Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0001-7836-4072
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Keywords
Hinduism, India, Juristic personhood, Sovereignty, Constitutional law, Sabarimala, Ban on women
Abstract
A brief commotion arose during the hearings for one of twenty-first-century India’s most widely discussed legal disputes, when a dynamic young attorney suggested that deities, too, had constitutional rights. The suggestion was not absurd. Like a human being or a corporation, Hindu temple deities can participate in litigation, incur financial obligations, and own property. There was nothing to suggest, said the attorney, that the same deity who enjoyed many of the rights and obligations accorded to human persons could not also lay claim to some of their constitutional freedoms. The lone justice to consider this claim blandly and briefly observed that having specific legal rights did not perforce endow one with constitutional rights. Nevertheless, a handful of recent and high-profile disputes concerning Hindu temple deities and the growing influence of Hindu nationalist politics together suggest that the issue of deities’ rights is far from a settled matter. This article argues that declining to recognize deities’ constitutional rights accurately reflects dueling commitments in the Indian Constitution.
First Page
450
Publication Title
Journal of Law and Religion
Recommended Citation
Deepa Das Acevedo, Deities’ Rights?, 38 J. L. & Religion 450 (2023).
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, Hindu Studies Commons, Liturgy and Worship Commons, Religion Law Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons
Comments
© The Author(s), 2023.
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.