Gods’ Rights vs Hydroelectric Projects. Environmental conflicts and the Judicialization of Nature in India
Résumé
The aim of this paper is to show how questions related to the environment and reli gion may sometimes overlap in Indian judiciary practice. Courts in India are some times called upon to make a ruling about writ petitions which involve promoters of public works (hydroelectric projects, dams, tourist resorts, etc.) whom villagers accuse of not only spoiling a natural environment but of damaging a place where a village god all egedly lives. I discuss one example of these writ petitions that I followed up dur ing my fieldwork at Himachal Pradesh High Court in Shimla. The case concerns the building of a water tank near a natural source supposedly inhabited by jogni (powerful femin ine beings). Based on ethnographic material and court files, the paper shows how nature is presented in these petitions both in ecological terms, as a resource with an in trinsic value that has to be regulated by law, and in terms of a place over which god s have specific rights
Domaines
Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie
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