Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Rivers in South Asia have significantly shaped the region’s political, social and cultural history. However, with the emergent threats of climate change, new regimes of ‘environmental’ law, and large-scale human intervention, the landscape – whereby the environment is intertwined with people’s lives and their livelihoods – is profoundly impacted. This article explores two reflections on contemporary debates on the rivers. First, it investigates how non-state actors, such as Sadhus (ascetics), leverage religious worldview to engage with law to safeguard the river Ganga’s interest. Secondly, it examines how a federal case of ‘rights of river’ in Uttarakhand became a rallying point for legal personhood in India. By drawing recent scholarship, this article illustrates the intricate relationship between religious environmentalism, environment and the role of non-state actors in navigating legal frameworks based on rights. The article argues that the recent order on river rights, while drawing on nature’s right discourse overlook deeply entangled characteristics of river’s relationship with riparian community and fraught nature of religious environmentalism in India. Using the Ashram as a site of locating religious environmentalism and its entanglement with the river’s right, the article demonstrates how an ontological move towards more-than-human rights-based framework can obfuscate longstanding inequality embedded into how ‘nature’ is accessed and utilised.
Author: Rahul Ranjan
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Language: English
Topic: Environmental law and policy
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Norges Forskningsråd
OpenAlex ID: W4403870830