The National law School of India University (NLSIU) and Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory organised a conference on Contours of Legal History in India from March 27 to 28, 2025.

About the Conference

Emerging research on legal history in India has emphasised upon the dynamic life of  law, going beyond its doctrinal imperatives, and highlighting histories of petitioners, lawyers, and litigants both in the courtrooms and outside it. Legal historical research includes new archives and methodologies for rethinking the relationship of law with society – that is, between the normative imaginings rooted in the realm of ideas and intellectual legacies and the everyday experiences of law rooted in mundane operations. Contours of Legal History in India: Pedagogy and Research is the first workshop co-organised by the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt (Germany) and National Law School of India University, Bengaluru (India) that will bring together researchers, scholars, and students to discuss the new imperatives in the field of legal history in India. In the recent clamour to “decolonise”, pre-colonial pasts have often been rendered timeless, while the postcolonial moment has been interpreted as a replica of a “monolithic colonial”. How do we analyse the colonial genealogies of law in contemporary India? What about the precolonial iterations of law in the modern? What are the intersections of historical and legal methodologies and sources? What constitutes legal history in India? How does research intervene in, instruct, create pedagogical practices in both law and history?

Aim of the Conference

The aim of the 2-day conference is to bring together diverse groups of scholars and researchers, across ranks and specialisations. Our interest is in creating opportunities for conversations around legal history research in India and the world. One of the key highlights of our 2-day event are the early career researcher writing workshops through which we facilitate mentorship opportunities for scholars located in India. Our plenaries and roundtables create opportunities for conversations around historiography of legal history in South Asia, legal history pedagogies, and new approaches towards studying the embeddedness of law in history, society, and politics. The workshop is a step towards connecting communities of legal historians across the world in order to facilitate future projects that will enrich our knowledge of legal history in the global south, particularly India.

Schedule

Reflections from the conference

NLS faculty Dr. Samyak Ghosh, Assistant Professor, Social Science, who was one of the organisers of the conference said:

“Contours of Legal History in India was the kickoff pilot workshop for an MoU between the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru and The Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt. The workshop brought together leading legal historians and early career scholars from across three continents to facilitate conversations around legal cultures in history, particularly themes like legal consciousness, legal pluralism, and regimes of law in colonial and postcolonial India. The participants of the workshop discussed how law has been interpreted, deployed, and used by institutions and peoples in a long historical framework, particularly in colonised and postcolonial societies. Apart from discussions on the forms of law, the participants foregrounded how understanding of law shaped people’s identity (as groups, communities, and collectives) and the making of law as situated discourse (in specific histories and societies) through such meaning making practices (of law) led by the people. As an organiser, I am extremely grateful to all the speakers who facilitated an extremely productive discussion for the two days of the workshop.”

In this week’s faculty seminar, Dr. Samyak Ghosh Assistant Professor, Social Science, will present his paper titled ‘Where is the Historian in Public History?: An Informal Essay.’ The seminar will be held on March 19, 2025, at the Ground Floor Conference Hall at NLSIU’s Training Centre at 3:45 pm.

Abstract

In the recent past history has been dragged into the most acrimonious spaces with bizarre consequences. In this paper, I consider such examples to ask two questions – what is history (as knowledge) in the present? and where is the historian in public history? Through a consideration of these two related questions I explore the location of the historian in public history sites and the early iteration of public history in the Indian context. The paper argues that the location of the professional historian in public history is shaped by dilemmas that often puts the historian in face of a challenge. In other words, there is an inherent tension between the professional and the public historian, and a merger is often waged through difficult negotiations. The paper reflects on some of these negotiations that professional historians forge in order to situate themselves rather than roaming footloose in the messy world of public history.

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In our upcoming public lecture on March 27, 2025, NLSIU and Max Planck Institute For Legal History and Legal Theory [MPI (LHLT)] will host a public lecture titled ‘Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia’ delivered by Prof. Mitra Sharafi, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin-Madison. This lecture is being organised as part of the Contours of Legal History in India Conference.

About the Speaker

Prof. Mitra Sharafi is a legal historian whose research focuses on South Asia. She holds law degrees from Cambridge and Oxford (the UK equivalent of a JD and LLM) and history degrees from McGill (BA) and Princeton (PhD). Her first book, Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772-1947 won the Law and Society Association’s 2015 Hurst Prize. She is completing her second book manuscript, provisionally entitled, Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia. Her next major project will explore the world of non-European law students from across the British empire (and globe) who came to London’s Inns of Court to become barristers, 1860s-1960s. Sharafi has published articles on the history of abortion, blood-stain testing, forum-shopping for divorce, the legal profession, constitutionalism and the rule of law, and slavery. Future articles will examine the role of scientific experts in criminal trials, and the history of law books and publishing. Her research has been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, Institute for Advanced Study, Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, Romnes Faculty Fellowship, Shelby Cullom Davis Center, and Social Science Research Council.

