Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In DeVore v. University of Kentucky Board of Trustees, the Sixth Circuit found that a University did not discriminate against a University of Kentucky employee in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by denying the employee’s religious accommodation request that would’ve exempted her from a series of University COVID testing policies. The Sixth Circuit reasoned that the plaintiff offered no evidence to show a conflict between her religion and the University’s policies, instead presenting her objection the COVID policies as a reflection of her personal moral code.
  • In Esses v. Rosen, a federal district court in New York declined to issue a preliminary injunction prohibiting the defendant from issuing a “seiruv,” which is a form of rabbinical court notice that informs the public that the plaintiff has failed to respond to a summons from the rabbinical court. The court declined to intrude on questions of rabbinical court procedure, which would violate the First Amendment’s Establishment clause.
  • Luther Rice College and Seminary has filed a complaint in a federal district court in Georgia, alleging that the State of Georgia has violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments by excluding Luther Rice students from being eligible for a statewide financial student aid program due to the fact that Luther Rice College is a religious institution that the state has classified as a “school of theology.” Luther Rice alleges that the state’s exclusion of the school from its financial aid programs forces the college to forfeit its religious character, beliefs, and exercise or be completely barred from state government financial aid programs, which the college pleads is a violation of the Free Exercise clause and the Equal Protection clause.
  • The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has recently agreed to pay $880 million to 1,353 people who alleged they were sexually abused as children by Catholic clergy. To date, the settlement has been regarded as the single highest payout by a diocese.
  • In Kumar v. State of Karnataka, an Indian High Court found that a pair of individuals who barged into a mosque and shouted “Jai Sriram” (Glory to Lord Rama) did not violate a section of the Indian Penal Code that prohibits “deliberate and malicious outraging of the religious feelings of any class of citizens.” While the Indian Court conceded that the outburst would outrage the religious feelings of any class of citizens, the High Court ultimately decided that the outburst did not have the “effect on bringing out peace or destruction of public order,” nor did it cause “public mischief or any rift.”
Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  •  In Kristofersdottir v. CVS Health Corp., a nurse-practitioner filed a complaint in the Southern District of Florida alleging that CVS revoked all religious accommodations that allowed employees to refuse to prescribe contraceptives, which is the accommodation plaintiff had for over 7 years. 
  • In Dad’s Place of Bryan, Ohio v. City of Bryan, a Christian church filed suit in the Northern District of Ohio, alleging that the city has violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, as well as RLUIPA, by charging the church’s pastor with 18 criminal counts for allowing homeless persons to reside on the property for an extended amount of time in violation of city zoning rules.
  • In Uzomechina v. Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey, the District of New Jersey dismissed racial discrimination and wrongful discharge claims brought by a priest who was fired after he was allegedly falsely accused of financial and sexual misconduct. However, the court allowed the priest’s defamation claim, which he alleges that the Diocese passed on false information about him to his subsequent employer, to proceed.
  •  In Carter v. Virginia Real Estate Board,  a Virginia trial court held unconstitutional a portion of Virginia’s Fair Housing Law that said: “use of words or symbols associated with a particular religion . . . shall be prima facie evidence of an illegal preference under this chapter that shall not be overcome by a general disclaimer.” A realtor included references to Jesus and a Bible verse in her email signature and was investigated, but the court invalidated the statute, saying the presumption of animus was unconstitutional.
  • A Michigan hospital agreed to pay a $50,000 settlement in a Title VII discrimination lawsuit alleging that the hospital had refused to hire an employee who had objected on religious grounds to receiving a flu shot. The settlement prohibits the hospital from refusing to hire applicants because of their sincerely held religious beliefs opposing such a vaccine mandate.
  • In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated the Ram Mandir, a Hindu Temple located on a contested holy site once home to a 16th-century mosque. Critics allege that the temple represents an effort by Modi to elevate the Hindu religion in India’s public life.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Communalism in the Indian Constitution

Liberalism privileges the individual and teaches that the state is legitimate when it honors individual rights–including the right to religious freedom. A much older understanding conceives the polity in terms of communities, including religious communities, and teaches that the state has a duty to coordinate relations among them justly. An interesting-looking new book from Cambridge, India’s Communal Constitution: Law, Religion, and the Making of a People, argues that both understandings prevail in contemporary India: a formal liberalism and a practical communalism. The author is constitutional scholar Mathew John (Jindal Global Law School, India). Here is the description from Cambridge’s website:

