Paper short abstract:

Ritual techniques of contestation and verification used in temple consultations are compared to the principle of "reasonable doubt" in criminal trials in India. In both cases doubting appears related less to conscience, belief or cognition than to the technicalities of evidence and procedure.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper the act of doubting will be analyzed in relation to two contexts of interaction and judgment in contemporary India. The first deals with temple consultations, during which village deities, through their institutional mediums, are asked to arbitrate local conflicts and to give their verdict on people's misconduct. During the consultation, the possibility that people doubt what the deity tells them is totally accepted and the ritual procedure includes specific techniques of contestation and verification. The analysis of these ritual procedures will show how doubting has little to do here with the question of belief. Instead, it is a way for people to become involved in the interpretative process and for the medium to reinforce the authority of his verdict. This interactional form of doubting will be compared to the principle of "reasonable doubt" as used in Indian criminal trials and particularly in judges' rulings. Contrary to other judiciary systems, where the verdict depends on a popular jury and on the jurors' intime conviction, ethnographic material and court records show how in Indian trials the notion of "reasonable doubt" which the judge refers to may even go against his personal, more intuitive opinion about the case and be merely due to the lack of admissible evidence that was submitted to the court. In both cases doubting appears to be much less related to conscience, belief or cognition than to the technicalities of evidence and procedure.