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Legal Pluralism, Waqf, and Property in Urban India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2025

Radhika Chatterjee Open the ORCID record for Radhika Chatterjee [Opens in a new window]
Radhika Chatterjee*
Affiliation:
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
*
Email: radc.23@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article examines interactions facilitated by legal pluralism in contemporary urban India. Employing a framework of semi-autonomous social fields, I focus on use rights exercised over “Waqf” properties and the role social fields so generated play in facilitating access to property rights for groups without social and economic capital. Viewing property through a relational lens and relying on the method of examining “trouble” disputes, I discuss two long-term disputes in a Sufi shrine of an urban village called Mehrauli, Delhi. I will advance two main arguments in the article. First, the operation of formal and informal legal orders forms a generative ground making access to resources more equitable. Second, formal and informal legal orders interact to form a dialectical relationship, such that it becomes difficult to tell which of the two is superior.

Keywords

legal pluralismpropertyurban IndiaWaqfuse rightsurban villages

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 12 , Special Issue 3: Property Rights in India: Theory and Practice , September 2025 , pp. 373 - 393
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Asian Journal of Law and Society

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