‘In the matter Re: Rights of Nature’ (English)

Conceived by Khoj International Artists’ Association and Zuleikha Chaudhari in collaboration with lawyer Harish Mehla.

Note:

Life is complex and fragile with bodies and ecologies interwoven with each other in their vulnerabilities. But when life is understood only as human, in its narrowest definition, how can we reinvent the terms of what and who counts?

Photograph by Alina Tiphagne

Cast

Petitioner 1: Khoj International Artists’ Association and Zuleikha Chaudhari and Maya Anandan (minor)

Respondent 1: Union of India through the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Commission On Air Quality Management, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Delhi Pollution Control Board, Punjab Pollution Control Board, Haryana Pollution Control Board, Department of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare of the States of Punjab and Haryana and Union Territory of Delhi and Indian Krishi Union.

Respondent 2: Farmers’ Union

Judges/Principal Bench: Justice Rajive Bhalla (Retd.), Justice Kamaljit Singh Garewal (Retd.), Justice K. Kannan (Retd.)

Counsel representing the petitioners: Harish Mehla

Expert Witness 1: Manish Shrivastava

Expert Witness 2: Tarini Mehta

Counsel representing the Union of India through the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change: Mannat Anand

Expert Witness: Kahan Singh Pannu

Counsel representing the Farmer’s Union: Manmohan Lal Sarin

Artist/ Expert Witness 1: Randeep Maddoke

Artist/ Expert Witness 2: Thukral & Tagra

Artist/ Expert Witness 3: Shweta Bhattad

Court Master: Zuleikha Chaudhari

In the matter Re: Rights of Nature: A Staged Hearing

is the fourth iteration of Khoj’s 3-year-long project, Does the Blue Sky Lie?: Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities which explores the troubled, toxic ecologies of Delhi’s air. Thus far, the project has been realised in the following episodes:

– Air Expo 2022: A public art intervention at the Plaza, Select Citywalk

21st-29th April, 2022

– Does the Blue Sky Lie?: An Exhibition at Khoj Studios

27th April-21st May, 2022

– Cafe Classroom: a discursive space for talks at Khoj Studios

30th April-30th May, 2022

Episode Four takes the form of a fictional/staged National Green Tribunal (NGT) hearing exploring the contentious issues pertaining to the air quality of Delhi/ National Capital Region (NCR). The National Green Tribunal (established 2010) has been set up under the National Green Tribunal Act as a statutory body to deal with environmental cases and speedy implementation of decisions relating to it. The project employs the laws and protocols of the NGT in order to explore “principles of natural justice” in the context of environmental justice.

The hearing stages arguments and witnesses (an economist and a policy advisor) pertaining to Khoj International Artists’ Association and Zuleikha Chaudhari’s petition at the NGT indicting Union of India through the Ministry of Environment, the respective State stakeholders, and a fictitious Farmer’s Union for their inability to stop stubble-burning in areas of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. While the petition prayer requests the NGT to impose a prohibition and penalties for stubble burning and penalties on the respondents, the central focus of the petition is to integrate Rights Of Nature as an expansion of Right to Life as enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

According to the “Rights of Nature” doctrine, an ecosystem is entitled to legal personhood status and as such, has the right to defend itself in a court of law against harms, including environmental degradation caused by specific developmental projects. The Rights of Nature law brings a biocentric perspective into focus, a position that differs from the anthropocentric standpoint in which Nature is valued for the utility or the benefits it provides (conventionally as use or exchange value). However, recognizing nature as a legal person with the same rights, duties and liabilities as humans is not an ideal approach, since nature is inherently different from human beings and cannot be held liable in the same way.

In order to protect the rights of nature, do we need a new system for nature that moves beyond legal personhood, to “legal naturehood” in recognition that an ecosystem has the right to exist, flourish, regenerate its vital cycles, and naturally evolve without human-caused disruption.

The hearing includes three practising lawyers, three subject expert witnesses, three retired judges as well as three artists. It follows the protocols, procedures and laws of the NGT. The project is grounded in current environmental laws in India which exist within major central legislations. The hearing therefore entails opening and closing statements by the lawyers, examination and cross examination of witness testimonies (along with evidence), and the final judgement on the matter. The final judgement is unknown and will be delivered at the end of the hearing.

