58 – Law on the Ground in a Time of Indian Political Transformation

Scholarship on the intersections of law and democratic politics in India is extensive but frequently operates at the levels of theory or history. By contrast, this panel provides a venue for scholars studying the law-democracy nexus at the level of lived realities. Panelists use methods that include but are not limited to interviews, participant-observation, media analysis, surveys, and other forms of qualitative social science. We are particularly (but not exclusively) interested in understanding how widely studied frameworks like autocratic legalism, democratic decay, democratic backsliding, and illiberal democracy manifest in everyday ways. How are they constituted through and reflected by changes to speech practices, behaviors, interpersonal relationships, community networks, activist strategies, legal strategies, institutional and regulatory praxis, and other granular forms of social life? We are also interested in unearthing insights about law and democracy in India that are only or are primarily accessible through these types of ground-level qualitative study. By engaging with the social life of law and political transformation in contemporary India, the presentations in this panel help to move the conversation from the “ideal” (what ought to be) to the “real” (what is). Among other issues, we seek to explore the following in the Indian context: 1. The use of legal concepts or institutions to resist or reinforce longstanding or emerging socio-political hierarchies; 2. The everyday nature of violence and mob action as mediated (or not) by law; 3. Intra- or inter-religious disputes pursued through formal law; 4. Legal institutional transformations that are driven by or responsive to political transformations; 5. Shifting experiences at lower-level (judicial or administrative) legal institutions; 6. Shifting relationships between religious legal systems and state legal systems.

Convenors

Deepa Das Acevedo
- Fuchs Sandhya
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