Screening of JAI BHIM COMRADE

Do you cast your vote or vote your caste?

Over the past few decades, identity based politics have taken a centre stage in India.

Although a section of the society does realise that the voice of the marginalised must be heard, are those in power misusing their social apathy to their own benefit?

Any activist associated with representation of Dalits in India today has a myriad of issues to consider including resistance from various spheres and the adverse consequences of such a movement. The psuedo appreciation of Dalit Capitalism has been offset with the recent accquittal by the Bihar HC of those who massacred 23 Dalits for the 'lack of evidence'. The binaries of representation and invisibility have been undermined in an effort to understand the politics of representation. Strengthening a movement would require regular dissecting of these themes at a deeper level through cultural and social engagement. The demand of the movement of resistance has grown beyond mere claims on visibility. There are larger concerns around sustaining the movement and preventing polarisation of individuals at all levels.

 The screening of this movie and bringing together of some of the best known thinkers, activists and writers in this conference is an attempt to interrogate and draw the fault lines of contemporary Dalit politics in India. This seminar broadly focuses on the question of representation and resistance to cultural hegemony through carving of a political identity outside the mainstream politics, the highly charged debates around representation in media houses that have largely remained elitist, the genesis of Dalit Capitalism and the fate of Dalit movement in Karnataka. We hope to take off from the movie, which is an ode to a most brilliant Dalit poet of our times, Vilas Ghogre who died protesting the flagrant injustice meted out to the community in ‘modern’ India under the aegis of much cherished rule of law. The thoughts and the memories the movie would invoke in us provide the necessary missing links to the purely academic discourse on politics of marginalised identities that is to follow.

Movie Screening: 3Hrs 20 Minutes

Followed by a discussion with:

1. Anand Patwardhan

2. V S Sreedhara

3. Indhudhar Honnapur

Notifications

A. Events

1. Azim Premji University is holding its first international conference on law, governance and development at the TERI campus in Bangalore on May 18-19, on Indian Legal System Reform: Empirical Baselines and Normative Frameworks. 

2. Pratap Bhanu Mehta will be speaking on Rule of Law in a Developing Society at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore at 6.30 pm on Friday, May 18. Prior registration is necessary in order to attend.

3. Suchitra Film Society is celebrating Satyajit Ray with a month-long festival from May 5-27, including screenings of Ray's films every weekend during this period. For details, contact +91-80 26711785.

4. Goa University is organising a round-table discussion on Freedom of Expression and Privacy at their campus on June 2. For details, email Natasha Vaz.

5. The Alternative Law Forum is offering a two-day course, Commoning the Law, on the fundamentals of legal regulation of speech, on June 9-10. For details, contact Danish at +91-80-22868757 or send him an email.

B. Competitions and Calls for Papers

1. The Gujarat National Law University is holding the second GNLU - Y.J. Trivedi annual Intellectual Property Rights Essay Competition 2012. Submissions must be emailed to them by June 4. Participants also need to fill out the registration form. The best essays win cash prizes. For clarifications, contact Nisha Trivedi at +91-8128650868 or send her an email. 

2. Istanbul Kültür University is calling for papers for its International Conference on Rethinking International Law and Justice to be held in Turkey on 24-25 September. Abstracts in the prescribed form must be emailed to them by June 10.

3. The Law and Social Sciences Research Network is calling for papers for its third biennial conference to be held at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, from December 14-16. Abstracts on any of the themes must be emailed to them by June 30.

SOCIO-LEGAL NOTES: OF RIGHTS AND EDUCATION

Padmini Baruah

Education, described as a basic human right under the Universal declaration of Human Rights, has, in recent times, become an important part of national policy. As the problems of development can, in the long term, only be tackled effectively by building up the human capital of a nation, it is imperative that every citizen of the country receive adequate free and universal education. It is with this broad objective in mind that the Constitution (86th Amendment) Act was passed in 2002, declaring free and compulsory Education as a fundamental right under Art. 21A.

In furtherance of the object of Art. 21A, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 was enacted by Parliament as an enabling legislation. In a recent judgement, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of this Act, and held that this act would apply to government schools, aided schools inclusive of aided minority schools, schools belonging to specified category, and unaided non-minority schools. However, the judgement excluded from its ambit unaided minority schools.

In keeping with its role in spreading awareness on current issues among the legal student community, the Law and Society Committee, NLSIU organised a talk on the issues arising out this judgement in association with the Centre for Child and the Law, NLSIU. This talk was led by Niranjanaradhya V.P. (Fellow and Programme Head, Universalisation of School Education at CCL) and Jayna Kothari (a partner in Ashira Law, Bangalore, who has worked on this case on behalf of the Azim Premji Foundation.)

This discussion brought to light several relevant issues pertaining to the substantive provisions of the Act as well as the prospective challenges of implementation. The prime cause of concern raised was that the Act, as it stands at present, completely excludes unaided minority schools from its purview. This gives rise to the potential problem of private schools claiming minority status on arbitrary grounds to escape their obligations under this Act. Numerous insights were offered on this issue by the guest speakers as well as the faculty members present, who clarified the position of the law in this regard. Accordingly, Article 29 and 30 of the Indian Constitution give substantial protection to the rights of the minority institutions, and any intervention in their administration would imply violation of fundamental rights. 

Another problem may be envisaged at the level of implementation, without challenges of corruption, evasion of responsibilities, and discrimination. While acknowledging that there are yet no institutional mechanisms in place for effective implementation, it was agreed upon that the State as well as non-State actors had a significant role to play in this regard.

All in all, the discussion successfully encapsulated the challenges that the implementation of the Right to Education Act continues to present. It was a highly educational experience which succeeded in sensitising and arousing the interest of all those present. It is hoped that this issue is actively taken up by the students of an institution with such social obligations as NLSIU so that a constructive way forward may be forged. 

***

 

The author is a I Year, B.A.LL.B (Hons.) student at NLSIU.

The Committee is pleased to announce that it is coordinating a research project with the Centre for Law and Policy Research and CCL to bring out a dossier on the Act.