News Type: Event

The National Law School Of India University (NLSIU) invites you to a special lecture on “National Security and International Trade”, to be delivered by Professor Petros C. Mavroidis, on Friday, 19th January 2024.

About the speaker

Professor Petros C. Mavroidis is Edwin B. Parker Professor of Foreign & Comparative Law, at the Columbia Law School.

He served as a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) legal affairs division from 1992 to 1995 and has been a legal adviser to the WTO since 1996. He was the chief co-rapporteur for the American Law Institute study “Principles of International Trade: The WTO” (2013).

Mavroidis has written 10 books and scores of peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. His book, ‘The Regulation of International Trade’ won the 2017 Certificate of Merit in International Law for a distinguished contribution to the field from the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. The two-volume tome is a meticulous exploration of WTO agreements regulating trade in goods. The third volume of the series, dealing with Trade in Services, was published by MIT Press in 2020.

At Columbia Law, Mavroidis is a member of the Center on Global Governance and serves on the boards of advisers for the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law and the Columbia Journal of European Law.

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an increasing use of trade policies by high-income States, such as the US and the EU,  to pursue national security, economic security and policy autonomy objectives, and to protect and project societal values. A common feature of such interventions is that they are largely unilateral in nature.  In this talk, Petros Mavroidis will be discussing the findings and recommendations in his recent work regarding policy options to manage spillovers of such unilateral trade policies motivated by national security and other non-economic objectives on global trade and investment.

Note: The zoom link (available here) to join the lecture, will be activated on Friday, 19th January 2024.

In this week’s faculty seminar, Dr. Ashna Singh will be presenting on her paper titled “Exploring ‘humiliation’ in Section 3 (1) (r) of Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989” on Wednesday, 10th January, 2024. Dr. Karthikeyan D will be the discussant.

Abstract

The Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 criminalizes, amongst other things, in Section 3(1)(r) – anyone who not being a member of a scheduled caste or scheduled tribe “intentionally insults or intimidates with intent to humiliate a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe in any place within public view.” The use of caste names as slurs is covered under this section. This Act was brought about to protect SC/ST members from retaliations by non-SC/ST persons when the former would try to assert their rights. Humiliation by use of caste slurs is a form of retaliation. There have been a series of judgments in recent times from courts across the country that particularly dwell on the aforementioned offence. However, courts tend to interpret this provision very narrowly. The problem persists also because of how the provision itself is worded. The meanings of intentional insult, humiliation, and public view are unclear.

This paper aims to analyze how courts interpret this section, particularly in light of the word ‘humiliate.’ The idea of humiliation becomes important especially because the insult must take place ‘in public view.’ In case of the general offence of defamation, it is enough when at least one other person is privy to one’s defamation (whether stranger or not) but for an SC/ST person to have been insulted, the court likes to see if there has been some sort of spectacular humiliation of the victim. As per courts, this spectacularity is achieved when the humiliation occurs preferably in front of people (i.e., public) who are strangers to the victim and also preferably at a public place. Courts also tend to conflate ‘public view’ with ‘public place,’ thus furthering the private-public separation that Ambedkar recognized for its artificiality.

It is proposed in this paper that a purposive interpretation of this provision will further the object of the Act. In particular, it proposes to foreground the word ‘humiliate’ in Section 3(1)(r) of the Act by relying upon Gopal Guru’s edited volume titled ‘Humiliation: Claims & Context.’ Thinking of humiliation in its historical and present sociological context may therefore aid in understanding the meaning of ‘intentional insult’ in using a caste slur as well as help in revealing the artificial distinction between the public and the private.

The National Law School Of India University (NLSIU) invites you to a special lecture on “Moral Vaccination: Ideas and Institutions in the Control of Contagion in India and China in the 19th and 20th centuries”, to be delivered by Dr. Prerna Singh, on Thursday, 4th January 2024.

About the speaker

Prerna Singh is Mahatma Gandhi Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Brown University. She holds appointments across Political Science and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and is also affiliated with the Departments of Sociology and the Center for Contemporary South Asia. Singh is a fellow of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research (CIFAR) and co-convenor of the Brown-Harvard-MIT Joint Seminar in South Asian Politics.

Prerna Singh’s research focuses on the improvement of human well-being, particularly as it relates to the promotion of social welfare on the one hand, and to the mitigation of ethnic conflict and competition, on the other. Her work combines multiple methods including comparative historical, ethnographic, statistical, survey and experimental analyses.

Abstract

Prerna will present on her new book project in which she develops a moral theory of popular compliance with public health interventions, such as vaccination, through a comparison of China and India from the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century.

Selected Excerpts from the Lecture

“Most of my work so far has really been committed to this idea of trying to understand what are the conditions under which we promote human flourishing. The way that I have thought about human flourishing or well-being is through two broad trajectories, one is questions of social development, social welfare and the other is the question, which we might broadly define as us-them relations.”

