The Commons Cell, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, organised a one-day workshop on ‘Experiments in Writing: Environment and Climate Law’ on December 20, 2025. This workshop was designed and delivered by Dr. Arpitha Kodiveri, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Vassar College.
About the Workshop
This one-day intensive workshop invited participants to explore new modes of writing in climate and environment law, moving beyond traditional legal forms to experiment with narrative, reflective, interdisciplinary, and speculative approaches. Designed for students pursuing law, social sciences, and public policy, the workshop blended creative experimentation with rigour, encouraging participants to produce writing that is analytically grounded while also being affective and publicly accessible. Across the workshop, participants tested alternative structures, voices, and genres that can help reshape how legal scholars and students communicate environmental urgency and imagine climate-just futures.
Dr. Arpitha Kodiveri is an environmental law and justice scholar and an assistant professor of political science at Vassar College. Her work focuses on the role of law in the context of redressing climate harms faced by indigenous communities in South Asia. Her previous research examines land conflicts and legal mobilization by forest-dwelling communities in India. She has worked as an environmental lawyer supporting Adivasi and forest-dwelling communities in India.
Queries
For any queries, please write to Lianne D’Souza () or Aditya Dalal ().
We congratulate the NLS Men’s University Football Team for securing the Runners-Up position at the Legacy Cup 2025 held at Ekalavya Academy of Sports Excellence, Electronic City on November 30, 2025.
The 5-a-side football tournament featured sixteen teams from various universities, competing in a knockout format.
The NLSIU squad for the event consisted of the following players: Muhammad Anwar, Saumya Bapna, Kanishk Hegde, Shoubhik Chatterjee, Siddarth Dinesh, Janav Arun, and Sai Sanket. The team secured victories in the Round of 16, Quarter-Finals, and Semi-Finals, including two closely contested penalty shootouts, advancing to the championship match. After a competitive run, the NLSIU team finished as Runners-Up.
A note from the team:
“The tournament proved to be a highly valuable competitive experience for the squad. Representing NLSIU at this scale and returning with a podium finish was both rewarding and encouraging for the team’s ongoing development.”
NLSIU hosted a guest lecture by Sharwari Pandit (NLS BA LLB 2017), Associate at McKinsey & Company on December 12, 2025. This classroom session revolved around her new co-authored book: ‘The Digital Currency Revolution: Central Bank Digital Currencies, Crypto, and the Future of Global Finance,’ Mark Mobius, Lourdes Casanova, Sharwari Pandit, and John Ninia, Springer Nature, 2025.
Abstract
As emerging markets rapidly adopt digital financial systems, Sharwari’s work offers a sharp, timely look at how these innovations impact economic regulation, privacy, central bank autonomy, and the global financial order. From country case studies to debates on the potential decline of cash and the rise of digital currencies, her book opens crucial questions for public policy today.
NLSIU is organising a Campus Day on Sunday, January 4, 2026, for prospective NLSAT candidates applying to the 3-Year LLB (Hons.) and 2-Year Master’s Programme in Public Policy (MPP).
The campus visit is intended for anyone who is interested in applying for these programmes for the Academic Year 2026-27.
This event gives applicants a rare chance to experience NLSIU up close, receive information on these programmes, attend demo classes led by our faculty, engage with current students, and explore our campus firsthand. Candidates are welcome to bring up to two guests along for the visit.
Please note, registration for the campus visit is mandatory. Please register on the NLSAT 2026 admissions portal (nlsatadmissions.nls.ac.in) and fill out the ‘NLSAT 2026 Campus Visit’ Google Form.
The last date to register for the campus visit is December 30, 2025 (11:59 pm). A detailed schedule will be shared with registered attendees ahead of the campus day.
Campus Day Schedule
9:30 – 10:00 am: Registration | Gate 1
10:00 – 10.30 am: Introductions & Address by Dean-Academics and Programme Co-Chairs | Amphitheatre
10:30 – 10:55 am: Address by Campus and Residential Life Team (DCRL) | Amphitheatre
11:05 – 11:45am: Demo classes for 3-Year LLB (Hons) & Master’s Programme in Public Policy (parallel sessions) | New Academic Block | Check out the classroom handout.
