The NLSIU Library Committee is organising a book talk at the NLS Library by Valerian Rodrigues on his book ‘Ambedkar’s Political Philosophy: A Grammar of Public Life from the Social Margins.’ The talk will take place from 5 pm to 6:30 pm. This is the first public discussion of Prof. Valerian’s book.

Panelists:

Valerian Rodrigues, Former Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU (Author of the book)
Shruti Kapila, Professor of History and Politics, University of Cambridge, and Visiting Professor, NLSIU
Arvind Narrain, President, PUCL, Karnataka

Moderator: Chandrabhan Pratap Yadav, Assistant Professor, Social Science, NLSIU

This event is open to the public and registration for members outside of the NLSIU community is mandatory to attend the event. To register, click here.

About the book

This study is organized around a set of key concepts that Ambedkar, the Indian thinker and leader of the socially marginalized, proposed to reconstruct public life, factoring in oppression and degradation. This framework conceived human beings as endowed with a distinct set of attributes entitling them to consideration as moral equals despite other differences among them. It also accorded a procedural priority to consciousness in human understanding. Ambedkar deployed this framework to contend against social institutions of caste, untouchability, and other forms of marginalities and to interrogate texts, traditions, and modes of social dominance. Ambedkar regards justice as foundational to modern societies. It called for ‘initial equality’ across its members while recognizing desert. All differential accomplishments, however, cannot be rewarded or compensated. Democracy is an essential requirement to resolve competing claims. As a self-governing mode of rule, democracy affords access to its members to multiple avenues of reach, learning, and enablement. Nationalism, a distinctive bond that precipitates with the entry of the masses into the political arena, is justiciable only if it has a definitive tilt towards democracy. Social relations, however, are caught in trappings of power across levels of a social ensemble. Control over state power is an indispensable condition to undermine dominance and enable the commons. The representational, constitutional, and institutional architecture of power must be geared to this end. Such a pursuit needs to be secured through an apt moral anchor shored up through religious sanctions. In Ambedkar’s view only Buddhism can measure up to this demand.
(Source: Oxford University Press)

About the author

Valerian Rodrigues is currently a Jawaharlal Nehru University Fellow, Nehru Memorial Trust, New Delhi, and former Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He has taught at Mangalore University, Karnataka (1982-2003) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (2003-2015). Rodrigues has been National Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) (2015-17) and Ambedkar Chair, Ambedkar University, Delhi (2017-2018). He has also been Visiting Scholar and Professor at Erfurt University (2012), Wuerzburg University (2011, 2015), and Simon Fraser University (2019), and Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (1989-1991), Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla (1999-2001), and Max Weber College, Erfurt (2012).
(Source: Oxford University Press) 

Excerpts from the talk

On ‘frames’ of thinking

“A thinker has a kind of substratum on which he builds up his positions. What is that substratum? People have called it different things. You could call it ‘epistemic,’ you can call it ‘frame’. Say for example, Professor Amartya Sen calls it a ‘frame’. You can call it whatever term that you use. I was interested, what is the frame of thinking that this man [Ambedkar] employs to take up the kind of stances that he takes? And that remains invariant over the changes.”

The Ambedkar-John Dewey connection

“How does he [Ambedkar] go about thinking? … Recently there have been a lot of people who have been writing the connection between the American philosopher, John Dewey, and Babasaheb Ambedkar and some of them even have reduced Ambedkar into a footnote of John Dewey. I thought that these are claims that are not warranted.”

‘Being’ vs ‘Consciousness’

“Ambedkar thinks that ‘consciousness’ is primary for understanding and rejects the central Marxist thesis of primacy of ‘being’ over ‘consciousness.’ Ambedkar just reverses it and begins to say ‘consciousness’ is before and ‘being’ is defined by ‘consciousness.’ But this is not a two way process, but deeply interactive processes wherein consciousness undergoes changes but the nature of being also undergoes changes because you don’t merely think but you also act.”

Ambedkar’s idea of the ‘human’

“I think the idea of the ‘human’ is quite central to Ambedkar and, Ambedkar begins to begin to dwell extensively on that. The concept of ‘rights’ are dependent upon the idea of the ‘human’ and Ambedkar comes very strongly to argue the concept of ‘human dignity,’ that there is a unique dignity that people have and that dignity goes into making them as equal … The idea of ‘conscience’ is also quite central to Ambedkar and he also critiqued the tradition by invoking this idea. Ambedkar rejects the idea of ‘God’ and man and I hope, you know, an argument which he makes in ‘The Buddha and His Dhamma,’ I put it there in the idea of the human because he thinks eventually humans have to take charge of their own lives. They have to take charge, they have to be responsible and the idea of ‘God’ and the idea of the ‘soul,’ etc., do not allow human beings to take charge of themselves.”

