National Law School of India University, Bengaluru is organising a campus visit at NLSIU on March 12, 2023 (Sunday). This campus visit will provide applicants to the NLSAT 2023 a unique opportunity to receive information on the 3-Year LL.B. (Hons.), Master’s in Public Policy, and Ph.D. programmes directly from the faculty members who teach these programmes, interact with current students, and get a chance to explore the University campus. Those interested in the 3-Year LL.B. (Hons.), Master’s in Public Policy, or the Ph.D. programmes are encouraged to attend. Parents/ guardians may also accompany the applicants.
Registration is mandatory. The last date to register for the campus visit was March 7th, 2023. A detailed schedule will be shared with registered attendees.
This week’s faculty seminar will feature a talk by Dr. Sebanti Chatterjee about her monograph – “Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality” – that was published last month by Bloomsbury. Prof. (Dr.) Atreyee Majumder will be the discussant.
About the speaker:
Dr. Sebanti Chatterjee, Academic Fellow, NLSIU.
Sebanti is a cultural anthropologist with an interest in Sound Studies, Religious Studies, and Gender Studies. She earned her doctorate degree in Sociology from the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University. Her areas of interest are anthropology of sound, visual documentation of cultural practices, research on gender violence and labour settings.
Abstract:
Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality is about sacred and secular choirs in Goa and Shillong across churches, seminaries, schools, auditoriums, classrooms, reality TV shows, and festivals. Voice and genre emerge as social objects annotated by tradition, nostalgia, and innovation. Piety literally and metaphorically shapes the Christian lifeworld, predominantly those belonging to the Presbyterian and Catholic denominations. Indigeneity structures the political and cultural motifs in the making of the Christian musical traditions. Located at the intersection of Sociology, Anthropology, and Ethnomusicology, the choral voices emplace ‘affect’ and the visual-aural dispatch. Thus, sonic spectrum holds space for indigenous and global musicality. (Source: Bloomsbury)
NLS faculty members Dr. Rinku Lamba & Dr. Aniket Nandan will be speaking as part of the Policy Adda at the BIC Hub’ba 2023 this Sunday, February 26, 2023. They will be speaking on the topic ‘Why Policy Education in a University Matters’. Dr. Rinku and Dr. Aniket teach core courses of the Master’s Programme in Public Policy (MPP) at NLSIU.
The Chair on Consumer Law and Practice, NLSIU is conducting a three day capacity building programme for members of the Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission of Kerala from February 1-3, 2023. The programme will involve sensitization workshops for members of the Kerala Consumer Commission who are involved in adjudication of consumer disputes. It will help address consumer disputes, specifically on product liability, intermediary liability, misleading advertisements, endorser’s liability, direct selling, e-commerce disputes etc., so as to achieve the objective of the Consumer Protection Act 2019.
The programme is being supported by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Department of Consumer Affairs, GoI.
The programme will be inaugurated by:
Shri Rohit Kumar Singh (IAS), Secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi.
Shri P M Ali Asgar Pasha (IAS), Secretary, Department of Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs, Ministry of Consumer Affairs Kerala.
Dr. M.T Reju, (IAS), Secretary to Government, Department of Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs, Ministry of Consumer Affairs Karnataka.
Prof. (Dr.) Nigam Nuggehalli, Registrar, NLSIU, Bangalore.
The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) along with the Inequality and Human Development (IHD) Programme, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) is jointly organising a panel discussion on PERSPECTIVES ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. The event is being organised on January 30, 2023 in observation of the 75th Year of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
The discussion will take place at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore from 3.30 PM to 5 PM.
Panelists:
Prof Narendar Pani Professor and Dean, School of Social Sciences, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore
Dr Aparna Chandra, Associate Professor of Law, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore
Dr Preeti Pratishruti Dash, Assistant Professor of Law, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore
Moderator:
Prof Sarasu Esther Thomas, Professor of Law, and Coordinator – Centre for Women and the Law, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore
Watch the full discussion here:
Organisers:
For any queries, please write to
Dr Anant Kamath, Assistant Professor, NIAS – or
The VC Office, NLSIU –
On 17th of January which marks Rohith Vemula’s seventh death anniversary, we are screening the film “WeHaveNotComeHere to Die” (2018) which chronicles the events leading up to Rohith’s death. We will be joined by the director Deepa Dhanraj for a session after the screening.
Deepa Dhanraj is a writer and an award winning film maker whose filmography covers topics such as population control policies, communal politics, women and customary law and civil liberties.
NLSIU is organising a lecture by noted Kannada writer, critic and teacher, Dr Rahamat Tarikere on Thursday January 19, 2023 at 5 PM.
The lecture titled “The Concept of Plurality: Some Notes” (ಬಹುತ್ವ: ಕೆಲವು ಟಿಪ್ಪಣಿಗಳು) will be held at the Allen & Overy Hall, Training Centre, NLSIU. He will be conducting the session in Kannada, Hindi and English.
About the speaker:
Dr Rahamat Tarikere recently retired as Professor from the Kannada University, Hampi. He is well known for his sharp insights and critical view on Kannada culture. Dr Tarikere is a three time winner of the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award for his travelogue Andaman Kanasu and his research on Sufis in Karnataka, and the Sahitya Akademi Award for Kattiyanchina Daari, a collection of essays on the cultural history of Karnataka.
