News Type: Event

Members of the NLS Queer Alliance (NLSQA), a student collective at NLSIU, will be speaking at the Bangalore International Center on 20th May from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.  The session titled “Worlds Words Weave: Queer Explorations towards Constructing Reality on Our Own Terms” will be an interactive one with the conversation linking anecdotes, polemics, popular culture, legalese and semantics in general. The session will entail 5 speakers from the NLSQA talking about words like family, joy, etc and their meaning to queer individuals.

NLSQA Speaks | About the event 

“Through this conversation, we seek to explain what words mean to the queer community and highlight how language has historically deprived the queer community of participating in public discourse. While at the same time, we shall endeavor to reclaim and redefine these words.

The Queer community has been thrusted into hypervisibility following the widespread publicity of the Marriage Equality petitions in the Supreme Court. The hearings saw the usage of many terms, concepts, and identities integral to the Queer experience. However, the meanings of these words got distorted and confused as they went through the grapevine of petitions, media coverage, and popular discourse.

Language and vocabulary are important tools in any social movement. It sits at the epicenter of any hegemony. The pervasive power of language is visible in how we write our laws and our stories. When the speakers of the language cannot find words to describe themselves, it is imperative that we embrace new words and the worlds that they weave. The fight for the recognition of the rights of queer people seeks to challenge this semantic and linguistic cis-heteronormativity.

Through this session, the NLSQA seeks to reach out to the wider community, highlight the power of language, showcase the queer usage of everyday words, explain what certain words mean to queer individuals, and most importantly, draw links between pop culture, the law and colloquial language.”

About the speakers:

• Dhawal M, Convenor, NLS Queer Alliance, and third-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student
• Sarthak Virdi, Student & Member, NLS Queer Alliance, and second-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student

If you are interested in attending the event, please RSVP here.

 

In our next faculty seminar on 17th May, Dr. Arul George Scaria will discuss a report he prepared for the Delhi High Court.

Abstract of the Report:

Sec. 52(1)(za) of the Copyright Act 1957 is an important exception provision under the Indian copyright law. It exempts from copyright infringement liability public performance and communication to the public of certain types of copyrighted works in the course of bonafide religious ceremonies and official ceremonies. The explanation provided with the provision mentions that ‘religious ceremony’ includes marriage procession and “other social festivities associated with a marriage”. But the scope and limitations of this exception provision remained largely untested. Recently, a copyright infringement case was initiated before the Delhi High Court by Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), which issues licenses for public performance of sound recordings assigned to it by copyright holders, against Lookpart Exhibitions and Events Private Limited (Lookpart), which provides event management services for different social events including weddings. PPL argued that Lookpart was using the sound recordings for social events, including weddings, without obtaining any license from PPL. Lookpart relied on the exception provided under Sec. 52(1)(za) of the Copyright Act, 1957 to argue that use of sound recordings during marriage ceremonies or other social events connected with marriage does not amount to infringement of copyright under Sec. 51 of the Copyright Act 1957. As music is an integral part of marriage ceremonies and festivities associated with marriages in India and as the questions of law involved in the matter has enormous implications for creative artists and copyright owners on one hand and users of copyrighted works, including organisations involved in the management of weddings and other social events on the other hand, the court appointed an independent expert on the matter to examine the scope and historical context of Sec. 52(1)(za). This was also important in view of the fact that not much academic deliberations or judicial opinions were available on the provision, in spite of its socio-cultural significance in the Indian context. This report, prepared by the independent expert appointed by the Court, examines in detail the social, cultural, historical and legal dimensions of Sec. 52(1)(za). The report was submitted to the Court on July 5, 2022.

On May 18, there will be a Public Lecture by our guest speaker, Mr. Manoj Mitta, who will be delivering a talk on his recently published book, Caste Pride: Battles for Equality in Hindu India (Westland 2023).

About the Speaker:

Manoj Mitta is a Delhi-based journalist focusing on law, human rights and social justice. A law graduate from Hyderabad, he has worked with the Times of India, the Indian Express and IndiaToday. Mitta has written two critically acclaimed books on impunity for mass violence: When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and Its Aftermath, co-authored with H.S. Phoolka (2007), and The Fiction of Fact-finding: Modi and Godhra (2014). His article on caste was published in 2007 in Writing a Nation: An Anthology of Indian Journalism, edited by Nirmala Lakshman.