We begin the new term with a faculty presentation by guest speaker Dr. Rochelle Pinto from Azim Premji University.

Abstract 

This essay revisits the historiography around the Foral of 1526, the initial document that embedded the Portuguese colonial state within the gāuṇkārī, a form of agrarian landholding in Goa. In the centuries that followed, complaints about revenue arrangements concerning the gāuṇkārī held the state accountable to the terms of the Foral as a pact that had been violated. These complaints appeared frequently enough to be an impetus to reread the document. The essay suggests that while these invocations of the Foral may have disingenuously over-read its pact with the gāuṇkārs, the issuing of the document implied a political relation between the monarch and the gāuṇkārs that tends to be elided in economic histories. Rereading the Foral against both, other kinds of sixteenth-century documents issued by the state in Goa, and against prior forais, helps revisit the political connotations and structures that the document may have introduced to its codification of the claims of the gāuṇkārī.

About the Speaker

Rochelle Pinto teaches English at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. Her interests include nineteenth century land disputes, and the relation between ethnography and the colonial novel. Her two books are Between Empires – print and politics in Goa (OUP, 2007) and Translation, Script and Orality – becoming a language of state (Orient BlackSwan, 2021). She was research fellow at the L’Institut d’Études Avancées, Nantes, 2019-20, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 2015-2017, and CSDS, Delhi, 2014-2015. She taught English at Delhi University, and at CSCS, Bangalore, where she co-directed a project, ‘Archive and Access’, between 2009-2011.

Faculty members of NLSIU will be participating in the 10th International Conference on International Law being organised by the Indian Society of International Law (ISIL). The conference is taking place from October 25 – 27, 2024 at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India. The keynote address is being delivered by the NLSIU Vice-Chancellor, Prof. (Dr) Sudhir Krishnaswamy.

Dr. Govindraj G. Hegde, Associate Professor of Law, NLSIU, will be chairing sessions at the conference, while two panels will feature the following NLS faculty members:

Panel 1 – Teaching International Law 

Dr Akhila Basalalli, NLSIU Bangalore
Dr Ashna Singh, NLSIU Bangalore
Dr Srinivas Burra, South Asian University
Ms Rohini Sen, Jindal Global Law School
Ms Dhanushka Medawatte, Colombo University, among others.

This panel examines the dominant narratives and teaching pedagogy of international Law.

• Akhila Basalalli traces a pattern of inward-looking normativity of international law and examines if the teaching pedagogy in global south is oblivious to the growing integration between the international and domestic legal systems.
• Ashna Singh argues that the teaching of critical international law through a well-articulated TWAIL framework exists but doesn’t yet properly account for the material and epistemological dimensions of caste.
• Srinivas Burra approaches the pedagogy of international law navigating between mainstream and critical.
• Rohini Sen uses two feminist pedagogical techniques – standpoint theory and relational analysis to unpack the category of ‘expert’ and ‘expertise’ in the domain of international legal knowledge-making through teaching.
• Danushka S. Medawatte argues that the pedagogues of international law are situated in the heart of a crisis which puts in juxtaposition international laws’ moral authority that decays through its double standards for the global south and north; and, international laws’ rejections within the socio-legal spheres of the global south.

Panel 2 – Challenges in Dispute Settlement in International Economic Laws 

Dr Harisankar Satyapalan, NLSIU Bangalore
Mr Arnav Sharma, NLSIU Bangalore
Ms Ronjini Ray, NLSIU Bangalore
Dr Saravanan, IIM Ahmedabad, among others.

This panel deals with issues related to settlement of disputes in the area of international economic laws, including international commercial arbitration, international investment arbitration and international trade law.

• Dr. Sathyapalan explores how various jurisdictions have applied the ‘commercial’ element in international arbitration to include or exclude ‘investment’ treaty arbitration from the scope of jurisdiction of national courts.
• Dr. Saravanan A examines the impact of amicus curiae submission on outcome of international investment awards while focusing on the development of transparency and public participation within India’s Model BIT.
• Ms. Ronjini Ray analyses the impact of EC Enforcement Regulation (No 2021/167) on trade disputes involving developing countries at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the absence of the Appellate Body.
• Mr. Arnav Sharma explores an Indian approach to dispute settlement in Free Trade Agreements with respect to sustainability issues, specifically looking at labour and environment chapters.

About ISIL

The Indian Society of International Law (ISIL), a premier national institution for teaching, research and promotion of international law in India was established in 1959, primarily due to the efforts of the late V.K. Krishna Menon, Former Defence Minister. Inaugurated by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, ISIL has carved a niche for itself among the community of international lawyers throughout the world. This would not have been possible but for the hard work of giants like Judge Nagendra Singh, Dr K. Krishna Rao, Mr. G. S. Pathak, Justice R. S. Pathak, Mr. Ram Niwas Mirdha, Prof. M. K. Nawaz, Prof. Upendra Baxi, Prof. R.P. Anand, Prof. Rahmatullah Khan and a host of others.

