Ten years ago, we lost Priya Thangarajah — an aspiring young lawyer and activist who had worked both in India and her native Sri Lanka on issues of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, violence and human rights — when she took her life. Priya was a graduate of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, and Georgetown University, Washington DC, where she was also a Fulbright scholar.

To commemorate her life and work, this Human Rights Day, the Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) at NLSIU will revisit three reports Priya authored during her lifetime. Specialists will offer contemporary reflections on the themes they cover, to create a festschrift, a selection of deliberations on her legacy as a scholar.

These themes are:

• Queer couples and Habeas Corpus in India (co-authored with Ponni Arasu);
• Tamil – Muslim relations in Sri Lanka (co-authored with Mirak Raheem);
• Legal protections for queer persons in Sri Lanka

In addition, the panel will also cover a fourth theme, i.e. d. Queerness and mental health, with a focus on suicide.

Panellists

Our distinguished panel of specialists, which will reflect on Priya’s life and work, includes:

• RUMI HARISH is a musician, and a social justice and human rights activist. He identifies as a queer transmasculine person. Rumi has written four play scripts and has worked as a music director for various documentary films and theatre productions. He is a regular columnist for different media outlets, including previous columns in Kannada Prabha and Agni Patrika. His biography was recently written by Dadapeer Jyman, a young writer and theatre director. In 2023, Rumi received the Karnataka State Sahitya Academy Award, Sahityasree.
• MANAVI ATRI is a human rights lawyer and researcher working at Alternative Law Forum, Bengaluru, India. She works with the LGBTQIA+ community on issues of self-identification, harassment and the realization of the community’s fundamental rights. Her co-authored work includes Asserting Dignity in Times of COVID, Right to Love, Wages of Hate: Journalism in Dark Times, and Criminalizing the Practice of Faith, and From Communal Policing to Hate Crimes, a report on Dakshina Kannada.
• SHREEN SAROOR is a Sri Lankan peace and women’s rights activist. She founded the Mannar Women’s Development Federation (MWDF) to support women affected by the Sri Lankan Civil War, which MWDF assisted women experiencing war-related gender issues such as widowing, wartime rape and child soldier recruitment. After the War ended, she formed Women’s Action Network (WAN) in 2010 to advocate for women’s issues throughout Sri Lanka, including through law reform and legal assistance. Her work also includes micro-credit loan programs, domestic violence advocacy and support, and reconciliation between Sri Lanka’s ethnic and religious groups. She also advocates for reforms to Sri Lanka’s Muslim laws, campaigns for the rights of female workers, and fights against Islamophobia.
• SARALA EMMANUEL is a feminist activist, researcher and experimental filmmaker based in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. She is an integral part of diverse movements, including farmer and fisherwomen’s groups, women living with disabilities, grassroots queer collectives, autonomous peace movements, and trade unions. She is also part of regional networks such as Asia Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development, SANGAT South Asia, and DAWN. She is a founder member of the Feminist Collective for Economic Justice and currently acts on the Sub Committee on Gender and SOGI of the Human Rights Commission Sri Lanka.
• ERMIZA TEGAL is a senior Attorney at Law in Sri Lanka leading a chamber in public law and family law. Her practice works closely with victims of torture and domestic violence. Her work involves law reform and human rights advocacy, including protection for victims of torture and gender-based violence, family law reform,  plantation workers’ rights, and a feminist perspective on economic justice for Sri Lanka in the context of the economic crisis. She has served as a legal expert on State advisory committees on law reform. She holds a Masters in Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She was the lead Counsel for several mental health professionals and experts who intervened in the decriminalization case heard by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 2023.
• PASAN JAYASINGHE is a queer researcher, writer and activist from Colombo, Sri Lanka. In these capacities, he has worked as a policy advisor, legal researcher and election monitor in the past. He is currently completing a PhD in Political Science at University College London.
• VINAY CHANDRAN is Executive Director of Swabhava Trust, established in 1999, an NGO in Bengaluru, India, offering support services to LGBTQIA+ people. He is also a peer counsellor, a trainer on gender, sexuality and sexual health issues, as well as a researcher. He has written extensively on the mental health concerns of queer people and is co-editor of the book, Nothing to Fix: Medicalisation of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, and author of several articles at the intersection of sexuality, medicine and mental health.
• KAUSHIKI RAO trained in Bengaluru, India, as a mental health counsellor in 2017 and has been practicing since. She recently completed further training at the Toronto Institute for Relational Psychotherapy and currently practices as a psychotherapist in Toronto, Canada.  She primarily works from an intersubjective and self-psychology lens. She is particularly interested in how relational (social) structures such as caste, gender, race, class generate and inform intrapsychic dynamics.