The project interrogates what role art can play as a means of knowledge production in the context of ecological interrelations. Can artists and artworks articulate the web of ecological, cultural, economic, historical and political relations as legitimate legal narratives in a judicial context? While Shweta Bhattad’s work centres around rediscovering traditional farming methods and building sustainable ecosystems along with women farm labourers; Thukral & Tagra raise concerns of the women belonging to the Indian agrarian community and their burden of overdue debts due to farmer suicides through their board game Weeping Farm; and Randeep Maddoke’s documentary film highlights the issues faced by Dalit farm labourers in the state of Punjab.

BIOGRAPHIES

Credits

Conceived by Khoj International Artists’ Association and Zuleikha Chaudhari and developed with lawyer Harish Mehla.

Direction and dramaturgy: Zuleikha Chaudhari

Legal research and first and second draft petition: Stella James and Nayana Udayashankar.

First and second draft petition review: Shibani Ghosh

Final petition: Harish Mehla

Petition vetting: Emilie Gaillard, France (Director, Normandy Chair for Peace) and Tarini Mehta, India (Invited professor, Normandy Chair for Peace)

Lawyers

Harish Mehla is an advocate at the Punjab & Haryana High Court, Chandigarh practicing since 2009. His practice is focused on matters arising on Constitutional Law, Agricultural Laws (Fertilizer Control Order, Insecticides & Pesticide Laws, Seed & Plant Variety Laws), Intellectual Property Laws, Commercial Laws and Criminal Laws. He co-founded the Collective of Lawyers of Punjab and Haryana High Court, a forum that organises seminars and workshops on Judicial Accountability with Senior Advocates and members of Judiciary. In 2016 he worked as special invitee with the High Court Bar Association for restoration of the vintage section of the Bar library. He is a regular panel speaker for various news channels on issues pertaining to Human Rights violations and India and International Disputes

Special thanks: Justice Jayshree Thakur, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry, Prof. Pramod Kumar, Chandigarh Tourism, Elsewhere Foundation, Navkiran Natt, Nandan Nawn, Justice Yatindra Singh (Retd.), Harinder Bindu.

Mannat Anand , Partner at Anand & Sood Law firm, is an Advocate at the Punjab & Haryana High Court, Chandigarh. She completed her LLB at ILS Law College, Pune University in 2015 and is a gold medalist. She handles cases in the field of Criminal, Civil, Arbitration, Matrimonial , Consumer, service matters etc . She has been appointed as Amicus Curiae on several occasions and is empanelled with High Court Legal Service Authority. She is also Vice president of Innerwheel club new gen panchkula (international women’s organisation) and believes in women empowerment.

Manmohan Lal Sarin is a Senior Advocate practising at the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Chandigarh. He joined the Bar in 1971 and was designated Senior Advocate in 1987. He has been the Advocate General for the State of Punjab twice, and once for the State of Haryana. He is also the Founder Secretary of the Sarin Memorial Legal Aid Foundation, Chandigarh, which was set up in 1995 for spreading legal literacy and providing legal aid for protection of the environment and for helping disabled children. He has been the President of Alliance Francaise Le Corbusier de Chandigarh since 1990.

He was knighted by the French Government with the award of ‘Chevalier des Palmes Academiques’ in 1999 and, in 2016, by the second highest French Award “Chevalier L’Ordre National du Merite''.

ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

Eaten Cotton

With the Gram Art Project, Shweta has created a collective space for the people in Paradsinga, Madhya Pradesh, to express their concerns as a part of an average Indian village through forms and media which are socially and ecologically non-exploitative. Their work centers around issues of farmer suicides, land grabbing by developers, ecologically and livelihood damaging technologies like Genetically Modified (GM) crops that are being forced into the farming systems without the involvement of farmers in the decision-making process. Over the past years their interventions have been focused on rediscovering traditional methods of farming by working with the women farm labourers to build a sustainable ecosystem through collaboration.

Shweta Bhattad is a visual artist and performer. She is a trained sculptor, having completed her BFA in Nagpur, and MVA in MS University of Baroda. She has worked across mediums in the past, with a strong focus on issues of women’s safety, education and the female body. She is also a founder member of the Gram Art Project Collective, which is a group of farmers, artists, women, makers. These are people of different ideas and identities but connected together by living and working in and around a village they all are concerned about. This village is Paradsinga, situated in Sausar Tehsil of Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh.

Weeping Farm

“Statistically, every forty minutes a farmer commits suicide in India.”

