Daniela Berti | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research (original) (raw)
Papers by Daniela Berti
Contributions to Indian Sociology 57, 1–2: 13–43, 2023
In this article, I focus on how the issue of considering animals as legal persons has been argued... more In this article, I focus on how the issue of considering animals as legal persons has been argued in court by the Nonhuman Rights Project led by Steven Wise in the United States and how this project was recently adopted and reinterpreted by an animal rights organisation in India in preparation for their own court battle. In turn, Indian cases raising the question of the legal
personhood of animals and rivers have been used by Wise as examples to argue his case in court. The comparison will raise the question of how legal ideas and strategies regarding so-called ‘rights of nature’ travel around the world, giving rise to reciprocal appropriations and possible idealisations.
Animal Sacrifice, Religion and Law in South Asia Edited by Daniela Berti and Anthony Good, 2023
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
This book presents original research on the controversies surrounding animal sacrifice in South A... more This book presents original research on the controversies surrounding animal sacrifice in South Asia through the lens of court cases. It focuses on the parties involved in these cases: on their discourses, motivations, and contrasting points of view. Through an examination of judicial files, court decisions and newspaper articles, and interviews with protagonists, the book explores how the question of animal sacrifice is dealt with through administrative, legislative, and judicial practice. It outlines how, although animal sacrifice has over the ages been contested by various religious reform movements, the practice has remained widespread at all levels of society, especially in certain regions. It reveals that far from merely being a religious and ritual question, animal sacrifice has become a focus of broader public debate, and it discusses how the controversies highlight the contrast between 'traditional' and 'reformist' understandings of Hinduism; the conflict between the core legal and moral principles of religious freedom and social progress; and the growing concern with environmental issues and animal rights.
The relevance of rituals to define regional identities in India can be traced back to early medie... more The relevance of rituals to define regional identities in India can be traced back to early medieval times. By considering some Jain Sanskrit texts from the 11th to the 16th century, Granoff (2001) shows how ritual distinctions were used for expressing what were primarily territorial, political or geographical oppositions (Granoff 2003). Inversely, rituals in medieval India also served to unite territorially and politically based distinctions. This is shown, for example, by the inclination of Hindu kings to select an existing local cult and to apply it to the whole territory of their kingdom by means of royal patronage (Kulke 1986). The importance of rituals to mark, either by separating or uniting, territorial and political identities, was also recognised by post-colonial nationalist leaders. Immediately after Independence, many of them pursued the idea of national unity through ritual along with constructing — in some cases, redefining — regional
This paper proposes a survey of the many ways in which people look at and deal with animals in co... more This paper proposes a survey of the many ways in which people look at and deal with animals in contemporary India. On the basis of ethnographic research and of multiple written sources (judgments, newspapers, websites, legal files, activist pamphlets, etc.), I present some of the actors involved in the animal debate-animal activists, environmental lawyers, judges, and hunter-conservationists-who adopt different, though sometimes interconnected, approaches to animals. Some of them look at animals as victims that need to be rescued and treated in the field, others fight for animals in Parliament or in Court so that they can be entitled to certain rights, others are concerned with the issue of species survival, where the interest of the group prevails on the protection of individual animals. In the context of a predominantly secularist background of the people engaged in such debates, I also examine the role that religion may, in certain cases, play for some of them: whether as a way of constructing a Hindu or Buddhist cultural or political identity, or as a strategic argument in a legal battle in order to obtain public attention. Lastly, I raise the question of the role played by animals themselves in these different situations-as intellectual principles to be fought for (or to be voiced) in their absence, or as real individuals to interact with and whose encounter may produce different kinds of sometimes conflicting emotions.
Filing Religion. State, Hinduism, and Courts of Law. Daniela Berti, Gilles Tarabout, and Raphaël Voix (eds). New-Delhi, Oxford University Press, , 2016: 71-100, 2016
This chapter examines how a ritual conflict involving supporters of two village deities, with a l... more 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.