11:45 am – 12 pm: Refreshments | Outside the Library
12:15 – 12:45 pm: Guided Campus Tour
1:00 pm: Informal interactions | Near Training Centre Cafe
In this week’s faculty seminar, our visiting faculty Dr. Sumaira Nawaz presented a paper titled ‘A World-Facing Sovereignty: Political Change and Minority Voices in Kabul’s Siraj ul-Akhbar, c. 1911-1918’ on December 10, 2025. Dr. Kena Wani, Assistant Professor, Social Science, was the discussant.
About the Speaker
Sumaira Nawaz is a scholar of global intellectual history and received her PhD from the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. Her work engages with print culture, migration and mobility, book history, and Muslim modernity. She has studied at SOAS and the University of Delhi.
Abstract
In the essay “A World-Facing Sovereignty,” I turn to Kabul’s foremost Persian-language newspaper Siraj ul-Akhbar (1911–1918) that strengthened Afghanistan’s image as a site of Islamic revival among readers within Afghan frontiers and beyond. To insert Afghanistan within the interconnected print-spheres of the Middle East and South Asia, the editor Mahmud Tarzi regularly translated news from the Ottoman Empire, Qajar Iran, and British India within Siraj. In the process, Tarzi wrote of the Ottoman and Qajar constitutional revolutions as moments of deep anxiety and caution that had caused political turmoil and civil strife in the region. As one of the last independent Muslim polities, Afghanistan, he reasoned, could not risk such upheavals within its borders, even though the Afghan state welcomed support from Young Turk technocrats to aid its burgeoning press and infrastructural development projects. Cross-border news from colonial South Asia too did not always hold a favorable tone towards Afghanistan, with the Hindu nationalist Arya Samaj Press accusing the Afghan state of discriminating against non-Muslim minority groups within the region. In the course of this essay, I investigate how these accusations became a site of interaction and exchange between Afghan and South Asian Urdu presses, pushing Tarzi to re-frame the legitimacy of the Afghan ruler Habibullah Khan’s reign through the language of minority protection and equality before law. The objective through this analysis is to illustrate that South-South textual exchanges did follow stable pathways to Pan-Islamic unity but in fact sharpened divisions among disparate Muslim readers.
The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) is a national level entrance exam for admissions to undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) law programmes offered by 25 National Law Universities around the country. CLAT is organised by the Consortium of National Law Universities consisting of the representative universities.
Instructions for Candidates at NLSIU
CLAT 2026 examination will be held on December 7, 2025 (2:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M).
Candidates are permitted to enter the Test Centre premises from 1:00 P.M. onwards.
Entry into the Test Centre will not be permitted after 2:15 P.M.
Candidates shall be allowed to leave the Test Centre only after the test is over.
Candidates must enter the NLSIU campus through Gate 1.
Entry to the University campus is restricted to candidates only. Parents and guardians are not permitted.
No parking facility will be available. Vehicles will not be allowed entry into the campus.
Candidates must show their Admit Card to enter the Test Centre.
Admit Card and Photo ID proof will be verified at the verification desk.
Candidates must carry a print copy of their Admit Card and Photo ID Proof.
Candidates are requested to follow the queue and markings outside the gate.
The event will begin with a panel discussion, followed by an audience Q&A.
About the Book
De and Shani’s book challenges canonical understandings of the making of India’s Constitution. Most scholarship has foregrounded the work of the Constituent Assembly, assuming that “constitutional politics and details were beyond the imagination, interest and capacity of the Indian people, and that this process did not occupy their concerns” (7). By contrast, De and Shani argue that the Constitution was fit together through “disparate and simultaneous constitution-making efforts across the country,” stemming from “large and diverse publics” (13-14). In other words, the people contributed to the assembling of India’s Constitution.
Aparna Chandra heads the M. K. Nambyar Chair on Constitutional Law at the National Law School. She primarily teaches constitutional law and comparative public law. Her last book, Court on Trial: A Data Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India, builds on a decade of original empirical research to interrogate the functioning of the Indian Supreme Court.
Jai Brunner teaches constitutional law and jurisprudence at the National Law School. His current research interests lie in using legal theory to identify problems of indeterminacy in Indian Supreme Court reasoning.
The student-led theatre effort at NLS, The Green Room, is organising a reading of Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Bet‘ with Shivam Vig, a Bengaluru-based theatre practitioner and director of ‘Poor Vanya.’
The reading will take place at NAB 101 from 5 to 7 PM on December 10, 2025.
The Green Room is a nod to the intimate, lively backstage space in theatres where artists gather before a performance. Hereis the exciting schedule for this trimester.
