Lawrence Liang | Ambedkar University Delhi (original) (raw)

Papers by Lawrence Liang

This is a chapter from "The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution" edited by Sujit Choudhry ... more This is a chapter from "The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution" edited by Sujit Choudhry & Madhav Khosla & Pratap Bhanu Mehta (2016)

This chapter examines the place of the right to freedom of speech and expression within Indian constitutionalism. After reviewing the classical normative arguments for free speech, it considers how the domain of speech is related to colonial continuity, sedition, and public order. It discusses the scope of Article19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution with
respect to free speech, as well as the Indian Supreme Court’s successes and failures in its efforts to expand the domain of speech. It explores the democracy argument as the primary justification used by the courts in free speech cases, and its consequences.

Finally, it looks at the standards for determining reasonableness, hate speech, and obscenity, and argues that the idea of a deliberative democracy must be supplemented with the concept of agonistic politics to enrich and strengthen the free speech tradition that has evolved in the past six decades

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

... The Malegaon phenomenon is very similar to the emergence of Nollywood in Nigeria. Nollywood i... more ... The Malegaon phenomenon is very similar to the emergence of Nollywood in Nigeria. Nollywood is the name of the film industry in Nigeria (Hausa, English and Yourba films), and it emerged through a creative history of appropriation and localization of Bollywood films. ...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Just as the explosion of information in the 18 th century brought about by the print and industri... more Just as the explosion of information in the 18 th century brought about by the print and industrial revolution necessitated the emergence of dictionaries and encyclopedias to make sense of the capacious and chaotic world of information and knowledge, we seem to be witness to a comparable moment in the early decades of the 21 st century with the proliferation of archival initiatives. The career of encyclopedias were never totally exhausted by their status as epistemological enterprises and they often spilled into narrative domains, emerging as new ways of curating knowledge as narrative. The growth of encyclopedias could be read as symptomatic of seismic shifts in the world of knowledge and our uncertain place in it. They were narrative forms that attempted to manage the deluge and impose a logic of sense through classification and the imposition of order. 2 We see a parallel in our contemporary era with the rise of archival impulses, situated at the intersection of vastly democratized technologies of storage, retrieval and classification on the one hand, and the befuddlement that we experience by the rate of their growth and the amount of information, which defies a conventional organizational logic. 3

Shadow Libraries Over the last few monsoons I lived with the dread that the rain would eventually... more Shadow Libraries Over the last few monsoons I lived with the dread that the rain would eventually find its ways through my leaky terrace roof and destroy my books. Last August my fears came true when I woke up in the middle of the night to see my room flooded and water leaking from the roof and through the walls. Much of the night was spent rescuing the books and shifting them to a dry room. While timing and speed were essential to the task at hand they were also the key hazards navigating a slippery floor with books perched till one's neck. At the end of the rescue mission, I sat alone, exhausted amongst a mountain of books assessing the damage that had been done, but also having found books I had forgotten or had not seen in years; books which I had thought had been permanently borrowed by others or misplaced found their way back as I set many aside in a kind of ritual of renewed commitment.

I developed an early suspicion of any form of nationalism courtesy of a geography teacher and an ... more I developed an early suspicion of any form of nationalism courtesy of a geography teacher and an imaginary cricket game. As the only student of Chinese origin in a high school in Bangalore, I was asked by my teacher in a benign voice who I would support if India and China played a match. Aside from the ridiculousness of the question (China does not even play cricket), the dubious intent behind it was rather clear, even to a teenager. Still, I dutifully replied, " Sir, I will support India, " for which I received a gratified smile and a pat on the head. I was offended less by the crude attempt by someone in power to force a kid to prove his patriotism, than by the outright silliness of the game. If all it took to establish the euphoric security of nationalism was that simple answer, I figured there must be something drastically wrong with the question. I was left, however, with an uneasy feeling (one that has persisted through the years), not because I had given a false answer but because I had been forced to answer a false question. The answer made pragmatic sense in a schoolboy way (you don't want to piss off someone who is going to be marking your papers), and I hadn't read King Lear yet to know that the only appropriate response to the question should have been silence. If Cordelia refuses to participate in Lear's competition of affective intimacy, it is not just the truth, but also the distasteful aesthetics of her sister's excessive declarations of love, that motivates her withdrawal into silence. If we similarly measure ultranationalism not just on a political plane but on an aesthetic one, we are immediately struck by just how deafeningly loud and shrill it is. While one could attempt to counter the ascending clamor with speech of one's own, there are times when our silence may be our greatest weapon. I would suggest that if we think of ultranationalism as an affective excess marked by a hyperperformative jingoism, often orchestrated around sporting rituals, then one of the undervalued ways of countering excess has been asceticism.

