Challenges in ‘translating’ human rights: perceptions and practices of civil society actors in western India

Rights-based approaches have become prevalent in development rhetoric and programmes in countries such as India, yet little is known about their impact on development practice on the ground. There is limited understanding of how rights work is carried out in India, a country that has a long history of indigenous rights discourse and a strong tradition of civil society activism on rights issues. In this article, we examine the multiple ways in which members of civil society organizations (CSOs) working on rights issues in the state of Rajasthan understand and operationalize rights in their development programmes. As a result of diverse ‘translations’ of rights, local development actors are required to bridge the gaps between the rhetoric of policy and the reality of access to healthcare on the ground. This article illustrates that drawing on community-near traditions of activism and mobilization, such ‘translation work’ is most effective when it responds to local exigencies and needs in ways that the universal language of human rights and state development discourse leave unmet and unacknowledged. In the process, civil society actors use rights-based development frameworks instrumentally as well as normatively to deepen community awareness and participation on the one hand, and to fix the state in its role as duty bearer of health rights, on the other hand. In their engagement with rights, CSO members work to reinforce but also challenge neoliberal modes of health governance

Identity and difference in a Muslim community in central Gujarat, India following the 2002 communal violence.

The broad aim of the thesis is to examine the impact of class, caste and religious identity in constructing notions of Muslim identity in a small town in central Gujarat, India and to challenge wider assumptions about the primacy of religious identity in ordering sociality in 'everyday life' in the region following the large-scale violence against the Muslim minority in 2002. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic research, the thesis engages with debates about the impact of violence on inter-ethnic relations and the construction of a minority identity. My research focuses particularly on the Muslim Sunni Vohras in the town of Mahemdabad, a community whose language, residential patterns, dress and kinship system defy, both locally as well as more generally, dualistic notions of what constitutes 'Hindu'/'Muslim' modes of conduct. As a merchant group, Sunni Vohras in the town have traditionally maintained closer ties with local Hindu merchants rather than other Muslims with whom they commonly eschew close affiliation. Through an analysis of various spheres such as kinship, gender, religious practice and local politics, the thesis examines how different notions of 'Muslim identity' are at once predicated on an opposition to 'Hindu identity' but likewise how competing definitions are brandished as a means of establishing status and honour. On a wider level, the thesis presents an examination of how 'everyday coexistence' between different religious groups in the town following the 2002 violence and the way in which such coexistence is sustained and managed through informal networks. Unlike nearby cities, the town in which research was conducted had not previously experienced wide-scale attacks in the past and prided itself on the 'communal harmony' between Hindus and Muslims. The thesis argues that the ongoing salience of caste and class links between the two communities constitute a central factor in explaining how, despite the wider social and political context, religious identity has not succeeded in trumping previous forms of social stratification

Comparing national home-keeping and the regulation of translational stem cell applications: an international perspective

A very large grey area exists between translational stem cell research and applications that comply with the ideals of randomised control trials and good laboratory and clinical practice and what is often referred to as snake-oil trade. We identify a discrepancy between international research and ethics regulation and the ways in which regulatory instruments in the stem cell field are developed in practice. We examine this discrepancy using the notion of ‘national home-keeping’, referring to the way governments articulate international standards and regulation with conflicting demands on local players at home. Identifying particular dimensions of regulatory tools – authority, permissions, space and acceleration – as crucial to national home-keeping in Asia, Europe and the USA, we show how local regulation works to enable development of the field, notwithstanding international (i.e. principally ‘western’) regulation. Triangulating regulation with empirical data and archival research between 2012 and 2015 has helped us to shed light on how countries and organisations adapt and resist internationally dominant regulation through the manipulation of regulatory tools (contingent upon country size, the state's ability to accumulate resources, healthcare demands, established traditions of scientific governance, and economic and scientific ambitions)

Biogovernance beyond the state: the shaping of stem cell therapy by patient organizations in India

Public engagement through government-sponsored "public consultations" in biomedical innovation, specifically stem cell research and therapy, has been relatively limited in India. However, patient groups are drawing upon collaborations with medical practitioners to gain leverage in promoting biomedical research and the conditions under which patients can access experimental treatments. Based on qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2015, I examine the ways in which two patient groups engaged with debates around how experimental stem cell therapy should be regulated, given the current lack of legally binding research guidelines. Such processes of engagement can be seen as an alternative form of biomedical governance which responds to the priorities and exigencies of Indian patients, contrasting with the current measures taken by the Indian state which, instead, are primarily directed at the global scientific and corporate world

“There is peace here”: Managing communal relations in a town in central Gujarat, India

This article describes the relations between Hindus and Muslims in a small town in central Gujarat following the massive violence against the Muslim minority community throughout many parts of the state between February and May 2002. While the ‘communal divide’ has become more pronounced following the 2002 attacks in many parts of the state as well as in the town in which the research was conducted, concerted efforts are made by members of both communities as a means of re-imposing a sense of ‘everyday peace’. As such, normative discourses presenting the 2002 violence as an aberration with respect to the state of local communal relations in the town represent a collective strategy of containing the tension and mutual suspicion which remain constant undercurrents in daily life. This article, moreover, explores the ongoing caste- and class-based social networks and interactions underlying public declarations of ‘everyday peace’ which have played a central role in, if not averting violence altogether, discouraging the development of further communal segregation and division in the aftermath of the 2002 attacks in the town

Religion as practice, religion as identity: Sufi dargahs in contemporary Gujarat

The role of religion in contemporary Gujarat remains both contradictory and highly contested: the rise of politicised Hinduism and Islamism, which has gained strength in recent decades, remains at odds with the many forms of everyday religious practice which blur the boundaries of more reified religious doctrine. This article examines the practices around Sufi shrines in a commuter town in Central Gujarat and, in particular, the lives of three pirs (saints) who maintain a significant following among different religious communities. Through an analysis of the precarious position of Sufi shrines in contemporary Gujarat, I will suggest that Islam has, much akin to Hinduism, become a site of contestation in which the politics of identity formation do not necessarily sit easily with everyday beliefs and practices that continue to be widely practised. As such, the article seeks to problematise widespread assumptions which often conflate religion as a personal experience with its role as a marker of social and political identity

The culture of prohibition in Gujarat, India

The idea of Gujarat conjures a number of often contradictory and paradoxical images. This is certainly true for the well-known comparison of the region’s Gandhian past with modern branding of politicized Hinduism). It is also true in the relation between the forces of altruism and egoism which are evident in much of the state’s history. In this chapter, a focus on the role of drink and drinking in the region also brings to light the many paradoxical facets of Gujarati society, ideas and history

On reproductive justice: ‘domestic violence’, rights and the law in India

In this paper we draw attention to the difficulty of accessing reproductive rights in the absence of effective state and legal guarantees for gender equity and citizenship, and argue that if reproductive rights are to be meaningful interventions on the ground, they must be reframed in terms of reproductive justice. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Rajasthan, Northwest India, we track two dynamic legal aid interventions on reproductive health rights in India, concerned with domestic violence and maternal mortality respectively, that have sought to fill this existing gap between ineffective state policies and the rhetoric on reproductive rights. Through an analysis of these interventions, we propose that requirements of reproductive justice cannot be met through discrete or private, albeit creative legal initiatives, pursued by individuals or civil society organisations but must involve comprehensive policies as well as strategies and alliances between state, non-state, transnational organisations and progressive political groups