News Type: Event

Panel Discussion on ‘From Archive to Activism: Queer & Trans* Cultural Work’ | QAMRA Archival Project

The Queer Archive for Memory Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) is hosting a panel discussion titled ‘From Archive to Activism: Queer & Trans* Cultural Work’ at the Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru, on July 13, 2025.

Click here to register and know more.

About the panel discussion

This event brings community organisers, academics, and activists together in conversation about how the worlds of queer-and-trans community-building, knowledge production and information dissemination, and progressive social change, intersect.

The panellists share a unique connection with QAMRA, an autonomous community archive at the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru. Through their lightning talks and a moderated roundtable, they will reflect on the past, present, and future of queer and trans* cultural organising, involving distinct forms of resistance and joy.

*(*) In Trans acknowledges the diversity of gender identities and expressions beyond the binary, reflecting the inclusive scope of this conversation.

Workshop on ‘Archives and Queer Counter-Narratives’ | QAMRA Archival Project

The Queer Archive for Memory Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) is hosting a workshop on ‘Archives and Queer Counter-Narratives’ at the Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru, on July 12, 2025. The workshop will be conducted by Mira Brunner, Chief Archivist at QAMRA.

Click here to register and for more details.

About the workshop

This workshop brings together two powerful tools of counter-narrative—art and the queer archive—to explore how we can use them in tandem to tell stories of our own. Together, as participants and facilitators, we will experiment with ways of broadening our relationship with history, critically examining the present, and imagining the futures we hope for and work towards.

Through a series of hands-on exercises and discussions, we will explore three key themes:

Preservation
What do we choose to preserve, and how? We will engage with a range of materials to think about preservation both practically and politically.

Organisation
How does the structure of memory storage shape how it is understood? We’ll reflect on different archival logics and the possibilities of queering archival organisation.

Access
How do we dream through the archive? We’ll imagine the audiences of the future and consider how we want our saved materials to speak to them.

This workshop is an invitation to think, feel, and make within the space of collective memory and queer futurity.

Justice Ahmadi Distinguished Lecture 2025 | Inaugural Lecture by Ramachandra Guha

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru and the Ahmadi Foundation are jointly organising the inaugural lecture of the Justice Ahmadi Distinguished Lecture Series on July 12, 2025. The lecture will be delivered by historian and biographer Ramachandra Guha on the topic ‘What would Dr. Ambedkar make of India Today?’ It will be held at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) auditorium at 11 am. 

The lecture series is part of the Justice Ahmadi Initiative on Rule of Law, Democracy and Social Justice established in honour of, and to preserve and promote the legacy of former Chief Justice of India, Aziz Mushabber Ahmadi.

Please note, RSVP is mandatory for anyone attending the event including members of the NLS community. To RSVP, click here.

Abstract of the lecture 

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar is remembered and admired for many things: for his heroic, lifelong, campaign to eradicate the evil of untouchability; for his scholarly contributions as an economist and social theorist; for the social movements he led and the political parties he founded; for the educational institutions he nurtured; for his critical role in overseeing and directing the framing of the Constitution; for the brilliant books, essays and pamphlets that he authored on a variety of subjects.

This lecture will focus on Ambedkar as a visionary and deeply insightful theorist of constitutional democracy. By juxtaposing what he said in his speeches in the Constituent Assembly to the social and political realities of contemporary India, Guha will demonstrate how his ideas remain of compelling relevance to us today. While the core of the talk will be on Ambedkar the political theorist, it will end by briefly comparing his  legacy with that of other remarkable Indians of his generation, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, M K Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. 

About the speaker 

Ramachandra Guha is a historian and biographer based in Bengaluru. His books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989); an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002); and a landmark history of the Republic, India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007; third revised edition, 2023). Having previously taught at Yale University, the London School of Economics, and the Indian Institute of Science, he is currently Distinguished University Professor at Krea University.   

Book Launch | ‘Making India Work’ by Prof. Louise Tillin | V.R. Krishna Iyer Chair on Public Law & Policy Choice, NLSIU & BIC

The V.R. Krishna Iyer Chair at NLSIU, in collaboration with the Bangalore International Centre, is hosting the launch of ‘Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy’ (Cambridge University Press, 2025), by Prof. Louise Tillin, Professor of Politics & Former Director, King’s India Institute, King’s College London. The discussion on ‘The History of Welfare: State, Market and Livelihoods in India’ will be followed by Q&A with the audience.

