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The principles of conservation spelled out in the first law on preservation for the whole of India — the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act of 1904 — were indicators of the ways in which conservation policy was made in colonial India: determined by the state, and heavily influenced by principles of preservation derived from Europe, based on a specifically colonial understanding of India's history and heritage, and of the ‘guardianship’ role of the colonial state. Yet attempts to implement pre-colonial religious structures could have unforeseen results, as local, indigenous religious groups began to utilize the opportunities for funding opened up by the new Act and succeeded in using the provisions of the Act in ways that best suited their own interests. This chapter looks closely at the interface between preservation policy and practice in colonial India in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, and calls into question colonial hegemony as an explanatory framework for understanding a complex process of cultural practice.

The year 2016 preludes the start of three trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The trials of Mr. Ongwen, Mr. Al Mahdi and the trial of Mr. Gbagbo and Mr. Blé Goudé started in the same year while several trials drew to a close. Both Mr. Bemba and Mr. Al Mahdi were convicted for crimes committed in the Central African Republic and Mali, respectively. In a separate trial Mr. Bemba and his co-defendants were convicted of witness tampering. While some of the developments at the Court are promising, a closer look at both the legal and political developments warrants some caution. Some states remained uncooperative with the ICC, to the extent that three member states have left the ICC.