The Indian Supreme Court in an order in November 2025 has attempted to create a uniform standard for identifying ‘Aravallis’, a mountain range in India, to curb widespread illegal mining happening in these hills due to lack of a standard definition. Social mobilization efforts are underway to undo the attempt to standardize, given the very narrow definition adopted by the Courts. Granting personhood to the Aravallis and recognising the entire hill range as one single being might help the conservation efforts.

Brief background

The Aravalli hill ranges in India have consistently preserved the natural diversity and acted as a natural defence against the expansion of the Thar desert in northwest India. Since November 2025, the Indian Supreme Court has been critiqued for declaring an operational definition of the Aravallis (“…any elevation of a landform of more than 100 metres in the Aravalli districts…”) and of Aravalli range (“…several hills within the proximity of 500 metres from each other…”). What necessitated this definition was the growing cases of illegal mining in light of lack of a uniform definition adopted by all the states.

The definition has been criticised by environmentalists and scholars alike for opening up the doors to incessant mining, as it leaves out a huge number of hills from its ambit. What has been particularly concerning is the impact of such mining on reduced groundwater levels for western Rajasthan, a state in northwest India. Given the role of the Aravallis in preserving the ecology, there have been massive protests, calling for doing away with the problematic definition. It has been claimed that the definition has the potential to retrospectively validate otherwise unlawful mining activities, happening within the 100-meter range.

Against this conundrum, granting personhood to the Aravallis may play a vital role in the mobilization efforts to save the hills.

Indian perspective of Personhood

The ‘rights of nature’ jurisprudence derives from the ecocentric approach to environmental protection that recognises the intrinsic value of natural resources and has been greatly shaped by judicial decisions in India. The only attempt towards statutory recognition of legal personhood, a private members’ Bill in 2024, did not see light of the day. The Courts have gone on to grant legal personhood to specifically identified resources like a certain river, mountain or lake, or the ‘mother earth’ in general, implying that the resources are “living entities with all corresponding rights, duties, and liabilities of a living person”.

Then, there are cases that have obliquely recognised rights of ecological resources in an attempt to protect them. For instance, in a noted decision, Orissa Mining Corporation v. Ministry of Environment and Forest, the Indian Supreme Court recognised the religious and spiritual rights of the local community over the bauxite rich hills to order a referendum of the local Gram Sabha (association of local community). Years of protests by the indigenous communities opposing the environmental clearance granted to a mining company to extract bauxite from the Niyamgiri hills, culminated in the decision.

Implications on conservationism

By recognising the religious beliefs of the tribal population in Niyam Raja, or the ‘king of Law’, the deity residing atop the Niyamgiri hills, the Court impliedly recognised the intrinsic rights of the hills, by considering it a ‘living entity’, without actually conferring personhood in explicit terms. Thus, this decision has been hailed as one of the early decisions that contributed to the rights of nature jurisprudence. The process of recognition of rights was instrumental in changing the status quo i.e. grant of mining rights in the hills. The rights recognition gave an opportunity to the Courts to refer the matter back to the Gram Sabha. This suggests that the very implied recognition of rights added the much-needed impetus to the social mobilization for preservation of the resource in question. This must serve as a motivation for litigants, attempting to protect certain natural resources to push for an explicit recognition of personhood and for judges, to grant them.

Conclusion

Drawing parallels between the Niyamgiri movement and the Aravalli movement, it can be argued that grant of personhood may have long standing implications for protection of the latter. The grant of personhood may give the Aravallis a standing in the Courts, which is currently missing. As per the current definition, some hills fall outside its scope, creating a lacuna. Granting personhood eliminates this gap, allowing the entire Aravalli range to be understood as a single being or entity, with no room for bifurcation within the range to identify which is a hill, which is not. Thus, intrinsic value of the hill range can be recognised, irrespective of its height and other quantitative parameters. While there is no deification of the Aravalli hills, like that of the Niyamgiri, it still is home to various ‘sacred groves’ and is considered a spiritual heritage by the local communities, with their core belief lying in the preservation of nature. Therefore, the Niyamgiri experience must be used as an example by everyone fighting for the cause, to call for grant of personhood on the Aravallis.