Panellists:

Dr. Anindita Adhikari, Assistant Professor of Social Science, NLSIU, Bengaluru

Rajendran Narayanan, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru

Moderator:

Prof. (Dr.) Arun Thiruvengadam, Professor of Law, NLSIU, Bengaluru.

About the book

Welfare guarantees and direct benefit transfers are at the heart of the political marketplace but the longer-term history of welfare in India is surprisingly little known. ‘Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy’ (Cambridge University Press, 2025) recovers a history that is crucial for understanding the current juncture of welfare politics and political economy in India. Traversing more than a century of welfare development from the late colonial period to the present-day, the book asks why India has ended up with a small protected formal sector workforce shielded by social security and protection against retrenchment, and a much larger population that labours informally and does not enjoy such protections. It examines why India’s model of industrialisation failed to provide an engine for mass employment or welfare state development, and why the focus of policy efforts has shifted over the last fifty years from employment generation to the rise of ‘direct benefits’ which subsidise precarious livelihoods. (Source: BIC)

About the author

Source: King’s College London
Source: King’s College London

Louise Tillin is Professor of Politics and Former Director of King’s India Institute, King’s College London. She is the author of numerous books including ‘Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy’ (Cambridge University Press, 2025); ‘The Politics of Poverty Reduction in India: The UPA Government from 2004 to 2014’ (Orient Blackswan, 2020) co-authored with James Chiriyankandath, Diego Maiorano and James Manor; ‘Indian Federalism’ (Oxford University Press, 2019), ‘Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across States’ (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-edited with Rajeshwari Deshpande and KK Kailash; ‘Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins’ (Hurst & Co/Oxford University Press, 2013) and has published in many academic journals.

Since 2013, she has been the co-organiser of a series of conferences on India’s Political Economy, most recently in conjunction with the New Political Economy Initiative at IIT Bombay. She holds degrees from the University of Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania and Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. (Source: BIC) 

Session on Building your Rhodes Scholarship Application with Vibha Swaminathan

The Career Services Office is organising a session on ‘Building your Rhodes Scholarship Application’ on Wednesday, July 2, 2025. Ms. Vibha Swaminathan, a 2025 Rhodes Scholar-elect from NLSIU, will deliver the session between 3 and 4 pm in room 104 at the OAB. The session is open to NLS students across all programmes and years.

About the speaker

Vibha Swaminathan graduated from the LL.B. (Hons) programme at NLSIU in 2025, and will read for the BCL on the Rhodes Scholarship. At Oxford University, she is interested in examining the political and legal fragilities of citizenship, generated along intersectional axes of class, gender and religion.

Read our interview with Vibha.

Screening and Panel Discussion | Unfolding Memory: Many People, Many Desires

The Queer Archive for Memory Reflection and Activism (QAMRA), housed at NLSIU, is screening independent filmmaker T Jayashree’s ‘Many People, Many Desires’ (2004) on June 29, 2025. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with T Jayashree and other members of QAMRA – Mira Brunner and Dr. Siddharth Narrain. The session is part of Bangalore International Centre’s Pride Programmes.

Session Timings: 7 to 8:30 PM
Screening Duration: 45 minutes
Panel:
1. T Jayashree, Filmmaker & Co-Founder, QAMRA
2. Mira Brunner, Chief Archivist, QAMRA
3. Dr. Siddharth Narrain, Faculty In-charge, QAMRA, and Assistant Professor of Law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru
RSVP: Click here

About the film

‘Many People, Many Desires‘ is centred around the interviews of many members of the LGBTQ community in Bengaluru at the time of the shooting (2004). The film was shot entirely in a MiniDV tape format. Starting from an exploration of sexuality and human rights, it allows the viewer to hear the first-person narratives of some of those who were engaged with the sexuality movement of the time – whose work is instrumental for the fight for legal rights for queer people in India.

Using legal discrimination against sexual minorities as its starting point, the film explores the relationship between class, sexuality, and gender. The film captures early years in the movement against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial law which criminalized homosexual behaviour and has now, through efforts which included some of those interviewed in the film, been read down.

The panel will talk about what has changed, what has remained the same, and QAMRA’s (the Queer Archive of Memory, Reflection, and Activism) attempts to preserve this history. They will discuss their perspectives on archiving queer material and the responsibilities of preserving what is still in living memory.

About QAMRA

QAMRA is a multimedia archival project that chronicles and preserves the stories of communities marginalised on the basis of gender and sexuality in India. Its aim is to aid efforts in queer rights advocacy through archival activism, acting as a resource base for activists, students, educators, artists, and scholars working in the area of gender and sexuality. As a repository of narratives, it hopes to enable and further conversations around the history, present, and future of the Indian LGBTQIA+ community.

