Imagining the Post-colonial Lawyer: Legal Elites and the Indian Nation-State, 1947–1967

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-186
Author(s):  
Alexander WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Public Law ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Indian Nation

AbstractA key feature of British rule in India was the formation of a class of elite metropolitan lawyers who had an outsized role within the legal profession and a prominent position in Indian politics. This paper analyzes the response of these legal elites to the shifting social and political terrain of post-colonial India, arguing that the advent of the Indian nation-state shaped the discursive strategies of elite lawyers in two crucial ways. First, in response to the slipping grasp of lawyers on Indian political life and increasing competition from developmentalist economics, the elite bar turned their attention towards the consolidation of a national professional identity, imagining an ‘Indian advocate’ as such, whose loyalty would ultimately lie with the nation-state. Second, the creation of the Supreme Court of India, the enactment of the Constitution of India, and the continuous swelling of the post-colonial regulatory welfare state partially reoriented the legal elite towards public law, particularly towards the burgeoning field of administrative law.

Citizens, the Smoking Guns of AFSPA and Bare Life in Northeast India

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-367
Author(s):  
Vibha Arora
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Indian Government ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Disturbed Areas ◽  
Indian Nation

At the heart of ‘Indian nation-state making’ in the post-colonial context is dominant imagery and imaginary of Indian-ness, and there is an uncertain relationship between legitimate and illegitimate violence, and debate on integration and coercion of diverse nationalities in this state-nation. The ethnic nationalities of India’s Northeast have not been well integrated into the Indian imaginary and share a sense of belonging. Insurgency shapes the politics of this borderland and fuels secessionist aspirations and led to a demarcation of disturbed areas and exceptional citizens. Following Foucault and Agamben, I highlight the immense ‘unchecked’ sovereignty and biopolitical control of the Indian government to demarcate zones of democratic exception in Northeast India and enforce laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to perpetuate its domination, militarise and radically decide on matters of life. The law is draconian in its implications and I review some of the extant literature that reveals the ‘bare life’ enjoyed by some Indian citizens. Integrating ethnographic voices from Manipur, this paper deepens our critical perspective on the AFSPA to understand its fundamental impact on everyday life and routine violence in Manipur and the consequent emigration of its citizens.

The Nation and Its Queers

Out of Time ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 174-212
Author(s):  
Rahul Rao
Keyword(s):  
Great Power ◽  
Gender Transition ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Colonial Archive ◽  
Gender Trouble ◽  
The Right ◽  
Caste Groups ◽  
The Relationship

In 2014, the Supreme Court of India endorsed the demand of trans petitioners for recognition as a ‘backward’ class, entitling them to constitutional guarantees of affirmative action. The equation of transness with backwardness seems to reiterate the ascription of primitiveness to the queer in the colonial archive. In Indian politics, backwardness has different connotations arising out of the struggles of subordinate caste groups. This chapter explores the perils and potentials of the trans claim to backwardness, asking what an appeal to Dalit leader Ambedkar’s politics of futurity means for trans politics. On a parallel register, the chapter explores the relationship between gender identity and backwardness in the imagination of the nation itself, demonstrating how an elite drive for great power status is articulated through the idiom of gender transition. Finally, the chapter reflects on the potentials of gender trouble on both the right and left of the Indian ideological spectrum.

On the Problem of Nation(alism): Persistence and Absence in the Indian Post-Colony

2021 ◽  
pp. 174387212110076
Author(s):  
Roshan de Silva-Wijeyeratne ◽  
Edward Synot
Keyword(s):  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
The Future

The search for an origin of the nation is destined to remain structured by an aporia that signals the productive irresolution of signification. In a sense, presence is always to arrive in the future, to be made anew. In post-colonial India the Muslim other embodies the ghostly trace of an undecidable figure that characterizes the aporia at the heart of the claim of Hindutva nationalism to a universal purchase on Mother India. The Muslim other then, as the ghost of the undecidable, becomes a metaphor for the fundamental fracture or split in the Hindutva nationalist imaginary, a specter which cannot be resolved and which indeed founds the very (im)possibility of the Hindutva Indian nation itself.

‘Using’ Crisis of Governance as an Opportunity for ‘Re-invention’: Why the Supreme Court of India Took To Hearing Public Interest Litigations—A Case Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-223
Author(s):  
Subrata Biswas
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The People ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Right

What do the different State organs do when they face a crisis? Do the suffering institutions successfully re-invent themselves or is it that some other institution uses the crisis to find an ‘opportunity’ to re-invent itself? Can one’s crisis be another’s opportunity? This case-study analyses how the Supreme Court of India (hereinafter SCI) reinvented itself in a bid to further the cause of good governance in the country ever since emergency had been clamped on the nation towards the end of 1970s. Surely there has been a crisis of governance in India, caused by the pathetic performance of both the legislature and the executive. It has led to myriad problems in both social and political arenas. If left unaddressed, Indian people might have turned more violent than they already are and that could have perpetrated a failure of democracy in the country. But the SCI has successfully played a positive role in this regard. If the other institutions have failed the people, the Supreme Court has championed their cause. The world’s largest democracy stands saved until now. But is it wholly the judges’ heartfelt concern for the people that has prompted the Supreme Court to function in this fashion? Did anything go wrong during the emergency? Why is it that it has been more and more active ever since the emergency ended? And why is it that there has been an exponential growth in public interest litigations (hereinafter PILs) in the Supreme Court even though it cannot handle so many cases because of infrastructural paucities? Situating itself in the specific context of PILs entertained by the SCI and supporting it with the theoretical inputs of the so-called ‘principal-agent framework’, this essay argues that there has been a competition (i.e., between the court and the elected politicians) for ‘occupying’ more space in the domain of governance since the inception of the Constitution and it is only the Supreme Court that got the right ‘opportunity’ to achieve its objective in the wake of crisis in governance that became so visible in Indian politics ever since the fag-end of the 1970s. While the court tried other instruments earlier in its game plan vis-a-vis the elected politicians, the crisis situation since the end of the 1970s made it ‘invent’ a new tool in the form of PILs capable of safeguarding the interests of the people and insulating them against the mindless functioning of multiple state agencies. But how far can the SCI (hereinafter SCI) proceed with this new tool? Is there a risk of ‘overusing’ it? Does the court not have its own limitations in this regard, too? What should the Supreme Court do in order to avert a fresh ‘crisis’?