The aim of this paper is to show how questions related to the environment and religion may someti... more The aim of this paper is to show how questions related to the environment and religion may sometimes overlap in Indian judiciary practice. Courts in India are sometimes 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 allegedly lives. I discuss one example of these writ petitions that I followed up during 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 feminine 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 intrinsic value that has to be regulated by law, and in terms of a place over which gods have specific rights. a Generous support for research leading to this article was provided by the programme "Uomo e natura nel pensiero e nella storia sociale dell'India" funded by the Ministero dell'Istruzione dell'Università e della Ricerca, and also the programme "Presence d'Esprits", funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). b CNRS, Centre d'Études Himalayennes.
Cet article aborde l’imbrication des questions de religion et d’environnement dans les procédures... more Cet article aborde l’imbrication des questions de religion et d’environnement dans les procédures judiciaires en Inde. Il examine des cas de figure qui témoignent de la complexité de certains problèmes que les juges ont à trancher. L’approche privilégiée ici est anthropologique plutôt que juridique et l’accent est mis sur la pluralité des dimensions des phénomènes envisagés dans le contexte des transformations que connaît la société indienne. Outre une présentation du rôle des cours supérieures de justice en Inde les auteurs examinent la manière dont des projets de développement susceptibles de porter atteinte à l’environnement sont contestés devant les tribunaux en faisant aussi appel à des arguments religieux.
In this paper I focus on particular kinds of texts that may be found in court files on suicides a... more In this paper I focus on particular kinds of texts that may be found in court files on suicides and are commonly known as suicide notes, that is notes supposedly written by a person who has allegedly committed suicide and who wrote down their reason for taking their own life. Unlike most of the “voices” that emerge from a court file, which are always mediated by a legal or judicial representative—the police, the court or the lawyer—suicide notes are not supposed to undergo this legal and linguistic formatting. In fact, unlike other court documents, which in spite of being written in the first person by the witness are an official transcription of an oral statement, the content of a suicide note is supposed to have been originally produced in writing and the person referred to in the note as “I” is supposed to be the author of the note. One of the main issues raised by these notes in court is their authenticity. We are in fact dealing here with texts that appear to have been spontaneously written but whose authenticity is often challenged either by the prosecutor or by the defense lawyer—depending on what is written in the note. The interest these notes have for the anthropologist is therefore twofold. On the one hand, they provide a version of the suicide that is not directly produced by a court officer but is supposedly written by the person who committed suicide or, in the case where it has been fabricated, by the victim’s family or in-laws. On the other hand, these notes are subjected to judicial scrutiny and interpretation; therefore, whether they are real or fictional, they produce a court discourse and they sometimes even appear to have been written with the view to the judicial outcome. I will therefore look at these notes both as a lens which can give access to the deceased’s last thoughts —or to those of her entourage if the note is fabricated—and as a lens used by judges themselves to arrive at a decision
Contributions to Indian Sociology, Jan 1, 2010
A Companion to the Anthropology of India
Democracy, Citizenship, and Belonging in the …
Rechtsanalyse als Kulturforschung, ed. Werner Gephart. Frankfurt am Mein, Vittorio Klostermann, 2012
Contributions to Indian Sociology 57, 1–2: 13–43, 2023
In this article, I focus on how the issue of considering animals as legal persons has been argued... more In this article, I focus on how the issue of considering animals as legal persons has been argued in court by the Nonhuman Rights Project led by Steven Wise in the United States and how this project was recently adopted and reinterpreted by an animal rights organisation in India in preparation for their own court battle. In turn, Indian cases raising the question of the legal
personhood of animals and rivers have been used by Wise as examples to argue his case in court. The comparison will raise the question of how legal ideas and strategies regarding so-called ‘rights of nature’ travel around the world, giving rise to reciprocal appropriations and possible idealisations.
