Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Abstracts
Keynote Address
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intercedes on behalf of the wronged person through a visitation of
calamity on the accused, particularly ill-health, in other words a curse.
Confession of the accused happens through the form of ritual called the
Jagar or through the sacrifice of a goat. While in most cases the Jagar is a
possession ritual where the deity communicates with the devotees and
listens to their petitions, here in case of Golu it is particularly different.
The petition is already given in writing. Therefore Jagar for the Golu mostly
is a healing ritual where the accused holds a story telling session and a
performance, at the end of which he/she confesses and is forgiven. The
ailing person who may be the accused or his/her kin is healed. Others may
also seek healings and blessings during the ritual. If Golu helps a case in
the state legal system to be resolved in his/her favour, the petitioner after
gifting of the necessary bell may also hold a Jagar performance in thanks.
I posit that the layering of the relationship between the benevolent deity,
his ability to punish wrong doers and interfere in the state legal system,
and the stylised ritual practices of written petitions that are modern,
complicates a singular understanding of this as a non-state legal practice.
I would bring these findings in dialogue with Habermas conceptualisation
of non-state practices. An added framework would be to examine the
materiality of the practice and ritual efficacy of this system of belief and
justice.
the Palk Bay between semi-industrial fishers from Tamil Nadu and
their
Abstracts
4
small-scale fisher colleagues in northern Sri Lanka.
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conformed chiefly to legal centralism, that is, the view that the state is the
sole source of law. There has been little feminist theory which has
deliberated on enduring structures of power embedded in other normative
orders such as the lineage, the clan or groups engaged in the informal
sector of the economy which legal centralism refuses to characterise as
law. In consequence, other sources which generate law, the ways in which
they secure compliance and their effects have been neglected. This article
tends to argue that to understand the legal world of a woman, it is
imperative to know the reality of the experiences of women with law.
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7
both communal education and the leaders persistent, tenacious and
compassionate investigation of the crimes. In astonishing scenes we
watch the Jamaat meetings, where women often shout over each other
about the most difficult facets of their personal lives. Above all, the
womens Jamaat exists to hold their male counterparts and local police to
account, and to reform a profoundly corrupt system which allows men to
take refuge in the most extreme interpretation of the Quran to justify
violence towards women.
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The Ultimate Caste Sanction Faces the Court: Excommunication in
21st Century Tamil Nadu
HEADLEY, ZO
Researcher in Legal Anthropology
French Institute of Pondicherry
In this contribution, I will explores the wider topic of the clash of
paradigms between state law and caste norms in the field of arbitration
and judicial practices through specific cases studies of recent court cases
of excommunication in Tamil Nadu.
Excommunication, or suspension from caste, is the severance of an
individual religious, social and economical relations of her/his birth group.
Losing ones caste, or rather falling from ones caste, to borrow the
Sanskrit term employed in the earliest description of this phenomenon,
constitutes is the most severe form of punishment handed down by caste
panchayats in Tamil Nadu. The changing perceptions and legislations over nearly two centuries- of the rights of castes to exclude their
members reveals the ever complex relationship between the state
judiciary and caste society: for the colonial period, that of the complexity
of legally accommodating caste autonomy and civil rights; during the first
four decades post-Independence, that of the confusions and tensions
generated by the primacy of religion in the understanding of custom and
personal law and finally, over the last two decades or so, a new chapter
in the perception of caste panchayats and their sanctions is being written,
that of the obnoxious practice of imposing punishments, which this
contribution will explore.
Through the study of a number of recent cases brought by
excommunicated individuals and families to the Madras High Court, as
well as a scrutiny of their media coverage, I will try to unravel the debate
and tensions surrounding the recent criminalisation of the ultimate caste
sanction.
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familial unit on the one hand, and facilitated by the shrine context on the
other. Womens involvement, rationalization, as well as active agency, are
central to my enquiry.
