News Type: Event

Ethics & Texts@NLS Library | ‘Dharma and the Law’ by Dr. Arshia Sattar

The Library Committee at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru is introducing a series of events surrounding the theme “Ethics & Texts”. The first of these will focus on “Ethics & Epics,” and Dr. Arshia Sattar will discuss the topic ‘Dharma and the Law’. Dr. Sattar will consider ideas of dharma as they are presented in the Hindu epics, most especially in Valmiki’s Ramayana, and explore how such classical understandings might be relevant to our times.

The talk will take place from 5:15 pm and is open to the public subject to prior registration.

About the Speaker

Dr. Arshia Sattar is a translator and writer and holds a PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilisations from the University of Chicago. Dr. Sattar has worked with the Valmiki Ramayana for over 30 years and is particularly interested in the epics and storytelling traditions of the Indian sub-continent.

She teaches and writes about classical Indian literature in India and abroad. She has several publications, most notably an abridged translation of the Valmiki Ramayana which has remained in print since 1996. She has been a Fulbright Scholar in Residence at Hampshire College in the U.S. and a Rockefeller Fellow at the Rockefeller Centre in Bellagio. Her Mahabharata for Children was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Children’s Literature in 2022. In 2023, she was conferred the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for her outstanding contribution to literature.

Book Talks@NLS Library | A Woman of No Consequence: Memory, Letters and Resistance in Madras

The Library Committee at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru is organising a Book Talk on “A Woman of No Consequence: Memory, Letters and Resistance in Madras,” authored by Dr. Kalpana Karunakaran and published by Westland Books in 2025.

The talk will take place from 5:15 pm and is open to the public subject to prior registration.

Panellists:

About the book

A Woman of No Consequence: Memory, Letters and Resistance in Madras is an intimate, yet simultaneously anthropological, exploration of the life of Dr. Karunakaran’s maternal grandmother, Pankajam (1911–2007). The book captures the singularity of an exceptional woman, even as it situates her in a social universe shaped by the conventions of Tamil Brahmin orthodoxy. Dr. Karunakaran conveys with clarity how the ‘utterly ordinary’ life of a ‘woman of no consequence’ (as Pankajam writes of herself), lived out largely within the confines of family and kin, was quite far from ordinary.

The book draws extensively upon letters, glimpses of Pankajam’s life narrated through her thinly-disguised semi-autobiographical short stories that allowed her to ‘say the unsayable’ about love, intimacy and conjugality, and her autobiography, which she began writing in 1949 and kept writing till her last piece in 1995. What comes together is a riveting portrait of heartbreak and violence, yearning and delight, a housewife’s quest for intellectual growth and her talent for friendships across cultures and continents.

In the final reckoning, A Woman of No Consequence is about the chequered trajectories of a newly-born nation as seen through the lens of its daughters – restless women forcing home and nation to reckon with their stubborn striving for self-actualisation.

About the author

Dr. Kalpana Karunakaran is an Associate Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department, IIT Madras. Her research and writings are in the intersecting fields of gender, poverty, microcredit, women’s work in the informal sector, women’s trade unions and collective action in solidarity-based movements. A bilingual public speaker and writer in Tamil and English, Dr. Karunakaran conducts workshops and participates actively in campaigns for gender equality, labour rights and human rights organized by women’s movements, trade unions and rural development NGOs in Tamil Nadu. She also writes on women’s lives with a focus on the intersections between the personal and the political. She is the author of Women, Microfinance and the State in Neo-liberal India (Routledge 2017) and the Tamil memoir, Comrade Amma: Magal Parvaiyil Mythily Sivaraman (Comrade Mother: A Daughter’s Portrait of Mythily Sivaraman), published in 2018.

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Play Reading | The Exception and the Rule by Bertolt Brecht | The Green Room

The Green Room, student-led theatre effort at NLS, invites you to the play reading, featuring The Exception and the Rule by Bertolt Brecht. This session will take the form of a table read followed by a discussion, as per the details below:

Date: April 1, 2026
Time: 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Venue: Amphitheatre

About the Play

The Exception and the Rule is a Lehrstück (learning-play) that follows a merchant crossing a desert with his porter under conditions of intense competition. As suspicion and class tension escalate into violence, the play culminates in a courtroom trial that exposes how legal systems can normalise and legitimise inequality.

