Description
Reparations are now receiving needed attention in the social sciences. Bhopal Gas Disaster survivors have been fighting for ‘reparations’ against harms to their bodies, environments and livelihoods since 1984. Their 40-year old campaigns for legal justice and compensation in Indian and US jurisdictions have much to teach us about the politics of (elite) capture of reparative efforts for justice and environmental and health restitution. They showcase how legal doctrines such as forum non conveniens and parens patriae privileged corporate elites and enabled the dismissal of survivors’ court cases for justice and compensation and disempowered them as Indian citizens by making them wards of the state unable to chart their own legal pathways. This inflects existing analyses of the harms of co-optation and ‘elite capture’. And yet, taking a capacious understanding of reparations beyond legal-political realms, and reading Bhopali sociopoetic practices of survival and sociality as forms of reparative mutuality, helps analyse how these exceed but remain at risk of (elite) capture. The paper examines the aim at citizen science and campaigns for establishing the Chingari Rehabilitation Centre and Sambhavna Clinic, as well as other forms of mutual care and aid in the context of ongoing struggles for justice.
