News Type: Event

Talk on ‘The Uneven City: potholes, pain, and politics in Hyderabad, India’

NLSIU’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) Chair on Urban Poor and the Law is organising a talk on the topic ‘The Uneven City: potholes, pain, and politics in Hyderabad, India’ on July 12, 2024. The event will take place at the ground floor of the NLSIU training centre at 5 pm.

Speaker:

Dr. Sneha Annavarapu, Assistant Professor of Sociology, National University of Singapore, and Assistant Professor of Urban Studies, Yale-NUS College.

Abstract:

In this paper, I draw on the embodied experience of driving into potholes and on bumpy roads in Hyderabad and show how road surfaces become the literal terrain on which political sensibilities are shaped. Drawing on ethnographic data from 2017-2022, I analyze how potholes shape driving dispositions in a city that is attempting to brand itself as a “world-class” city. I show that far from being just physical interruptions on the surface of the road, potholes engender political subjectivities in three ways: one, they generate, sustain, and institutionalize narratives of state corruption; two, through their capacity to hurt, injure, and even kill certain motoring bodies, potholes enable an experience of inequality in the register of pain and risk; and three, potholes spawn citizen engagement and claims-making. Through a discussion of these three processes, I show how and why the banal pothole becomes an aperture through which to view the desires, discomforts, and disappointments in urban India. Ultimately, I argue that taking sensation and tactility into account clarifies how social inequality operates through urban infrastructure.

Panel Discussion | Secularism, Religion and Women: Perspectives from the Global South

NLSIU and the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) are organizing a panel discussion on July 12, 2024, from 6.30 pm to 8.00 pm at the BIC, Domlur.

This panel discussion is a conversation between two authors who also share a teacher-student relationship. Prof. Nivedita Menon will speak on her latest book, Secularism as Misdirection, while Dr. Debangana Chatterjee, her student from Jawaharlal Nehru University, will present her first book, Lives of Circumcised and Veiled Women. The intellectual pursuits of two individuals, which converged in classroom discussions once, complete a full circle of knowledge creation.

The conversation aims to probe religion and secularism using gender as the focal point. Menon’s title alludes to perspectives from the global South and India. In her argument, secularism performs a “misdirection” as in the performance of a magic trick. It simultaneously hypervisiblises women and religion and obscures caste, capitalism, and the non-individuated, non-rational self. Chatterjee’s work sheds light on the politics of representation and the process of exoticising women’s bodies in knowledge production; presenting the politics which cloaks the ‘misdirection’. It brings out the intricacies of representational discourses around cultural practices of female circumcision and Islamic veiling.

The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Rinku Lamba, followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

About the Speakers

Prof. Nivedita Menon

Nivedita Menon is a Professor at the Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her latest book is ‘Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South’. Apart from research papers in Indian and international journals, her previous books are ‘Seeing like a Feminist’, 2012, ‘Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law’, 2004; and (co-written) ‘Power and Contestation: India after 1989’, 2007. She has translated fiction and non-fiction from Hindi and Malayalam into English, and from Malayalam into Hindi, and received the AK Ramanujan Award for translation instituted by Katha.

Dr. Debangana Chatterjee

Dr. Debangana Chatterjee is an assistant professor and currently, the co-director of the Centre for Women and the Law (CWL) at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru. In her doctoral thesis, awarded at the Centre for International Politics Organization and Disarmament (CIPOD), Jawaharlal Nehru University — she has tried to locate the existing Indian discourse surrounding the practices of Female Circumcision and Islamic veiling, viewed through the larger frame of international politics. Based on the thesis, her first published book, titled ‘Lives of Circumcised and Veiled Women‘ was published by Routledge in 2023. In May 2023, she successfully concluded a short-duration research project (2022-23) gauging the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on home-based sex workers in Bengaluru and identifying the policy lacunae, under the aegis of ICSSR- Southern Regional Centre (SRC).