About the Playwright

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), a pioneering German playwright and director, is best known for developing epic theatre – a form that encourages critical engagement over passive emotional absorption. His works often interrogate social and economic structures through minimal staging and disruptive techniques.

Open to all NLS Community, whether you would like to read a role or simply listen and join the discussion.

Discussion | Public Interest Litigation from a Comparative Perspective: Legitimacy of Judicial Lawmaking

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, will host a two–day, closed-door discussion on “Public Interest Litigation from a Comparative Perspective: Legitimacy of Judicial Lawmaking,” on March 28–29, 2026 at the University campus. The discussion is being organised in collaboration with colleagues from the universities of Tilburg and Utrecht, the Netherlands.

This discussion forms part of a broader comparative research initiative examining how courts across jurisdictions engage with questions of legitimacy in public interest litigation (PIL), particularly in cases that raise complex issues at the intersection of law, governance, and public policy. The project brings together insights from multiple jurisdictions, including India, South Africa, the United States, and the Netherlands, and seeks to better understand how courts justify and construct their authority in such cases. The closed-door meeting focusses on India as an important case study because of its distinctive experiences with PILs.

The discussion will convene a select group of judges, legal practitioners, academics, and researchers to engage in focussed discussions on these themes. Deliberations will centre on key dimensions of judicial legitimacy in PILs, including questions of access to courts, judicial reasoning and fact-finding practices, and the design and impact of remedies.

As a closed-door discussion, participation is by invitation only. The format is designed to facilitate in-depth and candid exchanges among participants, contributing to an ongoing research effort and fostering collaborative academic engagement.

The discussions are expected to inform future research outputs, including comparative scholarship and potential policy-relevant insights on judicial lawmaking in public interest cases.

Play Screening | C. P. Taylor’s ‘Good’ | By The Green Room

The student-led theatre effort at NLS, The Green Room, is organising a screening of ‘Good’ by C. P. Taylor, presented as part of the National Theatre production as per the details below:

Date: March 25, 2026
Time: 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Venue: NAB 205

The Green Room is a nod to the intimate, lively backstage space in theatres where artists gather before a performance. The screening will be followed by an open discussion. 

About the Play

Set in 1930s Germany, Good follows John Halder, a liberal academic who slowly becomes complicit in the Nazi regime. What begins as a series of small, seemingly reasonable compromises made for career stability and personal convenience gradually leads to a profound moral collapse. The play examines how, unlike overt fanaticism, ordinary decency erodes under pressure, exposing the unsettling ease with which self-justification and ambition enable participation in systemic violence.

What makes Good particularly urgent today is its focus on incremental complicity that emerges through everyday choices. It reminds us that harm is often normalised in subtle ways, and that individuals rarely see themselves as doing wrong, even as they become part of unjust systems.

About the Playwright

C. P. Taylor (1929–1981) was a Scottish dramatist known for his politically engaged theatre. He wrote widely on history and morality, often blending these themes with elements of dark irony, with Good standing as his most acclaimed and enduring play.

NLS Faculty Seminar | Kabir: Within Bhakti and Without?

This week’s faculty seminar featured presentation by Dr. Rinku Lamba, Associate Professor, Social Science, NLSIU on ‘Kabir: Within Bhakti and Without?’

Abstract

Many prominent anti-colonial Indian thinkers recalled the phenomenon of bhakti as relevant for constructions and imaginations of political community. Among the pantheon of recalled poet-saints is Kabir (15C) who even today is known for the “confident” and “passionate” way in which he was “ever at odds with the world around him, always ready to fling the dart of criticism in the direction of established religion.” (Hawley and Jeurgensmeyer 2004 35)

Much reception of Kabir closely associates him with bhakti, which in turn is known to offer conceptual space for a critique of caste hierarchies and also for its equivocal stance on questions of democratic power.  However, a closer perusal of Kabir’s verses reveals their preoccupation with the themes of persuasion and judgment, and these are themes that demand reckoning with Kabir’s thought alongside but also outside of the frames of bhakti.  Such attention to these themes, in conjunction with a focus on other features of Kabir’s perspective – such as the individualism he expresses and/through his stance on religion – can illuminate significant aspects of the cultures of secularity and democracy in India.