India chapter of global study on media piracy

This article seeks to introduce the complex world of open-content licences against the backdrop o... more This article seeks to introduce the complex world of open-content licences against the backdrop of the massive expansion of copyright in recent years and the increasing threat posed by copyright licences to the world of cultural production. The world of open content has been inspired by the free software movement and hence this article begins with an overview of the conceptual challenges posed to copyright by free software movement. It then moves into an analysis of the ways in which the terms of free software may be understood for the purposes of cultural production and what such a translation may entail. We then go through a brief survey of the history of open- content licences and discuss a few routes through which we may read licences not only as legal documents but also as cultural documents.

An ethnographic encounter with Rajnikant fans gone wrong

An examination of the Copyright amendment 2010 and its impact in fair use of films and sound reco... more An examination of the Copyright amendment 2010 and its impact in fair use of films and sound recording

Article post Naz judgment

Collectors, storytellers and archives

Chapter from Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property (Eds.) Gaëlle Krikorian an... more Chapter from Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property (Eds.) Gaëlle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski, Zone Books, 2010

This article looks at the challenge of thinking of the figure of the pirate in contemporary IP debates

A review of Abhijit Tambe's sound piece on Shivajinagar from the Peaking Duck journal

This article explores the relationship between law, aesthetics, and film theory with a particular... more This article explores the relationship between law, aesthetics, and film theory with a particular focus on how affective relations and intensities define the encounter between law and cinema. It considers the longer history through which law has come to deny the significance of emotions, sense-perception, aesthetic discernment, and sexuality in its deliberations. It challenges such a disavowal in several ways, by pointing to how such considerations are manifest in the law’s self-presentation, in its codes and judgments, and its production of sexually charged renditions of the obscenities it sets out to police. This reframing of law and legal experience draws upon and seeks to contribute to recent developments in film theory that highlight affective and bodily dimensions of film experience over questions of representation.

The Law and Development Review, 2010

Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2011

Page 1. Free/Open Source Software Open Content Lawrence Liang Asia-Pacific Development Informatio... more Page 1. Free/Open Source Software Open Content Lawrence Liang Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme e-Primers on Free/Open Source Software Page 2. © United Nations Development Programme Asia-Pacific ...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

India chapter of global study on media piracy

An ethnographic encounter with Rajnikant fans gone wrong

Article post Naz judgment

Collectors, storytellers and archives

This article looks at the challenge of thinking of the figure of the pirate in contemporary IP debates

A review of Abhijit Tambe's sound piece on Shivajinagar from the Peaking Duck journal

The Law and Development Review, 2010

Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2011

Photo: The Hindu MARKEDLY DIFFERENT: " The judgment is the outcome of a new kind of political act... more Photo: The Hindu MARKEDLY DIFFERENT: " The judgment is the outcome of a new kind of political activism around free speech… " Picture shows a protest in Bengaluru against Sec.66A. With its judgment to strike down a legal provision for violating freedom of speech, the Supreme Court has paved the way for thoughtful jurisprudence in the age of the Internet While describing Sec.124A of the IPC (sedition) as the " prince among the political sections designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen " , Mahatma Gandhi offered us an ironic way of thinking about liberty-curbing laws through the metaphor of illegal tyrants. On that count, the Supreme Court's judgment in the Shreya Singhal versus Union of India case, striking down Sec.66A of the Information Technology Act can be seen as a welcome end to a short-lived but terribly tyrannical reign of a petty despot. Over the past few years, Sec.66A has been used in a range of infamous instances, ranging from the Shaheen Dhada case (a young woman was arrested for an innocuous Facebook post) to the most recent incident of the arrest of a Class XI student for posting comments on his Facebook page that he attributed to Azam Khan, a Samajwadi Party Minister in Uttar Pradesh. As is perhaps appropriate for a law that struck at the very heart of Web 2.0 and social media, the challenge to its constitutional validity was brought by a 21-year-old law student, with other individuals and organisations subsequently joining the case. The proceedings before Justices Rohinton Nariman and G. Chelameswar were keenly followed and reported by many people on social media, and it is safe to say that the judgment was one of the most keenly anticipated decisions in recent times. The Supreme Court has not failed us in its role as the constitutional guardian against capricious laws that threaten our fundamental rights. Three forms of speech In a carefully reasoned decision, the court has struck down Sec. 66A in its entirety on grounds of vagueness, overreach, and the chilling effects it has on online speech. It also reads down Sec.79 (intermediary liability), holding that intermediaries are liable to take down content only upon receipt of actual knowledge from a court order or on being notified by the appropriate government. It, however, upholds Sec. 69A and the rules under the IT Act (blocking of websites) on the grounds that there are internal safeguards and reasonable procedures available within Sec.69A. The court begins by distinguishing between three forms of speech: discussion, advocacy and incitement, and holds that mere discussion or even advocacy of a particular cause, howsoever unpopular, is at the heart of Article 19(1)(a). It is only when such discussion or advocacy reaches the level of incitement that Article 19(2) kicks in. The court finds that not only does Sec. 66A interfere with the right of the public to receive and disseminate information, the provision fails to distinguish between discussion, advocacy and incitement. It then goes on to discuss what standards constitute 'reasonable restriction'. In the current case, the government had argued that we need to apply a more relaxed standard of reasonableness of restriction, with regard being kept for the fact that the medium of speech being the Internet, it differs from other media on several grounds. While the courts agree that the Internet may be treated separately from other communication media and that there could be separate laws that only deal with online speech, these laws still have to pass the test of reasonableness in Art.19(2). Citing an important and often ignored free speech judgment, the Ram Manohar Lohia case (1960), the court holds that any restriction that has to be made in the interests of public order must have a reasonable relation to the object to be achieved, that is, public order. The relation should be one which has a proximate connection or nexus with public order, and not a far-fetched, hypothetical or remote relation. It then examines each of the grounds under Art.19(2) to find that 66A failed to establish a proximate connection to public order, incitement, defamation, and so on.