“Withing the second trajectory, which is what I will be focusing on today, is trying to come up with this idea of a moral theory or the moral foundations of development. If we think about most of the ways in which we understand the drivers of human development, I argue that they can be reduced to a pretty ‘homo-economicus-rational actor model’ of trying to understand how development happens and the ways in which primarily state but other agents incentivize and prioritize social development.”

“In comparative politics, the main idea/arguments of why is it that the state is more likely to prioritize social development are that is a state is wealthier therefore it can afford to, or whether it is democratic the mechanism there is often that you are accountable to a ballot box, or political competition and being held accountable to a certain constituency.”

“So what I am trying to do is to shift towards an idea which is called ‘homo-morales’. Anne Marie Slaughter and Hillary Cottam call this ‘Sapiens Integra’, so not ‘homo-economicus’ but a much more wider Weberian conceptualization of rationality, in which we can think of things like norms, values, beliefs, world-views, trust, legitimacy and authority, as well as shared solidarities as being the drivers of development.”

“COVID has been this grim reminder of the specter of infectious diseases, and historically infectious disease remain the single largest cause of human mortality, killing more people than all wars, all natural disasters, and all non-infectious diseases combined. They have been the silent but decisive sub-text for political history, changed the course of wars (think of Napolean’s expedition in Russia, the decline of empires – the Holy Roman, the Ching, and the successive revolutions.”

“One of the most cited pieces in social sciences, an article by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, about how colonial institutions affect political and economic outcomes today, but again they argue that what determines the nature of colonial institutions particularly settler mortality or non-settler mortality or non-settler colonialism is actually settler mortality, which is influenced by infectious diseases.”

“The 20th century see this whole bacteriological revolution and epidemiological transition, decline in infant mortality, huge spike in life expectancy, but event today we continue to see this threat of vector borne diseases, and climate change is only going to make that much worse. Climate change is exacerbating the threat we face from new as well as existing pathogens.”

“Infectious diseases are so terrifying because of these consequences that I have laid out (in the lecture), but really critically because of this very chilling, stealthy mode of transmission, the fact that they kind of seamlessly pass through ever more tightly policed borders. Zica and Ebola, are a cause of major political concern in North America, in the way that poverty in the same countries in Africa and Latin America is not, as poverty is not contagious.”

“The overarching question of the project is really this – what explains the variations in the control of contagion historically, across political borders, despite shared epidemiological histories, and demographic and socio-economic conditions? So, that is the sort of broad comparative question, that drives the book.”

The National Law School Of India University (NLSIU) invites you to a special lecture on “Sub Continental Transitions: Ecology, Society, Economy in India (1930s to 2020s)”, to be delivered by Professor Mahesh Rangarajan, on Friday, 5th January 2024.

About the speaker

Prof. Mahesh Rangarajan is Professor of History and Environmental Studies and Honorary Chair Of Archives of Contemporary India, Ashoka University.

He was educated at Hindu College, University of Delhi and then at Balliol and Nuffield Colleges, both in Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Dr. Rangarajan has worked as an Assistant Editor with The Telegraph, Kolkata and has been a current affairs commentator with the audio visual media in both English and Hindi. He has previously taught at the University of Delhi and at the Krea University. He has also been a Visiting Faculty at Cornell University, Jadavpur University and at the National Center for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru.

He was Director, at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (2011-15) and has also served as Vice-Chancellor, Krea University (2021-22). He was Chair of the Elephant Task Force of the Government of India in 2010 and member of the Forest Advisory Committee with the Ministry of Environment, Government of India (2008-2012).

Abstract

The 1930s were momentous in many ways political and economic and ended with the outbreak of World War Two.  What is often not realised is that the ideas, debates  and practices on development had long term consequences for the larger environment. The changes unleashed during and after war time led to growth as first priority powering major shifts in human-nature ties right till the end of the 1960s. Drawing on critiques in selective ways systems of protection and repair came into being. By the early 90s these were under strain. There are challenges of keeping the environment habitable, safe and productive for the future and for non-human inhabitants of land, water and air. India Ekologika has to tackle futures while critically learning from the past.

Selected Excerpts from the Lecture

“We are living through very epochal transitions. India is not alone in that respect. There are political transitions and there is a large demographic transitions, there are economic transitions, there are social transitions. Each of these is complex and contested, as it should be. In many ways, I think the environment moved over the last fifty years, from being a subject which was important for livelihood and dignity for some, important in terms of ways of reconciling the multiple ways in which the very technologies that enable longer life spans, better nutrition, better outcomes in health, also exert enormous stress on the bio-physical environment.”

“This notion of polities which are geared to war, is a very important force shaping not only human societies, and polities and empires, but which has implications for the bio-physical environment. I want to emphasize this because the 1930s see the Japanese attempt to take over China, i.e., in 1937 and a lot of it was about warfare for resources.”