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Roundtable on ‘Land Revenue Law Reform’ | By MoHUA Chair on Urban Poor and the Law, NLSIU

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Chair on Urban Poor and the Law at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru is organising a roundtable (RT) on ‘land revenue law reform’. The RT will be held on Monday, March 23, 2026, from 9:30 AM to 1:45 PM in hybrid format, at the Bangalore International Centre, Domlur, and online.

About the Roundtable

The roundtable intends to take stock of, and reflect upon, the various significant developments that have taken place in the field of land laws in India over the last few years. Recently, the Supreme Court’s decision in Samiullah vs. State of Bihar raised several important legal and policy issues — are Indian laws clear on the differences between “registration” and “title”? How can technological solutions play a role in cutting through cumbersome procedures? What documents are necessary and sufficient to prove title? The Supreme Court has instructed the Law Commission of India to prepare a detailed report on these questions.

The Government of Karnataka has undertaken significant reforms in land revenue administration, registration systems, and stamp duty frameworks, with a view to enhancing efficiency, transparency, and legal certainty in land governance. Building on these efforts, Karnataka’s 2025-26 Budget proposes a new land revenue legislation to be enacted after a comprehensive study for effective implementation at the field level.

At this RT, we will bring together senior members of the Government, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to share their expertise and perspectives on these critical issues. Faculty from the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge – Prof. Martin Dixon, Prof. Shailaja Fennell, and Dr Lovleen Bhullar – will join faculty from the National Law School of India at three distinct panel discussions on themes concerning land law reform:

Panel 1

  • Conclusive land titling: Despite mandatory registration under the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, India’s land system remains rooted in presumptive title, with fragmented records and competing claims. This panel examines the shift from presumptive to conclusive titling, with particular focus on questions of legal finality, error correction mechanisms, and the institutional architecture required to sustain such a system.

Panel 2

  • Comparative perspectives on land revenue law and reform: Panel 2 seeks to examine the shift in land governance toward facilitating industrial and renewable energy development. As land revenue law increasingly intersects with questions of planning, agriculture, and sustainability, this panel brings a comparative perspective to examine how different jurisdictions navigate these competing priorities and what lessons they offer for Karnataka’s evolving reform trajectory.

Panel 3

  • Land use and environmental perspectives: As environmental considerations (re)shape prevailing conceptions of what a ‘productive’ use of land entails, this panel examines the evolving interface between land revenue law and ecological governance. It explores how land use controls mediate tensions between development, proprietary interests, and sustainability, and whether revenue frameworks can meaningfully respond to emerging environmental priorities.

Guest Lecture | ‘Grindr Wars: Neoliberalism and the Postcolonial Queer Subject in India’ | by Dr. Shannon Philip, University of Cambridge

The Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection, and Activism (QAMRA), at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru is hosting a lecture by Dr. Shannon Philip, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. Titled “Grindr Wars: Neoliberalism and the Postcolonial Queer Subject in India,” the lecture will take place on Thursday, April 2, 2026, at 5 pm at the Conference Room, Training Centre, NLSIU.

The lecture is open to the public. Please register to attend.

Abstract

Grindr Wars: Neoliberalism and the Postcolonial Queer Subject in India

The rapid digitalisation, neo-liberalisation, and globalisation in India are profoundly transforming sexual identities and sexual politics. In particular, dating apps like Grindr are changing the ways in which young gay men’s identities and relationships are formed, mediated, and embodied. In this talk, Dr. Shannon Philip ethnographically explores the ways in which Grindr offers much needed visibility to young middle-class gay men in India where powerful heteropatriarchies marginalise their sexualities and masculinities. Yet at the same time, the inequality that marks this digital and neoliberal expansion means that gay dating applications like Grindr also reproduce these very inequalities of caste and class.