Animal Sacrifice, Religion and Law in South Asia Edited by Daniela Berti and Anthony Good, 2023
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
This book presents original research on the controversies surrounding animal sacrifice in South A... more This book presents original research on the controversies surrounding animal sacrifice in South Asia through the lens of court cases. It focuses on the parties involved in these cases: on their discourses, motivations, and contrasting points of view. Through an examination of judicial files, court decisions and newspaper articles, and interviews with protagonists, the book explores how the question of animal sacrifice is dealt with through administrative, legislative, and judicial practice. It outlines how, although animal sacrifice has over the ages been contested by various religious reform movements, the practice has remained widespread at all levels of society, especially in certain regions. It reveals that far from merely being a religious and ritual question, animal sacrifice has become a focus of broader public debate, and it discusses how the controversies highlight the contrast between 'traditional' and 'reformist' understandings of Hinduism; the conflict between the core legal and moral principles of religious freedom and social progress; and the growing concern with environmental issues and animal rights.
The relevance of rituals to define regional identities in India can be traced back to early medie... more The relevance of rituals to define regional identities in India can be traced back to early medieval times. By considering some Jain Sanskrit texts from the 11th to the 16th century, Granoff (2001) shows how ritual distinctions were used for expressing what were primarily territorial, political or geographical oppositions (Granoff 2003). Inversely, rituals in medieval India also served to unite territorially and politically based distinctions. This is shown, for example, by the inclination of Hindu kings to select an existing local cult and to apply it to the whole territory of their kingdom by means of royal patronage (Kulke 1986). The importance of rituals to mark, either by separating or uniting, territorial and political identities, was also recognised by post-colonial nationalist leaders. Immediately after Independence, many of them pursued the idea of national unity through ritual along with constructing — in some cases, redefining — regional
This paper proposes a survey of the many ways in which people look at and deal with animals in co... more This paper proposes a survey of the many ways in which people look at and deal with animals in contemporary India. On the basis of ethnographic research and of multiple written sources (judgments, newspapers, websites, legal files, activist pamphlets, etc.), I present some of the actors involved in the animal debate-animal activists, environmental lawyers, judges, and hunter-conservationists-who adopt different, though sometimes interconnected, approaches to animals. Some of them look at animals as victims that need to be rescued and treated in the field, others fight for animals in Parliament or in Court so that they can be entitled to certain rights, others are concerned with the issue of species survival, where the interest of the group prevails on the protection of individual animals. In the context of a predominantly secularist background of the people engaged in such debates, I also examine the role that religion may, in certain cases, play for some of them: whether as a way of constructing a Hindu or Buddhist cultural or political identity, or as a strategic argument in a legal battle in order to obtain public attention. Lastly, I raise the question of the role played by animals themselves in these different situations-as intellectual principles to be fought for (or to be voiced) in their absence, or as real individuals to interact with and whose encounter may produce different kinds of sometimes conflicting emotions.
Filing Religion. State, Hinduism, and Courts of Law. Daniela Berti, Gilles Tarabout, and Raphaël Voix (eds). New-Delhi, Oxford University Press, , 2016: 71-100, 2016
This chapter examines how a ritual conflict involving supporters of two village deities, with a l... more 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.
The aim of this paper is to show how questions related to the environment and religion may someti... more The aim of this paper is to show how questions related to the environment and religion may sometimes overlap in Indian judiciary practice. Courts in India are sometimes 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 allegedly lives. I discuss one example of these writ petitions that I followed up during 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 feminine 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 intrinsic value that has to be regulated by law, and in terms of a place over which gods have specific rights. a Generous support for research leading to this article was provided by the programme "Uomo e natura nel pensiero e nella storia sociale dell'India" funded by the Ministero dell'Istruzione dell'Università e della Ricerca, and also the programme "Presence d'Esprits", funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). b CNRS, Centre d'Études Himalayennes.
Cet article aborde l’imbrication des questions de religion et d’environnement dans les procédures... more Cet article aborde l’imbrication des questions de religion et d’environnement dans les procédures judiciaires en Inde. Il examine des cas de figure qui témoignent de la complexité de certains problèmes que les juges ont à trancher. L’approche privilégiée ici est anthropologique plutôt que juridique et l’accent est mis sur la pluralité des dimensions des phénomènes envisagés dans le contexte des transformations que connaît la société indienne. Outre une présentation du rôle des cours supérieures de justice en Inde les auteurs examinent la manière dont des projets de développement susceptibles de porter atteinte à l’environnement sont contestés devant les tribunaux en faisant aussi appel à des arguments religieux.
