Reconstructing the Public Trust: River Integrity as a Public Fiduciary Purpose in Indian Law

Indian environmental law does not recognise or remedy cumulative injury to rivers that function as interconnected ecological systems and are understood as sacred through religious meanings, institutions and practices. Existing law regulates injury source by source, treats river degradation as diffuse public harm and assumes that orthodox public trust protects ecological interests. Neither fragmented regulation nor legal personality addresses cumulative harm, restoration or institutional responsibility. Through a cumulative-injury analysis of the rivers of Thrissur, Kerala, this article reconstructs public trust as sacred public trust. Protecting ecological integrity and restoring it where injury has occurred becomes a public fiduciary purpose; the river is the legally protected object of that purpose; the State remains the primary trustee. Temple-linked institutions incur practice-specific duties only where their legally structured responsibilities and material control extend to river-affecting practices. Sacred public trust treats sacred status as neither creating legal obligation by itself nor precluding secular regulation. Instead, it translates the authority and material influence of sacred institutions into ecologically accountable duties grounded in existing constitutional and public law foundations, and specifies which bodies owe which duties, what constitutes a breach, and which forum and remedies apply. It thereby addresses cumulative river injury without invoking legal personhood.