Dr. Rinku Lamba

Dr. Rinku Lamba is an associate professor at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru. She previously held visiting faculty positions at Humboldt University, and University of Wurzburg in Germany, and served as an instructor at the University of Toronto. She was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, a Harold Coward Fellow at the University of Victoria, and held fellowships at the University of Sydney and the Australian Catholic University, Sydney. She was also the Lansdowne Visiting Scholar in Religious Studies at the University of Victoria in Canada in 2019. In 2022, she received the Dalai Lama Fellowship for Nalanda Studies from the Foundation for Universal Responsibility.

Watch the video of the talk:

Special Lecture by NHRC Chair, NLSIU | “Ties of Brotherhood: Custodial Deaths and the Law in India”

The National Human Rights Commission Chair at NLSIU is presenting a special lecture on “Ties of Brotherhood: Custodial Deaths and the Law in India” with Advocate and Researcher Megha Bahl on Wednesday, 10th July, at 5.30 pm.

About the speaker 

Megha Bahl is a Delhi-based High Court and trial court lawyer who has worked on both prosecution and defence within the criminal legal system. She has undertaken extensive research and legal aid on concerns of democratic rights, particularly those relating to police violence. Megha is a Fulbright scholar who recently completed her Master’s in Law from the University of Texas at Austin. At UT Austin, she undertook research with the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab, a research and advocacy group at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, on custodial deaths and oversight conditions for those incarcerated in the state of Texas.

Abstract

Custodial deaths are universally recognized as a violation of fundamental and human rights, but continue to persist unabated within the police and prison systems of the country. According to the last available National Human Rights Commission Annual Report, it received 2543 intimations of custodial deaths in police, judicial and (para)military custody within the year 2021-22 itself. Recent interventions have proposed technological solutions to the challenge of custodial violence, for instance, through the mandatory installation of CCTV cameras in police stations. This talk aims to bring attention to the systemic challenge of “ties of brotherhood”, in the words of the Supreme Court in DK Basu v. State of West Bengal (1997), which breeds impunity for such forms of police violence. Here, ties of brotherhood refer to legal and organizational cultures within police organizations which shield perpetrators and impede access to justice. The talk relies on two case studies of custodial deaths from Delhi to throw light on the specific ways in which these ties of brotherhood operate among the police organizations, and the capacity of the Law and legal processes to constrain such organizational cultures.

 

 

Research Talk | ‘Composing Violence: Notes on Hindu Nationalism and the Legal Archive’

NLSIU will be hosting a research talk by Dr. Moyukh Chatterjee, Faculty at the University of Edinburgh and author of ‘Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities‘ (Duke University Press, 2023), at the Training Centre Conference Room at 3 PM, on Tuesday, July 9, 2024.

About the Session

The idea of a research talk is about discussing how the book was researched, methodology and writing. So this will not be a “talk” in the conventional sense. Attendees are all expected to read the introduction to his book before coming for the talk, which is available here. The talk would happen on campus in person, and in hybrid mode.

Abstract 

To compose violence is to describe violence as a constitutive force that produces and reproduces the majority and the minority – on the street, in the courtroom, in the police archive, and within mainstream media. In my work on the afterlives of Gujarat 2002, I examine the role of legal archives, everyday police reporting, and courtroom rituals in the production of new kinds of majorities and minorities. By moving from exposure to composition – the power of violence to produce new attachments, subjects, and subjectivities – we will discuss two related questions: What scholarly work is possible when violence is not repressed, not located at the margins of the state, and not even disguised by the participants? What forms of everyday legality transform anti-minority violence into durable order? We will focus on police archives, legal activism, and mainstream media coverage, to understand the role of everyday law in sustaining supremacist regimes.

About the Speaker

Dr. Moyukh Chatterjee is a political and legal anthropologist and his work explores the afterlives of political violence. He teaches in the department of social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His book Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities (Duke University Press, 2023) examines how political violence against minorities acts as a catalyst for radical changes in law, public culture, and statecraft. More broadly, his work explores the limits of the politics of exposure to understand majoritarian politics and anti-minority violence in India and beyond.

