Book Review: Rajshree Chandra (ed.), The Cunning of Rights: Law, Life, Biocultural
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023017698271 |
| Author | Hidam Premananda |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews 93
to vote in 1980 and 1984. Here, the reader would like to know more about the Congress’s strategy
vis-à-vis Imam Bukhari: why did the party decide to rely on a cleric in the 1970s and1980s, whereas it
had traditionally promoted secular Muslim leaders?
The main case study, however, concerns the Babri Masjid. In an 80-page long final chapter, Hilal
Ahmed narrates the story of the ‘disputed structure’ from different Hindu and Muslim points of view.
The dominant Muslim approach remained well in tune with the ‘secularism of minority rights’, but there
were tensions between Imam Bukhari, who, in the name of these minority rights, headed a ‘radical’ fac-
tion and the proponents of ‘a legal-constitutionalist position’ who, like Syed Shahabuddin, were
prepared to transform the Babri Masjid into ‘a protected monument’ (p. 238).
While the chronicle of the legal cases is summarized clearly, the reader, afterwards, is sucked into the
maelstrom of the Babri Masjid-related negotiations for 30 pages of description. The conclusion of this
chapter, however, is very dense and may require some clarifications. First, Hilal Ahmed points out that
during the negotiations on the future of the Babri Masjid, Muslims were prepared to have it partly
‘declared as a protected historical monument’ (p. 272). But he does not say whether it meant that they
had shifted from a ‘secularism of minority rights’ to a ‘secularism of historical monuments’. Second,
while Hilal Ahmed emphasizes the point that even the radicals eventually adhered to a legal-
constitutional solution, one could argue that the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 was a factor of
the re-radicalization of some groups, including Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) , as Irfan
Ahmad has shown in Islamism and Democracy in India (a book surprisingly absent from Hilal Ahmed’s
bibliography). Third, the attacks on the Babri Masjid have reinvigorated a collective sense of a ‘royal
Muslim past’ (p. 274) among the largest minority community of India. But the demolition of the Babri
Masjid—sketchily covered in the book—has probably introduced a disconnect between this sentiment
and the plight of Muslims in India today.
While the book leaves certain questions open, it is remarkably original. Never before has an academic
study been devoted to the Muslim political discourse of historical monuments in India. Not only is the
study well documented, but the narrative is peppered with precious ethnographic details and the excerpts
of speeches as well as well-chosen writings.
Christophe Jaffrelot
CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS and King’s India Institute (KCL)
E-mail: christophe.jaffrelot@sciencespo.fr
Rajshree Chandra (ed.), The Cunning of Rights: Law, Life, Biocultural. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
2015. 244 pages. `850.
DOI: 10.1177/2321023017698271
If rights are constituted in the circulation of biopolitical power, Rajshree Chandra has a case to prove that
rights are actually cunning in the way they emerge, disappear and reappear in a complex network of legal
and scientific discourses on various shades of life forms and property. While the book has brought to
view the global network of scientific and legal research in relation to genetically modified or, one may
even say, as Chandra reminds us throughout the book, genetically invented crops, we could think of them
becoming intellectual properties all along; so what has emerged from the book interestingly is a strange
work of science and law in the production of rights of farmers, indigenous communities and local tribes.
The theme of this book is not only about the nature of the rights of farmers, communities and tribes
but also the entire process of entitlement with which they are connected to the global network of claim
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