Introduced by: Siddharth Narrain | Moderated by: Mario da Penha

RSVP Here

This will be a hybrid event, with the in-person component at the NLSIU campus, and a virtual arm on Zoom ( Join here)

The Green Room at NLSIU is organising a screening of the play Frankenstein (National Theatre Live) on Wednesday, December 3, 2025 (6 – 8 PM) at NAB 101.

Directed by Danny Boyle, this acclaimed staging features Benedict Cumberbatch in a riveting performance as the Creature.

About the Production

This National Theatre Live adaptation is celebrated for its visceral, cinematic staging. One of its most notable features is its alternating cast: Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller switch roles between Victor Frankenstein and the Creature in different performances. Our screening features Cumberbatch as the Creature, offering a powerful and emotionally layered interpretation of the role.

Danny Boyle’s direction employs minimalist yet dynamic design, expressive lighting, and a striking soundscape to trace the Creature’s journey from birth to betrayal. The nearly wordless opening sequence—depicting the Creature’s first moments of life—remains a landmark moment in physical theatre, demonstrating how movement, light, and spatial design can drive narrative with extraordinary force.

About the Playwright and the Play

Mary Shelley (1797–1851) published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus when she was just twenty, and the novel has since become one of the most influential texts in English literature. Blending gothic horror, early science fiction, and philosophical inquiry, Shelley’s story interrogates enduring questions of creation, moral responsibility, alienation, and the boundaries of the human. The tale of Victor Frankenstein—who animates life from dead matter only to abandon the being he creates—continues to shape global conversations around scientific ethics, vulnerability, and monstrosity.

In this week’s faculty seminar, Dr. Srikrishna Ayyangar, Associate Professor of Social Science, presented his paper titled ‘Pragmatism and the Populist Challenge in India’s Democracy.’

Abstract

Populist politics are, well, popular, because its supporters and adherents argue that such politics are practical and effective. This paper argues that there is something more fundamental at stake, which is at the heart of our democratic system, liberal promise, left-right wing perspectives, and policy practices. The paper argues that when the rug under Ambedkar’s pragmatism is pulled, everything else comes down along with it. And conflating practicality with pragmatism is perhaps the first inadvertent step in that direction.

The NLS Library Committee organised a Book Talk on the book Justice Making, Justice Spaces & Justice Users published by Goa 1556 in collaboration with Kokum Design Trust. The book is edited by Dean D’ Cruz, Reboni Saha, Siddhrath Peter de Souza, Varsha Aithala and Naomi Jose. The talk took place at the Ground Floor Conference Hall at the NLSIU Training Centre on Monday, December 1, 2025.

About the book

The book reimagines how justice systems can be reshaped to better serve the people, especially those historically disadvantaged. Focussing on public spaces in Goa like courtrooms, police stations, protest sites, and classrooms, this collection brings together voices of practitioners, activists, and researchers to ask: How are these spaces structured, and what must change for them to truly support those seeking justice?

The book contains grounded case studies and thoughtful reflections from the digitalisation of courts to protest movements and planning law and aims to offer a compelling and people-centred vision of justice.

About the Panellists

• Varsha Aithala is an Assistant Professor of Law and a doctoral candidate at the National Law School of India University. Her doctoral work focusses on legal aid in India. She is a partner at Justice Adda, a law and design thinking based social enterprise. Her teaching and research interests cover areas of access to justice, law and technology and private law. Varsha has significant corporate practice experience in India and the United Kingdom. She is qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales and as an advocate in India.
• Dr. Siddharth Peter de Souza is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, Warwick University. His work explores how data is governed globally in contested, and plural settings. He is also the founder at Justice Adda.
• Dr. Siddharth Narrain is an Assistant Professor of Law at the National Law School of India University, whose work focusses on public law, law and media, human rights law, and gender and sexuality related law. Siddharth’s Ph.D. thesis titled Facebook’s Crowds and Publics: Law, Virality & the Regulation of Hate Speech Online in Contemporary India (UNSW, Sydney 2023) investigates how virality has enabled digital harms including hate speech online that has led to serious challenges to platform governance in the Indian context.

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The National Human Rights Commission Chair on Human Rights, NLSIU in collaboration with Pacta, a Bengaluru-based law firm, organised a panel discussion on ‘Access to Justice’ based on a recently released report, on Wednesday, November 26, 2025.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD Act) guarantees access to justice for persons with disabilities. Pacta’s ‘Access to Justice for Persons with Disabilities: A Data-informed Report’ examines how well that guarantee has translated into improved access across four critical pillars of the Indian Justice System: Police, Prisons, Judiciary and Legal Aid. The report primarily focusses on the lack of data across the system, which invisibilises the struggles (such as inaccessible infrastructure, lack of sensitivity within institutions, disparate mandates at various levels, and non-uniform practices across States) faced by persons with disabilities. This leads to a gap in awareness at an institutional level, making it challenging to take corrective measures.

