INDIAN LAWYERS AND POLITICAL MODERNIZATION.

The article discusses the role of lawyers in the modernization of Indian society. The modern legal system in India, is an instrument of "tutelary politics" in the hands of the Western- educated elite. It is widely believed that Brahmins and other upper castes are pre-dominant in India's legal profession today. At the district level, advocates tended not to specialize and most worked on both the civil and criminal sides. They conformed to a pattern reported all over India and did not form partnerships or firms, although a junior advocate just out of school might be more or less apprenticed to an established advocate. Modern law has a direct impact upon village behavioral norms in the statutory village court. An alternative to enforcement by the courts of the officially constituted norms of contemporary India is the voluntary change in customary practice, which occurs within the confines of the new caste associations. The attitudes of Indian lawyers about their own profession naturally vary with the socioeconomic perspective and the personal ideology of the individual practitioner.