19 June 2025
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (née Swarupa Kumari Nehru) was a famous diplomat, politician and Indian freedom fighter during the 20th century. Her role in international politics and relations as well as the development of the model and formation of the United Nations is oftentimes shadowed by her connection to her brother Jawharlal Nehru, the first president of independent post-colonial India, and Mahatma Ghandi, who she fought alongside with for an Indian state free from British imperial rule. Continue reading >>
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06 June 2025
Sleeping on Bills
In a landmark judgment from April 2025, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that gubernatorial inaction is unconstitutional. Responding to the Governor of Tamil Nadu’s failure to act on ten bills, the Court declared such inaction “illegal” and reasserted limits to gubernatorial discretion. It not only imposed a timeframe for assent but also used its extraordinary powers to deem the bills passed. Continue reading >>
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18 November 2024
Feminist Killjoy…But With a Heart
India is currently witnessing a spate of protests against gender-based violence targeted towards women. The rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata, allegations against influential figures of the Malayalam film industry, and wrestler Vinesh Phogat’s accusations of sexual harassment against BJP leader Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh have led to demands for stricter legal consequences. However, I urge feminists to eschew reliance on the punitive state. It is paramount that feminists “break the wheel” and not adopt the tools of the oppressor by advocating for punishment, shame, and stigma. Continue reading >>12 November 2024
Hansa Mehta
Imagine if the very first article of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 1948, referred “all men”, rather than “all human beings”, and asked us all to act in the spirit of “brotherhood”. Thankfully, that is not how it reads, and for this, credit is due to an Indian woman: Hansa Mehta, whose contribution UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres recognized in his speech celebrating 70 years of the UDHR when he said: “without her, we would literally be speaking of Rights of Man rather than Human Rights.” Continue reading >>
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08 October 2024
The Bombay High Court Dismisses the Ministry of Truth
In 2023, the Indian central government established a Fact Check Unit to monitor online content related to ‘any business of the Central Government’ and order the takedown of any information that it considered ‘fake or false or misleading.’ The FCU itself was envisaged as a public body and a part of the central government. As it seems, the Indian central government wanted to depart from existing liability rules protecting platforms in all cases of online criticism of the Indian State. As the FCU would be the last arbiter of what could be said online in India about the central government, the amendment instituted what could be called a ‘Ministry of Truth’. This was struck down by the Bombay High Court. Continue reading >>29 August 2024
Lights, Camera, Inclusion?
On July 8th, 2024, the Supreme Court of India ruled on a case challenging the movie "Aankh Micholi" for allegedly reinforcing harmful stereotypes about disabilities. The Court declared that “disabling humor” which demeans persons with disabilities would not be fully protected as freedom of speech. While the judgment provided an in-depth analysis of creative freedom and the rights of persons with disabilities, it stopped short of issuing binding directives, thus lacking the teeth necessary to effect meaningful change in how disabilities are portrayed in media. Continue reading >>
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19 April 2024
The Right to Education and Democratic Backsliding in India
Since the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in the federal elections in India in 2014, the country’s performance in key indicators of democratic quality has suffered. Over the course of its two terms in power, the party has sought to subvert key institutions for accountability, enact an ethno-cultural majoritarian electoral agenda, and use federal law enforcement agencies against their political opponents. While there is extensive literature on the erosion of civil-political rights in the past ten years, the effects of the BJP government on social rights like education and healthcare remain under-explored. Therefore, in this post, I explore three striking dimensions of primary educational policy under the BJP government. Continue reading >>
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17 April 2024
India’s Push-and-Pull on Reproductive Rights
For a piece mapping India’s push-and-pull on reproductive rights – the expanse of its protection and the edges it comes up against – history is a good place to start. Rights in the reproductive sphere are relatively new to India. While India enacted a seemingly liberal abortion legislation as early as 1971, concerns about women’s rights were hardly the drivers behind it. Women’s bodies were a means to achieve the State’s end of population control. It is difficult to justify if women were truly seen as rights-holders. Did this change in recent years? Continue reading >>
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15 April 2024
The Fabulous and the Fascist
The last ten years have witnessed the gradual collapse of democracy and constitutionalism in India. Where do LGBT rights figure in all this? I contextualize the wins and the losses and discuss why LGBT rights in India are not “under attack” as they have been under authoritarian governments elsewhere. Continue reading >>12 April 2024
Gender, Equality, and the Predicaments of Faith
In the context of the rise of the global right, feminist debates on gender and sexual rights can and have at times slipped into a left and right ideological divide. In reflecting on the ways in which gender equality has been addressed in the context of Indian constitutional law over the past two decades, what emerges is a more complex picture. Continue reading >>
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