Questioning the Supreme Court elision of the meaning of Hinduism with the meaning Hindutva, this ... more Questioning the Supreme Court elision of the meaning of Hinduism with the meaning Hindutva, this book contends that Hindutva cannot be separated from its appeal to religion, nor from its assault on the legitimacy of religious minorities.
This paper intervenes in critical socio-legal/post-colonial scholarship on human rights directed ... more This paper intervenes in critical socio-legal/post-colonial scholarship on human rights directed at how religion is constitutive of race and shapes who and what is regarded as ‘human’ and entitled to rights. It focuses on the Indian post-colony and legal persecution of the Tablighi Jamaat, a global, quietest Islamic movement, by the Hindu Right government during the Covid pandemic. It analyses how religion structures race in Hindu nationalist discourse to transform the Muslim into a perpetual outsider and an existential and epistemic threat to the Hindu nation and rights of the Hindu racial majority. The discussion connects to the epistemic anxiety generated by the alternative worldviews presented by this racialised ‘Other’ that shape legal consciousness and rights interventions globally. In complicating how anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia are integral to the transnational histories of race and race-making, the analysis triggers a rethinking of human rights interventions and the...
The government has largely disregarded the focus on rights, and used the establishment of a secur... more The government has largely disregarded the focus on rights, and used the establishment of a security regime to further regulate sexual conduct, rather than liberate…
This chapter examines the relationship between transnational law (TL) and feminist legal theory (... more This chapter examines the relationship between transnational law (TL) and feminist legal theory (FLT), focusing on the specific historical and political trajectories advanced by FLT in the transnational context and how they influence understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality in law. It demonstrates how these concepts have come to be understood in women’s human rights campaigns against violence against women (VAW) in both the domestic and global contexts. The chapter sets out how these concepts have been taken up in FLT, which in this overview, includes the poststructural, queer, and postcolonial feminist critiques of these concepts. The chapter then illustrates how in the context of VAW, “solutions” have mainly taken the form of carceral measures and a general tightening of the sexual security regime. The chapter provides a fuller understanding of the transnational effects of FLT and its limitations as a progressive project.
... The petitioners filed a writ in 19V seeking a mandamus from the Bombay High Court to direct t... more ... The petitioners filed a writ in 19V seeking a mandamus from the Bombay High Court to direct the government to prosecute Bal Thackeray and Sanjay Raut, the executive editor, under sections 153A and 153B of the Indian Penal Code, for writing and publishing several ...
This chapter looks at human rights, analysing the structure and politics of human rights in the t... more This chapter looks at human rights, analysing the structure and politics of human rights in the twenty-first century. In particular, the chapter examines the influence of liberal internationalism on human rights and how this is shaped by the legacies of colonialism, slavery, apartheid, and engagements with sexual, religious, and racial differences. The chapter encourages questions about whether rights are universal instruments of emancipation, or whether the rights are more complex, contradictory, and contingent in their functioning. The chapter also sets out the dominant understandings of human rights as progressive, universal, and based on a common human subject. Human rights advocates sometimes differ on the strategies to be adopted to address violations; these can have material, normative, and structural consequences that are not always empowering. These competing positions are illustrated through two case studies: one on the Islamic veil bans in Europe and the second on LGBT hu...
In this Article, I examine how the international women's rights movement has reinforced the i... more In this Article, I examine how the international women's rights movement has reinforced the image of the woman as a victim subject, primarily through its focus on violence against women (VAW). I use the example of India to examine how this subject has been replicated in the post-colonial context, and the more general implications this kind of move has on women's rights. My main argument is that the focus on the victim subject in the VAW campaign reinforces gender and cultural essentialism in the international women's human rights arena. It also buttresses claims of some "feminist" positions in India that do not produce an emancipatory politics for women. This focus fails to take advantage of the liberating potential of important feminist insights. These insights have challenged the public/private distinction along which human rights has operated, and traditional understandings of power as emanating exclusively from a sovereign state.In the first Part of this Ar...
In August 2015, after footage emerged of members of the Islamic State (IS) throwing a gay man off... more In August 2015, after footage emerged of members of the Islamic State (IS) throwing a gay man off of a roof in Tal Abyad, Syria, the UN Security Council called its first organised session on gay rights that was open to all member states. 1 In a closed-door meeting, sponsored by the US and Chile, the Security Council focused on IS and its ongoing persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Syrians and Iraqis. 2 Thirteen of the 15 countries sitting on the Security Council participated in the meetings, with China, Russia, Nigeria and Malaysia present, but silent, and Chad and Angola remaining absent. The event was celebrated as a landmark where the Security Council had taken up the cause of LGBT rights for the first time in its 70 year history. 3 The question that I seek to examine in this paper is how have we arrived at a point where the location of LGBT rights within a security discourse marks a moment to be celebrated? Or to put it slightly differently, what ever happened to queer radicality? My central claim is that queer engagement with human rights has taken the radicality out of queer rather than resulting in the queering of international human rights. While there are undoubtedly temporal moments when the radicalism of the project emerges, these are quickly quenched by the lure of normativity and glitter of respectability. I argue that the potential for queer radicality remains on the outskirts of human rights, rather than within its embrace, and that these possibilities are abundant outside of the parameters of the liberal imaginary within which human rights remain immersed.
