News Type: Event

NLSIU will host a public lecture by Dr. Betsy Rajasingh on “Copyright Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives,” on Friday, 1st March, at 4 PM.

About the speaker

Dr. Betsy Rajasingh is an Assistant Professor and Co-Director at the Centre for IP Research and Advocacy at NLSIU, Bengaluru. She teaches intellectual property and property law and offers electives relating to copyright and geographical indications. Prior to her role at NLSIU, she was an Assistant Professor at Saveetha School of Law, Chennai. She has also previously worked as a Legal Executive in Singapore and as a Legal Associate in Chennai, handling various legal matters. Dr. Rajasingh’s research focuses on intellectual property law, particularly the intersection of technology and law, which formed the basis of her PhD. She has authored a book titled ‘Digital Copyright Law – A Comparative Study of the Limitations and Exceptions Relating to Education’ published by Thomson Reuters.

About the lecture

The law of copyright provides a set of exclusive rights to the copyright holder, including the right to make copies of the work and share them. While libraries worldwide engage in making knowledge accessible through their operation and services, oftentimes they engage in activities that are in direct conflict with the rights of the copyright holder. To ensure that such activities are permitted, copyright law provides for certain limits and exceptions to the rights of the copyright holder and permits use of copyright works by libraries in the interest of the public. Dr. Betsy Rajasingh’s talk seeks to highlight the scope of these limits and exceptions for libraries and archives in the context of international and domestic law and the implications of digitization on the same.

Please register for the webinar here.

The webinar is open to all, with no registration fee. The webinar link and joining details will be sent to your registered email address.

About the Conference

The Government of Karnataka will host a two-day international conference titled ‘Constitution and National Unity’ on February 24th and 25th, 2024, in Bengaluru, India to commemorate 75 years of the Indian Constitution. The conference will focus on topics related to constitutionalism and social justice and aims to contribute to contemporary conversations on these critical themes.

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) will anchor Theme I (The 75th Year of the Indian Constitution) of the Conference.

Theme I: The 75th Year of the Indian Constitution

The National Law School of India will anchor one theme of the Conference. Theme I of the Conference, titled the 75th Year of India’s Constitution aims to recognise and celebrate the strides made in achieving the transformative goals of the Constitution while simultaneously addressing the contemporary challenges that persist.

The speakers in Theme I feature a vibrant group of academics, policy-makers and members of civil society. They will engage in generative discussion and debate, drawing from their research expertise and experience in government and civil society. By revisiting India’s constitutional founding as a reference point, the panels in Theme 1 will navigate the complexities of our present and reimagine our constitutional future.

Panel I: Constitutionalism and Democracy in the 21st Century
2 PM to 3 PM, 24th February (Saturday)

	Prof. Gopal Guru, Editor, Economic & Political Weekly, Mumbai; Retired Professor of Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
	Prof Tarunabh Khaitan, Professor (Chair) of Public Law, London School of Economics Law School, UK.
	Prof Nandini Sundar, Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics.
	Prof Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor & Professor of Law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru.

 

Panel II: Ensuring Equality and Equity
3:30 PM to 4:30 PM, 24th February (Saturday)

	Prof Sanjay Jain, Professor and Former Principal, ILS Law College Pune.
	Sr Adv Jayna Kothari, Senior Advocate, Karnataka High Court & Supreme Court of India; Director, Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bengaluru.
	Prof Sukhadeo Thorat, Chairman, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru; Former Chairman, University Grants Commission.
	Prof Meena Dhanda, Professor of Philosophy and Cutural Politics, University of Wolverhampton
	Prof Rochana Bajpai, Professor of Politics, SOAS University of London.

 

Panel III: Re-affirming India’s Federal Design
5 PM TO 6 PM, 24th February (Saturday)

	Prof Govinda Rao, Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy; Member of 14th Finance Commission.
	Prof Kham Khan Suan Hausing, Professor & Former Head, Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad.
	Prof Ashutosh Varshney, Director of the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences.
	Ms. Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive, Centre for Policy Research (CPR).

 

Panel IV: Institutional Safeguards for Democracy
9:30 AM TO 11 AM, 25th February (Sunday)

 

	Dr. Aparna Chandra, Associate Professor of Law, M K Nambyar Memorial Chair on Constitutional Law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru.
	Honourable Dr S.Y. Quraishi, Former Chief Election Commissioner of India.
	Prof E. Sridharan, Academic Director & Chief Executive, University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India, USA.
	Prof Arun Thiruvengadam, Professor and Faculty In Charge, V.R. Krishna Iyer Chair on Public Law and Policy Choice, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru.