This panel discussion began by sharing some of the major findings from the report. This includes a brief overview of the mandates for inclusion and data collection across the four pillars, the availability of data based on specific indicators and sub-indicators, some of the major issues that have been identified and recommendations to mitigate them. The discussion then turned to the diverse group of panellists, to seek their views on the inaccessibility plaguing our justice system, the utility of data-availability to tackle systemic challenges and analyse potential solutions to improve access to justice for persons with disabilities.

Panellists

Dr. Viswesh Sekhar, a senior advocate specialising in disability law. He has a Ph.D. from Symbiosis International University, on “Reasonable Accommodation and Accessibility as Human Rights of the Physically Disabled Person in India”. Dr. Sekhar has contributed to key reports and legal reforms, including the “Finding Sizes for All: A Report on the Status of the Right to Accessibility in India” report of the CDS Centre NALSAR, commissioned by the Supreme Court and quoted in the landmark Rajive Rathuri judgment. He was the only lawyer in the 16-member team of NGO representatives from India who attended the CRPD Committee at the United Nations, Geneva in 2019.

 

Mr. Shreehari Paliath, India Justice Report. Formerly, as a journalist, he has reported on social justice issues including labour, migration and criminal justice, and public policy, using public data. He won the Laadli Media & Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity in 2023 and 2025, and is a recipient of MSF’s Without Borders Media Fellowship.

 

 

Ms. Darshana Mitra, Assistant Professor of Law and Director-Clinics at NLSIU. Darshana has previously taught at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Kolkata, and has worked as a researcher at the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore. She is also the co-founder and director of Parichay, a collaborative legal aid clinic that works on citizenship deprivation and statelessness in Assam. At Columbia, she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and a recipient of the Human Rights Fellowship, the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship, and the 2019 Human Rights Institute Commendation for Leadership and Commitment in Human Rights. Her interests lie in citizenship and immigration law, human rights law, gender, child rights, and clinical legal education.

 

Ms. Varsha Aithala, Assistant Professor of Law and a doctoral candidate at NLSIU. She has worked as a corporate lawyer in leading Indian law firms and has significant corporate practice experience in India and the United Kingdom. Previously, she was a research fellow and faculty at the School of Policy and Governance, Azim Premji University. Her teaching and research interests cover the areas of access to justice, law and technology, private law and social investment. Varsha is qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales and as an advocate in India. Her doctoral work focuses on legal aid and courts in India.

 

Mr. Mohammad Abdurazak, a first-year LLB (Hons.) student at NLSIU who holds a BA in English from St. Joseph’s University, Bangalore. A para-athlete who has represented Karnataka at the National Paralympics in swimming, he has also written on disability and allied subjects, with publications in the Museum of Art and Photography and other outlets. His research interests include disability praxis and critical disability studies.

The Green Room held a reading of Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi on November 26, 2025 (5 pm–7 pm) at NAB 101.

Draupadi (originally Dopdi, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) is among her most iconic works. Reimagining the mythic figure of Draupadi within the harsh landscape of counterinsurgency operations in contemporary India, the story turns the epic heroine into a revolutionary tribal woman at war with state power.

Author and the Text

Mahasweta Devi (1926-2016) was one of India’s most powerful and influential literary voices — a writer whose work (foundational in subaltern and feminist literature) consistently cut through layers of state violence, gendered oppression, and the lived realities of marginalised communities, especially Adivasi groups. Her stories are unsparing, political, deeply humane, and often unsettling in the questions they force us to confront.

Reflections

This searing and politically charged short story, written against the backdrop of the Naxalite movement, confronts the machinery of state violence, the language of war, and the embodied resistance of a subaltern woman.

The session opened with a collective reading led by our volunteers, followed by an engaging and deeply thoughtful discussion on the text’s major concerns — the State’s transgression of its own legal order, the aesthetics through which violence is justified, the liberal subject’s complicity in oppressive structures, and the brutalisation of marginalised bodies under counterinsurgency regimes. Participants also reflected on the force of Dopdi’s final act of refusal, and how it reshapes questions of agency, vulnerability, and political defiance.

Director Samragni Dasgupta enriched the conversation with insights from theatrical practice, exploring how this intense narrative might be adapted for the stage through lighting, movement, spatial design, and the creative use of archival material. Her inputs opened up a wider conversation on the possibilities and challenges of translating politically dense prose into performance.

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We invite curious, interested and aspiring students, lawyers and other professionals to the open house on NLSIU’s Master’s Programme in Public Policy. This conversation will revolve around public policy education and practice, focussing on the curriculum and pedagogy of what NLS has to offer in this subject. This discussion will be hosted at the Lecture Room 1, India International Centre, New Delhi from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm on December 7, 2025.