Questioning the Supreme Court elision of the meaning of Hinduism with the meaning Hindutva, this ... more Questioning the Supreme Court elision of the meaning of Hinduism with the meaning Hindutva, this book contends that Hindutva cannot be separated from its appeal to religion, nor from its assault on the legitimacy of religious minorities.
This paper intervenes in critical socio-legal/post-colonial scholarship on human rights directed ... more This paper intervenes in critical socio-legal/post-colonial scholarship on human rights directed at how religion is constitutive of race and shapes who and what is regarded as ‘human’ and entitled to rights. It focuses on the Indian post-colony and legal persecution of the Tablighi Jamaat, a global, quietest Islamic movement, by the Hindu Right government during the Covid pandemic. It analyses how religion structures race in Hindu nationalist discourse to transform the Muslim into a perpetual outsider and an existential and epistemic threat to the Hindu nation and rights of the Hindu racial majority. The discussion connects to the epistemic anxiety generated by the alternative worldviews presented by this racialised ‘Other’ that shape legal consciousness and rights interventions globally. In complicating how anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia are integral to the transnational histories of race and race-making, the analysis triggers a rethinking of human rights interventions and the...
The government has largely disregarded the focus on rights, and used the establishment of a secur... more The government has largely disregarded the focus on rights, and used the establishment of a security regime to further regulate sexual conduct, rather than liberate…
This chapter examines the relationship between transnational law (TL) and feminist legal theory (... more This chapter examines the relationship between transnational law (TL) and feminist legal theory (FLT), focusing on the specific historical and political trajectories advanced by FLT in the transnational context and how they influence understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality in law. It demonstrates how these concepts have come to be understood in women’s human rights campaigns against violence against women (VAW) in both the domestic and global contexts. The chapter sets out how these concepts have been taken up in FLT, which in this overview, includes the poststructural, queer, and postcolonial feminist critiques of these concepts. The chapter then illustrates how in the context of VAW, “solutions” have mainly taken the form of carceral measures and a general tightening of the sexual security regime. The chapter provides a fuller understanding of the transnational effects of FLT and its limitations as a progressive project.
... The petitioners filed a writ in 19V seeking a mandamus from the Bombay High Court to direct t... more ... The petitioners filed a writ in 19V seeking a mandamus from the Bombay High Court to direct the government to prosecute Bal Thackeray and Sanjay Raut, the executive editor, under sections 153A and 153B of the Indian Penal Code, for writing and publishing several ...
This chapter looks at human rights, analysing the structure and politics of human rights in the t... more This chapter looks at human rights, analysing the structure and politics of human rights in the twenty-first century. In particular, the chapter examines the influence of liberal internationalism on human rights and how this is shaped by the legacies of colonialism, slavery, apartheid, and engagements with sexual, religious, and racial differences. The chapter encourages questions about whether rights are universal instruments of emancipation, or whether the rights are more complex, contradictory, and contingent in their functioning. The chapter also sets out the dominant understandings of human rights as progressive, universal, and based on a common human subject. Human rights advocates sometimes differ on the strategies to be adopted to address violations; these can have material, normative, and structural consequences that are not always empowering. These competing positions are illustrated through two case studies: one on the Islamic veil bans in Europe and the second on LGBT hu...
In this Article, I examine how the international women's rights movement has reinforced the i... more In this Article, I examine how the international women's rights movement has reinforced the image of the woman as a victim subject, primarily through its focus on violence against women (VAW). I use the example of India to examine how this subject has been replicated in the post-colonial context, and the more general implications this kind of move has on women's rights. My main argument is that the focus on the victim subject in the VAW campaign reinforces gender and cultural essentialism in the international women's human rights arena. It also buttresses claims of some "feminist" positions in India that do not produce an emancipatory politics for women. This focus fails to take advantage of the liberating potential of important feminist insights. These insights have challenged the public/private distinction along which human rights has operated, and traditional understandings of power as emanating exclusively from a sovereign state.In the first Part of this Ar...
In August 2015, after footage emerged of members of the Islamic State (IS) throwing a gay man off... more In August 2015, after footage emerged of members of the Islamic State (IS) throwing a gay man off of a roof in Tal Abyad, Syria, the UN Security Council called its first organised session on gay rights that was open to all member states. 1 In a closed-door meeting, sponsored by the US and Chile, the Security Council focused on IS and its ongoing persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Syrians and Iraqis. 2 Thirteen of the 15 countries sitting on the Security Council participated in the meetings, with China, Russia, Nigeria and Malaysia present, but silent, and Chad and Angola remaining absent. The event was celebrated as a landmark where the Security Council had taken up the cause of LGBT rights for the first time in its 70 year history. 3 The question that I seek to examine in this paper is how have we arrived at a point where the location of LGBT rights within a security discourse marks a moment to be celebrated? Or to put it slightly differently, what ever happened to queer radicality? My central claim is that queer engagement with human rights has taken the radicality out of queer rather than resulting in the queering of international human rights. While there are undoubtedly temporal moments when the radicalism of the project emerges, these are quickly quenched by the lure of normativity and glitter of respectability. I argue that the potential for queer radicality remains on the outskirts of human rights, rather than within its embrace, and that these possibilities are abundant outside of the parameters of the liberal imaginary within which human rights remain immersed.
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