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Of Ebbs and Flows: Understanding the Legal Consequences of Granting Personhood to Natural Entities in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2021

Stellina Jolly  and
K.S. Roshan Menon
Stellina Jolly
Affiliation:
South Asian University, Faculty of Legal Studies, New Delhi (India). Email: [email protected].
K.S. Roshan Menon
Affiliation:
Advocate, High Court Delhi, New Delhi (India). Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

A study of the rights regime for environmental protection in India indicates that such protections overlap with constitutional rights guaranteed primarily to citizens or persons under the law. Contemporary jurisprudence has aggressively developed this intersectionality, declaring natural entities to be living persons with fundamental rights analogous to those of human beings. This article explores the role played by two judgments delivered by the Uttarakhand High Court – Mohammed Salim v. State of Uttarakhand and Lalit Miglani v. State of Uttarakhand – in the establishment of an effective framework for environmental protection. This is effectuated in both cases by assigning legal personality to rivers and articulating a conceptual shift from the human-centric approach. Accounting for the socio-cultural and spiritual relationships that have received legal protection, this article critically analyzes the judgments, their rationale and contributions to environmental protection. As the judgments articulate a paradigm shift in environmental protection, their effectiveness is best assessed through analyzing the frameworks created for their implementation. While the pronouncement of the Indian courts on the legal personality of rivers is an encouraging paradigm shift in environmental commitment, establishing the rights of nature was undertaken without due attention to the complexities that characterize the Indian socio-politico-religious context and to the legal consequences of bestowing vaguely contoured rights upon natural entities.

Keywords

Indian riversLegal personalityRights of naturePublic trustParens patriaeEnvironmental protection
Type
Article
Information
Transnational Environmental Law , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , November 2021 , pp. 467 - 492
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We thank the anonymous TEL reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

References

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55 M. Ghatwai, ‘Madhya Pradesh Assembly Declares Narmada Living Entity’, Indian Express, 4 May 2017, available at: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/madhya-pradesh-assembly-declares-narmada-living-entity-4639713.

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58 Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh v. Government of Bangladesh, Writ Petition No. 13989 of 2016 (Bangladesh SC).

59 Ganga, n. 1 above, para. 10.

60 Ibid., para. 9.

61 Ibid., para. 18.

62 Ibid., para. 11.

63 Ibid., para. 16.

64 Glaciers, n. 2 above, para. 60.

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69 Dwivedi, n. 68 above, p. 24.

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76 Ganga, n. 1 above, para. 16.

77 M.C. Mehta v. Union of India and Others, National Green Tribunal (NGT) Judgment, 1 Jan. 2015 (the judgment refers to the Ganga as a Holy River).

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88 The SCI, in 2017, decided to strike down the practice of ‘triple Talaq’ (the pronouncement of instant divorce by a Muslim husband against his wife) as arbitrary and violative of the constitutional guarantee of equality under Art. 14. The judgment was succeeded by the passing of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 2019, which made triple Talaq illegal and punishable by law. The contents of the judgment and the consequent law have been used by entities to further political debate on religious personal law: Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017) 9 SCC 1; see also ‘Examining the Political Will Behind the Triple Talaq Debate: A Reading List’, EPW Engage, 14 Aug. 2018, available at: https://www.epw.in/engage/article/examining-political-will-behind-triple-talaq-reading-list.

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90 State of Uttarakhand v. Mohd Salim, n. 19 above.

91 Glaciers, n. 2 above, para. 60.

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93 Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018) 1 SCC 791; Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala, 2018 SCC OnLine Ker 5802.

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101 Ibid.

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103 Charan Lal Sahu Etc. Etc v. Union of India and Ors, 1989 SCR Supl. (2) 597.

