for the global rhetoric of justice. It allows life to continue harmoniously, bypasses the petty impatient irritants of demands and desire, and opens windows of opportunity for better clarity of visions. In that regard, it is pertinent to note here that the overall assessment of Indian legal and other developments remains today generally clouded by remarkable negativities. Often derogatorily bad-tempered and unconstructive, it is frequently motivated by certain political and even personal agenda that underpin partial, hostile rhetorical dismissals of anything India attempts to survive in dignity. Reading of scholarly work, as of judicial decisions, may actually benefit from awareness of the writer’s biography, to understand better why particular perspectives are taken, certain lenses are chosen and specific outcomes are presented. Apart from being informed by the three articles that constitute the main body of this Special Issue, the present introduction is particularly inspired by Sen, a massive study that identifies early on that ‘[i]mportance must be attached to the starting point, in particular the selection of some questions to be answered….rather than others’. This wide-ranging post-Rawlsian analysis of justice as reasoned fairness, a form of equity rather than an idolised moon-like image of equality, realistically observes that ‘global justice is not a viable subject for discussion, since the elaborate institutional demands needed for a just world cannot be met at the global level at this time’. This sobering health warning implies that any globally uniformising analysis of justice risks being little else than rhetoric asking for the moon. More productive, as the three present contributions exemplify, are efforts to think about and strive for more and better local justice. By definition, as the little words ‘more’ and ‘better’ indicate, the aim is not selfish possession of the full ideal shining end-result in the sky of hope, as the research effort represents agitation ‘merely for the elimination of some outrageously unjust arrangements’. What precisely is ‘outrageously unjust’ would, however, remain subject to often highly subjective assessment and situation-specific scrutiny, as outrage can be easily manipulated or may be (ab)used strategically as a bargaining tool. Similarly, Twining found in conversations with leading Southern voices of human rights protection that their pluralist desire to account for different perspectives always risked ‘tolerating the intolerable’. Both these methods, identifying what is ‘outrageously unjust’ or ‘intolerable’, will indeed be subject to unending reasoning. While we may readily agree that it is intolerable or outrageously unjust in today’s world that some people die of starvation, deficiencies in securing a specific extent of development, basic education for young people or gender equity in family laws are much more difficult to assess in light of the respective actors’ value judgements. So what can we do if some participants in these ongoing debates stubbornly continue to insist that their perspective is correct and everyone else’s is misguided? Sen observes in this context that ‘many acts of nastiness are committed by people who are deluded, in one way or another, about the subject’. Since humans cannot find a globally agreed definition of ‘law’, this indicates that we will forever struggle with universally binding agreements about justice. Hence, given that ‘a diagnosis of perfectly just social arrangements is incurably problematic’, justice is never really an identifiable final or permanent state of perfection, but rather a momentary glimpse of the moon of bliss. Sen suggests: Resistance to injustice typically draws on both indignation and argument. Frustration and ire can help to motivate us, and yet ultimately we have to rely, both for assessment and for effectiveness, on reasoned scrutiny to obtain a plausible and sustainable understanding of the basis of those complaints (if any) and what can be done to address the underlying problems. Thus, Sen advises: ‘The challenge today is the strengthening of this already functioning participatory process, on which the pursuit of global justice will to a great extent depend. It is not a negligible cause’. Picking up this challenge, I seek to demonstrate how, in a scenario of ever more intensive pluralisms of people, communities and states, as well as concepts and methods of justice-conscious activism, even if we only focus here on Indian basic rights problems, the complexities in this field are growing rather than being reduced. There is a cacophony of comment and critique, and we find much anger and disappointment about what looks like significant failures. And yet, it seems, considerable progress is being made in establishing greater clarity about relevant parameters, particularly in identifying more sophisticated benchmarks for assessing and promoting plausible, realistic forms of justice. The elaborate performance of academic discourse is thus not a futile exercise, even if it is full of irritants. It can bring increasing awareness, first of all, about the inherently plural nature of law, its multidisciplinary uses, and at the same time its limits, too. Aware of such limitations and volatile liquidities, we may then proceed to further discussions about ambitious ideals like justice. Asking for the moon of perfect justice remains also today a tempting short-cut strategy, succumbing to almost childish desire to have a desirable toy. The hard labour of reasoning over the contours of the resulting mirror image of this ideal is never going to end. This introduction therefore also tests to what extent the three energetic young contributors to this Special Issue are aware of such limitations and are prepared to engage constructively in further reasoning.
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