Abstract

This essay explores how individuals and communities ‘bring forth’ new spaces for distinguishing and realizing justice. It is about the idea, or more precisely, the ideas of justice and their meanings not conceived as a priori ideals or unyielding normative models, but as a malleable conversation that emerges continuously through practices and discourses human beings create in their everyday lives and situations. Specifically, it attempts to understand the idea of justice from the perspective of the ‘everyday’ by exploring the the aspirations represented by innumerable written petitions (manauti) that devotees hang around the temple walls of Goludev, the ‘God of Justice’ in the Central Himalayan province of Kumaon. Several questions present themselves: What does justice mean in this context? Why do devotees seek out Goludev for the resolution of matters of justice instead of using the secular courts in the region? How does Goludev provide justice and what kind of justice is it that he makes available? What are the sociological and political consequences of situating divine justice, whose instrumentation is achieved not only through written petitions handed to the deity but also through practices of ritual embodiment or spirit possession, within a secular democratic context?

摘要

本文探讨了个人和社区如何“创造”新的空间来区分和实现正义。它是关于理念，或者更准确地说，关于正义的理念及其意义，不是被视为先验的理想或不屈不挠的规范模型，而是作为一种可塑的对话，通过人类在日常生活和情境中创造的实践和话语而不断出现。具体来说，它试图通过探索信徒悬挂在中央“正义之神”戈卢杰夫寺庙墙壁上的无数书面请愿书（manauti）所代表的愿望，从“日常”的角度理解正义的概念。喜马拉雅山的库马翁省。出现了几个问题：在这种情况下，正义意味着什么？为什么奉献者寻求戈卢杰夫来解决正义问题，而不是使用该地区的世俗法院？戈卢杰夫如何伸张正义以及他伸张的是什么样的正义？在世俗民主背景下，神圣正义的实现不仅通过向神明提交书面请愿书，而且还通过仪式化身或精神占有的实践来实现，其社会学和政治后果是什么？