The meanings of decolonisation

Date: April 22, 2024

Time: 2:30- 4pm

Location: CB-001 (Confluence building, Lower Mountjoy)

Abstract

The foundation of Indian criminal laws, processes and penal institutions was laid down during British colonial rule, and these laws, processes and institutions continued into postcolonial India, over 75 years after Indian independence. Over the past few years, the Indian government took up the task to ‘decolonise’ Indian criminal laws, and these ‘de-colonised’ criminal laws are to come into force in July 2024. It is therefore timely to (re)visit the multiple and contradictory meanings of ‘decolonisation’. The Indian criminal law reform exercise indicates that decolonisation is not always anticolonial; exercises that purport to ‘decolonise’ often reify the power structures that underly colonialism/coloniality. This offers scant solace or liberation to the bodies and collective movements of Dalits, Adivasis (Indigenous peoples), gender, religious, and political subalterns who continue to be controlled and subjugated under Indian criminal laws.

Speaker's biography

Rishika Sahgal is an Assistant Professor in Law at the University of Birmingham. Previously, she was based at the University of Sheffield. She completed the BCL with distinction and MPhil and DPhil in Law on the Rhodes Scholarship from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Prior to Oxford, Dr Sahgal served as law clerk to the Chief Justice of India at the Supreme Court of India. She completed her undergraduate studies in law at National Law University, Delhi, where she was senior researcher on the Death Penalty Research Project. This research was cited by the Law Commission of India in its report recommending the abolition of the penalty, and by Dr Shashi Tharoor, member of the Indian Parliament, while introducing a private member’s bill to abolish the death penalty in India.