Passage — Il

The 'law' is an enterprise that seeks to rule us all from cradle to the grave, whether as constitution confronting custom, or as custom confronting constitution, and often indeed as the diverse combinatory prowess of both. The very notion of enterprise suggests risktaking i.e., risk as a site for both opportunity as well as failure for regulation or felicitation  of approved social conduct. At the same moment, this coupling of the constitutional and  custom is at the outset designed to pluralise the notion of legal literacy, a message yet to  be fully constructed and conveyed co-equally to those who govern us and those who would resist domination. As citizens, we are supposed to know the law made by the state,  whether we intend to obey it or break it. As members of cultural and religious communities, we also need to know the norms that define our membership of these collectives. Often, our identity and obligations as members of a political society and of  diverse memberships within cultural and religious communities constitute spheres of peaceful coexistence. Often, too these collide. To decide what obligations ought to have precedence, each one of us in collision situations has to know a great deal about the law of the state and that constituting community and identity other than the political. Literacy in state law is important but never enough for an understanding of multiple sources of obligations that constantly press upon us. This invites engagement with many difficult questions including what we may want to mean by literacy, law, domination, and resistance. Further, the question always is : how far do resources of legal literacy endow us with resources of justice for all and care of self and care for others ?