‘Remembering Priya Thangarajah: A Queer Feminist Festschrift’ | By QAMRA At NLSIU

Ten years ago, we lost Priya Thangarajah — an aspiring young lawyer and activist who had worked both in India and her native Sri Lanka on issues of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, violence and human rights — when she took her life. Priya was a graduate of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, and Georgetown University, Washington DC, where she was also a Fulbright scholar.

To commemorate her life and work, this Human Rights Day, the Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) at NLSIU will revisit three reports Priya authored during her lifetime. Specialists will offer contemporary reflections on the themes they cover, to create a festschrift, a selection of deliberations on her legacy as a scholar.

These themes are:

• Queer couples and Habeas Corpus in India (co-authored with Ponni Arasu);
• Tamil – Muslim relations in Sri Lanka (co-authored with Mirak Raheem);
• Legal protections for queer persons in Sri Lanka

In addition, the panel will also cover a fourth theme, i.e. d. Queerness and mental health, with a focus on suicide.

Panellists

Our distinguished panel of specialists, which will reflect on Priya’s life and work, includes:
Rumi Harish | Manavi Atri | Shreen Saroor | Sarala Emmanuel | Ermiza Tegal | Pasan Jayasinghe | Vinay Chandran | Kaushiki Rao

This will be a hybrid event, with the in-person component at the NLSIU campus, and a virtual arm on Zoom.