Further, while such healing practices are significant in themselves, our
context raises questions about perceptions of inaccessibility or
inadequacy of justice for the marginalized. A secondary set of questions
raised by the ethnographic evidence then, relates to the conflation of
justice with healing. It opens up potentially powerful insights about how
people understand and collapse the rigidities of "Hindu" and "Muslim". As
these are processes to which people willingly submit, such evidence is
necessarily to be understood in dialogue with people's notions of a shared
past.
Tata
The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments largely do not apply in the
North East region; instead a significant level of governance autonomy was
written into the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution for incorporating tribal
communities in these regions into the Indian Union. The most
decentralized unit of governance in Mizoram, therefore, have been Village
Councils that are animated by a mix of customary and statutory laws, and
(cultural) norms and regimes of rights alternative to those of the market
and private property. Till recently the state didnt have urban local
governments but this changed with the introduction of the Jawaharlal
Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) which made funding for
infrastructure conditional on undertaking urban governance 74th
Constitutional Amendment reforms. If we understand governance
structures to serve as not only administrative and political units but with
cultural content, what sorts of resistance and subversion is seen in
response to the long arm of the state and state policy via JNNURM? And
how are customary laws, rights and practices getting re-worked through
the constitution and operation of the newly formed Aizawl Municipal
Council?
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MPhil Student
Centre for Political Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
The Indian state presents itself as the quintessential post-colonial state
which is continuously imagining and re-imagining its nature and scope at
the interface of tradition and modernity. One of the major zones of this
kind of negotiation occurs in the legal framework where various
components like democratic constitutional law; community based law;
religious personal laws are engaging and negotiating with each other
within the framework of the universal modern state structure. This
universality is sought to be achieved through a process of accommodation
and representation of different ethnic groups, indigenous communities,
caste and gender. There are many types of indigenous community in India
which have their own customary laws along with community values. These
laws in tandem with the particular values operate in a complex terrain of
the social, political and economic structure. India after independence
operationalized the modern constitutional state structure based on the
philosophy of social, political and economic justice. The Indian constitution
is a modern document that uses an affirmative language of
enfranchisement, equality and liberty. The constitution came with the
promise of ensuring emancipation and empowerment irrespective of a
persons particular caste, class, gender, religion, region, location. However
this modern project of the Indian state could not fully take-off when faced
with the complexities of the pre-existent multiple form of organizing,
operating and disciplining of the society.
This paper is an attempt to engage with the particularity of the experience
of the gendered citizen who is at the intersection of the modern law with
the community based customary laws. In India there are many indigenous
communities of which the third largest is the Santhal, which is a
homogenous community. The Santhal community has its own particular
customary law which governs them in all aspects of public and private
life, especially the rights and access to resources. The modern state also
has its set of universal laws which deals with the issue of rights and
access to resources. Both these sets of legal formulations are assessed
as being representative of tradition and modernity which interact and
intersect. It will be interesting to examine the convergence and
divergence of the customary law and modern law particularly in their
engagement with the womens question.
MAJUMDAR, ANINDITA
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Assistant Professor
MCPH
Manipal University
At a recently concluded exhibition on The Body in Indian Art (14 March
7 June 2014, National Museum, New Delhi, India) a section of the exhibit
showcased images and sculptures from Indian art on miraculous births.
The concept note for the exhibit states:
The birth stories of Gods and Heroes across different religions are
miraculous or immaculate conceptions. The Quran describes the birth of
Mary as a boon resulting from an ageing mothers prayers who promises
to dedicate the child to the service of God. The Jain Tirthankaras choose
which parents to be born to as a result of the accumulation of good Karma
from their previous lives. The Boddhisattva Siddhartha [Buddha] entered
his mother Mayas womb in a dream and was born to predictions that he
would renounce the world. Prophesies foretold the birth of Krishna
compelling his parents to give him up for adoption so that he could fulfil
his predestined destiny. Sivas son Kartikeya was born of many mothers
and Parvatis son Ganesh was mysteriously conceived in Shivas absence.
All of these stories highlight that each religion gives importance to the
miraculous nature of birth, and make clear that no single configuration
defines or suggests the norm of an ideal family.
