Abstract: The public charitable trust, the legal infrastructure behind much of the formal religious giving and sacred space in India, has tremendous influence on communal life. Better known for its extreme contrast of horizontal slums pressed up against the verticality of high-tech and high-finance buildings, Mumbai’s largest landowners are actually charitable trusts. By approaching the city of Mumbai through this distinct financial form and the people who live within their arrangements, donate to them, and dispute them, this talk based on my book, Trust Matters, offers an innovative, ethnographically rich exploration of property, religion, and kinship in the urban global south. Numbering less than 60,000 in a city of over 12 million, the Parsis (Indian Zoroastrians), through their communal trusts, are the largest private landowners in the city.  The talk will describe some of the dynamics and consequences of this distinctive conjunction of religion and capital, and the unique, historical and contemporary processes of giving, disputing, living and dying that it enables.

Bio: Leilah Vevaina received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the New School for Social Research in 2015. She has an MA in Anthropology from The New School (2007) as well as an MA in Social Thought from New York University (2005). Her research lies in the intersection of urban property and religious life within the legal regimes of contemporary India. She has conducted fieldwork in Mumbai, India and Hong Kong, with specific focus on the Indian Zoroastrian, or Parsi, community, with generous support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation as well as the American Institute of Indian Studies. Her book, Trust Matters: Parsi Endowments in Mumbai and the Horoscope of a City (Duke University Press), focuses on religious endowments and the trust as a mechanism of property management in the city.

In addition to her focus on Zoroastrian global philanthropic networks, Leilah is researching Zoroastrian death rituals and their legal and funerary infrastructures for a new book on necrofinance and death and diaspora. Her forthcoming project seeks to research the connection between gambling and charity in contemporary  Hong Kong.

Leilah Vevaina is also the founding Director of the South Asia from Asia Initiative at Chinese University which aims to bring together research and teaching on South Asia in Hong Kong in collaboration with other departments and university partners.