This paper explores the relationship between “man-made law” and “the laws of nature,” focusing on contemporary legal cases to create a legal personality for natural entities in India. In 2017, the High Court of Uttarakhand, a northwestern state in India, mandated that the rivers Ganges and Yamuna are “living entities,” that is, “legal persons.” Unlike the similar “Rights of Nature” mandatories in New Zealand (for the Whanganui river) and Ecuador and Bolivia (for Pachamama), the Indian court case did not represent any single indigenous cosmology or religious belief. Despite the guise of reflection of politicized Hinduism (which is known for worshiping those rivers) into Indian environmental jurisprudence, the plaintiff of the original legal case was a Muslim social worker, while the BJP (Hindu Nationalist Party) state government was against the case. Then, why and how was this form of legality created in contemporary India? This paper ethnographically follows the process of “the making of law” [Latour 2011, Riles 2001] in Uttarakhand, to explore what kind of interests, passions, and emotions are included and excluded in such a process. By specifically paying attention to the affective/non-affective relationships between humans, water (as material substances), aquatic animals or plants, and infrastructures in the making of law, it aims to go beyond the classical boundary between human and non-human, reason and emotion in imagining legality.