This book speaks to debates on law, constitutionalism, and the contested terrain of political identity in modern India. Set against the overwhelmingly liberal design of the Indian Constitution, the book demonstrates a tendency in the Constitution and its practice to identify the Indian people in parochial and communal terms. This tendency is identified as India’s Communal Constitution and its imprint on contemporary constitutional practice is illustrated by drawing on the constitutional practice as it addresses religious freedom, personal law, minority rights and the identification of caste groups. Thus, casting the Constitution and its practice as a field of contest, the aspiration to define the Indian people as a community of individual citizens is brought face to face with its antagonists. The most significant of these antagonists is the tendency to cast the Indian people as a collection of communities which this book examines and details as India’s Communal Constitution.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Sahoo, “Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion India”

9781108416122In yesterday’s book post, I spoke about how Evangelical Christianity is not a “white” or even “American” phenomenon, but a growing worldwide movement that has experienced great success in the global South. For today’s post, here is a new book from Cambridge that discusses the growth of Evangelical Christianity in India and the resulting political conflicts: Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India, by Sarbeswar Sahoo (Indian Institute of Technology, Dehli). The publisher’s description follows:

This book studies the politics of Pentecostal conversion and anti-Christian violence in India. It asks: why has India been experiencing increasing incidents of anti-Christian violence since the 1990s? Why are the Bhil Adivasis increasingly converting to Pentecostalism? And, what are the implications of conversion for religion within indigenous communities on the one hand and broader issues of secularism, religious freedom and democratic rights on the other? Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork amongst the Bhils of Northern India since 2006, this book asserts that ideological incompatibility and antagonism between Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists provide only a partial explanation for anti-Christian violence in India. It unravels the complex interactions between different actors/ agents in the production of anti-Christian violence and provides detailed ethnographic narratives on Pentecostal conversion, Hindu nationalist politics and anti-Christian violence in the largest state of India that has hitherto been dominated by upper caste Rajput Hindu(tva) ideology.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

Bradley, “Women and Violence in India”

In February, I.B. Tauris released “Women and Violence in India: Gender, Oppression, and the Politics of Neoliberalism,” by Tamsin Bradley (University of Portsmouth).  The publisher’s description follows:

India’s endemic gender-based violence has received increased international scrutiny and provoked waves of domestic protest and activism. In recent years, related Screen Shot 2017-04-06 at 8.29.47 PMstudies on India and South Asia have proliferated but their analyses often fail to identify why violence flourishes. Unwilling to simply accept patriarchy as the answer, Tamsin Bradley presents new research examining how different groups in India conceptualise violence against women, revealing beliefs around religion, caste and gender that render aggression socially acceptable. She also analyses the role that neoliberalism, and its corollary consumerism, play in reducing women to commodity objects for barter or exchange. Unpacking varied conservative, liberal and neoliberal ideologies active in India today, Bradley argues that they can converge unexpectedly to normalise violence against women. Due to these complex and overlapping factors, rates of violence against women in India have actually increased despite decades of feminist campaigning.

This book will be crucial to those studying Indian gender politics and violence, but also presents new data and methodologies which have practical implications for researchers and policymakers worldwide.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

Truschke, “Aurangzeb”

In May, Stanford University Press will release “Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King,” by Audrey Truschke (Rutgers University).  The publisher’s description follows:

The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir is one of the most hated men in Indian history. Widely reviled as a religious fanatic who sought to violently oppress pid_28067Hindus, he is even blamed by some for setting into motion conflicts that would result in the creation of a separate Muslim state in South Asia. In her lively overview of his life and influence, Audrey Truschke offers a clear-eyed perspective on the public debate over Aurangzeb and makes the case for why his often-maligned legacy deserves to be reassessed.

Aurangzeb was arguably the most powerful and wealthiest ruler of his day. His nearly 50-year reign (1658–1707) had a profound influence on the political landscape of early modern India, and his legacy—real and imagined—continues to loom large in India and Pakistan today. Truschke evaluates Aurangzeb not by modern standards but according to the traditions and values of his own time, painting a picture of Aurangzeb as a complex figure whose relationship to Islam was dynamic, strategic, and sometimes contradictory. This book invites students of South Asian history and religion into the world of the Mughal Empire, framing the contemporary debate on Aurangzeb’s impact and legacy in accessible and engaging terms.