scholarly journals IS DECOLONIZATION OR REVITALIZATION OF EDUCATION NECESSARY IN POST-COLONIAL INDIA? A PHILOSOPHICAL INTROSPECTION

2019 ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
Amita Valmiki
Keyword(s):  
Education System ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
Indian Education ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British Rule

The material is to go back to the work of the master-academicians of British Rule and Post British Rule times. Some asked for radical change in the education system, like Rabindranath Tagore; but people like M. K. Gandhi were moderate and thought of self-sufficient education system. Many other academicians till date are figuring out new educational policies either to ‘decolonize’ or ‘revitalize’ Indian Education System; this being the Indian ‘post-modern deconstruction’ of rigid and orthodox being replaced by progressive and invigorating policies; not giving up the old but ‘revitalizing’ the old in new scenario.

IMAGINING INDIA, DECOLONIZING L'INDE FRANÇAISE, c. 1947–1954

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 1141-1165 ◽  
Author(s):  
AKHILA YECHURY
Keyword(s):  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
French India

AbstractThis article examines the final years of French rule in India. It questions the established narrative of the merger of the French settlements, which implied that they were always a ‘natural’ part of the Indian Union. It argues, on the contrary, that a full merger was only one of several possibilities for the various actors involved in the negotiations that took place between the independence of India in 1947 and the French withdrawal in 1954. Even those who supported a merger did so for different reasons, while a significant proportion opposed the merger on economic, social, and historical grounds. By examining more closely the opposing positions in the merger debate, we can locate them within the larger tensions of early post-colonial India – a new state that was struggling to define its geographical and ideological boundaries. This suggests that the decolonization of French India was not simply another chapter in French imperial decline; it was also an important example of Indian nation-building.

Personal Liability: Forging New Tools of Accountability in Public Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 001955612110105
Author(s):  
M. P. Chengappa ◽  
Adya Jha
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Public Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Accountability ◽  
The Public ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Personal Liability

In 1991, two decisions passed by benches headed by Kuldip Singh J. marked an unprecedented shift to holding public officers personally liable to pay damages for arbitrary orders. The Supreme Court of India imposed damages to the quantum of fifty lakh rupees on Captain Satish Sharma, the former Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, for arbitrarily allotting fifteen petrol outlets out of his discretionary quota to allottees related to him or his officials. Similarly, Sheila Kaul, the former Minister of Urban Development, was ordered to pay damages of sixty lakh rupees for illegal allotment of shops from her discretionary quota to her associates. While the two decisions ushered in a revolution of personal liability in the arena of public law, one was overturned by a review judgement, and the other has been simply forgotten despite being upheld in the review petition. In light of the growing number and prominence of misfeasance by public officers, this article considers the need for rethinking the theory of personal liability to compensate the public or individual loss adequately, deter the officials and assess it as an alternative to traditional mechanisms of public accountability.

Labels, Histories, Politics: Indian/South Asian Dance on the Global Stage

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
AVANTHI MEDURI
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The South ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Uk

In this paper, I discuss issues revolving around history, historiography, alterity, difference and otherness concealed in the doubled Indian/South Asian label used to describe Indian/South Asian dance genres in the UK. The paper traces the historical genealogy of the South Asian label to US, Indian and British contexts and describes how the South Asian enunciation fed into Indian nation-state historiography and politics in the 1950s. I conclude by describing how Akademi: South Asian Dance, a leading London based arts organisation, explored the ambivalence in the doubled Indian/South Asian label by renaming itself in 1997, and forging new local/global networks of communication and artistic exchange between Indian and British based dancers and choreographers at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Search for Principle - The Government's Liability in Negligence for the Careless Exercise of its Statutory Powers

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 629
Author(s):  
Thomas Geuther
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Public Authority ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
High Court ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
High Court Of Australia

For many years the English courts have struggled to develop a principled approach for determining when a public authority can owe a duty of care in respect of the exercise of its statutory powers. Initially, public authorities received no special treatment. Then the courts conferred an almost complete immunity on them, requiring public law irrationality to be established before considering whether a duty could arise. The English approach has not been adopted elsewhere in the Commonwealth. The High Court of Australia and the Supreme Court of Canada have developed different tests, and the New Zealand courts, while never explicitly rejecting the English position, have never followed it. This paper argues that a modified version of the Canadian Supreme Court's approach should be adopted in New Zealand. It proposes that irrationality be a precondition to the existence of a duty of care only where policy considerations are proved to have influenced the decisions of a public authority in exercising its statutory powers.

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