This article considers the significance of the incorporation of blood donation as a widespread feature of commemorative political rituals in India. It places the rituals in the context of the current campaign in India to replace paid with non-remunerated donation, and explains how this campaign has led to the circulation of a store of ethical capital that the ritual organizers endeavor—through these blood-shedding commemorations—to capture for political ends. It is argued that there is nothing purely political about memorial blood donation—that its performance relies upon certain established religious themes in order to achieve political efficacy, and that this works both ways. The article highlights the role of blood donation in facilitating bodily transactions across and between different temporal locations, and finishes with a case study that demonstrates the risk involved in these rituals of remembrance.
Giving and Taking without Reciprocity
Conversations in South India and the Anthropology of Ethics
Soumhya Venkatesan
has many valences; indeed, it is being mobilized in India now for new contexts such as blood donation, where the notion of sins being passed on with the gift are underplayed or ignored (ibid.) Here, dana is subsumed into larger ideas about gifting