Obeah and the Politics of Religion’ s Making and Unmaking in Colonial Trinidad Alexander Rocklin* This article investigates the practices of itinerant Indian Trinidadian ritual specialists, sadhus and priests, and their contestations with colo- nial institutions over the definition of their practices. It examines on the one hand Indians’ norm-bending healing and spirit working, often con- strued as “obeah” or witchcraft in the Caribbean. At the same time, it looks at the role of laws that determined what practices got to count as religion, and the ways in which courtrooms became sites where religion was actively (though unequally) made and unmade, by both colonial elites and subalterns. By examining Indian ritual specialists on trial for obeah, the article analyzes Indians’ participation in such religion-making: the construction and reinforcement of boundaries between reified catego- ries and the redescription of Indians’ ostensibly non-normative practices in accordance with regnant colonial norms for religion. A Creole witness who had been called to support the case of the com- plainant on being sworn put his finger into the “lota” kept for the purpose of swearing Hindoos and made a sign. Magistrate: What did you put your hands there for? Witness: I mistook it for the book. Magistrate: Nonsense. There is no obeah in it. (Laughter) (“Police Court Humour,” The Mirror, July 7, 1915) *Alexander Rocklin, 2520 N Sawyer Ave., Chicago, IL 60647, USA. E-mail: arocklin@uchicago.edu. I would like to thank Wendy Doniger, Stephan Palmié, Muzaffar Alam, Emily Crews, Brent Crosson, and the anonymous readers for their probing questions. I would also like to thank my fellow participants in the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion fellows seminar for their feedback, particularly Andrew Nicholson and Christian Wedemeyer. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, September 2015, Vol. 83, No. 3, pp. 697–721 doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfv022 Advance Access publication on April 23, 2015 © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com by guest on August 21, 2015 http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from