104 Gaurav Kumar Bansal v. Union of India (2017) 6 SCC 730.

105 Glaciers, n. 2 above, para. 63.3. The judgment identifies the Chief Secretary, State of Uttarakhand; Director of the NAMAMI Gange Project; Praveen Kumar (Director of NMCG); Ishwar Singh (Legal Adviser, NAMAMI Gange Project); Advocate General, State of Uttarakhand; Dr Balram K. Gupta (Director (Academics) Chandigarh Judicial Academy); and M.C. Mehta, Senior Advocate, Hon. Supreme Court, as the persons in loco parentis. See generally P. Srivastava, ‘Legal Personality of Ganga and Ecocentrism: A Critical Review’ (2019) 4(1) Cambridge Law Review, pp. 151–68.

106 Stone, n. 97 above, p. 466.

107 Z. Holladay, ‘Public Interest Litigation in India as a Paradigm for Developing Nations’ (2012) 19(2) Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, pp. 555–73.

108 Ganga, n. 1 above, para. 19.

109 In an industrial accident that occurred in June 2020 in Vizag, despite the victims filing petitions before the NGT Southern Bench, the NGT Principal Bench in Delhi took suo moto action. When this action was challenged by the company, the list of respondents who were served notice did not include the petitioners, effectively reducing the petitioners to mere spectators; see H. Moosa & N. Chaudhary, ‘Expeditious But Not Effective: Exercise of NGT's Suo Moto Powers in Industrial Accidents Cases’, Livelaw, 28 July 2020, available at: https://livelaw.in/columns/expeditious-but-not-effective-exercise-of-ngts-suo-moto-powers-in-industrial-accidents-cases-160613.

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112 Glaciers, n. 2 above, para. 53.

113 Ibid., para. 63.4.

114 Center for Social Justice Studies et al. v. Presidency of the Republic et al., Constitutional Court of Colombia, Judgment T-622/16, 10 Nov. 2016.

115 Ibid.

116 The Court relied on the following judgments: Yogendra Nath Naskar, n. 33 above, and Ram Jankijee Deities & Ors v. State of Bihar & Ors, 1999 (5) SCC 50; these judgments conferred legal personality on Hindu idols. Additionally, Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, Amritsar v. Shri Som Nath Dass & Ors, AIR 2000 SC 1421, conferred legal personality on the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikh faith.

117 Stone, n. 97 above, p. 457.

118 Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972).

119 T. Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (Bell Tower, 1999), p. 5.

120 Ibid., p. 161; C. Cullinan, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice (Green Books, 2011), p. 93.

121 See generally E. O'Donnell, Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration and Water Governance (Routledge 2018); A. Dyschkant, ‘Legal Personhood: How We Are Getting It Wrong’ (2015) 4 Illinois Law Review, pp. 2075–110.

122 Constitutión Politica de la República del Ecuador (Constitution of Ecuador), Arts 71–4.

123 Te Urewera Act, No. 51, 2014 (New Zealand).

124 Ibid., s. 21; see E. Macpherson, J. Torres Ventura & F. Clavijo Ospina, ‘Constitutional Law, Ecosystems, and Indigenous Peoples in Colombia: Biocultural Rights and Legal Subjects’ (2020) 9(3) Transnational Environmental Law, pp. 521–40.

125 Te Awa Tupua Act, n. 14 above.

126 Ibid., s. 20.

127 Ibid., s. 16.

128 Center for Social Justice Studies, n. 114 above.

129 Ibid.

130 Ibid.

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147 Saloni Ailawadi v. Volkswagen India Private Ltd, 2019 SCCOnLine NGT 69.

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152 M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath (1997) 1 SCC 388.

153 M.I. Builders v. Radhey Shyam Sahu (1999) 3 SCR 1066.

154 K.M. Chinappa v. Union of India, 2002 (8) SCALE 204.

155 Smith, G.P. II, ‘Environmental Hedonism or, Securing the Environment through the Common Law’ (2015) 40(1) William & Mary Environmental & Policy Review, pp. 65–114Google Scholar.

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