Sharafi teaches Contracts I at the UW Law School, along with undergraduate courses in Legal Studies and History. She is the recipient of campus awards for her teaching and mentoring.

Mitra Sharafi is president-elect of the American Society for Legal History. She has hosted the South Asian Legal History Resources website since 2010.

Abstract

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the government of British India created a wave of new institutions for the scientific detection of crime. Falsity was a special preoccupation of colonial officials, who were invested in the “native mendacity” stereotype. Driven by deception anxiety, the new South Asian forensics focused on finding the fake, including the identification of planted animal blood and poison at crime scenes. The new forensics were meant to sidestep the problems of perjury and forgery by relying on scientific testing and experts. But in trying to detect falsity from without namely evidence planted by colonized tricksters, these systems generated new forms of falsity from within, including a rule of criminal procedure that allowed a privileged group of state lab experts not to give testimony in court. This feature, which increases the risk of wrongful convictions, lives on in Indian law today.

NLSIU’s Ford Foundation Chair on Public Interest Law is organising a talk titled ‘Caste in Prisons’: A Judicial Unravelling, being delivered by  Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar.

About the Talk

Prisons in India have a colonial legacy that has been built upon over the years with the basic administrative edifice and character remaining intact. This is most starkly reflected in the Prison Manuals that mirror all the caste and class biases that have endured through the centuries. While episodic judicial interventions over the years through PIL have sought to address some of the issues like overcrowding, solitary confinement and so on, it is not until the judgment delivered on 3rd October 2024 by the Supreme Court of India in Sukanya Shanta v. Union of India that a systematic analysis was undertaken while declaring unconstitutional the provisions that have given a ‘de jure’ legitimacy to the de facto constitutionally impermissible practice of caste-based segregation in prisons.

The talk will trace the background to the historic case of Sukanya Shanta v. Union of India, what the judgment signifies from a constitutional and sociological standpoint, the response it has received all round and the tasks that lay ahead not just for the Court but for all of us.

About the Speaker

Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar was appointed as a Judge of the High Court of Delhi on 29 May 2006. He became the Chief Justice of the High Court of Orissa on 4th January 2021 and retired on 7th August 2023. As a judge he delivered judgments in every branch of law including constitutional, commercial, arbitration law, tax and criminal laws. Many of the judgments have contributed to the development of law in that field. As Chief Justice of the High Court of Orissa, he spearheaded reforms on the administrative and judicial fronts both in the High Court and the district courts. The notable initiatives included the establishment of state-of-the-art centres for digitisation of records of the courts and the setting up of the Centre for Judicial Archives and the Museum of Justice in Cuttack. On 17 October 2023 Muralidhar was designated as Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court of India and has since returned to practice.

Excerpts from the talk

In a thoroughly enlightening lecture at the National Law School, Justice Muralidhar delivered a thought- provoking analysis of judicial review, the realities of India’s prison system, and the state of legal aid. His address, informed by historical cases, contemporary challenges, and philosophical reflections, shed light on how legal structures often reinforce pre-existing societal systemic injustices rather than dismantle them.

Justice Muralidhar’s lecture urged students, legal professionals, and scholars to rethink the role of courts, prisons, and lawyers in ensuring justice. Justice Muralidhar began his lecture by examining the function of judicial review, particularly in correcting injustices within the prison system. He traced the historical evolution of how Indian courts have interpreted constitutional rights for incarcerated individuals.

For decades, prisons operated as rigid, rule-bound institutions with little constitutional oversight. Justice Muralidhar highlighted that Prabhakar Pandurang (1964) was one of the first cases where the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners retain fundamental rights even while serving their sentences. However, the transformation was slow. He rejected the idea that judicial intervention in prisons is “activism”. Instead, he argued, such interventions are simply courts doing their constitutional duty at the bare minimum. Ensuring basic human rights in prisons—such as access to books, medical care, and protection from discrimination—should not be seen as extraordinary but as fundamental protections to be secured.

He explained that much of India’s criminal justice framework is inherited from colonial rule. The Defence of India Rules and similar statutes gave the state sweeping powers over prisoners. Even today, vestiges of these frameworks remain, limiting the rights of incarcerated individuals. He emphasized that while laws have changed, the administrative cultures within prisons are yet to be fully aligned with constitutional principles.

Read the full summary report here.

Watch the video

Gallery

Related News

Read our blog post with Justice Muralidhar:
The NLS Blog | Scholars in Conversation | Justice (Dr.) S. Muralidhar with Radhika Chitkara and Pranav Verma