Over the last decade, he has been trying to understand the relationship between crowds and power, impunity and state formation, and the law and supremacist regimes as part of a broader effort to grasp the role of violence within liberal democracies. His current research examines the everyday life of far-right supremacist regimes, including the life stories of precarious young men who join far-right organisations, the creation of muscular, religious publics, and the relationship between authoritarian rule and public religiosity.

M K Nambyar Annual Lecture 2024 | Prof. Nivedita Menon, Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, JNU

We are excited to announce that Prof. Nivedita Menon, Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, will deliver the MK Nambyar Annual Lecture for 2024 on 9th July. NLSIU Faculty, Dr. Salmoli Choudhuri will be the moderator.

The talk will be delivered on the topic ‘Insurgent constitutionalism and Radical frames of citizenship’ from 5 PM to 6.30 PM, in the Krishnappa Hall, OAB – 201, NLSIU.

About the Speaker

Nivedita Menon is a Professor at the Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her latest book is Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South (Permanent Black and Duke University Press 2023). Apart from research papers in Indian and international journals, her previous books are Seeing like a Feminist(2012/updated 2nd Edition 2022), Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law (2004); and (co-written) Power and Contestation: India after 1989 (2007/2nd Edition 2014). She is a regular commentator on contemporary issues on the collective blog kafila.online (of which she is one of the founders). She has translated fiction and non-fiction from Hindi and Malayalam into English, and from Malayalam into Hindi, and received the AK Ramanujan Award for translation instituted by Katha.

About the Session

I will consider two themes in the lecture – constitutionalism as a radically transformative framework, and an expanded notion of citizenship. A Constitution is usually seen as a legal document that embodies a new dispensation or structure of power and which becomes a crucial reference point in the resolution of disputes between groups.  However, that does not exhaust what Constitutions do. The hope inspired by the idea of a Constitution as the basis of a democratic state is as vibrant in the twenty-first century as in the mid twentieth, when the first wave of decolonisation took place across the global South. A comparison of Chile’s draft Constitution of 2022 and India’s enacted in 1950 yields some productive insights. We will also consider two movements in India that invoke constitutional morality – the queer movement and Pathalgadi. In addition we will consider the recently enacted Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code as a violation of every principle of both consitutionalism and citizenship. The lecture will also question the idea of citizenship as inherently emancipatory, and consider what citizenship can look like when freed from the barbed wire borders of nation states.

Lecture Video

 

NLSIU Online Webinar | In the Dream House: Examining the New Archival Turn in India

As a part of the International Archives Week from June 3rd to June 9th 2024, NLSIU will host an online webinar titled “In the Dream House: Examining the New Archival Turn in India” by Ammel Sharon, on June 7 (Friday), 2024.  This marks the sixth International Archives Week organized by the International Council of Archives. This year’s theme is #CyberArchives.

About the Lecture

This illustrated talk will introduce archives in a three-fold manner: as records, institutions and spaces. It will show similarities, and mark some differences, between archives and allied record-keeping sites like libraries and museums. Second, it will make a few observations on archives of independent India based on recent scholarship. Finally, it will discuss the approach of the Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) at NLSIU as a significant ‘living archive’ of gender and sexuality.

About the Speaker

Ammel is Project Director and Lead Archivist at the Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) at NLSIU. She is also a PhD candidate in History at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Her dissertation is titled Literature as Recovery: The Public Life of Text Criticism in Kannada.

At QAMRA, she brings her interests in history and higher education to the queer archive at NLSIU. She supervises archival processes including acquisition, documentation and digitization of the collections. Her priorities are to deepen QAMRA’s presence among queer individuals and communities in India, as well as on the NLSIU campus among faculty members, library staff and students through events and collaborations, to foster exchange with academic and archival institutions, fundraise to ensure stability crucial for the continuity of QAMRA’s plans, and work towards community-focused public engagement and research publications.

