Papers by Anindita Chakrabarti
Cultural Studies , 2024
Analyzing the battle over Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple’s enormous treasure, the paper documents th... more Analyzing the battle over Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple’s enormous treasure, the paper documents the litigious journey of the concept of sacred possession and heritage. It shows how the evolving and complex logic of secular governance in India provides the legal categories that animate this contestation over the deity’s wealth. While the enormous treasure trove housed in the six chambers of the temple’s basement ‘belongs’ to the idol (murthi) Lord Sree Padmanabhaswamy, the royal family of Travancore has held the right for over the last two hundred and seventy years to control the wealth as the Lord’s servants (dasa). Though the dispute over what is arguably the world’s largest temple gold and valuables collection began in 2007, it gained widespread media attention in 2009 when a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed. Since then, the royal family, temple management, and other stakeholders have been embroiled in the struggle for possession and control of the temple’s wealth. The paper explores how legal frames of Anglo-Hindu law in their postcolonial avatars, material patrimony (gold and land), and notions of immaterial heritage (shebaitship) animated and framed this contestation. To this end, the paper maps the legal trajectory of the dispute and the public debates over the ownership and control of the astounding wealth of Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple. Further, it decodes the legal reasoning behind the courts’ arguments and delves into ontological questions surrounding religious freedom and secularity. The discussion illustrates how notions of immaterial heritage anchored in ideas of kingship as well as kinship emerged as clinching evidence in the management and access to this sacred wealth. Finally, the analyses offer insights into the governance of sacred materiality through religio-legal categories in a postcolonial nation-state.
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Religious Freedom: Social-Scientific Approaches, 2021
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Campus verlag, 2022
market economies. Taking cue from this body of scholarly work, the paper will explore the case of... more market economies. Taking cue from this body of scholarly work, the paper will explore the case of pious Muslim entrepreneurs in Malabar, Kerala, to examine whether there is a link between Islamic doctrines and economic activity among devout Muslims. This exercise shows that while Weber's observation on Islam and capitalism does not hold, his verstehen approach is still relevant in understanding the internal logic of Islamic economic acumen and its complex negotiations with the instrumental rationality of the modern capitalist economy.
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Journal of Legal Anthropology, 2022
In India, where religion-specific laws govern issues of marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption ... more In India, where religion-specific laws govern issues of marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption and inheritance, the family laws of Muslims-the largest religious minority-have been a thorny issue in the post-independence period. In recent years, the major intervention in Muslim personal law reform came in the form of the invalidation of instant divorce or triple talaq by the Supreme Court of India. Subsequently, a law was passed that criminalised it. By delving into a close examination of recent judicial activism and by drawing on our ethnographic work with Muslim women in India, we show that it is only by refocussing the debate from judicial discourse to legal practice that the trope of Muslim women's victimhood and the tired debates about religious freedom versus citizenship rights can be questioned and bypassed.
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Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 2022
Contemporary public as well as academic discourse on personal law in India has over the years eng... more Contemporary public as well as academic discourse on personal law in India has over the years engaged with the issues of its inadequacies, judicialisation and uniformity. This discourse has paid scant attention to the functioning of the law and the complexities of a multicultural nation-state committed to the idea of political secularism. This paper engages with the mahallu system of Malabar and sheds light on how decision-making in Muslim personal law is a process embedded in quotidian micro-politics, sectarian dynamics, social censure and affect. By tracing a triple talaq case in its ethnographic details we show that love (or lack of it), kinship expectations and community authority come together in resolving a conjugal dispute that does not lead to a straight path of legal interpretation but into a labyrinth of micro-politics of local religious factions and authority. The paper shows that the non-state quasi-legal institutions that come under the rubric of the mahallu system comprise of a particular kind of legal pluralism which is complex and replete with multilayered relations of power. This also brings to fore the binary and the play between what is considered to be legal and legitimate.
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Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 2021
The phenomenon of ‘legal pluralism’ in India is conditioned and facilitated by the democratic sta... more The phenomenon of ‘legal pluralism’ in India is conditioned and facilitated by the democratic state’s commitment to protect religious freedom and uphold sociocultural diversity. Community-based adjudicating institutions such as the Darul Qaza (also known as Sharia court) function within this constitutional framework but every citizen also has the right to approach a state court as and when they deem necessary. So far, the discourse on Islam, personal law, and the secular state has revolved around parliamentary debates, judicial activism, and legislative changes where the focus has been on the question of Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and gender justice. The discussion on personal law has rarely paid serious academic attention to the complexities of kinship conflicts embedded in affective as well as economic and legal matrix or more importantly how they are resolved. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the jurisprudential practices of Sharia courts in Uttar Pradesh, India, the paper offers a lens to understand how conflict resolution in family matters takes place in a legal plural landscape ensconced between citizenship rights and community practices. We argue that understanding this process also offers important insights on the shifting meaning of secularism in contemporary India.