“A major issue that was debated in the thirties and forties – if there is to be an independent India, can it be independent in a manner, more self-assertive than the very sad history of the Latin American countries which become independent in the 1820s or many Arab countries, which become independent in the 1920s. So this notion of an independent India, which is not part of that larger military machine, has huge implications, surprising as this may seem, for the larger resources and endowments of the sub-continents.”

“India that emerges in 1947, is shaped both by the debates of the inter-war years and by the experience of the second world war. The second world war was a crucible and many of the policies and ideas that we see emerging in independent India, you can see their roots going back to the second world war. Take the Grow More food campaign, its given a lot of emphasis in the early years of independent India. It becomes a very important lynchpin of the first three five year plans, and the idea of growing more food, did make sense. From the 1920s, we enter a period of more rapid demographic growth…..in the newly independent country, this is true in India as much as is it in Pakistan, increasing production of agriculture, particularly of grain is seen as a priority, and one of the ways to do it is to expand the area of cultivable land. The expansion of cultivable arable land is given huge incentive.”

In this week’s faculty seminar, Sharon Singh will be presenting on her paper titled “Contextualizing Corrective Rape in an era of Transformative Constitutionalism in India” on Wednesday, 3rd January, 2024. Dr. Debangana Chatterjee will be the discussant.

Abstract

The discourse on homosexuality is underscored by the conception of social identities being inherently antagonistic. Definition wise, corrective rape refers to rape perpetrated against lesbians by straight heterosexual men with the intent of ‘curing’ their homosexuality but fundamentally speaking, apart from the curative intent element, corrective rape includes ingredients of being a hate crime based on a combination of gender-based violence and homophobic violence. It is also viewed as a form of sexual punishment for violating the traditional gender representation. Traditionally, corrective rape referred to commission of rape against lesbians but presently the scope of the term also includes commission of rape against any such individual who does not conform to the conventional typology of sexual identity. The intersectionality between patriarchy, heteronormativity, heterosexism, homosexuality and heterosexuality helps in understanding why homosexuals in general, and lesbians in particular are more prone to discrimination and violence. Targeted violence against homosexuals is underscored by a variety of factors, patriarchy being the chief cause of the violence against lesbians. The adoption of any technique which is aimed at curing homosexuality is in direct conflict with an individual’s right to bodily autonomy, right to dignity and right to equality. The preambular language of the Indian Constitution embodies these cardinal values and over the last decade, the judicial discourse on the rights of homosexuals has also gathered momentum such that it has encouraged a more progressive and inclusive State policy on this front. The theory of transformative constitutionalism has ushered in a positive change yet human rights violations of homosexuals continue unabated. For such inhuman practices to cease against homosexuals and for acceptance to flourish, beyond procedural and legal changes, value modification through social change is of vital importance.

In this week’s faculty seminar, Dr. Debangana Chatterjee will be presenting on her book titled “Lives of Circumcised and Veiled Women: A Global-Indian Interplay of Discourses and Narratives” on Wednesday, 27th December, 2023. Prof. Dhivya Janarthanan will be the discussant.

Abstract 

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 reveals 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.

In this week’s faculty seminar, Dr. Mayur Suresh, Senior Lecturer in Law, SOAS, will be presenting on his book titled “Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi’s Courts” on Wednesday, 20th December, 2023. Dr. Manpreet Dhillon, Academic Fellow will be the discussant.

Author bio

Dr Mayur Suresh is a Senior Lecturer in Law at SOAS, University of London and has taught at SOAS since 2015. He graduated from NLSIU in 2004.  His book Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi’s Courts (Fordham University Press, 2023) is derived from an ethnography of terrorism trials in Delhi. In 2023 Mayur was awarded the Leverhulme Research Leadership Award for a project titled The Social Life of Law in Authoritarian Contexts through which he will build a research team to do ethnographic and quantitative research into the state’s use of law to reconstitute society.

Abstract

This book is an ethnography of terrorism trials in courts in Delhi, India. Amidst the grinding terror trials—which are replete with stories of torture, illegal detention and fabricated charges—I found letters written to judges appealing for justice, an extensive knowledge of legal procedure, friendships with police officials, a cautious faith in the courts, and a deep sense of betrayal when this trust was belied. By looking at the everyday life of the law in these courts, I argue that legal technicalities enable forms of life to emerge in the courtroom. The book shows that though seemingly mundane, legal technicalities are fraught and highly contested and acquire urgent ethical qualities in the life of a trial: Legal language becomes a question of a form of life, the file becomes a space in which the world can be made or unmade, the petition a way of imagining a future, and investigative and courtroom procedures enable the unexpected formation of close relationships between police and terror-accused. I argue that in attending to the ways in which legal processes are made to work—through legal language, through files and the everyday interactions among lawyers, judges, accused terrorists, and police—we are offered a way of understanding how human expressiveness, creativity and vulnerability emerge through the law.