Posted on by Liam Ray

Bandyopadhyay & Sen, “Religion and Modernity in India”

In February, Oxford University Press will release Religion and Modernity in India by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (Victoria University of Wellington) and Aloka Parasher Sen (University of Hyderabad). The publisher’s description follows:

india-modernityModernity, which emphasizes the relegation of religion firmly to an individual’s private life, is a challenging idea for any culture. In India it faces a particularly unusual problem: the persistence of numerous traditional and religious practices means that religion and modernity co-habit here in a complex, plural, transient, and historically evolving relationship.

Religion and Modernity in India explores this complex relationship through a series of case studies on the quotidian experiences of people practicing a variety of religions. It presents the dynamically interacting textures of society engaging with modernity in divergent ways, both historically and in contemporary times.

The essays in this collection consciously bring in the idea of inclusivity by factoring in the small and local contexts. They raise important questions about marginality and sexuality, and discuss the oral and cultural traditions of both mainstream and marginal communities such as tribal communities and women. In doing so, they put forward the perspectives of groups that represent difference but at the same time are linked to a larger whole.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

Ahmad, “Muslim Rule in Medieval India”

In September, I.B. Tauris will release “Muslim Rule in Medieval India: Power and Religion in the Delhi Sultanate,” by Fouzia Farooq Ahmad (Quaid-i-Azam University).  The publisher’s description follows:

The Delhi Sultanate ruled northern India for over three centuries. The era, marked by the desecration of temples and construction of mosques from temple-rubble, is for 41ibbk901ll-_sx302_bo1204203200_many South Asians a lightning rod for debates on communalism, religious identity and inter-faith conflict. Using Persian and Arabic manuscripts, epigraphs and inscriptions, Fouzia Farooq Ahmad demystifies key aspects of governance and religion in this complex and controversial period. Why were small sets of foreign invaders and administrators able to dominate despite the cultural, linguistic and religious divides separating them from the ruled? And to what extent did people comply with the authority of sultans they knew very little about? By focusing for the first time on the relationship between the sultans, the bureaucracy and the ruled Muslim Rule in Medieval India outlines the practical dynamics of medieval Muslim political culture and its reception. This approach shows categorically that sultans did not possess meaningful political authority among the masses, and that their symbols of legitimacy were merely post hoc socio-cultural embellishments.Ahmad’s thoroughly researched revisionist account is essential reading for all students and researchers working on the history of South Asia from the medieval period to the present day.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

“Filing Religion” (Berti et al, eds.)

In June, the Oxford University Press released “Filing Religion: State, Hinduism, and Courts of Law,” edited by Daniela Berti (National Centre for Scientific Research), Gilles Tarabout (National Centre for Scientific Research), and Raphaël Voix (National Centre for Scientific Research). The publisher’s description follows:

The Indian Constitution posits a separation between a secular domain that the state can regulate and a religious one in which it should not interfere. However, defining the 9780199463794separation between the two has proved contentious: the state is involved in various ways in the direct administration of many religious institutions; and courts are regularly asked to decide on rights linked to religious functions and bodies. Such decisions contribute to (re)defining religious categories and practices.

This edited volume aims at exploring how apparently technical legalistic action taking place in courts of law significantly shapes the place Hinduism occupies in Indian and Nepalese societies, perhaps even more so than the ideology of any political party. Thus, this volume does not deal so much with politics of secularism in general, but with how courts deal in practice with Hinduism. The approach developed in this volume is resolutely historical and anthropological. It considers law as part of social, religious, and political dynamics while relying on in-depth ethnography and archival research.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

Elmore, “Becoming Religious in a Secular Age”

In June, the University of California Press will release “Becoming Religious in a Secular Age,” by Mark Elmore (University of California, Davis).  The publisher’s description follows:

Religion is commonly viewed as a timeless element of the human inheritance, but in the Western Himalayas the community of Himachal Pradesh discovered its religion 9780520290549only after India became an independent secular state. Based on extensive ethnographic and archival work, Becoming Religious in a Secular Age tells the story of this discovery and how it transformed a community’s relations to its past, to its members, and to those outside the community. And, as Mark Elmore demonstrates, Himachali religion offers a unique opportunity to reimagine relations between religion and secularity. Tracing the emergence of religion, Elmore shows that modern secularity is not so much the eradication of religion as the very condition for its development. Showing us that to become a modern, ethical subject is to become religious, this book creatively augments our understanding of both religion and modernity.