Social justice and enlightenment: West Bengal

The State of Justice in India: Issues of Social Justice is a collection of writings on the state of social justice in the present-day West Bengal. It studies the strong disjunction between the notion of enlightened politics, on which the constitutional Left in West Bengal has thrived for several decades, and social justice. The articles probe the question: is there a necessary connection between the politics of communism and attainment of social justice? Social Justice and Enlightenment: West Bengal is based on ethnographic studies which suggest that while there is a general regime of justice in West Bengal, the rule of law as the main mechanism of justice makes little sense in the presence of specific local judicial practices. It questions why the archaic rule of law still remains fundamental in the state governance and concludes that the West Bengal experience demonstrates that while democracy may widen through the mass entry of workers, peasants and the rural and urban poor, and though this may facilitate long-denied political justice for them, this does not ensure social justice per se. (Source: www.alibris.com)