Nearly 75% of the full-time workers on Indian farms are women (OXFAM). Women are both directly and indirectly impacted by these alarming suicides. Weeping Farm looks at female farmers’ distress and agrarian crisis as a running commentary of the current time. Beating the clock, as a player, you will confront distressing situations that narrate the farmers’ ongoing battle of survival against intangible and tangible issues. As one of the women belonging to the Indian agrarian community, you live with overwhelming odds! Which strategy may help you proceed? Should you be part of the system or stand against it? Or should you leave it to fate to hang in limbo? Whichever card you may play, how will you ensure your survival?

Thukral and Tagra are a Delhi-based artist duo comprising Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra. Driven by the artistic methodologies of painting, gaming, archiving, and publishing, their multifaceted studio practice reflects the scope of engagement in the cultural and political landscape of India and the world.

While their early work dealt with the intricacies of consumer culture globally, their recent interest in ecology and climate change is a revisiting of their family histories of migration and farming in the state of Punjab. Their efforts to address ongoing social issues through education and art also include Pollinator, a learning lab, which fosters cross-pollinations across creative fields, and the new publishing and distribution platform andArchive that reconfigures the potential of the print and the archive.

Landless

Landless is a debut documentary film by Randeep Maddoke on the issues faced by Indian Dalit farm labourers in their daily life. The film looks at the issues of land in the state of Punjab and follows the story of the victims of caste-based discrimination, social boycott, and communal attacks by Jatts (upper caste).

Randeep Maddoke is a Punjab based concept photographer and documentary filmmaker, born and raised in the village Maddoke, Moga (Punjab). He is known for his focus on the pains of the marginalised sections of society which are constantly subject to systematic social exclusion. He completed his studies from Government College of Arts, Chandigarh with specialisation in Graphics (Printmaking). He documented the class struggle of Dalits in Punjab, Haryana, and Tamil Nadu to study the practice and effects of caste. In 2008 he went to Nepal to document the making of the democratic Republic out of the monarchical Nepal. There too he located the threads of casteism and the resistance thereof.

EXPERT WITNESSES

Kahan Singh Pannu is a retired IAS officer. He completed his BSc in Agriculture from College of Agriculture PAU Ludhiana in 1981 and his MSc in Entomology in 1984. He has extensively worked with the Punjab Government since his appointment in 1988 in various capacities including the position of the Chairman of Punjab Pollution Control Board, where he was instrumental in bringing down the crop residue fire incidents by 50% in 2017. He also served as the Secretary of Dept of Agriculture before his retirement in August 2020. Presently, he practises farming, and adopts eco-friendly methods in farm cultivation. He has also received the President and Prime Minister awards for his service.

Prof. (Dr.)Tarini Mehta is a professor and advocate specialising in environmental and human rights law. She has a Doctorate in International Environmental Law from Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law (US), an LLM from the University of Cambridge, and an LLB from the University of Warwick. Her primary areas of research are international and regional environmental and climate change law. She has presented her research at conferences across India, Europe, US, and Canada, and published in several peer-reviewed journals and books. She has also conducted legal and social research for various organisations.

Dr. Manish Kumar Shrivastava is a Senior Fellow at TERI. His research focuses on theories and practices of justice with a particular reference to the interaction of energy, technology, finance, and environmental policy in multi-level governance and fragmented society contexts. His current research focuses on challenges and opportunities faced in pursuit of just energy transition

in India from the perspective of finance, gender justice, role of sub-national and non-state actors in scaling up climate action in developing countries, and relevance of frugality in technological choices and governance for sustainability. Earlier, he has taught climate policy and economics at TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi. He holds Ph.D. and M.Phil. Degrees in Science Policy and MA in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is associated with the Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association for over 25 years and currently is Joint Secretary to its National Committee.

JUDGES

Justice Rajive Bhalla (Retd.) is the Former Judge at the Punjab and Haryana High Court and former Advocate in the Supreme Court of India.

Justice Kamaljit Singh Garewal (Retd.) is the Former Judge at the Punjab and Haryana High Court and the United Nations Appeals Tribunal, New York & Geneva. He is currently the Committee Chairman of the Golden Forests (India) Limited and a Columnist at India Legal Live.

Justice K. Kannan (Retd.) is the Former justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and currently serves as a Chairman of the Railway Claims Tribunal (RCT) at the Principal Bench at New Delhi, India. He is also the Founder – Director of Madhyastham.

