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Although numbering fewer than 60,000 in a city of more than 12 million people, Mumbai’s Parsi community is one of the largest private landowners in the city due to its network of public charitable trusts. In Trust Matters Leilah Vevaina explores the dynamics and consequences of this conjunction of religion and capital as well as the activities of giving, disputing, living, and dying it enables. As she shows, communal trusts are the legal infrastructure behind formal religious giving and ritual in urban India that influence communal life. Vevaina proposes the trusts as a horoscope of the city—a constellation of housing, temples, and other spaces providing possible futures. She explores the charitable trust as a technology of time, originating in the nineteenth century, one that structures intergenerational obligations for Mumbai’s Parsis, connecting past and present, the worldly and the sacred. By approaching Mumbai through the legal mechanism of the trust and the people who live within its bounds as well as those who challenge or support it, Vevaina offers a new pathway into exploring property, religion, and kinship in the urban global South.
Price: $26.95
Pages: 224
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Publication Date:
01 December 2023
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781478025399
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
“This fascinating ethnography’s twinned focus on the charitable trust as a property form and on the Parsi community of Mumbai brings to light the tensions for both in maintaining a perpetual life. If trusts fix property and obligation, Leilah Vevaina shows how their perpetuity strains against community divisions, urban development, and global networks of philanthropic capital. This is a strikingly original and at times surprising book, with implications that stretch beyond Mumbai and toward rethinkings of unlikely modes of capital and forms of wealth that seem ‘forever.’”—Bill Maurer, Professor of Anthropology and Law, University of California, Irvine
“Leilah Vevaina presents a fascinating array of processes, lives, and practices of the Parsi community in Mumbai across legal, spiritual, and material spaces to illuminate the dynamic workings of the public charitable trusts it operates throughout the city. This book makes important contributions to theoretical discussions in anthropology, law, and South Asian studies.”—Ritu Birla, author of, Stages of Capital: Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late Colonial India
"Trust Matters captures the essence of how research comes alive through ethnographic fieldwork. Leilah Vevaina beautifully encapsulates details from her interviews, conversations, experiences, and observations in and around Bombay city, the Parsi community, and the courts."—Rahela Khorakiwala, Journal of Anthropological Research
"Trust Matters is a well-researched ethnographic study on Parsi charitable trusts and their decisive influence on the urban topography of Bombay/Mumbai. This book, highly useful for understanding the larger implications of the relationship between faith and the economy, is a timely contribution to the underexplored theme of religious charity in anthropology and sociology, with the potential to inspire and guide future research in this area."—E. K. Muhammed, Contemporary South Asia
"Trust Matters is a truly fascinating book for it proves to be a canonical example of how relevant contemporary ethnography is. In a landscape of a dense ethnographic repertoire, Vevaina shows how maneuvering across anthropological canons can unravel an object of inquiry not touched within the palimpsestic view of the city. . . . This ethnography of a people and their properties in a subjunctive temporal sense of what is a good relation with assets will appeal to scholars across disciplines interested in anthropology of religion, urban space, law and Parsi life in India."—Arman Hasan, South Asian Review
"Trust Matters provides an excellent ethnographic window on a crucial historical thread of colonial and post-colonial Mumbai. It is a welcome contribution for students and scholars familiar with legal anthropology, but it is also broadly accessible to a more generic anthropological readership."—Roberto Rizzo, Social Anthropology
“Leilah Vevaina presents a fascinating array of processes, lives, and practices of the Parsi community in Mumbai across legal, spiritual, and material spaces to illuminate the dynamic workings of the public charitable trusts it operates throughout the city. This book makes important contributions to theoretical discussions in anthropology, law, and South Asian studies.”—Ritu Birla, author of, Stages of Capital: Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late Colonial India
"Trust Matters captures the essence of how research comes alive through ethnographic fieldwork. Leilah Vevaina beautifully encapsulates details from her interviews, conversations, experiences, and observations in and around Bombay city, the Parsi community, and the courts."—Rahela Khorakiwala, Journal of Anthropological Research
"Trust Matters is a well-researched ethnographic study on Parsi charitable trusts and their decisive influence on the urban topography of Bombay/Mumbai. This book, highly useful for understanding the larger implications of the relationship between faith and the economy, is a timely contribution to the underexplored theme of religious charity in anthropology and sociology, with the potential to inspire and guide future research in this area."—E. K. Muhammed, Contemporary South Asia
"Trust Matters is a truly fascinating book for it proves to be a canonical example of how relevant contemporary ethnography is. In a landscape of a dense ethnographic repertoire, Vevaina shows how maneuvering across anthropological canons can unravel an object of inquiry not touched within the palimpsestic view of the city. . . . This ethnography of a people and their properties in a subjunctive temporal sense of what is a good relation with assets will appeal to scholars across disciplines interested in anthropology of religion, urban space, law and Parsi life in India."—Arman Hasan, South Asian Review
"Trust Matters provides an excellent ethnographic window on a crucial historical thread of colonial and post-colonial Mumbai. It is a welcome contribution for students and scholars familiar with legal anthropology, but it is also broadly accessible to a more generic anthropological readership."—Roberto Rizzo, Social Anthropology
Leilah Vevaina is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Inheritances 1
1. In Perpetuity: The Trust and Timely Obligations 27
2. Presents and Futures: The Trust and Obligation’s Asymmetries 52
3. No House, No Spouse: The Bombay Parsi Punchayet 75
4. The Beneficiary, the Law, and Sacred Space 105
5. From Excarnation to Ashes: Trust to Trust 128
6. Awakening the “Dead Hand”: Liquid and Solid Properties 146
Conclusion: An Unsettled (E)state 167
Notes 175
References 185
Index 201
Introduction: Inheritances 1
1. In Perpetuity: The Trust and Timely Obligations 27
2. Presents and Futures: The Trust and Obligation’s Asymmetries 52
3. No House, No Spouse: The Bombay Parsi Punchayet 75
4. The Beneficiary, the Law, and Sacred Space 105
5. From Excarnation to Ashes: Trust to Trust 128
6. Awakening the “Dead Hand”: Liquid and Solid Properties 146
Conclusion: An Unsettled (E)state 167
Notes 175
References 185
Index 201