Revision summary
Customary law governs land, water, and forest through taboo, fine, and office. Sacred groves in Kodagu, Kerala, and Meghalaya are standard Indian examples. Ostrom’s commons design matches many of those local rules. Chipko and Niyamgiri show custom in political defence of habitat. Custom can fail under market pressure, so recognition must be empirical, as in the Forest Rights Act.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Customary law is the local rule of land, water, forest, and sanction. It can conserve an environment when the rule and the habitat still fit each other.
Body
Custom as conservation
- Sacred groves such as kaavu in Kerala, devara kadu in Kodagu, and law kyntang in Meghalaya close felling and hunting by ritual fine, which Madhav Gadgil and others have treated as living conservation.
- Elinor Ostrom showed that commons need nested rules, monitors, and sanctions; many customary systems already have those, without a state forest code.
- Chipko in the Garhwal Himalaya and Dongria Kondh defence of Niyamgiri show custom joining protest when the state or a company claims the hill.
Limits and law
- Custom can also exhaust a resource when population, market timber, or elite capture break the old restraint, so custom is not automatically green.
- The Forest Rights Act, 2006, and related PESA rules try to recognise community forest rights rather than treat all local use as theft.
- Anthropology’s task is to record tenure, taboo, and sanction, then ask whether those rules still match ecology under new markets.
Flow diagram
Conclusion
Customary law can protect groves, pastures, and hills when rights and sanctions are real. Conservation policy works better when it recognises those rules instead of erasing them.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Incest Taboos.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2015 · Q1(c)). View answer →
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Does custom always conserve nature?
No. Custom conserves when rules, monitors, and ecology still match. Market timber and elite capture can empty the same grove.
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Is this only a tribal topic?
No. Peasant irrigation panchayats, pastoral routes, and caste-linked tanks are also customary environmental law.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2022 · Q2(c) · Anthropology GS 1 · 15 marks
Discuss with suitable examples the typo-technological problems in Indian palaeolithic industry with reference to environmental hypotheses
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