 

SLR@20: Launch of the Socio-Legal Review’s Special 20th Anniversary Issue

The Socio-Legal Review (SLR) was first published in 2005 by a group of students at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU). Emerging from the broader “law and society” movement, SLR was founded on the growing realisation that law cannot be meaningfully understood in isolation from social and political realities.

In 2025, SLR marks twenty years of this bold and continuing experiment in student-led legal scholarship with the launch of its Special 20th Anniversary Issue, titled: “SLR@20: Reflections from India, South Asia, and Beyond.” This Special Issue critically reviews the state of socio-legal scholarship today—both evaluating past trends and setting future lines of inquiry—through five contributions that reflect on what “socio-legal” means today in India, South Asia, and beyond, across disciplines, geographies, and methodologies.

To commemorate this milestone, we invite you to join us for a launch event featuring a roundtable discussion with the authors who have contributed to this ambitious and agenda-setting issue, followed by an audience Q&A.

In attendance:

Elizabeth Lhost
Programme Manager, Modern Endangered Archives Program, University of California, Los Angeles Library, USA

Anup Surendranath & Maitreyi Misra
Professor of Law and Executive Director; Director, Death Penalty Mitigation and Director, Mental Health and Criminal Justice, The Square Circle Clinic, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, India

Maryam S Khan
Research Fellow, Institute of Development & Economic Alternatives (IDEAS), Lahore, Pakistan

Sara Dezalay
Professor of International Law and International Relations, European School of Social and Political Sciences (ESPOL), Université Catholique de Lille, France

This event is open to all and will be held online. Registration is mandatory. We look forward to your participation in celebrating two decades of socio-legal inquiry and critical scholarship at SLR.

To Modify or Not: The Conundrum of Gayatri Balasamy | Legal Services Clinic, NLSIU

The Legal Services Clinic, NLSIU is co-hosting a discussion titled “To Modify or Not: The Conundrum of Gayatri Balasamy,” scheduled for Friday, May 23, 2025, from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM, at the Bangalore International Centre, Domlur.

This panel is co-hosted by the Legal Services Clinic, NLSIU in collaboration with Manipal Law School, Bengaluru, under the aegis of the Bangalore Legal Forum—a joint initiative that curates public lectures and panels on pressing legal themes. Previous events in this series focused on Internet and Free Speech, also hosted at the BIC.

About the Panel

The event will consist of the following panelists:

The discussion will be structured in two parts:

Part I: The Propriety of Judicial Modification of Arbitral Awards

This segment will explore the recent Gayatri Balasamy decision, particularly the use of Article 142 in private law disputes. This will be a moderated discussion on whether courts should possess the power to modify arbitral awards.

Part II: Arbitration as a Tool of Access to Justice

This will be a roundtable discussion on India’s policy push to become a pro-arbitration jurisdiction (e.g., entry of foreign law firms in international arbitration, proposed amendments to the Arbitration Act), leveraging arbitration and ADR mechanisms for legal aid and access to justice; the ethical and practical implications of third-party funding in pro bono or low-resource arbitration contexts.

NLS Faculty Seminar | ‘Caste, Resources, and Political Economy: Influence of Caste Associations in Post Liberalisation Bihar’

At this trimester’s last seminar, we have a presentation by Dr. Aniket Nandan, Assistant Professor, Sociology, on his paper titled ‘Caste, Resources, and Political Economy: Influence of Caste Associations in Post Liberalisation Bihar.’ The seminar will be held on May 21, 2025, in the Ground Floor Conference Hall at NLSIU’s Training Centre at 2:15 pm.

Abstract

This study critically examines the mechanisms and influence of associational structures of caste on the popular political economy of Bihar as they display intriguing interaction with market and politics in post liberalization India. Significant socio- anthropological literature on associational structures of caste have tended to emphasise on its role as a socio-political organization. Subsequently, functions of caste associations were observed to be (re)shaped by several forms of cultural and political assertive mechanisms. However, in contemporary context, effects of associational structures of caste are found to be pervasive in everyday economic relations and the business economy. In the post-liberalization era, caste associations, that continually influenced everyday economic relations and politics, have often constructed resources in the form of a network of opportunity hoarding and gatekeeping of professions. Therefore, for this study, imagination of associational structures of caste is revisited, beyond its religious ideology, political competition, and its prevalence in agrarian order. This study views caste associations not only as a mechanism of socio-political assertion and cultural guardian but also as a strategic dialogist for claim making over economic opportunities and advantageous professions.