About the Short Story
We began this circle with Chekhov and given his enduring ability to capture the human condition with precision and compassion, he returns again. The Bet is one of Chekhov’s most striking philosophical tales. The story begins with a heated debate between a banker and a young lawyer over whether capital punishment is more humane than solitary imprisonment. Their argument escalates into a reckless wager: the lawyer commits to spending fifteen years in voluntary isolation to prove that life—any life—is preferable to death. Over the course of this confinement, Chekhov offers a profound study of human endurance, materialism, knowledge, and the hollowness of worldly desire. The ending resists easy moral conclusions, prompting us to reconsider what we value in freedom, suffering, wealth, and learning.
Since this is a work of prose rather than a script, the session will take the form of an open discussion on the story’s narrative, characters, and thematic tensions.
We invite curious and interested students, parents, schools, and career counsellors, to the open house on the NLS BA (Hons) programme at Hyderabad on Saturday, December 13, 2025.
This conversation will revolve around BA education and practice, focussing on the multidisciplinary curriculum and pedagogy of what NLS has to offer in this programme. The session will be hosted from 11 am to 1 pm. It is intended to guide students in their Class XI and XII in making an informed decision about their higher education journey.
The open house will be conducted by our faculty member Dr. Parashar Kulkarni, Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Inclusion (CSSI).
Kindly register ahead for the open house by filling out this form.
About the NLS BA (Hons) Programme
NLSIU pioneered and developed an integrated 5-year BA LLB (Hons.) degree that transformed Indian legal education. Several NLS graduates have pursued further degrees in humanities, social sciences, and business and then embarked on very successful careers in these fields.
As NLSIU develops into a multi-disciplinary university, in line with national and state education policies, the NLS BA (Hons.) programme draws on 35 years of experience in offering the integrated 5-year BA LLB (Hons.) programme. The NLS BA (Hons.) programme curriculum has been carefully designed by faculty teams after extensive stakeholder consultations with eminent academics and practitioners from across the country’s top universities to provide their inputs and advice on the curriculum.
Our faculty come from leading universities within India and beyond. We have faculty strength in the following areas:
History: Modern South Asia, Urban History, Labour History, Global History, Post-Independent India, Development and Planning, Indian National Movement (19th and 20th century)
Politics: Western Political Thought, Tagore, Gandhi, Periyar and Indian Political Thought, Political Economy, Urban Politics, Land, Indigeneity, Political Parties, The Indian State and Democracy, Comparative Methods in Political Research
Sociology and Anthropology: Social Theory, Caste and Tribe, Capitalisms, Development, Land Politics, Cinema and Popular Culture, Religion, Urban Anthropology, Ecology
Economics: Development Economics, Environmental Economics, Labour Economics, Econometrics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, History of Economic Thought, Game Theory
Our faculty have rich research agendas and publication records across law and the social sciences which will inform classroom teaching and learning.
The Supreme Court of India has declared privacy and informational self-determination as fundamental rights. Taking this into account, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDPA) provides for a framework to balance between individual autonomy and legitimate public and commercial uses of data. The Act governs the processing of digital personal data.
It seeks to balance two objectives:
* Protecting an individual’s right to privacy; and
* Ensuring that personal data can be used for legitimate and lawful purposes.
The Act also establishes a unified legal framework for how entities in India collect, store and process digital personal data with the twin aims of protecting individual autonomy and enabling responsible, data-driven economic growth. The DPDP Act, 2023 and the recently notified DPDP Rules, 2025, together represent the most significant attempt yet to articulate a unified legal architecture for this balance.
While the DPDPA laid down broad principles around rights of data principals, duties of Data Fiduciaries, cross-border transfer constraints and the institutional creation of the Data Protection Board, the DPDP Rules, 2025 provides for a compliance architecture.
The goal of this panel discussion is to explore how India’s new DPDP Act can be put into practice in a way that protects people’s rights, builds trust in how organisations use data and still allows India’s digital economy and innovation to grow.
The Commons Cell, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, organised a one-day workshop on ‘Experiments in Writing: Environment and Climate Law’ on December 20, 2025. This workshop was designed and delivered by Dr. Arpitha Kodiveri, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Vassar College.
We congratulate the NLS Men’s University Football Team for securing the Runners-Up position at the Legacy Cup 2025 held at Ekalavya Academy of Sports Excellence, Electronic City on November 30, 2025.
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The student-led theatre effort at NLS, The Green Room, is organising a reading of Anton Chekhov’s ‘