Abstract
The 21st century is witnessing a shift toward a multipolar world, with several nations having similar power. While the contemporary international order has been frequently presented as a secular and universal framework that maintains order among a diverse community of nations, this multipolar world questions the foundational assumption. This article argues that Epistemic Colonialism has created the current framework of international law. Through colonialism, Western practices have submerged non-Western civilisational frameworks. The “myth of universality” can be broken down by analysing it through the lens of Indian Dharma, which shows how a pluralistic legal order offers a more resilient alternative to the contemporary international legal order.
Introduction
International law cannot be seen as a subject separate from colonialism, as it did not emerge through a global democratic consensus. European expansion and conquest led to a dominance of Western practices across the globe. Antony Anghie states that the concept of sovereignty was constructed in a way that excludes non-European entities. Epistemic colonialism is centred around this exclusion. It moves beyond mere physical occupation of territory, but occupies intellectual categories, through which concepts such as “justice,” rights,” “freedom,” and “statehood” are understood.
International law is usually spoken about with reference to the Westphalian system that is rooted in the 17th-century European treaties, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberal individualism. This system, now, functions as a checkpoint, where any legal tradition that does not conform to Western standards is thought of as “pre-modern”, “customary”, or “religious” and dismissed. This allows for a blanket application of Western laws across the global order, which silences the rest of the world.
The Myth of Universality
One of the most powerful existing myths is the claim that international law is universal. This idea of “universality” strictly serves one purpose, and that is creating a hierarchy. Historically, this distinction of “civilised” and “uncivilised” nations was created only to protect the power of European nations to determine who had legal personality and who did not.
While there have been progressions from the 20th century, with the overtly racist language being removed from the modern treaties, the underlying sentiment of creating a distinction between some nations and others still exists. Universality is enforced through the imposition of specific Western political and economic models, such as the neoliberal market standards or interpretations of certain human rights. These interpretations often ignore the communal and spiritual foundations of non-Western societies. This “abyssal thinking” creates a line that makes the non-Western legal system invisible, committing “epistemicide”, the murder of knowledge.
Dharma: An Alternate Approach
The Indian concept of Dharma offers a radically different path. Dharma, as opposed to the Western understanding of the term, is not simply “religion” or “law “, but is a multidimensional framework consisting of duty, ethical conduct and cosmic order. Unlike Westphalian law, which is built on the foundation of the individual and their rights against the state, Dharma begins with the recognition of an obligation. Werner Menski states that the Dharmic framework views the individual as part of an interconnected web of duties. These duties are to the family, the community, and the environment, and are specific to different people and situations, depending on factors like gender, age or status. The key notion in Dharma is “symbiotic interaction” and “intrinsic diversity” of all manifestations of life.
Western international law treats states as atomised, self-interested actors, whereas the Dharmic approach focuses on relationality. The state is not seen as a supreme entity but as a custodian or caretaker of a higher order. The idea of rita serves as a basis for this line of thinking, which holds that there is a pre-existing natural order, is concerned with protecting Dharma, and acknowledges a concept known as Svadharmia, which is a personal or context-specific duty. Unlike the “one-size fits all” approach of universalism, this approach allows for a higher degree of local and cultural pluralism with a unified ethical framework.
Challenging the Secular-Liberal Monopoly
The inclusion of frameworks like Dharma challenges the strict secularism that international law demands. The Westphalian system insists that for a norm to be “legal”, it must be separated from its spiritual and abstract roots. However, this creates friction for civilizational states like India, Islamic nations, or China, whose legal systems are deeply connected to their spiritual and philosophical traditions.
Dharma becoming a concept in the international legal world would challenge the neutrality of secularism, which is established by Westphalian thinking. A truly international law would thus need to be a law of many laws. This false neutrality of secularism can only be undone by a pluriversal system where different civilizational laws, with their basis in their customs and religions, are allowed to coexist without one being forced to fit into the mould of another.
A Dharmic Application
A Dharmic approach in the field of environmental law could help shift the attitude that drives lawmakers. International environmental law is largely reactive and market-based, more often than not taking a back seat to development goals, and treating nature as a resource to be managed or as a right for humans to enjoy. A Dharmic approach treats the Earth as a living entity with whom humans share a bond of duty. This is reflected through a recent Supreme Court case, where the court bestowed on the rivers Ganga and Yamuna a state of personhood and extended all corresponding rights, duties, and liabilities of a living person to the rivers.
Toward a Pluriversal International Law
While moving toward a pluriversal system, the focus must not be on replacing Western law with another hegemony, but on dismantling the monopoly that was created by epistemic colonialism. The characteristics of this newly formed, decolonised international law would be diversity, cross-cultural dialogue, and institutional reform.
A pluriversal international global order would allow different cultures to engage in a dialogue to find common ground, which in the case of Dharma would be the ethical intersection between human rights and Dharma. Concepts like Dharma should be recognised by international systems, and general principles of law recognised by civilised nations, as mentioned by Article 38 of the ICJ Statute, should include non-Western civilizational concepts. This can only be done if we move away from the Eurocentric focus of international institutions and include a wider range of legal experts trained in non-Western traditions and law.
Conclusion
Our current global legal system is fragile. It is built upon a narrow cultural foundation imposed upon non-Western societies through colonialism. The world in the 21st century is deeply interconnected and more culturally assertive, which makes the myth of a single Western universality unsustainable. Pluriversal international law, however, offers a potential solution to this instability.
By embracing and integrating civilisational frameworks like Dharma, or cultural and spiritual laws from China, Africa and Islamic nations, we do not descend into a legal system marked by chaos. By creating an interconnected international legal realm, there can exist a more authentic international order that does not force non-Western countries to translate their spirituality and customs into acceptable Western forms. This shift from a universal law to a pluriversal law, and the stepping away from the false neutrality of secularism, will form a true reflection of our international system. Only by decolonising our international legal systems can we create a global order that is as diverse as the people it seeks to govern.
About the Author
Rianne Michael is currently doing her BA LLB at Jindal Global Law School. Her interests lie at the intersection of caste discrimination law and criminal justice, particularly how systems respond to caste-motivated violence and how procedural frameworks can either reinforce or dismantle social inequality.
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