Through a comparative analysis of crimes of 'honour' in India and Pakistan and an examination of appellate judgments from the two countries, we reflect upon how a rights-based discourse of modern nation-states forms a complex terrain where citizenship of the state and membership of communities are negotiated and contested through the unfolding of complex legal rituals in both sites. We identify two axes to explore the complex nature of the interaction between modernity and tradition. The first is that of governance of polities (state statutory governance bodies) and the second is the governance of communities (caste panchayats and jirgahs). We conclude that the diverse legacies of common law in India and Pakistan frame an anxious relationship with the categories of tradition and modernity, which inhabit spaces in between the governance of polities and the governance of communities, and constantly reconstitute the relationship between the local, national and the global.