Fully-Funded Inaugural Workshop on Anti-Caste and Adivasi Indigenous Perspectives on Law
Department: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Chair on Constitutional Law and Social Inclusion
Submission Deadline: May 15, 2026
Across the Global South, questions of inequality, dispossession, and structural violence are increasingly being revisited through critical and interdisciplinary approaches to law. Yet dominant legal frameworks continue to be shaped by assumptions of neutrality, individual rights, and state-centric governance, often failing to adequately engage with deeply embedded structures of hierarchy and marginalization. Anti-caste thought and indigenous (Adivasi) perspectives offer distinct and rigorous frameworks for rethinking law, power, and justice. Anti-caste thought foregrounds graded inequality, stigma, and the limits of formal equality. Indigenous perspectives challenge dominant conceptions of discrimination, land, community, and development, raising foundational questions about the authority of the state and the legitimacy of extractive governance models. Both approaches, while emerging from different historical and conceptual trajectories, interrogate systems of social hierarchy, discrimination, and exclusion, and foreground the lived realities of marginalised communities. Together, they illuminate the limits of existing legal frameworks in addressing structural injustice. They also open alternative ways of thinking about law, not merely as an instrument of regulation, but as a site of contestation, transformation, and the reimagining of justice. Despite their significance, these traditions are often marginal within mainstream legal discourse, fragmented across disciplines, and under-engaged as theoretical frameworks for reimagining law and governance. This Workshop seeks to create a focused space to engage these perspectives as central to contemporary debates.
About the workshop:
It is a focused four-day residential experience designed to enable young scholars to engage in sustained, interdisciplinary, peer-to-peer collaboration under the close mentorship of experienced faculty and professionals. Feedback shall be given on the papers written by the participants on any topic related to this Workshop. All selected participants will be required to submit an 8,000-word draft or work-in-progress academic writing in advance of the Workshop.
The Workshop is open by application to young scholars working to understand and map the levers of political, economic, and legal authority in the world today. We particularly welcome applications from scholars from marginalized communities. The Workshop will be limited to a cohort of up to 20 participants, enabling sustained engagement. Participants may include final-year undergraduate law students, master’s students, doctoral candidates, junior faculty, and early-career practitioners working at the intersection of law and social justice.
Travel and Accommodation:
The Workshop shall be organized on the campus of NALSAR Hyderabad. The University will provide accommodation to all selected candidates. Travel expenses from any city in India to and from Hyderabad shall be reimbursed upon submission of valid travel tickets.
Format
The programme will be a 4-day residential intensive workshop, structured around:
- Thematic lectures led by invited faculty
- Small-group workshops featuring pre-circulated drafts
- Focused roundtables and discussions
- Participant-led interventions
Proposed Themes
The Workshop invites applications from scholars engaging with law in relation to broader questions of power, hierarchy, and knowledge production, including but not limited to the following themes:
- Anti-caste thought and legal theory, including questions of anti-subordination, critiques of neutrality and formal equality, and the ways in which caste operates as a structure of institutional power.
- Indigenous jurisprudence and legal pluralism, including engagements with customary law, non-state normative orders, and debates on recognition, autonomy, discrimination, and exclusion.
- Land, forest, and resource governance, with a focus on dispossession, extractive development, and the relationship between environmental justice and community rights.
- Governance and the State, including tensions between indigenous autonomy and state authority, and forms of decentralization.
- Law, violence, and criminalization, examining policing, surveillance, and the role of law as an instrument of regulation and control over marginalized communities.
- Knowledge systems, narrative, and epistemic justice, including the role of testimony, literature, and lived experience in shaping legal understanding, and the challenges of translating such knowledge into formal legal frameworks.
- Comparative and global perspectives, including engagements with indigeneity across jurisdictions and the intersections of caste, race, and coloniality in shaping legal and political orders.
Faculty
The Workshop will bring together a curated group of scholars, including legal academics working on constitutional law, inequality, and governance, scholars of anticaste and indigenous thought, and interdisciplinary researchers across law, humanities, and social sciences.
Timeline
Application Deadline: May 15, 2026
Selection Intimation: May 20, 2026
Full-Paper Deadline: July 30, 2026
Workshop: August 27 to 30, 2026
For any query: Please contact either Dr. Anurag Bhaskar (Adjunct Professor of Law) or Mr. Vidhik Kumar (Research Associate) at dr.ambedkarchair@nalsar.ac.in
Announcement Document:
Application Process
Submit your applications before the deadline