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Annual Review of Sociology of Religion, 2021
Religion-specific family laws (referred to as personal laws in India) function under the constitu... more Religion-specific family laws (referred to as personal laws in India) function under the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom-Articles 25-30 of the Indian Constitution. But they operate in a context where Article 44, part of the Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution, holds a tentative promise of a Uniform Civil Code (ucc)2 that is supposed to replace these diverse religion-based family laws. The contradiction at the heart of religion-based family law of Indian Muslims can be summed up in the following way: the mpl exists due to the constitutional commitment to the principle of religious freedom but its archaic character symbolizes the antithesis of the very spirit of the Constitution. The question of personal law of Muslims (the largest religious minority) has, over the years, created distinct camps with those who want to protect what goes in the name of religion-based family laws and those who want to reject such obscurantist, gender unjust indulgences and arrive at a ucc at two ends of the spectrum.3 The public as well as academic discussion on this question has centered around three key issues: gender justice, national integration, and the citizenship rights assured by the Constitution. Somewhat tautologically, they constitute the reason as well as outcome of the project of reforming/ jettisoning religion-based family laws. The constitutionally backed promise of religious freedom loses much of its sure-footedness once tested
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Contributions to Indian Sociology, 2021
In India, gold's uniqueness lies in its dual demand for 'sacred' ritual purposes as well as 'prof... more In India, gold's uniqueness lies in its dual demand for 'sacred' ritual purposes as well as 'profane' economic security. As a scarce commodity, gold is continuously monitored and regulated by the state. This study investigates how communities associated with the craft and trade of gold jewellery cope with state regulations, an aspect that has largely gone undocumented in sociological literature. The article traces the transformation of the goldsmithing sector in post-independence India. The repeal of the Gold Control Act 1968 in gold jewellery sector. The study captures the occupational recasting as a new community of goldsmiths emerged during this period replacing the traditional goldsmithing castes. It account of a triadic relationship between an informal manufacturing sector, state regulation and a self-organised workforce based on regional ties and village networks.
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Orient Blackswan, 2020
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Orient Blackswan, 2020
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Religion and Secularities: Reconfiguring Islam in Contemporary India, 2020
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Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd, 2019
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Book, 2018
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Abstract
The article explores Alexis de Tocqueville’s explication of democracy as ‘civil religion... more Abstract
The article explores Alexis de Tocqueville’s explication of democracy as ‘civil religion’ or the new
sacred of modern times. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville analyzed democracy as a political system
as well as a moral value. The article begins with Tocqueville’s analysis of the religious roots of American
democracy. Dissociated from the affairs of the state through the principle of ‘disestablishment’, religion
became secure in civil society, whereas the concept of democracy became inviolable and ‘set apart’ as
sacred. He noted that the power of the majority acquires an inviolable character in democracy that
had the potential to turn against the very principles that it upholds. In the Indian context, the debate
around a uniform civil code (UCC) is one such issue that captures this predicament. Working out
a roadmap for Indian pluralism signposted with a constitutional commitment to equality, liberty and
fraternity has proved to be a task fraught with moral and political complexities, if not impasse. The
article argues that Tocqueville’s discovery of the role of religion in civil society, his mistrust of democratic
majoritarianism and his emphasis on understanding the ‘practice’ of democracy have something
to offer to the polarized UCC debate in India.
Keywords
Democracy, uniform civil code, pluralism, adjudication
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South Asian History and Culture, Jan 1, 2010
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Papers by Anindita Chakrabarti
The article explores Alexis de Tocqueville’s explication of democracy as ‘civil religion’ or the new
sacred of modern times. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville analyzed democracy as a political system
as well as a moral value. The article begins with Tocqueville’s analysis of the religious roots of American
democracy. Dissociated from the affairs of the state through the principle of ‘disestablishment’, religion
became secure in civil society, whereas the concept of democracy became inviolable and ‘set apart’ as
sacred. He noted that the power of the majority acquires an inviolable character in democracy that
had the potential to turn against the very principles that it upholds. In the Indian context, the debate
around a uniform civil code (UCC) is one such issue that captures this predicament. Working out
a roadmap for Indian pluralism signposted with a constitutional commitment to equality, liberty and
fraternity has proved to be a task fraught with moral and political complexities, if not impasse. The
article argues that Tocqueville’s discovery of the role of religion in civil society, his mistrust of democratic
majoritarianism and his emphasis on understanding the ‘practice’ of democracy have something
to offer to the polarized UCC debate in India.
Keywords
Democracy, uniform civil code, pluralism, adjudication
The article explores Alexis de Tocqueville’s explication of democracy as ‘civil religion’ or the new
sacred of modern times. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville analyzed democracy as a political system
as well as a moral value. The article begins with Tocqueville’s analysis of the religious roots of American
democracy. Dissociated from the affairs of the state through the principle of ‘disestablishment’, religion
became secure in civil society, whereas the concept of democracy became inviolable and ‘set apart’ as
sacred. He noted that the power of the majority acquires an inviolable character in democracy that
had the potential to turn against the very principles that it upholds. In the Indian context, the debate
around a uniform civil code (UCC) is one such issue that captures this predicament. Working out
a roadmap for Indian pluralism signposted with a constitutional commitment to equality, liberty and
fraternity has proved to be a task fraught with moral and political complexities, if not impasse. The
article argues that Tocqueville’s discovery of the role of religion in civil society, his mistrust of democratic
majoritarianism and his emphasis on understanding the ‘practice’ of democracy have something
to offer to the polarized UCC debate in India.
Keywords
Democracy, uniform civil code, pluralism, adjudication
and modernisation. As the title conveys, the focus of the book is on the categories of the religious and the secular, which are both contested within as well as demarcated by indeterminate, shifting boundaries.