Book Abstract :

In this masterful volume, Manoj Mitta uses the lens of the law in an eye-opening examination of the endurance and violence of the Hindu caste system. Linking centuries of legal reform with social movements, he unearths the characters, speeches, confusions and decisions that have shaped the battle on caste hierarchy into one that seeks to mitigate the ways in which this ancient system discriminated between Hindus in their daily lives: where they could live, how they could dress, whether they could go to a shop, a stream, walk a street or mingle, enter a temple, who and how they could marry, whether their actions, innocent or criminal, would attract punishment or impunity.

Describing brilliantly the passage of Hinduism into its modern avatar, the book celebrates women and men across the caste spectrum—leading lights Savitribai Phule, M.C. Rajah, R. Veerian, B.R. Ambedkar, Vithalbhai Patel and others—and outside of the caste system, such as non-Hindu legislators and administrators including Maneckji Dadabhoy, William Bentinck and Lord Willingdon. It re-examines the positions of stalwarts such as Motilal Nehru, Thomas Munro, Mahatma Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari, and shows why caste prejudice cleaves to names like Madan Mohan Malviya and Surendra Nath Banerjea.

Through these histories of reform, Mitta establishes that untouchability is merely the best-known aspect of the caste system, an elusive purity-based hierarchy that affects the freedoms of all. Studded with groundbreaking discoveries and stunning insights, Caste Pride is at once moving, enlightening and transformative.

The event is open to all. We look forward to seeing you at the session!

On 3rd May 2023, the faculty seminar will be by guest speaker, Shri. Feroze Varun Gandhi, who will be delivering a talk on his recently published book, ‘The Indian Metropolis: Deconstructing India’s Urban Spaces’.

About the Speaker: 

Shri. Feroze Varun Gandhi is a third-term Member of Parliament, representing the Pilibhit constituency in Uttar Pradesh. In his last book, ‘A Rural Manifesto: Realising India’s Future through her Villages’ (published in November 2018), Shri Gandhi presented an alternative approach to mainstream ideas of rural development, which despite their many achievements have certain inherent limitations. Shri Gandhi has published two volumes of poetry – ‘The Otherness of Self’ and ‘Stillness’ – that have been well received. He also writes widely in English as well as several regional language newspapers including The Hindu, The Economic Times, Amar Ujala, Lokmat, and Bartaman.

About the Book: 

For most urban Indians, the past few years have been unsettling—we have seen neighbourhoods locked down for months during a pandemic, increasing the daily challenges of earning a living as well as of access to good healthcare and education. Inflation has ravaged the land with spiralling prices of food, rent and transport. Our cities are hard to live in; lacking basic amenities, while being
unaesthetic and discordant with our civilization.

As economic growth takes priority, questions about liveability and meaningful employment arise, along with concerns about the deteriorating law and order. In blindly and poorly aping Western
models, our cities homogenize, losing their character, their identity and their soul. Meanwhile, climate change is no longer a mythical or distant possibility but a distinct and immediate reality. A typical city must now cope with extreme temperatures, both flooding and water shortages and abysmal air quality. These can no longer be treated as threats but as certainties to be planned for.

The Indian Metropolis seeks to begin a national conversation on these issues and suggests ways to turn our cities into enabling, energizing environments geared towards enhancing the daily life of the average city dweller.” (Source: Rupa Publications) 

The seventh cohort of the Master’s Programme in Public Policy, NLSIU is organising a seminar on “100 Years of Independence: Evolving Identities, Markets, and the Environment” on February 3-4, 2022. The seminar will cover a number of themes as part of the sessions over these two days.

Abstract:

At the stroke of midnight on 15th August 1947, India awoke to a new journey that would go on to define the local and global socio-economic trends for the next seven decades. 75 years later, we find ourselves at a juncture where equitable public policies must act as linkages between our post-colonial past and our post-pandemic future. At this critical point, it is important to introspect as well as look outward, to gauge where Indian development stands. This becomes specifically relevant given that in 25 years’ time, the country will celebrate its independence centennial. The path to the future, thus, needs to be connected to the past, for an equitable present.

India has come a long way since its independence, with evolving economic systems, emerging new markets, rapid development in technology, and a conscious acknowledgment for the need to protect our ecosystems. Indian society faces the challenges of rising inequalities across regions, income categories, social groupings, gender, and rural-urban divides. Moreover, concerns regarding flailing constitutional morality, populism, conservatism and the creation of several ‘imagined communities’ also need to be discussed in this context.

For further details including the programme schedule, click here.

Join a virtual discussion with Dr. Sushmita Pati on her new book, titled Properties of Rent: Community, Capital, and Politics in Globalising Delhi. Sushmita is Assistant Professor, Political Science at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore. Her research interests lie at the intersection of urban politics and political economy.

In her new book, she traces the social history of urban villages around Delhi and offers a new perspective on land, labor, and accumulation in urbanizing India.

