This looks like gobbledygook to me. In the case of India, I understand it, but in the case of New Zealand it looks like the 21st century bending over to be nice to the 10th, but with catastrophic potential fallout, and not necessarily just in New Zealand. This might be the template for moves all over the common law world.

According to this article http://www.ecologise.in/2017/04/10/mean-river-rights/ an Indian High Court judge has given rivers such as the Ganges personal rights. In terms of pre-existing Indian culture this makes some sense.

But "the New Zealand Parliament passed into law the Te Awa Tupua Bill, which gives the Whanganui river and ecosystem legal personality, guaranteeing its ‘health and well-being’. That makes much less sense.

This information is courtesy of my correspondent Sarak Sarkar, who is different from me in politial outlook, but has reservations http://eco-socialist.blogspot.com.au/2017/04/rights-of-rivers-are-they-realizable.html.

Interested in what you all make of this.

It makes me think of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYt0ldmAlhA

With rights come obligations!

(A hydro-electric dam? that's a form of taxation!)

Were the rivers in question asked for their consent to be counted as legal subjects of the state?
Well just like the rest of us, the answer is 'No': it's the nature of states to brutally claim everyone found in "their" territory as their subject.

I don't know about New-Zealand Rivers, but the Uttarakhand judge was obviously bananas if he thought that goddesses like Ganga and Yamuna, who came down to purify the world, could not take care of themselves and require state-protection.

Hi Graham, it may be an alien concept to Europeans that a thing like a river could have a living personality, but it is natural to many indigenous peoples, including Maori that such is the reality.

In this case, Gerrard Albert, a spokesperson for the local Maori had this to say; "We (Maori) have always believed that the Whanganui River is an indivisible and living whole — Te Awa Tupua — which includes all its physical and spiritual elements from the mountains of the central North Island to the sea,"
Should we argue with this belief, previously Europeans would have viewed the river for its exploration value only, and nothing more. It is acceptable to me.

when people worship the creation rather than the Creator you come up with all sorts of foolish and irrational conclusions.

Paul, there is no argument for going back to the superstitious past in our civic arrangements. I thought you were one of those who are highly critical of Christianity on this forum. So how can you advocate for a primitive religion being made the law of the land? What happened to separation of church and state?