Indian legal education has traditionally emphasized “black letter law”, focusing primarily on statutes, judicial precedents, constitutional provisions, procedural rules, and established legal doctrines. While doctrinal legal knowledge remains indispensable to the functioning of the legal system, an exclusive focus on formal sources of law may provide only a partial understanding of how law operates within Indian society. India’s diverse indigenous and local communities possess extensive bodies of knowledge concerning social organization, dispute resolution, environmental conservation, customary practices, community responsibilities, traditional medicine, agriculture, natural-resource management, and cultural preservation. Much of this knowledge has been transmitted through oral traditions and community practices rather than through formal legal texts. This paper examines the significance of indigenous knowledge from a socio-legal perspective and explores how it can enrich legal education and scholarship in India. It considers the relationship between customary practices and the Indian constitutional framework, particularly in the context of tribal self-governance, cultural rights, environmental protection, and access to justice. Constitutional provisions concerning Scheduled Tribes, the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, Article 244, and statutory frameworks such as the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, demonstrate the legal system’s engagement with community-based institutions and traditional relationships with land and forests. The paper argues that socio-legal learning should neither romanticize indigenous traditions nor treat them as legally irrelevant. Instead, indigenous practices should be critically studied in relation to constitutional values, fundamental rights, gender equality, dignity, and social justice. The paper proposes interdisciplinary legal education involving field research, oral histories, community interaction, clinical legal education, anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, and traditional knowledge systems. Moving beyond black letter law does not mean abandoning doctrinal legal education; it means complementing it with an understanding of the social contexts in which law is created, interpreted, implemented, and experienced. Such an approach can contribute to a more inclusive, contextual, and socially responsive Indian legal education system.