by Prof Kalpana Kannabiran
Chair: Professor Manoranjan Mohanty, Vice-President and Distinguished Professor, CSD, New Delhi.
Venue: Durgabai Deshmukh Memorial Hall, CSD, 53, Sangha Rachna, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi-110003.
Date & Time:3.30 pm on December 13 (Thursday), 2018
Abstract of the Lecture
The Supreme Court of India, in an important decision in the case of Navtej Singh Johar and Others vs. Union of India (2018), read down Section 377 Indian Penal Code (hereafter S.377), decriminalizing sexual relations between consenting adults, irrespective of sexual orientation or gender identity. A process that began with the 2009 judgment of the Delhi High Court in Naz Foundation vs. NCT Delhi, this decision marked the culmination of the judicial twists and turns in the matter of homosexuality and the rights of LGBTQI+ persons and Gender Nonconforming persons (GNC). In the author’s view, this judgment does not lend itself to a plain and linear reading of “the law” or “the constitution” or “rights” in Blackstonian terms, and she engages a different method (or anti-method) in the reading that is presented in this lecture. She hopes that this will help us excavate the constitutional archive and the languages of justice, which like the constitution are spatially rooted and understand better the shards and fragments of historical memory (including constitutional memory) in relation to the constitution and its specific, analogic and generic possibilities.
About the Author
Kalpana Kannabiran is Professor of Sociology and Director, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad, an autonomous research institute supported by the Indian Council of Social Science Research. Recipient of the Amartya Sen Award for Distinguished Social Scientists for her work in the discipline of Law in its inaugural year, 2012, Kalpana was awarded the VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research in the field of Social Aspects of Law by the ICSSR in 2003.
She was part of the founding faculty of NALSAR University of Law where she taught sociology and law for a decade, 1999-2009; is co-founder of Asmita Resource Centre for Women set up in 1991, where she designed and coordinated the legal services and outreach programme. Her work has focused on understanding the social foundations of non-discrimination, structural violence, and questions of constitutionalism and social justice in India – with a specific focus on gender, sexual minorities, caste, adivasi/indigenous rights and disability rights.
A frequent contributor to the Economic and Political Weekly and member of its editorial advisory group for the Review of Women’s Studies, she writes for The Hindu and The Wire.
Kalpana Kannabiran was a Member of the Expert Group on the Equal Opportunity Commission, Government of India, 2007-2008 and the General Secretary of the Indian Association for Women’s Studies, 1998-2000. She was Member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association, 2014-2018.