In this paper I focus on particular kinds of texts that may be found in court files on suicides a... more In this paper I focus on particular kinds of texts that may be found in court files on suicides and are commonly known as suicide notes, that is notes supposedly written by a person who has allegedly committed suicide and who wrote down their reason for taking their own life. Unlike most of the “voices” that emerge from a court file, which are always mediated by a legal or judicial representative—the police, the court or the lawyer—suicide notes are not supposed to undergo this legal and linguistic formatting. In fact, unlike other court documents, which in spite of being written in the first person by the witness are an official transcription of an oral statement, the content of a suicide note is supposed to have been originally produced in writing and the person referred to in the note as “I” is supposed to be the author of the note. One of the main issues raised by these notes in court is their authenticity. We are in fact dealing here with texts that appear to have been spontaneously written but whose authenticity is often challenged either by the prosecutor or by the defense lawyer—depending on what is written in the note. The interest these notes have for the anthropologist is therefore twofold. On the one hand, they provide a version of the suicide that is not directly produced by a court officer but is supposedly written by the person who committed suicide or, in the case where it has been fabricated, by the victim’s family or in-laws. On the other hand, these notes are subjected to judicial scrutiny and interpretation; therefore, whether they are real or fictional, they produce a court discourse and they sometimes even appear to have been written with the view to the judicial outcome. I will therefore look at these notes both as a lens which can give access to the deceased’s last thoughts —or to those of her entourage if the note is fabricated—and as a lens used by judges themselves to arrive at a decision
Contributions to Indian Sociology, Jan 1, 2010
A Companion to the Anthropology of India
Democracy, Citizenship, and Belonging in the …
Rechtsanalyse als Kulturforschung, ed. Werner Gephart. Frankfurt am Mein, Vittorio Klostermann, 2012
Animal Sacrifice, Religion and Law in South Asia , 2023
This book presents original research on the controversies surrounding animal sacrifice in South A... more This book presents original research on the controversies surrounding animal sacrifice in South Asia through the lens of court cases. It focuses on the parties involved in these cases: on their discourses, motivations, and contrasting points of view. Through an examination of judicial files, court decisions and newspaper articles, and interviews with protagonists, the book explores how the question of animal sacrifice is dealt with through administrative, legislative, and judicial practice. It outlines how, although animal sacrifice has over the ages been contested by various religious reform movements, the practice has remained widespread at all levels of society, especially in certain regions. It reveals that far from merely being a religious and ritual question, animal sacrifice has become a focus of broader public debate, and it discusses how the controversies highlight the contrast between 'traditional' and 'reformist' understandings of Hinduism; the conflict between the core legal and moral principles of religious freedom and social progress; and the growing concern with environmental issues and animal rights.
An anthropological study on judicial practices in South Asia, this volume takes criminal cases as... more An anthropological study on judicial practices in South Asia, this volume takes criminal cases as frameworks to examine power dynamics within a legal setting. Case studies in this book analyse a set of state and non-state institutions and the practices of people associated with them. The essays delve into the underlying tension in institutional contexts between legal practitioners such as police officers, lawyers, and judges who orient their claims towards neutralism, objectivity, and equality and a set of everyday interactions and decisions where cultural, social, and political factors play a major role. This volume is based on the premise that the study of judiciary cases, in all their multifaceted complexity, provides a pertinent and original angle from which to access some issues of South Asia. The contributors examine the discourses and relationships around criminal cases that shape how ideas circulate in the public sphere and how mediation and negotiation between different actors characterize police and court practices.
![Research paper thumbnail of Special Issue of Diogenes, 60 (3-4) [Daniela Berti and Gilles Tarabout eds, translation of Diogène,239-240]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/44141246/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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