Read more and RSVP here.

The Law and Technology Society, NLSIU, in association with the All India Game Developer Forum (AIGDF), announces ‘Consilience 2023′, the 22nd edition of L-Tech’s flagship conference. This year’s conference focuses on emerging issues in the Gaming Industry, particularly online gaming regulatory frameworks and fundraising within the industry. 

The conference will be hosted physically on 21st April, 2023 at the Bangalore International Centre. This year’s conference is anchored on the Online Regulatory Framework on Gaming and is composed of four panels: A. Online Gaming Regulations, B. Taxation of Online Gaming, C. Navigating the Gaming Landscape: Strategies for Successful Fundraising in Today’s Market, D. Making India a global gaming powerhouse: Building Games for Indian and Global Audiences.  

The conference shall include panelists from legal, policy, technology, and business backgrounds including Mr. Arun Prabhu, Mr. Meyyappan Nagappan, Mr. Abhinav Srivastava, Mr. Joyjyoti Mishra, Mr. Sai Srinivas, Mr. Akshat Rathee, Ms. Sanyukta Chowdhury and Mr. Rahul Singh amongst others.

About Consilience:

‘Consilience’ is the annual flagship conference organised by the Law and Technology Society at NLSIU on contemporary issues at the interface of law and technology. First organised in 2001, Consilience is the first conference of its kind in India, bringing together legal insights and technical expertise on a common platform, providing a launch pad for creative and pragmatic solutions to some of the most pressing issues in the domain of technology law and policy. 

Over the years, this annual summit has hosted themes like Artificial Intelligence, Net Neutrality, Cloud Computing, and Intermediary Liability, and has featured prominent speakers, including Kris Gopalakrishnan (Co-Founder, Infosys), Antony Taubman (Director, IP Division at WTO), Prof. Rahul De (Hewlett-Packard Chair Professor, IIM Bangalore), Justice S. Murlidhar (Chief Justice, Orissa High Court), Montek Singh Ahluwalia (Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of India) and Meenu Chandra (Senior Attorney, Microsoft India), among others. 

For more information, please visit the L-Tech website. For any queries, please write to

Registration Details: 

Please fill out the registration form by clicking on the relevant link below:

Registration form for students (from any institution).

Registration form for other participants

This week faculty seminar will feature a discussion by our faculty member Harsha N on the topic “Right to occupy airspace – Conflict between airports and landowners on the use of vertical space in India”. Faculty member Dr. Betsy Rajasingh will be the discussant.  The conversation will be followed by a Q&A session.

Abstract

The population density is rising near airports in India due to the economic benefits one can derive. The opportunity to accommodate the interest of various groups for commerce and dwelling has created a dependency on vertical growth. The conflict arises from utilising vertical space by two competing interests, one of the airports and the other of the adjacent residents. Demolition of buildings and structures to ensure safe airspace has become a necessity. Earlier jurisprudence of limiting the rights based on upper and lower stratum might be irrelevant today. The paper will address the Indian perspective and judicial interpretations of airspace in three broad areas: the concept of airspace, challenges to the demarcation of rights and obligations, and the method of determination of rights and obligations in the airspace. The paper will look into the principles of property from Roman Law to the contemporary principles of property law and their applicability to aviation law. The issue of competing interests of various groups to occupy the airspace is also a focus area of the paper.

NLS faculty member Dr. Aparna Chandra will be part of a panel discussion on “House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy” on April 14, 2023 at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) at 6.00 pm.

Abstract:

While there is overwhelming support for democracy in India and voter turnout is higher than in many Western democracies, there are low levels of trust in political parties and elected representatives. House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy, written by Ronojoy Sen, looks beyond Indian elections, which has increasingly occupied analysts and commentators, and focuses on the Lok Sabha. The book examines two broad questions: Is the Indian Parliament, which has the unenviable task of representing a diverse nation of a billion-plus people, working, if not in an exemplary manner, at least reasonably well, to articulate the diverse demands of the electorate and translate them into legislation and policy? To what extent has the practice of Indian democracy transformed the institution of parliament, which was adopted from the British, and its functioning?

The author will be in conversation with Aparna Chandra and Rajeev Gowda, moderated by Nitin Pai. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

About the Speakers

Ronojoy Sen, Author & Senior Research Fellow, National University of Singapore

Dr Ronojoy Sen is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies and the South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has worked for over a decade with leading Indian newspapers, most recently as an editor for The Times of India. His latest book is House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He is also the author of Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India (Columbia University Press/Penguin, 2015) and Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism, and the Indian Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 2010; revised ed. 2018) and has edited several books. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and read history at Presidency College, Calcutta.

