NLSIU’s Queer Archive for Memory Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) in collaboration with the Queer Judgements Project (QJP), hosted a book discussion at the NLS Library on ‘Queer Judgements,’ an edited collection which was published by Counterpress in January 2025.
The book discussion was moderated by Dr. Siddharth Narrain, Faculty Director, QAMRA Archival Project, NLSIU, with panellists:
- Vinay Chandran, Executive Director, Swabhava Trust
- Aishwarya Birla, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU
- Raju Behara, Researcher, Queer Judgements Project
- Deedee, Impact Consultant
- Radhika Chitkara, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU
QAMRA also displayed a small part of its collections for attendees to engage with at the NLS Library.
Abstract
The Queer Judgments Project is an initiative that evolved from disparate conversations between the current co-editors about how legal judgments related to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics could have been written in different terms in light of relevant legal frameworks. This project brings together friends, colleagues, scholars, and activists who are interested in improving and challenging the law and its application to make life better for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and other minoritized people and communities.
This edited collection is the first output of the project and the pages of this book re-imagine, re-write and re-invent judgments, from queer and other complementing perspectives. With an international reach and multi-disciplinary scope, this edited collection invites you to a queer dance through 26 judgments and commentaries.
About QJP
The Queer Judgments Project is an initiative that evolved from disparate conversations between the current co-editors about how legal judgments related to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) could have been written in more appropriate terms in light of the legal framework at the time. We wanted to cultivate a project that brought together friends, colleagues, and activists who were interested in improving and challenging the law and its application to make life better for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and other (LGBTIQ+) people and communities.
The main aim of the project is to re-imagine, re-write, re-invent, from queer and other complementing perspectives, judgments that have considered SOGIESC issues.
The project has an international reach and multi-disciplinary scope. Thus, individual contributors are free to choose which judgment they want to focus on, featuring voices from across the globe. Similarly, the audience is to include people outside of academia, marginalised people and young people.
About the Speakers
Vinay Chandran
Vinay Chandran is the Executive Director of Swabhava Trust, a non-governmental organisation in Bengalurur. Established in 1999, Swabhava works on providing access to support services for LGBTQIA+ populations. Swabhava’s programmes include the Sahaya Telephone Helpline (080-22230959), documentation and research, training and workshops, and support spaces for various LGBTQIA+ groups. Vinay is a peer counsellor on the Helpline and set up the projects in Swabhava. His research on healthcare perspectives on SOGI communities has been published (co-edited by Arvind Narrain) in Nothing to Fix: Medicalisation of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SAGE/Yoda Press, 2015). He is currently working on a follow-up book on healthcare discrimination in southern India.
Aishwarya Birla
Aishwarya joined NLSIU in 2022 as an Academic Fellow, and now works as Assistant Professor of Law at NLSIU and Research Associate for the Pluralist Agreement and Constitutional Transformation (PACT) project. Her broad interests include human rights law, anti-discrimination, refugee law, and constitutional law.
Raju Behara
Raju is a non-binary disabled poet and expressive arts practitioner whose work centers queerness, disability, and anti-caste resistance through hybrid forms like blackout and found poetry. Their practice focuses on chronicling and re-imagining erased histories of queer-trans communities via community-led initiatives, including a trans-led expressive arts cohort with the Piravi Art Community. In 2022, they initiated Redefining Queerscapes, a movement using workshops to transform legal texts into protest poetry, archived in the Queer Judgments Project, Reframe Journal and multiple anthologies. Their debut collection, Withering Tempests (2021), explores queer isolation, and their writings on queer-trans journeys in urban spaces in India appears in journals and queer collectives. As an EQUAL fellow and a collaborator with the Asia Pacific Trans Network, Raju documented systemic healthcare barriers faced by trans youth and led Queer & Quarantine, a crisis-intervention initiative, during the pandemic.
Deedee
Deedee is an independent impact consultant supporting Trans- and Women-led organisations across India. Her work is grounded in feminist, anti-caste, and anti-colonial frameworks. She previously served as South Asia Co-Leader at Ashoka Young Changemakers, a Washington D.C.-based organisation known for pioneering the field of social entrepreneurship. An experienced organizer and fundraiser, she has mobilized over $1 million and trained 10,000+ students and educators on the relationship between Empathy and Power in everyday praxis. Deedee holds a Philosophy degree from the University of Delhi, where she also partnered with the Vice Chancellor’s office to advance inclusive student leadership.
Radhika Chitkara
Radhika is an Assistant Professor of Law at NLSIU, Bengaluru, where she is also pursuing her PhD on “Policing Terror: A Legal Cartography of Institutions, Powers and Functions” as Dr. NR Madhav Menon Doctoral Scholar and a grantee of the Law and Social Transformation Grant administered by DAAD-UGC. She is an Editor of the National Law School Journal, and has over twelve years of experience as a human rights scholar and practitioner. Her research interests include policing and civil liberties, gender, and indigenous peoples’ rights.
Gallery
NLSIU’s Library Committee organised a poetry reading by 
Prof. Mohapatra recited the traditions he carries: his mother’s poetry, modern Odia verse, the Ramcharitmanas, and Faiz, alongside selections from his wide ranging collection in Odia and in English. The discussion flowed from the idea of a Puranic “Barshavatar” to questions about the relationship between the poetical and the political. In response, he read his rain poem on Socrates and spoke of his own examination of metaphysical ideas. The evening closed on a note of possibility and, as one student put it, “revolutionary optimism.”
Prof. Mohapatra has authored five volumes of poetry and has translated two volumes of Pablo Neruda’s poetry into Odia. A Fragile World, a book of his poetry in English translation, was published in 2008. He served as the national jury member for the Moortidevi Award of Bharatiya Jnanpith, Delhi, from 2013 to 2015. A volume of his poetry in Hindi translation – Buddha aur Aam – was published by Pralek Prakashan, Mumbai, in 2022. Prof. Mohapatra’s poetry carries not only a theorist’s critical gaze but, more importantly, a seeker’s voice. In terms of great uncertainty and disenchantment, his poetry seeks to re-enchant the world without drowning out contemporary realities.
The Law and Social Sciences Research Network (LASSnet) is pleased to 
Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based advocate and an Adjunct Professor at the Jindal Global Law School. He is the author of The Transformative Constitution (2019) and Unsealed Covers (2023). He has been involved in several contemporary constitutional cases, such as the challenge to the abrogation of Article 370, the electoral bonds case, the right to privacy case, and others. His work has been cited by the Supreme Court of India, and by various High Courts. He has served as amicus curae on two occasions before the Supreme Court of Kenya. He is also the author of three science-fiction novels, The Wall (2020), The Horizon (2021), and The Sentence (2024). (Source: HarperCollins Publishers India)
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The Career Services Office is organising a session on ‘Building your Rhodes Scholarship Application’ on Wednesday, July 2, 2025. Ms. Vibha Swaminathan, a 2025 Rhodes Scholar-elect from NLSIU, will deliver the session between 3 and 4 pm in room 104 at the OAB. The session is open to NLS students across all programmes and years.
The Queer Archive for Memory Reflection and Activism (QAMRA), housed at NLSIU, is screening independent filmmaker T Jayashree’s ‘Many People, Many Desires’ (2004) on June 29, 2025. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with T Jayashree and other members of QAMRA – Mira Brunner and Dr. Siddharth Narrain. The session is part of Bangalore International Centre’s Pride Programmes.
The Socio-Legal Review (SLR) was first published in 2005 by a group of students at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU). Emerging from the broader “law and society” movement, SLR was founded on the growing realisation that law cannot be meaningfully understood in isolation from social and political realities.
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