Law, Sovereignty, and Spatial Politics: Contesting Religious Sites in South Asia

This panel brings together scholars of religion, anthropology, and law to analyze the spatial politics of contested sites of worship in South Asia. It examines how legal structures in colonial and postcolonial South Asia have served to shape the spatial politics of contested sites, and the interrelations between the multiple religious communities in the region. The papers delve into the dynamics between multiple groups of worshippers, navigating fluid spatial histories and analyzing ritual expressions of practice and solidarity. They investigate a range of previously-unexplored contested sites in South Asia, including the Baba Budan Shah Dargah in Karnataka, Mughal-era Mosques legally confirmed as "temples," the Sufi Shrines in Sri Lanka, and, finally, the public spaces of Chennai owned and associated with Muslim women’s ritual presence and solidarity. Together, they serve to connect the politics of particular religious spaces with the broader legal and cultural themes of making and unmaking of sacred spaces, and to analyze  the means and modalities of existence in these spaces that give rise to unique claims of possession, ownership and historical title. 

There has been growing scholarly interest, across the world, on contested religious spaces as sites of political and social conflict. These  conversations tend to focus on well-known sites that have served as flashpoints of large-scale political mobilization, notably the the Temple Mound in Jerusalem, the Hagia Sophia in Turkey, and, of course, the Babri Masjid in India. Most of these conversations, however, have tended to revolve around what can be called the religion-state axis: the relationship between modern, secular states, and contested religious sites. This panel, in contrast, reorients focus to include the historical relationship between law and social processes to analyze the spatial politics of contested sites. On the one hand, it takes a critical approach to modern, secular law, showing how law is routinely mobilized by religious groups to lay claim over contested spaces. On the other hand, it calls attention to smaller, less-studied sites of negotiation among religious communities, showing how broad paradigms of national politics play out in everyday lives. 

The history of colonial and post-colonial South Asia, characterized by interrelations among multiple religious communities, provides a unique vantage point for conceptualizing the relationship between law and spatial politics of sacred sites. Particularly, the inheritance of a colonial legal structure, especially in relation to property and religious identity, has great significance in structuring social and spatial relations among multiple religious communities. A rich array of scholarly works, such as the works of Amrita Shodhan, Gregory Kozlowski, Julia Stephens, and Katherine Lemons, have analyzed this relationship between law and religious identity to reassess the question of secularism in South Asia. Other studies, including the works of Carla Bellamy, Anna Bigelow, Afsar Muhammad, Yogesh Snehi, and Anand Vivek Taneja, have investigated various dimensions of shared sacred sites and multireligious communities, exploring the devotional practices and civic effects of such sites. We advance this conversation by taking a fresh critical approach to the mobilization of law in the spatial politics of contested sites. We examine how so-called secular law and jurisprudence have served to solidify claims of religious and political groups on sacred sites. The urgency of this critical task has never been clearer in South Asia: it was a decision by the Supreme Court of India, after a decades-long legal battle, that certified the building of the Rama Birthplace Temple at the site of the now-demolished Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. This judgement, along with the multiple legal battles underway on other contested sites, demand a fresh examination in the role of law in shaping the spatial politics of contested sites.  

The panel begins with a historical overview on the relationship between law and sacred space in colonial and post-colonial India, moves on to examine specific histories of contested sites across South Asia, and ends with an ethnographic account of present-day intersections of law, politics, and ritual space. The first paper traces the historical development of the legal personality of the Hindu deity by analyzing a series of court cases and judgments in colonial and independent India. It shows how the Hindu deity has been historically equipped with somewhat unique legal powers to lay claim to contested sites of worship. The next two papers analyze such contestations among Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhist in multiple sites in South India and Sri Lanka. Studying the competing claims of Muslims and Hindus in the dargah of Baba Budan Shah in Karnataka, locally known as the "Ayodhya of the South," shows how all-India legal and political battles play out in smaller, less-noticed sites. Similarly, an analysis of Sufi shrines in contemporary Sri Lanka as sites of contestations between Buddhists and Muslims serves to bring an important comparative dimension in understanding contested sacral spaces across national and religious borders in South Asia. Finally, an ethnographic study of the politics of protest against India's Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA, 2019), defined along religious lines, serves to reveal the ever-changing relation between law, sacred space, and religious identity. By analyzing spaces of protest as the making of new ritual space, the final paper compels us to think anew the legal and political machinations that create everyday sacral spaces.  

Given their complex histories and contemporary spatial politics, contested sites are best understood in comparative and interdisciplinary frameworks. The papers in this panel deploy a range of methodologies, including legal-historical analysis of colonial and post-colonial legal cases, site-specific historical studies of Sufi shrines, and ethnography of popular protests. This multidisciplinary approach invites much-needed conversations on sacred sites among historians, legal scholars, religious studies scholars, and anthroplogists. The diverse locations of our case studies -- in North India, South India, and Sri Lanka -- aspire to bring in a broad subcontinental approach to the problem across nation-state borders and differences in legal regimes. Moreover, by moving beyond the conventional disciplinary divisions between the academic study of Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism, they serve to reveal the legal, political, and social interactions among multiple religious communities and state structures in sacred sites.