He reveals in particular the growing commodification of gay identities and sexualities that is mediated through digital platforms, producing a hierarchy between ‘classy gays’ and ‘poor gays’. Desire itself becomes commodified wherein ‘poor gays’ are not desirable bodies or identities and the performance of class and consumption becomes central to claims of sexual desirability. Grindr’s geolocating technology allows middle-class gay men to discriminate against ‘poor gays’ through the spatial and urban inequalities of cities like Delhi and Kochi, further amplifying the inequalities of caste and class. In this context, ‘Grindr Wars’ take place, which reveal the social and symbolic tensions, clashes, and violences that shape queer life in India today.

About the Speaker

Dr. Shannon Philip is Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. He is also a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His first book titled ‘Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony‘ was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

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NLS Faculty Seminar | Government Liability for Fundamental Rights Breaches in India: An Examination of the Writ Monetary Remedy

This week’s faculty seminar featured presentation by Balu G. Nair, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU on his PhD research paper titled ‘Government Liability for Fundamental Rights Breaches in India: An Examination of the Writ Monetary Remedy.’ He presented on ‘Chapter 3: Interpretive Principle: Fit With Case Law.’

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, the Supreme Court of India, under its writ jurisdiction, has been awarding compensation for the breach of constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights by government actors. This was made possible by the Court reading in such a power despite the text of Article 32 (which, among other things, provides for Court’s writ jurisdiction) not explicitly providing for it. The use of this power is also considered extraordinary as monetary compensation is usually to be recovered from trial courts through a civil suit.

Even after the passage of more than forty years since it was first awarded by the Supreme Court, the elements which make up a successful cause of action for this monetary remedy remain unclear. The judicial uncertainty has not been helped by the near complete absence of comprehensive scholarly accounts which attempt to make sense of this remedy, which he calls the ‘writ monetary remedy’.

Balu’s doctoral project, of which this chapter forms a central part of, attempts to derive a principle which could make sense of the Supreme Court’s case law on writ monetary remedy. While the thesis further attempts to defend the principle on the ground that it coheres with Indian constitutional law and established principles of remedial theory, in this chapter, he introduces the principle and tries to demonstrate how it fits with the case law on writ monetary remedy. In doing so, he argues that writ monetary remedy may be (and has been) awarded for the breach of any fundamental right and not just the violation of right to life and personal liberty in Article 21. Additionally, he also seeks to show that, despite the Court’s occasional suggestions that the remedy is available on a strict liability basis, i.e., without any fault on the part of the alleged wrongdoer, it has only been awarded when the breach is committed with manifest arbitrariness. Finally, he argues that the quantum of the award will primarily depend on the consequential pecuniary and non-pecuniary losses incurred by the rights-holder.

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Guest Lecture | ‘Encroachments or Convergences? A Complicated Introduction to Design Subject Matter under Indian Law’ | by Eashan Ghosh

NLSIU hosted a guest lecture by Mr. Eashan Ghosh, In-Charge IPR Chair at the National Law University Delhi, titled “Encroachments or Convergences? A Complicated Introduction to Design Subject Matter under Indian Law.” The lecture took place on March 18, 2026, at Krishnappa Hall, OAB.

Organised primarily for the second-year BA LLB (Hons.) students, the session was open to all faculty members, research scholars, and students at the University.

Abstract

The first set of substantive amendments to India’s Designs Act in over a quarter century are on their way. It has arguably never been a better time to get our heads around some foundational ideas on what designs law is and can be. In this lecture, Mr. Eashan Ghosh navigated the complex and controversial history of design subject matter in India. The lecture covered how lawmakers, judges, and practitioners have erred on both sides of the line in making this subject matter far harder to understand than it needs to be. It examined how the intrusions of copyright and trademark law have clouded our understanding of designs and clears out some conceptual space for how designs under Indian law might come to be understood in the future.

About the Speaker

Mr. Eashan Ghosh is an advocate specialising in intellectual property law, in private practice since 2011. He is In-Charge IPR Chair at National Law University (NLU) Delhi, where he also serves as the Programme Director of the WIPO Joint Masters in Intellectual Property Law & Management. Eashan, a graduate of the NLSIU (BA LLB (Hons), 2010) is the author of three book titles, the most recent of them being Imperfect Recollections: The Indian Supreme Court on Trade Mark Law (2024).

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