Legal Illusions and Caste Realities: Pseudolaw, Manual Scavenging, and the Law with Impunity in India

Abstract

This article draws on the conceptualisation of pseudolaw, the conflation of legal form with legal substance, to highlight the alarming persistence of manual scavenging in India. “Despite being banned through successive legislations, most notably the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act” (2013), the practice continues to break out in the country, particularly in urban municipalities and rural sanitation systems. The fact that manual scavenging, predominantly undertaken by Dalits, particularly the Valmiki community, persists not because of a legal void but due to the illusion of legality, where the symbolic enactment of law conceals the systemic failure of implementation, should be a cause for immediate concern. Scholars argue that pseudolaw prospers when legal language and ritual are misused to substitute for actual legal authority and justice. In India, this phenomenon takes the form of law with impunity. In this condition, state actors deploy the appearance of legal reform while enabling caste-based exploitation through negligence, denial, and lack of political will. “The judiciary, while occasionally progressive (e.g., Safai Karamchari Andolan v. Union of India, 2014), has not enforced substantive accountability”. “There have been virtually no prosecutions under the 2013 Act” (Shankar, S., & Swaroop, K., 2021), and deaths in sewers continue to be reported without compensation or legal consequence” (NHRC, 2022). This misuse of legal language and ritual is a stark injustice that demands immediate reform. This juridical void, ritualised performance of legality, masks the structural violence of caste and state complicity. Structural violence refers to the systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals. The State sustains a framework of denial by mimicking the form of justice through declarations, token rehabilitation schemes, and public ceremonies. In this context, legal prohibitions neutralise resistance rather than dismantle oppression. The article concludes that manual scavenging in India exemplifies how the law can become a tool of symbolic governance rather than transformative justice. Therefore, the need for legal reforms that move beyond performative prohibition toward structural accountability, caste annihilation, and radical legal literacy among the marginalised is urgent. These transformative legal reforms can inspire hope and action in the fight against manual scavenging.  The central aim of this article is to critically analyse how the Indian legal regime on manual scavenging produces an illusion of justice while failing to dismantle caste-based labour exploitation.