With RVS Sundaram, she has translated an eleventh century Kannada poem, Gadāyuddham, as The Duel of the Maces (Manohar 2018, Routledge 2020) and a tenth century Kannada treatise, Chandombudhi, as The Ocean of Prosody (Central University of Karnataka 2020). Recently, she co-authored an open-access info-booklet on pollinators, Native Bees and Pollination in the Puducherry Bioregion (IFP 2022). Her forthcoming publications include an article on Kannada typography for the Book History in India series Vol. 4 (Orient Blackswan), and an essay on abstinence for an anthology on South Asian friendships (Yoda Press). Some of her collaborative work can be found on www.understory.in

Please note: The webinar is open to all, with no registration fee. The webinar link and joining details will be sent to your registered email address. Register here. 

 

NLSIU Class Exhibition of ‘History, in the Present’

The class exhibition of the “History, in the Present” seminar at NLSIU, opens on Tuesday, May 28, between 5-6 PM at OAB 105. This preview will include a screening of the flagship exhibit followed by celebrations and reflections on the work done by students and the instructor Dr. Samyak Ghosh, during the trimester.

Following the preview, for the next two days, multiple exhibits are open to viewing at various locations across the campus, where those viewing can interact with the exhibits and share their reflections.

On May 30 (Thursday), an open house history telling event will be organized in the OAB 105, between 2:30-4:40 PM. The event also marks the closing of the exhibition.

Introduction

NLS students interacting with Jim Lambie’s Zobop exhibit.

The theme for the class exhibition of the Public History Seminar, AY 2024-2025, is “Anti-classroom Classroom”. Through several exhibits displayed at multiple sites throughout the NLSIU campus the students along with the instructor will explore how we can break down and rethink the classroom as a space and an idea.

Our point of divergence is the traditional classroom where the instructor and the institution are merged as sites of authority. “Anti-classroom Classroom” is not necessarily a critique of the traditional classroom but an effort to imagine and practice alternative forms of pedagogy that are in alignment with community-based learning and making and knowing as co-constitutive practices. The alternative imagination allows us to push boundaries of knowledge making in the classroom as we rethink what we do and where we do.

This is an endeavour in reassembling and reordering learning through practice-based reflection on the work that takes place in a Public History classroom. As an area of inquiry, Public History makes us think of the classroom beyond university spaces, to include spaces of public interaction like streets, neighbourhoods, monuments, museums, and much more.

One iteration of public history is to imagine the possibilities of history communication outside the traditional lecture and seminar based classrooms of universities. In doing so, the effort is also to focus on forms of knowledge making that exist in collective thinking, sharing of ideas, and making together as a community. This knowledge, as we acknowledge, is embedded in a space of public interaction and continuous interpretation. We expect that the audience will interact with our exhibits in ways that will expand our ideas of shared learning.

The full details of the exhibition are available here.

 

 

Faculty Seminar | Corporate Purpose and Financialization

Neeraj Grover, Assistant Professor at NLSIU, will present a paper titled “Corporate Purpose and Financialization”. Dr. Sudhanshu Kumar will be the discussant.

Abstract

This draft section is part of the larger project that maps the legal structure, design, and nature of the corporations against the backdrop of recently enhanced global convergence towards corporate social responsibility (“CSR”). The project questions if corporations thwart their social responsibility by design, and whether such design is a consequence of corporate law as it emerges from the fundamental jurisprudence of contracts and property.

In this section, the focus is on financialization. Financialization (or financialism) is a process that has changed the landscape of shareholders who are the most critical of the corporate stakeholders. It generally refers to the “increasingly important role of financial markets, motives, actors and institutions in the operation of the economy”.(Fligstein N. and Goldstein A.2015). At the level of the corporation and its shareholders, this manifests in the orientation of equity markets towards share value maximisation as its primary goal. In a legal design still path dependent on favouring shareholders at the cost of CSR, financialization appears to resist true corporate responsibility by reinforcing shareholder power and control over companies.