The central problem tackled within this project is the conflict between postcolonial theory and Marxism. This debate is approached through the subaltern scholars and Marxists such as Vivek Chibber who argue against this form of postcolonial theory, arguing in favor of a universalizing force of capital instead. Identifying the congruence of the two schools as forms of theory that seek to aid emancipatory politics, the thesis attempts to do a reparative reading of the two schools, in order to allow for a newer manner of thinking about these modes of resistance. Centrally, the thesis attempts to do this by locating the conflict between the two schools as being rooted in the problem of how history is viewed. Classical Marxism views history through dialectical and historical materialism which is teleological and universalizing, while subaltern historiography is rooted in attempting to write bottom-up histories (histories of the people) which causes, according to the critique, an inability to conceptualize universal emancipatory politics.
Walter Benjamin’s theory offers a unique way to approach the problem of classical dialectics by allowing for a shift away from its teleology and universalizing impulse. This is done by viewing dialectical contradictions of history as already present and using the idea of messianic time to offer a way in which the present is disrupted when the past is brought into the present in its fullness.This is read alongside Dipesh Chakraborty’s critique of linear (Eurocentric) time from a postcolonial perspective, and the idea of multiplicity in Hardt and Negri. This reading allows a newer understanding of dialectics to emerge, which acknowledges postcolonial specificities (in the conditions in which contradictions emerge), while retaining the dialectical progression of history as a process.
The thesis then illustrates that such contradictions are already seen in moments of the Global South’s artwork and movements, specifically looking at the ghazal ‘Hum Dekhenge’ and the movement of ‘Naxalbari’. Hum Dekhenge uses religion in a unique manner and embodies a contradiction which is made possible by the material conditions in which it was written, as well as the history of the ghazal form itself. Naxalbari, on the other hand, does not embody a similar effective strategy of mobilization owing to its failure to make religious appeals as Birsa Munda did. Drawing from these two examples, it is argued that an effective strategy for emancipatory politics must account for the material conditions in which contradictions emerge in specific ways.
We invite you to this week’s Public Lecture featuring guest speaker Prof. Mahesh Rangarajan who will be delivering a talk titled, “Nature in Balance? State, Society, and Ecology in Independent India”.
About the Speaker
Mahesh Rangarajan is Professor of Environmental Studies and History at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana. Prior to this, he was Professor of Modern Indian History at the University of Delhi. He has also taught at Cornell University, Jadavpur University, and the National Center for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru. Prof. Rangarajan served as Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, from 2011 to 2015 and as the VC of Krea University in 2021- 22. He is the author of Nature and Nation (2015), Nature Without Borders (2014), and India’s Wildlife History (2001). He has also co- authored People, Parks and Wildlife: Towards Co-existence (2000). His coedited works are The Oxford Anthology of Indian Wildlife in 2 volumes (1999), Battles over Nature (2003), Making Conservation work (2007), Environmental History as if Nature Existed (2010), Shifting Ground (2014), Nature without Borders (2014) , At Nature’s Edge (2018). His new book, Nature Contested is currently in press. Mahesh did his BA from Delhi University; he holds an MA and DPhil from the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2021 he was elected Foreign Member of the American Historical Association, the fourth Indian to be named so.
Abstract
We live in epochal times not only in political or economic but also ecological sense. 75 years after independence, India is a political democracy with an economy growing at 4.5 per cent for over four decades. But along with challenges of deprivation and inequality are environmental issues. The latter relate not only to species extinction or climate change , air, and water contamination or mangrove loss but to a larger question. It may be summarised as how far a peace with nature can underpin societal challenges. A safe, livable, and habitable ecosystem that includes not only humans but other life forms is as elusive as it is vital. India’s imperial legacy as well as specific development choices in the last century mean there is no clean slate to start on. Yet, as the talk hopes to show, there are ways to draw on past debates and initiatives to pose questions afresh.
The past cannot offer any easy cut and paste lessons. But it can help ask how and why we got here and inform us on where to go and how. A life of material and human dignity for all is much a question of ecological as of the human sciences. What better place to begin than an informed view of how nature’s pasts shaped the present?
We invite you to a QAMRA Talks event on “Archiving Justice Movements of the Marginal: Lessons from Queer Emancipation & HIV Struggles” by Vivek Divan. The talk will be followed by a discussion by NLS faculty member Kunal Ambasta.
Vivek Divan, NLS BA LLB 1994, founded the Centre for Health Equity, Law & Policy at ILS Pune in 2019 after decades working at the intersections of health, sexuality and rights. His work as part of queer emancipation struggles and health justice movements has revealed the many ways in which the law – often outside the courtroom – is pivotal to the quotidian ways marginalised communities express courage, protect themselves, and demand emancipation. Vivek also acts as an advisor to QAMRA at NLSIU.
On 17th of January which marks Rohith Vemula’s seventh death anniversary, 
We invite you to a QAMRA Talks event on “Archiving Justice Movements of the Marginal: Lessons from Queer Emancipation & HIV Struggles” by Vivek Divan. The talk will be followed by a discussion by NLS faculty member Kunal Ambasta.