 

Panel V: Forging Constitutional Culture and Consciousness
11:30 AM to 1 PM, 25th February (Sunday)

	Prof Shruti Kapila, Professor of History and Politics, Cambridge University, UK
	Prof G Mohan Gopal, Former Director of the National Judicial Academy of the Supreme Court of India, Founder Chair of the National Court Management Systems Committee of the Supreme Court of India.
	Prof Anurag Bhaskar, Deputy Registrar, Supreme Court of India; Assistant Professor (on leave), Jindal Global Law School; Affiliate Faculty, Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession.
	Mr. Bezwada Wilson, Co-Founder and National Convenor, Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), New Delhi.
	Dr. John Brittas, Honourable Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.

 

A discussion on NLSIU faculty Dr. Debangana Chatterjee’s book, ‘Lives of Circumcised and Veiled Women: A Global-Indian Interplay of Discourses and Narratives’, will be held at the India International Centre, New Delhi, on February 17th, 2024, (Saturday), from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm. The South Asian Edition of the book is available here.

You can also read our interview with Dr. Debangana Chatterjee, on her book.

About the book

The book unravels the politics of representation and the process of exoticising women’s bodies through the prism of external gaze and knowledge production. It brings out the intricacies of representational discourses around cultural practices of female circumcision (FC)/female genital cutting (FGC) and Islamic veiling. Focusing on crucial international legal texts and national legislation, the book gives an overview of the cultural nuances in FC/FGC and juxtaposes it with the Indian variation, khafz.

The author studies the international veiling narratives that conjure up a fractured discourse containing aspects of colonialism, Islamophobia, and Islamic fashion and maps them with the regional variations of Islamic purdah in India. The volume explores the cultural practice of khafz and purdah through narratives in India, portraying how representational factors from international discourses reflect on the Indian context and vice versa.

Amid the world of binaries and polarised opinions, the book offers a nuanced analysis of the space in-between, characterised by narratives from women. By situating women’s narratives in relation to family, community, state, and international politics, the book explores the global-Indian interplay of discourses on FC/FGC and Islamic veiling. This volume will be of interest to scholars, students, and readers of gender studies, feminism, cultural and religious studies, sociology, South Asian studies, and International Relations.

The flyer (for the book discussion) available here, contains a QR code and additional details.

 

 

In this week’s faculty seminar, Ammel Sharon will present her paper titled “Literature as Recovery: Text Criticism and the Kannada Public Sphere” on Wednesday, 17th January, 2024. Dr. Kena Wani will be the discussant.

Abstract

This dissertation studies how disciplinary knowledges shape the public sphere. Specifically, Ammel studies  the methods of three manuscriptologists over the 20th century and show how these shaped the Kannada public sphere in different ways. While Ammel puts the work of these manuscriptologists in  conversation with each other, Ammel frames each of their careers through one question, respectively.

These scholars, and the scholarly milieu they were part of, were involved in multiple public activities. They founded co-operative societies, associations, printing presses, newsletters and schools, they pioneered the editing and publication of hard-to-read manuscripts  that would find their way into textbooks and popular renditions, they intervened in caste-literary  discourse, and headed educational institutions. Yet, scholars in India have rarely turned the lens on themselves, and we have few rich and extensive histories of the sites of their work, that is, of  higher education in India.

In this dissertation, Ammel bring together an array of sources including several  memoirs of scholars, academic scholarship in Karnataka including essays, syllabi, university  magazines and textbooks, pamphlets, government records, legislations, matha publications,  correspondence and photographs to show how disciplinary knowledges can have a significant,  even fatal, influence on how societies and scholars understand themselves. The university, then,  remains a consequential actor in our times.

In this paper, Ammel will discuss the historical background, methods and concerns of Pha. Gu. Halakatti (1880-1964), a Virashaiva scholar outside the university based in Bijapur, and  D. L. Narasimhachar (1906-1971), a Kannada pandit who taught at the University of Mysore. Ammel ties these up in her conclusion by framing her dissertation’s concerns in  four broad themes: text criticism in community histories, the relationship between ‘discovery’ and  ‘recovery’ in the concerns of Kannada manuscriptologists, scientific method and social totality,  and the relationship between the regional university and religious institutions (mathas) in  Karnataka.