Legal Personhood for Rivers: How Colonial Dispossession and Capitalist Extraction Mask Ecological Justice in India’s Courts
Original framing: “Another court grants ‘rights’ to an Indian river but that doesn’t address our disconnect from nature” — bing news
The legal personhood framework in India often ignores or co-opts Indigenous knowledge systems, such as those of the *Adivasi* communities who have long practiced river conservation through sacred groves (*devara kadu*) and rotational farming. These systems treat rivers as kin, not resources, yet they are excluded from legal proceedings where personhood is granted by courts dominated by colonial-era legal structures. The *Gond* people of central India, for instance, have oral traditions warning against river pollution, but their warnings are sidelined in favor of state-led environmental policies that prioritize economic development over ecological integrity.
The legal personhood movement for rivers in India is a symptom of a broader crisis: the failure of colonial and capitalist systems to reconcile ecological justice with economic exploitation.
Courts granting rivers rights operate within a framework that still treats nature as property, ignoring the centuries of Indigenous stewardship and the material conditions of pollution and displacement that legal personhood alone cannot address. The trickster element here is the illusion of progress—legal victories that distract from the need to dismantle extractive capitalism and restore Indigenous governance. Solutions must move beyond symbolic recognition to include reparations for historical ecological debt, the integration of Indigenous knowledge into river management, and the democratization of water access. Without these systemic shifts, legal personhood risks becoming another tool of greenwashing, serving the interests of states and corporations while leaving marginalized communities and ecosystems further marginalized.