Law, Citizenship, and Dissent in India

Image by Charvi Dixit via https://tinyurl.com/3cwye3ym

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The past few years have been witness to a renewed interest in the question of citizenship in India. These conversations have taken on greater urgency in light of the latest amendments to the country’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019 and the announcement in that same year of plans for the implementation of a nation-wide National Register of Citizens (NRC). The CAA amendment of 2019 is the first time in the history of post-colonial India that religion is being used as a criterion for citizenship. The amended Act provides a path to citizenship for persecuted minorities from neighboring countries but excludes Muslims. The NRC creates challenging obstacles before existing citizens and residents of India to prove through documents that they meet its eligibility criteria. The countrywide protests against the CAA and NRC have led to robust debates about the intersection between law, citizenship, and dissent. This series of conversations and book discussions will critically analyze the present moment, but also take a historical approach to questions of secularism, citizenship and belonging, hate speech and symbols, and censorship. The discussions will feature perspectives from lawyers, historians, and anthropologists.

THURSDAY, MARCH 2, 2023

Session 1 (Louis A. Simpson Building, Room 144)

12:00 – 1:30 pm | Reconfiguring Citizenship in Contemporary India

Speaker: Shahrukh Alam, Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Discussants: Farrah Ahmed, Professor, Melbourne Law School/Princeton University
Gyan Prakash, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University

Session 2 (Green Hall 0-S-6)

4:30 – 6:00 pm | “Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi’s Courts”

Speaker: Mayur Suresh, Senior Lecturer in Law at SOAS, University of London
Discussants: Farrah Ahmed, Professor, Melbourne Law School/Princeton University
Shahrukh Alam, Advocate, Supreme Court of India

FRIDAY, MARCH 3, 2023

Session 3 (Louis A. Simpson Building, Room A71)

12:00 – 1:30 pm | Hate Symbols and Challenges to Solidarity in the US and India

Speaker: Sadaf Jaffer, Lecturer in South Asian Studies, Princeton University
Discussants: Shahrukh Alam, Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Neeti Nair, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia

Session 4 (Louis A. Simpson Building, Room A71)

4:30 – 6:00 pm | “Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia”

Speaker: Neeti Nair, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia
Discussants: Gyan Prakash, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University
Harini Kumar, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Princeton University

This event is part of the ‘Power, Inequality, Dissent’ series led by Prof. Divya Cherian (History) and Dr. Harini Kumar (History/CGI).

Co-sponsored by the Program in South Asian Studies, the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, and the University Center for Human Values.