CPR Land Rights Initiative invites you to a talk on
India’s Communal Constitution: Colonial Imprints and Constitutional Spillovers in the Making of a People
Wednesday, 18th September 2024, 3:30 – 5:00 PM IST
Speaker:
Dr. Mathew John, Professor, and Executive Director, Centre on Public Law and Jurisprudence, Jindal Global Law School
Moderator:
Dr. Namita Wahi, Senior Fellow, CPR & Founding Director, Land Rights Initiative
This is the fourth in a series of talks on “Legal History” as part of the Land Rights Initiative Speaker Series. This series is part of the Land Rights Initiative’s 10 year anniversary celebrations.
This event will be held in hybrid mode at the CPR Conference Room and online over Zoom. Please register below to attend either in person or via Zoom. Refreshments will be served.
About the talk:
The Preamble to the Indian Constitution speaks of the resolve of “We, The People of India” to constitute India into a sovereign, democratic, socialist, secular republic. Drawing on the idea of “the people”, this talk will examine the different ways in which the people who have been said to authorise the Indian Constitution have been characterised. The speaker will then show how the different ways of making the people salient have diverged from the dominant and perhaps even the constitutionally preferred idea of the people understood as a liberal community of citizens. One such divergent account is the colonially inspired and ethno-nationalist conceptualisation of the people that the speaker identifies as a “Communal Constitution”. Drawing on contemporary judicial doctrine on religious freedom and minority rights, the talk will demonstrate the continuing and constituent imprint of colonial and communal visions of the people at the fount of Indian constitutionalism.
About the speaker:
Prof. (Dr.) Mathew John is Professor, and Executive Director, Centre for Public Law and Jurisprudence, Jindal Global Law School. Dr. John holds B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) degrees from National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, and LL.M. from Warwick University. He completed his doctoral work at the London School of Economics on the impact of secularism on Indian constitutional practice. He has previously worked at the Alternative Law Forum, Bengaluru on social justice lawyering. He has also been a “Law and Culture Fellow” at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bengaluru; and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Dr. John works and publishes on issues bearing on public law, constitutionalism, constitutional theory, pluralism and the legal history of modern India. His work on these subjects has been published extensively in academic journals. Along with Dr. Sitharamam Kakarala, Dr. John has co-edited Enculturing Law: New Agendas for Legal Pedagogy (Tulika Books: 2007). He has authored India’s Communal Constitution: Law, Religion and the Making of a People (Cambridge University Press: 2024).
