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This article addresses the way issues of religion and the environment are embedded in judicial procedures in India. It examines specific cases which reveal the complexity of certain problems that the judges have to settle. Emphasis is placed here on the anthropological rather than the judicial approach, stressing the multifold dimensions of the phenomena envisaged in the context of the transformations affecting Indian society. After a presentation of the role played by the upper courts of justice in India, the authors examine how development projects likely to be detrimental to the environment come to be challenged before the courts by also referring to religious issues.