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CSSS is organising a lecture by Tanweer Fazal

CSSS is organising a lecture by Tanweer Fazal

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CSSS is organising a lecture by Tanweer Fazal
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Centre for the Study of Social Systems

School of Social Sciences

 

CSSS Colloquium

 

Tanweer Fazal 

(Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU)

 

Will be presenting a paper on

 

The Mosque as a Juristic Person: Law, Politics and Public Order

 

Date & Time: October 12, 2017 (Thursday), 3.00 pm

Venue: CSSS Committee Room (Room No: 13), SSS-II

 

Abstract: The dispute between Muslims and Sikhs over the Shahidganj mosque in Lahore in the early 1930s served as the prelude to the Punjabi Muslims’ decisive shift in favour of the Pakistan movement. The dispute, played out in the courts, became the site on which some of the knottiest questions of colonial jurisprudence were debated. Could the mosque, like a Hindu deity, be designated a juristic person? What laws would apply in an inter-religious dispute of this nature? And whether in such matters, the state law enjoyed pre-eminence over religious laws. Despite the unanimity over the building’s antecedents as a mosque, the courts – all the way from the Sikh tribunal, to the High Court to the Privy Council – ruled in favour of the Sikhs. The essay seeks to understand how these competing claims were adjudicated and what were the imperatives of the colonial government that resulted in such a judicial outcome. It then proceeds to examine the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri masjid case in order to understand the continuities as well as departures in the exigencies of the post-colonial state and the resolutions it offered thereof in such disputes.

Bio: Tanweer Fazal teaches at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU. He specializes in sociology of nationalism(s), community formation and identifications with specific focus on their implications on discourse of rights and entitlements. He is the author of “nation-state and Minority Rights in India (Routledge, 2015) and Minority Nationalisms in South Asia (ed., Routledge, 2012).

 

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.