Abstract
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This article brings together theories of truth in legal anthropology and the anthropology of religion to highlight how legal institutions can co-opt hate crime laws and reproduce patterns of sociopolitical oppression. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research on the social life of India's only hate crime law – the 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA), which punishes violence against Dalit (ex-untouchable) communities – the article argues that hate crime cases involve a clash between three different truth logics: attributive truth or credibility; formal juridical truth regimes defined by evidentiary technicalities; and a distinct mode of experiential-discriminatory truth, which is defined by its processual character. As Indian police and judiciary conflate these truth logics in practice, they publicly and legally erase realities of caste discrimination and (re)construct marginalized communities like Dalits as greedy and unreliable narrators.
This article brings together theories of truth in legal anthropology and the anthropology of religion to highlight how legal institutions can co-opt hate crime laws and reproduce patterns of sociopolitical oppression. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research on the social life of India's only hate crime law – the 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA), which punishes violence against Dalit (ex-untouchable) communities – the article argues that hate crime cases involve a clash between three different truth logics: attributive truth or credibility; formal juridical truth regimes defined by evidentiary technicalities; and a distinct mode of experiential-discriminatory truth, which is defined by its processual character. As Indian police and judiciary conflate these truth logics in practice, they publicly and legally erase realities of caste discrimination and (re)construct marginalized communities like Dalits as greedy and unreliable narrators.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 669-686 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 26 Jan 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Sept 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute.
Research Groups and Themes
- SPS Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice
