64 – Regulating Behaviour, Governing Lives: Everyday Narratives about Decoloniality

This panel invites papers drawing on empirically grounded socio-legal inquiries into imaginations of decoloniality in South Asia. What does decoloniality mean in the context of everyday regulation and governance? The architecture of India’s governance systems remains heavily influenced by its colonial experience. This panel enquires into reflections on meanings of decoloniality as they evolve through the way people navigate these governance structures. We seek to explore in what forms decoloniality manifests / would manifest for judges, lawyers, and bureaucrats as agents of the state and for teachers, village councils and religious heads as regulatory authorities in different semi-autonomous social fields and for citizens who remain in a continuous relationship with these different state and non-state systems of regulation. This panel seeks to explore the notions of decoloniality as they evolve through governance-in-action. More specifically, this panel invites papers enquiring into: - Decoloniality as a feature in the working of state authorities such as judges, police, commissions and government schools. How does it manifest? Or how do they imagine decoloniality in their respective contexts? - Narratives of decoloniality within spaces of non-state actors such as village councils, mediators, NGOs, religious tribunals and private educational institutions. - Impressions of decoloniality among vulnerable communities, including LGBTQIA++ groups, religious minorities, indigenous communities and individuals that stand at the intersection of all these axes.

Convenor

Prof. Anindita Chakrabarti -