The same myths are resurrected in conversations on the Draft Guidelines
for Assisted Reproductive Technologies in India. The Indian Council of
Medical Research and the medical community seek to reify mythology by
resurrecting it in contemporary practice such as in-vitro fertilization and
commercial surrogacy both of which involve asexual, assisted
reproduction. In case of commercial gestational surrogacy, a supposedly
multi-billion dollar industry, the practice of incubating artificially induced
pregnancies in the bodies of Indian women belonging to lower socioeconomic groups the mythic parallels sought to legalize the practice
lead to questions regarding legitimacy and law itself.
What form of legitimacy is sought from tales and stories that mirror
contemporary practices of asexual reproduction? What form of authority is
being channelled here? Is its divine character an easy reference point for
practices that defy any form of explanation? More importantly, how does
medicine, medical practice and medical regulation intersperse with
mythology and religion to understand its place in the world?
In this paper I analyse some of the myths of immaculate conception that
continue to mark our popular imagination especially within the Hindu
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pantheon to understand how and why they continue to inform
contemporary practices of law making and granting legitimacy. In this
process, cultures collide and interact in ways that become part of larger
social dialogues regarding emerging families and identities. Assisted
reproduction becomes enmeshed with mythology and religious discourse
to position itself as both acceptable and legitimate. Drawing from
emerging analysis of IVF cultures and medical anthropology, this paper
positions its findings within the contemporary world of politico-religious
law making that seemingly continues to draw its inspiration from the
divine.
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The essays, lastly takes into account the dispersed legal notions and
practices, which have their own ways of articulation in everyday life,
outside the centralised legal/juridical normative structures of the two
domains of law. There is a notion of Justice, which is quite dispersed and
differentiated that functions as unconscious guideline. Such legal
practices are against legal epistemological absolutism that causes neat
binaries, which in turn produce neat normative legal structures.
Legal practices are intrinsically linked with society and social relations in a
given situation in their historicity. Thus, any examination of a religiocultural specific legal practice needs a wider perspective. This essay
examines the issue under discussion within the framework of law, society,
culture, politics and history.
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difficult to pin down. Seizure of banned literature and confessions thus
form the bulk of the evidence. While many UAPA trials end in acquittals,
albeit after years of incarceration, many conclude in convictions, despite
lack of evidence and despite obvious violation of procedural norms by the
investigating agency. The war on terror often becomes an excuse for
lowering the burden of proof and eroding the due process of law.
This paper examines the workings of this anti-terror law in the courtrooms
and in the Tribunal that reviews the ban on the organization every two
years.
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In the proposed paper I intend to explore and study the democratic trends
of Jan Sunwai beyond the institutionalized framework of democracy. Public
hearing in the lifeworld of Indian polity and social life could range from
institutionalized hearing of courts to informal public hearing of
aggrieved social groups. Jan Sunwai on women and Dalit rights and issues
become more important in the context of failure of institutionalized forms
of democratic governance. Jan Sunwai seeks to address the structural
vulnerability of the marginalized groups emanating from trampling,
influencing or moulding scope of procedural forms of rights and justice to
the assured lives of dominant social forces. Most of the times the most
basic of grievances of Dalits, Women, Tribals are not even accorded basic
legal treatment of even a First Information Report (FIR) leave aside court
proceedings. Even when FIR is registered, casteist and patriarchal morality
and practices plays the spoiler by diluting or misrepresenting the case at
the behest of dominant social forces and further if we add onto the legal
squabbles of having the right resources for reports and hefty amount for
the lawyer, the already vulnerable has to wilt out or settle for a
compromise with the exploiter/oppressor. In general most of the time even
a dignified procedural treatment fails: on account of ones structural
location of being a Dalit, women, tribal, poor or being part of minority
religious community. The marginalized sections whenever they have had
interactions with modern/ traditional law or legal mechanisms most often
it was found to be discriminatory, alienating and humiliating.
