Plaintiff Deities.

Daniela Berti (1)

1 CEH - Centre d'Études Himalayennes

This chapter examines how a ritual conflict involving supporters of two village deities, with a long history of unsuccessful attempts to resolve it through ritual and administrative proceedings, was eventually brought to court. This shift from a ritual and administrative arena to the judiciary is discussed in reference to the notion of ‘judicialization’, a notion used to indicate the broadening of the court’s sphere of competence at the expense of politicians and/or administrators. By relying both on the legal file and on ethnographic material, the analysis bears on the arguments put forward by one of the gods’ legal representative in order to prove the god’s traditional right to an honorific position, as well as on the reasoning put forward by the judge in his ruling. It suggests that the shift to the courtroom transformed the nature of the case, from a conflict among gods’ supporters over a ritual honour, to a conflict between them and the state administration over a religious right.

Mots clés: court ethnography; judicialization; gods’ mediums; ritual honours; Himachal Pradesh

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Droit; Religions

Daniela Berti. Plaintiff Deities.: Ritual Honours as Fundamental Rights in India. Daniela Berti, Gilles Tarabout, and Raphaël Voix. Filing Religion. State, Hinduism, and Courts of Law, OUP, pp.71-100, 2016, 978-0-1994-6379-4. ⟨hal-02181508⟩