The open house will be conducted by the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Public Policy programme at NLS – Dr. Srikrishna Ayyangar and Dr. Devyani Pande. Having a combined experience of around three decades in this field both in India and abroad, they will convey the distinctive approach that NLS has to offer in public policy education.

Context

Over the past two decades, public policy has fundamentally changed the landscape of governance in India. With more than 60 academic programmes and a multi-billion-dollar public policy industry in India today, professionals to work in the area of public policy are certainly in demand and on the rise. These jobs range from strategic advisory, policy analysis, evaluation and monitoring of government programmes and advocating for issues in the public interest such as climate and environment advocacy, energy sufficiency, gender and human rights, and community empowerment. Be that as it may, different public policy professional programmes offer a distinct approach to educating aspiring professionals to meet the needs of this profession.

The Master’s Programme in Public Policy (MPP) at the National School of India University (NLSIU) offers one such distinctive approach. Being one of the first to launch a full-time MPP programme in India and having faculty with diverse experience with global and local academic backgrounds from a variety of disciplines and including some of the founding faculty and students of NLS, the MPP has adapted and is at the forefront of public policy education today.

The MPP provides a comprehensive education for aspiring public policy professionals to constructively meet the challenges of complex public problems. Our programme comprises relevant and contemporary perspectives from the social sciences, multi-methods research, experiential and immersive field projects and internships. Additionally, how governments function cannot be fully understood by only looking only at data-based evidence and socio-political contexts. Data helps to evaluate how governments act because data reflects government action. And laws help to assess how governments think. Public policy requires understanding administrative procedures, constitutional norms and a case-based understanding of how governments think and act. This programme is distinctive because it is singularly poised to also provide an exemplary foundation in the law relevant to public policy.

To register for the event, please click here.

A PDF version for circulation is also available here.

In this week’s faculty seminar Manish, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU presented his paper titled ‘Persistence of the world-class city: good governance and slum rehabilitation in contemporary Delhi’. The discussant was Dr. Sushmita Pati, Associate Professor of Social Science, NLSIU.

Abstract

This essay analyses contemporary slum rehabilitation policy in Delhi, India’s capital city—comprising the Delhi Slum and JJ Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy 2015 and its enabling statute, the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board Act 2010—using the framework of urban international law. It seeks to examine the policy framing of ‘slums’ as a problem needing the solution of ‘rehabilitation,’ and interrogate its assumptions and representations. In doing so, it shows that urban international law influences this framing through the logics of ‘good governance’ and the ‘world-class city’, and that in reproducing these logics the policy perpetuates existing inequalities experienced by the urban poor in Delhi.

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NLSIU launches a new conversation series by eminent speakers titled ‘Crafting Careers’ this week.  The inaugural session in this series features Mr. Vikram Bhat, Director of the Bangalore International Centre on November 22, 2025, from 2 pm to 3 pm at the NLS campus.

Crafting Careers

Crafting Careers is a new conversation series at the University under the NLS BA (Hons) programme, designed to help students navigate the world of work. Each session in the series brings leading professionals from fields such as media, government, public policy, business, finance, and the creative arts to campus for candid conversations about their journeys. These experts will share insights and advice from their professional experiences and offer reflections on how social science majors may relate to different career pathways. These dialogues will offer students a chance to learn from diverse experiences, gain practical insights, and reflect on how to build careers that align with their own interests, skills, and values.

About the Speaker

Vikram Bhat, presently the Director of the Bangalore International Centre, is a passionate educator who has had previous successful careers in technology and finance. In education, his areas of interest are educational equity, designing curricula for lifelong learning, and teacher training. He is particularly inspired by the potential of design thinking and an integrated Arts curriculum to transform educational systems.

Previously, Vikram worked as an advisor in the Deputy CM’s office in Delhi where he was a key member of the education task force which has transformed Delhi’s government schools. Before this, he served as the Vice Principal of an affordable private school in Central Bengaluru, prior to which he taught full-time at Parikrma, a unique NGO in Bengaluru that strives to provide high-quality education to slum children. He also held senior management positions at Dream a Dream & Teach For India, two of India’s most respected non-profits working in the education sector.

Prior to his career in education, he was the Vice-President of portfolio trading at Sanford Bernstein & Co., a pioneering equity research firm in New York, playing a key role in setting up their New York and London electronic trading operations.

He holds a B.E. in Electronics Engineering from the University of Mumbai, a Masters in Computer Science from New York University, and more recently, a Bachelor of Education from Christ University. He has also attended short-term courses at the d.school at Stanford University and Project Zero at Harvard University.

Vikram’s younger self is an avid long-distance runner having completed over 25 races and is a passionate film and theatre buff.

Watch the Session Video