Further I would like to place public hearing as a context of counter-public
discourse which is radically different from the failed public or unjust public
sphere. This counter public space although amenable to appropriation by
vested sections of civil society groups and NGOs, still out of large scale
mobilization and commitment of the oppressed themselves, the Jan
Sunwai platform becomes spaces where victims of gender or caste based
oppression can share their experiences and speak their heart out to be
heard by the receptive jury members without undergoing any
embarrassment or rigours of inept procedural justice. Thus the first-hand
accounts and narratives of difficult experiences become truths in
themselves not only for the narrator but also for the fellow audience and
jury. The mistrust based procedural banishment of marginalized hence
finds avenues in Jan Sunwais where new modes of assertions, solidarity
and resistance is forged at every step. In such a platform, the
victims/survivor not only resists in solidarity but also recover in
solidarity. Jan Sunwais as such generates egalitarian aspirations among
women, Dalits, Tribals and creates liberating body language as opposed
to the constrained atmosphere of the panchayats, police stations or
courts. Jan Sunwais therefore offers exciting grounds of interrogating not
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to make a change and a supposed political equality which conceals
extremely unequal power relations.
The presentation offers a crucial challenge to the contemporary
hegemonic development discourse on how despite the assertion of good
governance, the deepening of democracy and the realization of human
rights are not congruent with market oriented reforms.
Kshithij Urs highlights three aspects of the context on which urban water
reforms in Karnataka have been premised to make the point. The first is to
critically engage with the claim that good governance can promote both
capitalistic economic growth and participatory democracy. This policy
instruction makes it mandatory for democracy to organize a political
consensus promoting capitalism if it has to be termed good.
The second is to describe how the reforms are constructed to insist that
commercialization and privatization of water services, whether private or
public, lead to realization of the right to water by the poor and empower
them to exercise their client power to make service providers accountable,
triggering a virtuous spiral of participatory democracy.
The third aspect is to highlight how the dominance of the good
governance discourse in the water sector is being resisted and to explore
opportunities and limitations offered by this struggle in the deepening of
democracy and the emergence of new forms of water governance that is
socially just, culturally sensitive, economically prudent and ecologically
sustainable.
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added to the inherited system of national state centered on independent
fields of law. Khap panchayats ignore the distinction between public and
private law and develop a law without a state, even as they receive new
impetus from the revolution in information and communication
technology. All this affects the laws surface of explicit normative material
but also its bare life. The legal culture from which actors draw preunderstanding is rapidly going beyond the nation-state perspective as its
memory becomes shorter than before. Democratic law is needed to
guarantee that norms can coordinate social action and secure integration
in view of the preservation of diversity of values in plurality of life-worlds.
Indeed these problems have led to periodic legal reformsthat have led
many to demand that the Indian legal system return to its traditional roots
specifically by the creation of panchayats. Created in the 1950s, Nyaya
Panchayatshave the judicial power to deliver justice in villages falling
under their jurisdiction. They are mainly involved with civil jurisdiction and
they have proper rules and regulations under the law. The Law
commission in its fourteenth report, made the point that disputes before
them, become easier to secure when the person clothed with the
authority of deciding them have the advantage of knowing the disputants,
the subject matter of the dispute, the way in which the dispute arose and
other interesting facts relating to them.
As global India witnesses assertion by increasing variety of groups, each
having its own distinct traditions, values and world views, more conflicts
are reached by agreements on contestable matters and not on conditions
in which a shared basis is possible. To what extent can practices in these
societies bridge the growing gap between discrimination, legitimation and
actual norms? What is the role of customs and their effect on law and
justice? Are Dharmashastras a social norm making medium for Indian
society? Are Dharma problems different from law problems? Addressing
some of these questions, the paper sets out to critique Habermas notion
of law in the context of legality and legitimation in India today. Habermas
interventions and revisions are welcome but the epistemological attack on
tradition of modern legal theory undermines the basis for reform. Even
though Habermas sees facticity as factual norms that have status of social
acceptance in tension with social validity, it is unclear whether they can
be reconciled through democratic discursive will formation. The
conceptual tension between facticity and validity that action norms are
valid to those who could agree as participants in rational discourse, are
major challenges to be overcome if information and reason need to be
seen in the public space as constituted by illocutionary obligations.
Justice in Vacanas
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