Zuleikha Chaudhari

Zuleikha Chaudhari is a theatre director and lighting designer based in Delhi.

Since 2015, she has been exploring the framework of law as performance, the role of performance in law and the performativity of legal truth-production.

She has participated in residency programs such as DAAD Artists - in - Berlin ProgramBerlinerKünstlerprogramm (2019) and School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London (2017). She is presently a Distinguished Scholar with the Initiative on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley.

She is the director of the Alkazi Theatre Archives at The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi.

About Khoj

Khoj is an autonomous not-for-profit contemporary arts organisation based in New Delhi. Through its programs Khoj supports and incubates emerging, experimental and transdisciplinary creative practices and pedagogies. Since its inception in 1997, Khoj has been committed towards building global networks and solidarities, especially in the subcontinent. Khoj believes that art is of intrinsic value to society; it is a crucial form of inquiry that provides unique insights and drives change through affect.

Director

Pooja Sood

Programme Team

Indranjan Banerjee

Manjiri Dube

Ruchira Das - Deputy Director for ARThinkSouthAsia

Media & Production

Alina Tiphagne

Suresh Pandey

Admin & Accounts

V.P. Manoj

Laxmi Devi

Senior Fellows

Gauri Pathak

Isha Bhattacharya

Intern

Meenakshi Arundhati Banerjee

Support Staff

Arun Chhetri

Govind

Pancham Karketta

Khoj Canteen

Rajesh Gupta

Karma

Phulmata

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Production

Scenografia Sumant

Documentation Harkat Studios

Design Mebin Varghese

Translation Shveta

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case of Amarnath Shrine, In re 2013 (3) SCC 247 “The expression ‘life enshrined in article 21 of the COnstitution does not connote mere animal existence or continued drudgery through life. It has a much wider meaning which includes right to livelihood, better standard of living, hygienic conditions in the workplace and leisure. The right to life with human dignity encompasses within its fold, some of the finer facets of human civilization which make life worth living”. Furthermore while stressing the need for maintaining proper balance between socio-economic security and protection of environment Hon’ble court observed in M.C.Mehta v Kamal Nath 2000 96) SCC 213 “Any disturbance of the basic environment, namely air, water and soil, which are necessary for life would be hazardous to ‘life’ within the meaning of Art. 21. In the matter of enforcement of rights under Art 21 the Supreme court, besides enforcing the provisions of the Acts, has also given effect to fundamental rights under Article 14 and 21 and has held that if those rights are violated by disturbing the environment, it can award damages not only for restoration of the ecological balance but also for the victims who have suffered due to that disturbance. In order to protect life, in order to protect environment and in order to protect air, water and soil from pollution, the supreme court through its various judgements has given effect to the rights available to the citizens and persons alike, under Art, 21”

liberally by Hon’ble Supreme Court as not merely the moribund existence of human body but it also includes preservation and sustenance of environment and natural elements which leads to healthy growth of human life. It is this concept of defined “life” within Article 21wherein the relation of “human” and “nature” have been constantly scrutinized in various judicial precedents to strike balance between “development” and “exploitation

of nature”. At every instance wherein Hon’ble court adjudicated a point of conflict between development and nature,the court has stressed the importance of preservation of the environment as quintessential to development activities and human life.

In Para 17 the Court’s observation qua Article 21 is being reproduced here below for the ready reference of this HOn’ble court:

“It is an established principle of law that the right to life, as envisaged under Article 21 of the COnstitution of India includes the right to a decent environment. It includes within its ambit the right of a citizen to live in a clean environment. With regard to vehicular traffic, this court has issued a number of directions to ensure a clean environment and reduced pollution. It has been held that right to clean environment is a fundamental right. The right to live in an environment free from smoke and pollution follows from the quality of life which is an inherent part of Article 21. The right to live with human dignity becomes illusory in the absence of a healthy environment. The right of life not only means leading a life with dignity but includes within its ambit the right to lead a healthy,robust life in a clean atmosphere free from pollution. Obviously,such rights are not absolute and have to exist with sustainable development. Therefore,if there is conflict between health and wealth,obviously, health will have to be given precedence. When we are concerned with the health of one citizen but the entire citizenry including the future citizens of the country,the larger public interest has to outweigh the much smaller pecuniary interest of the industry,in this case, the automobile industry, especially when the entire wherewithal to introduce the cleaner technology exists.”

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