The DPIIT IPR Chair, National Law School of India University (NLSIU) is organising a special lecture to be delivered by Prof. William W. Fisher, WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Harvard Law School, on September 27, 2024. The talk is titled ‘Fostering Innovation, Production and Access to Pharmaceutical Products in Developing Countries’.

About the Speaker

Prof. William Fisher received his undergraduate degree (in American Studies) from Amherst College and his graduate degrees (J.D. and Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization) from Harvard University. Between 1982 and 1984, he served as a law clerk, first to Judge Harry T. Edwards of the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the US Supreme Court.  Since 1984, he has taught at Harvard Law School, where he is now the Wilmer Hale Professor of Intellectual Property Law.  In 2013, he created the CopyrightX online course, which is now offered annually to approximately 1000 students worldwide.  In 2021 he and Professor Ruth Okediji created a similar course on Patent Law and Global Public Health, which is now offered semiannually in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization.  He is currently the director of Global Access in Action, a non-profit organization, based at Harvard Law School, whose primary mission is improving public health in low and middle-income countries.

About the Lecture

Access to affordable, high-quality pharmaceutical products remains a critical challenge worldwide, particularly in the Global South. In this lecture, Prof. William Fisher will explore this pressing global health issue through historical insights, including responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. He will discuss potential initiatives that can foster local pharmaceutical innovation and production without requiring changes to the existing international intellectual property obligations. Through a set of legal and economic suggestions, the talk will explore ways to build sustainable infrastructure for local pharmaceutical industries in the Global South, while also addressing some of the key concerns of both proponents as well as critics of intellectual property rights.

Watch the lecture here:  

 

About the Speaker

Sanjay Jain is a Professor of Law at the National Law School of India, Bengaluru University and was formerly Principal of the Indian Law Society’s Law College, Pune. He is a leading constitutional law expert, and is shortly to publish a two-volume commentary on the Indian Constitution. Professor Jain is also well-known in India and internationally for his work on Disability Law, both for his academic work and for his activism and engagement with the judiciary and government. He has  intervened and been cited in some of the prominent cases in High courts and the Supreme Court and is currently carrying out research on the role of Judges in upholding the rights of Disabled people in pervasively Ablest  legal systems. He has led the Indian element of the Inclusive Public Space research project (based at the University of Leeds) and has recently been awarded a fellowship by the University of New South Wales and the University of Humboldt.

About the Seminar

This seminar will explore the potential for judges, operating in legal systems underpinned by ableism, to uphold and develop law  which achieves ‘enabling’ outcomes for disabled people. Professor Jain sets this discussion against the backdrop of ablist dimensions of the Constitution of India. He draws attention  to the potential for judges, within that system, to highlight the  exclusion experienced by disabled people and to evolve strategies for recognising and protecting their human rights and fundamental freedoms. Critical to the fulfilment of such potential, he argues, is judicial engagement with ideas developed by disabled people’s organisations and Disability Studies scholarship – as well as with international standards set out in instruments such as the  UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Please sign up here if you wish to attend.

For questions about the link or practical arrangements, please contact Grace Rogers (). 

This week’s faculty seminar will include two presentations by two of our faculty members. The first presentation will be by Darshana Mitra, followed by a joint presentation by Pranav Verma and Amrashaa Singh.

• Paper 1 | Darshana Mitra | An Uneven Land: Territorialised Citizenship in India
• Paper 2 | Pranav Verma and Amrashaa Singh | National Survey of Extra-Judicial Deaths: Draft Interim Report

 

This week’s faculty seminar will include two presentations by three of our faculty members on August 28, 2024 from 3:00 – 4:30 pm.  The first presentation will be by Kunal Ambasta, followed by a joint paper by Diya Deviah and Ammel Sharon.

• Paper 1 | Kunal Ambasta – “Burdens of Proof and Standards of Conviction: The Mechanics of the Presumption of Innocence through Indian Evidence Law”
• Paper 2 | Diya Deviah and Ammel Sharon – “Continuity without Cultivation? The Student, Writing Pedagogy, and the University in India”

Abstract of the second paper: 

The student in India has been cast as a political figure whose interests are tied in with social justice or the state. This paper rethinks the history of the student through archives of writing pedagogy in India.  We examine syllabi, answer scripts, composition manuals and reports on legal education reform to construct a history of writing and meaning making in English since the nineteenth century. Based on debates in the field of Writing and Composition Studies, we discuss contract grading and the role of silence in the classroom as avenues to develop student voice, and decentre classroom authority. Addressing challenges of the large and diverse university classroom, this paper resists the prefiguration of the student in socio-political terms, and argues for the classroom as a conceptual site in higher education in India.