With the emergence of larger institutional investors who invest across borders, it is also understood as a symptom of wealth concentration in the financial markets. This accumulation of shareholder wealth amongst fewer but larger institutional investors, who are interested in their corporations in ways different from retail investors, also homogenises shareholders as a group. Here, I ask whether financialization has been aided by corporate law, eventually requiring the ‘fix’ of stricter CSR mandates (especially in India) to make corporations socially responsible. To answer, I place four elements from the relevant legal theory and legislation on spot: (a) consecutive and incremental dominance of the protection of shareholders as the primary agenda of corporate finance law; (b) classic corporate law literature that pitted company directors against shareholders, and accordingly espoused the reduction of agency costs between “managers” and “shareholders” as the primary conundrum of corporate governance, (c) homogenisation of shareholders as a class in corporate law literature, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy of all shareholders interested in share value maximisation, (d) new ESG regime that links CSR with enhanced share value. [Note: for this version, I focus only on the last element, that is (d).]

The section is structured as follows: Part 1 describes financialization and explores how it restricts true CSR; Parts 2 deals with law’s role in enabling financialization, and sub-parts (a), (b), (c), and (d) each elaborate on how the four respective elements aforementioned reinforce financialization; Part 3 then concludes and connects this chapter with possible threads in progressive corporate law literature that might be useful in examining legal approaches that have the effect of restricting financialization. This includes debates around the legal duties of company directors.

NLSIU’s UNHCR Chair Panel Discussion | Representation in Refugee Law: The Right to Legal Aid for Refugees in India

The UNHCR Chair on Refugee Law at NLSIU is organizing a panel discussion titled “Representation in Refugee Law: The Right to Legal Aid for Refugees in India”, on May 20 (Monday), 2024, at 5 PM, in OAB 106. This panel will focus on the legal and material aspects of legal aid for refugees in India. The panelists are Advocate Sahana Basavapatna, and Paralegal and Researcher Iftikar Hussain Siddique.

Background

India is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention or to the Optional Protocol. Refugees have been accommodated in India on a case-by-case basis, however, in the absence of a comprehensive legal framework for their protection, most refugees are treated as illegal migrants, and are vulnerable to criminal prosecution. Even after refugees have served their sentence, they may be transferred to detention centres, awaiting deportation to a country which poses a risk to their lives. The recent deportation of 77 refugees from Myanmar, who had taken shelter in Manipur after the 2021 Military coup in Myanmar, indicates just how vulnerable refugees are in the absence of effective legal aid.

Refugees in India need legal representation not only at the stage of criminal prosecution, but also to enable them to apply for long-term visas, and seek access to various entitlements that they may qualify for. However, in the absence of recognition of their status as refugees, state-sponsored legal aid may fail to address their distinct needs. Recognising that there exists a constitutional imperative to provide free legal aid, this panel will focus on the experiences of together individual practitioners who work with refugees, to understand the challenges in providing them legal aid.

About the Panelists

Sahana Basavapatna is a lawyer by training and for more than 9 years, has been practising in the trial courts in civil, criminal and commercial law in Bangalore. Prior to relocating to Bangalore from New Delhi, Sahana worked at first in The Other Media from 2006-2009, an organisation that, at the time, worked with Burmese refugees. Sahana went on to pursue a career as an independent researcher working on forced migration and environmental law. Her research includes work with and on, among others, on the Chins and the Rohingyas from Burma and Dalits from Pakistan. She is a member of the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, based in Calcutta.

Iftikar Hussain Siddique, is an Inlaks Shivadasani Fellow and a paralegal from Assam. He is working on creating access to legal aid by conducting awareness and empowerment camps at the community level and by training other paralegal volunteers. He has worked with multiple organizations, researchers, academics, and institutions at grassroots-level and helped people get legal representation during the pandemic. He also regularly conducts awareness programmes at the Matia Detention Centre in Goalpara, Assam, and works with refugees in the detention centre to provide them access to legal representation.

Celebrating 10 Years! | BA LLB (Hons) | Batch of 2013

NLSIU is excited to host a campus reunion for the batch of 2013 this Saturday, May 11, 2024 as they celebrate 10 years of their graduation from law school. Our alumni will be spending the day on campus re-connecting with batchmates, faculty, and other members of the NLS community.