The study is based on fieldwork during May 2018- Jan 2020 with regards to understanding functions and new forms of engagements of caste association of Bhumihars in Patna region of Bihar. Nonetheless, it gains immense insights from ethnographic data collected intermittently. Therefore, in its attempt to foreground corelation between caste associations and market relations and political influence the study revisits the concept of dominant caste and contests a few traditional understandings about the tenacity of caste in Indian context.

The National Law School Trilegal International Arbitration Moot 2024-25 | Edition XVIII

The Moot Court Society at NLSIU is pleased to announce the XVIIIth edition of the National Law School Trilegal International Arbitration Moot (NLS-TIAM) for the academic year 2024-25. The competition shall be conducted offline at the NLSIU Campus from May 16-18, 2025. As a part of the NLS-TIAM, the Moot Court Society is also pleased to host the VIth edition of the National Law School Trilegal International Arbitration Conference (NLS-TIAC) on May 17, 2025.

About NLS-TIAM

The National Law School–Trilegal International Arbitration Moot stands as NLSIU’s premier event focussing on international arbitration and commercial law. Recognised as India’s largest arbitration moot, it encompasses a wide array of arbitral law topics and showcases a multitude of perspectives. The diverse participation underscores the varying jurisprudential approaches to arbitration law. Over the years, we have had the privilege of engaging with esteemed arbitrators from both national and international arenas, including Mr. Steven Finzio and Honourable Retd. Justice B.N. Srikrishna and many others. We are equally excited this year as well to welcome dignitaries such as HMJ Hrishikesh Roy, and HMJ Tejas Karia for the event.

The problem for this year’s edition has been meticulously crafted by Mr. Mark Mangan (Founding Partner, Lindsay Francis & Mangan), Professor Claudio Finkelstein (Professor, Catholic University of São Paulo and Partner, Finkelstein Advogados) alongside Mr. Pranay Lekhi (Associate, A&O Shearman) and Mr. Sharad Bansal (Counsel, Bombay High Court). We had the opportunity to have on-board Professor Julian Lew KC (Queen Mary University of London), Mr. Niranjan Venkatesan (Barrister, One Essex Court) and Mr. Vivekananda Neelankantan (Registrar, Singapore International Arbitration Centre) as members in an advisory capacity.

We look forward to welcoming enthusiastic participation, robust competition, and thought-provoking discussions during this edition!

We are delighted to welcome our Finals Panel comprising of:

  1. HMJ Hrishikesh Roy (Retd Judge, Supreme Court of India)
  2. HMJ Tejas Karia (Judge, High Court of Delhi and previous arbitrator)
  3. Mr. Rahil Pereira (Partner, Trilegal)
  4. Professor Luke Nottage (University of Sydney Law School)
  5. Ms. Shwetha Bidhuri (Director, SIAC)

About NLS-TIAC

The National Law School Trilegal International Arbitration Conference is an annual event that takes place alongside the National Law School Trilegal International Arbitration Moot. The conference is in its sixth edition and provides a unique opportunity for students, researchers, arbitration professionals, lawyers, and corporate firms to engage on contemporary issues impacting international arbitration in the ever-evolving legal and economic environment. The conference also offers participants the chance to engage with arbitration experts, academics, and professionals on these important themes. This year’s concept note revolves around Anti-Suit Injunctions in International Commercial Arbitration. The discussion will focus on jurisdictional complexities, issues concerning the ‘proper place’ of arbitration, and the effectiveness and enforceability of anti-suit injunctions amidst conflicts with national laws.

The Panelists comprise of:

  1. Professor Luke Nottage (Professor of Law, University of Sydney Law School)
  2. Ms. Steffi Mary Punnoose (Strategy & Development Manager (South Asia), SIAC)
  3. Ms. Manini Brar (Founder & Partner, Arbridge Chambers and Solicitors)
  4. Mr. Ganesh Chandru (Partner, Dua Associates)

Further, Dr. Harishankar K Sathyapalan (Associate Professor of Law, NLSIU) and Sahana Ramesh (Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU) will be moderating the discussion.

The sponsors for the event are:

  1. Trilegal, a leading corporate and commercial law firm based in India (Title Sponsor)
  2. Singapore International Arbitration Centre, a global non-profit arbitration institution
  3. Manupatra, one of the leading legal repositories in India (Media sponsor)