Dr. Aparna Chandra, Associate Professor, NLSIU

Dr. Aparna Chandra is an Associate Professor of Law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Her areas of teaching and research are constitutional law, human rights, legal theory, gender and the law, and judicial process reform. Her on-going research includes a collaboration with the Israel Democracy Institute on a European Research Council funded multi-nation study titled Proportionality and Public Policy; a University of Chicago funded research project titled Empirical Analysis of Indian Supreme Court decisions; and a collaboration with the Centre for Reproductive Rights, New York on a book on Reproductive Justice in India.

Aparna received her LL.M and JSD degrees from Yale Law School in 2007 and 2013, respectively. She was a Lillian Goldman Scholar at Yale Law School from 2010-2012. Her doctoral dissertation (under the supervision of Judith Resnik and guidance of Bruce Ackerman and Alec Stone Sweet) examined the role of international law in domestic constitutional adjudication, with a primary focus on the Indian Supreme Court.

M V Rajeev Gowda, Politician & Academician

Professor Rajeev Gowda is Ex-Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha from Karnataka. He has a B.A from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore, an MA in Economics from Fordham University and a PhD in Public Policy and Management from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has been a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and taught at the University of Oklahoma. Until recently, he was Professor of Economics and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and a Director on the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India. He has authored and edited books, scholarly articles and reports on policy issues. He has mentored start up companies and works on urban renewal and youth empowerment, among other areas of interest. He has been a Carnegie Council Global Ethics Fellow.

He is the Managing Trustee, Resurgent India Trust, which launched the Bengaluru Needs You initiative.

Nitin Pai, Co-Founder & Director, Takshashila Institution

Nitin Pai is co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy; and author of Nitopadesha: Moral Tales for Good Citizens. His current research includes information warfare, the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific. He teaches international relations, public policy and ethical reasoning at Takshashila’s graduate programmes. He is currently a columnist with Mint, ThePrint and Sakal, and a non-resident fellow at the Institute for South Asian Studies, Singapore.

Pai spent over a decade at the Telecommunications Authority of Singapore (TAS) and its successor the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) in broadband development and technology foresight. He has also worked with SingTel’s international connectivity business and undersea cable projects. He was a gold medalist from the National University of Singapore’s LKY School of Public Policy, an undergraduate scholar at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and an alum of National College, Bangalore.

 

About the Book 

A panel of scholars and musicians will engage in a discussion with author Sebanti Chatterjee on her recent book, Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality (published by Bloomsbury Academic, February 2023). The book uses the lens of sound and musical practices to tell the stories of two Christian communities in Goa and Meghalaya and introduces voice and genre as social objects. Given the imperial pasts of both regions, the book inquires how indigenous and cosmopolitan forces shape the sacred music repositories and their manifestations. The book takes us on a fascinating sojourn through seminaries, Bollywood Broadway, festivals, recitals, and belonging. Through the rituals of performativity and everyday interpretations of devotion, choral voices illuminate the interior and public lives of the sacred.

About the Speakers 

Sebanti Chatterjee, Senior Academic Fellow, NLSIU Bangalore, is a cultural anthropologist, who is currently a Senior Academic Fellow at the National Law School of India University Bangalore. She holds a doctorate in Sociology. Her monograph, Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality, was published by Bloomsbury Academic in Feb 2023. Sebanti's research interests span sound studies, gender studies, and religious studies. She has previously held regular and ad-hoc teaching positions at Sharda University, Greater Noida; Christ University, Bangalore; University of Delhi; and IIT Jodhpur. She has presented her work both nationally and internationally. Her research has been published in the journals of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and Society and Culture in South Asia. Sebanti also writes for children and occasionally wears the hat of a storyteller.

Karl Lutchmayer, Pianist, is equally renowned as a concert pianist and a lecturer. A Steinway Artist, Karl performs across the globe, and has worked with conductors including Lorin Maazel and Sir Andrew Davis, and performed at all the major London concert halls. He has broadcast on BBC Television and Radio, All India Radio and Classic FM, and is a regular chamber performer. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, Karl has also given over 90 world premieres and had many works written especially for him.

Sarbani Sharma, Assistant Professor, Azim Premji University, is an Assistant Professor at the School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. Her work focuses on itineraries of political aspirations for freedom and everyday life in Kashmir. She has previously taught Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Tübingen, Germany, and at the University of Delhi. Her research has been published in the Journal of Human Rights, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Society and Culture in South Asia, Allegra Labs, and Political and Legal Anthropological Review.

To RSVP, click here