The batch of 2013 has expressed a keen interest in reconnecting with faculty and staff members who played a significant role in shaping their educational journey. Therefore, we have allocated a dedicated time slot from 12:15 pm to 1:00 pm for an interactive session between the batch members and the faculty and staff. This session will be held in a hybrid format at the OAB-101 classroom, allowing for both in-person and virtual participation.

The schedule of events on May 11 (Saturday), 2024, is provided below.

A day filled with nostalgia

The day began with a session of introductions and updates from the alumni who gathered on campus along with many others who joined the session virtually over Zoom. The alumni came from diverse backgrounds such as International Law, Litigation, Finance, Civil Services, Corporate Law, Taxation, among other fields. They shared fond memories from their time at NLS, and surprisingly, almost all of them seemed to be able to recall their roll numbers from their law school days!

They interacted with NLS faculty Prof. Somashekar, Prof. Mrinal Satish,  and the University Vice Chancellor Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy who spoke to them about key campus developments and other measures being undertaken at NLSIU.

Following this introductory session, the alumni gathered together for lunch and later went on a campus walk to see the newer developments on campus including the redeveloped Library, the New Academic Block, the amphitheatre and both new and old hostels – this naturally included a visit to the hostel rooms where the alumni had resided during their time here on campus. After the campus walk, the alumni met the current students for a ‘Townhall’ and concluded the day with a photo session with their fellow batchmates.

Reflections

We asked some of our alumni to share their thoughts on how it felt to be back on campus after a decade, and here’s what they had to say:

Janhavi Manohar, Partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas

“Those who believe that you can’t turn back time have probably not attended an NLS reunion. Setting foot into (what used to be) our second year classroom was all the impetus that was needed to send us hurtling back a decade or so – every single one of us remembered our roll numbers and where we sat with some very vivid re-tellings of our favourite anecdotes. The campus tour and faculty interaction was in equal parts a walk down memory lane as well as a reminder of how much things had changed since we were last here. With the brand new amphitheatre, the library, the new Acad Block and the slew of changes in the offing, including the new academic courses, we look well poised to make good on our promise of being the Harvard of the East (and bettering that).

We are very grateful to Prof. Sudhir, Prof. Somashekar, Prof. Shreya Rao and Prof. Mrinal Satish who took the time out on a non-working day to meet us (and regale us). Also, a special shout out to the student volunteers who had the unenviable task of shepherding a bunch of noisy, boisterous (and magically de-aged) 20-year-olds across campus. Thank you NLS for everything – for shaping us, nurturing us, helping us create the best memories, and indulging us with small blips in the space-time continuum every now and then!” 

Aruj Garg, Branding and Marketing at Rebel Foods

“It was lovely to be at NLS with my batchmates and friends for our reunion. Some parts of the campus have been given a very aesthetic facelift and it was great to see students interacting with those changes. At the same time, a lot was exactly how it was when we were around, which brought back a lot of memories. For me, the hostel life was big part of the experience and visiting my old room was a highlight.”

Akshaya Ramadurai, Advocate, Madras High Court

“Returning to law school after 10 years was like a visit back home – the warm welcome by faculty, the VC and the coordinators made me feel I had never left. The campus tour was a beautiful trip down memory lane and also surprised us with the newer features. While we did get nostalgic about ‘Chetta’ and our extended chilling sessions there, the new and vibrant amphitheatre and renovated library made us envious. As a batch, we recalled both the naughty and some serious/sober moments and yearned for more time together.”

Gallery

Schedule

11:00 am – 12:00 pm – Arrival and Registration (Main Gate)
12:00 pm – 12:15 pm – Introduction of Batch members (OAB-101)
12:15 pm – 1:00 pm – Interaction with Faculty and Batch members
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm – Networking Lunch
2:30 pm – 3:00 pm – Guided Campus Tour
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Town Hall discussion with current law students
4:00 pm – 4:15 pm – Group Photo Session

Meeting Link for the 12 noon session: Class of 2013 Reunion
Meeting ID: 920 3903 9334 | Passcode: 469972