Anyone who has attempted to plan a holiday for aging parents or anyone with a disability will imm... more Anyone who has attempted to plan a holiday for aging parents or anyone with a disability will immediately realise how woefully inadequate our existing infrastructure is. But perhaps the lack of infrastructure and support is merely symptomatic of something far more worrying: our imagination that if you are disabled or ageing then you are confined to being at home and not entitled to the right to enjoy life with freedom and dignity. A few years ago, I suffered from Chikungunya (literally bent over or an old person's illness) at the same time that my mother had a knee replacement surgery. For two months, we both walked very slowly with the help of a walker, and while it was excruciatingly painful at the time, in retrospect, I consider myself fortunate for having had an illness which altered my experience of speed, mobility and comfort. While the able-bodied may count themselves as lucky and occasionally even feel empathy or anger at the state of affairs, the thing about ageing is that it is a lot more equalising and we are all headed there sooner or later. In that sense, even the most able-bodied amongst us is only temporarily so, which leads one to imagine that if not out of empathy, then at least out of long term self interest, we should all collectively think about the support systems we put into place for the aged. For a country that prides itself as a youthful nation with a large part of the population under the age of 25, it is very easy to slip into an intoxicating presentism, but what is 40 or 50 years in the life of a country, or indeed a civilisation? A sharp contrast to India is Japan, which, for a few decades now, has been dealing with the crisis of being an ageing society. But we should Why celebrate the youth when we treat the old as dead It might be in the country's best interests to plan ahead and think of better infrastructure and opportunities for the aged and ageing.

Special Arrangement Lawrence Liang Photo: Special Arrangement If judges are willing to learn from... more Special Arrangement Lawrence Liang Photo: Special Arrangement If judges are willing to learn from the singular, the minuscule minority and the multitude about what it means to live without a sense of liberty and dignity in the deepest sense of the term, then there is a profound constitutional lesson to be learnt from Rohith Vemula's words. After the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation (2014) overruling the Delhi High Court's decision, the National University of Juridical Sciences brought out a special law review issue assessing the judgment. Prof. M.P. Singh, the constitutional scholar and former vice chancellor of the university, wrote an article praising the judgment for its judicial restraint, in which he described the use of constitutional litigation by sexual minorities as a case of " misplaced hope in courts ". Prof. Singh prefaced his article with a cautionary extract from Judge Learned Hand that warns us against " placing our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes ". Prof. Singh similarly suggests that what activists ought to do is to educate legislators rather than pin their hopes on the judiciary. Underlying these opinions seemed to be an unwritten rule of an economy of hope (that one could have a little but not too much of it) but the essential trait of hope is that it is greedy sentiment that demands the impossible, and the Naz judgment with its rich evocation of dignity, liberty and equality had already proven that we could not just demand but hope for the impossible. In December 2015, Shashi Tharoor attempted to introduce a private member's bill in Parliament to amend Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and give effect again to the overruled Delhi High Court decision. The bill was supported by a grand total of 24 MPs, a good indication that it is unlikely that we will see any reform of the law in Parliament in the near future. And credit must be given to all the LGBT activists, their supporters and lawyers who refused to lose hope despite all the setbacks from the judiciary and the legislature, proving that hope is

Illustration: Keshav The punitive rhetoric underlying the warning about accessing torrent website... more Illustration: Keshav The punitive rhetoric underlying the warning about accessing torrent websites addresses only one axis of the debate. It would be more accurate to see piracy as a global pricing problem Recent reports about the change in copyright infringement warnings on various websites have triggered anxiety among many Internet users in India. While the government has maintained a list of banned websites for quite some time, the warning that one earlier saw merely mentioned that the website had been blocked under directions from the Department of Telecommunications, while the new message warns against the viewing, downloading, exhibition and duplication of the contents of the URL as being offences which are punishable under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act. It further states that these provisions prescribe a punishment of up to three years and a fine of up to Rs.3 lakh. Internet users in India, many of whom routinely use torrent sites to access a range of entertainment and other content, are understandably worried about the new punitive rhetoric that underlies the warning. It may therefore be useful to unpack what the law actually says on the point and also examine the impulse behind this rhetorical shift within the logic of copyright enforcement. Conflating various provisions Sec. 63 of the Copyright Act, which deals with the offence of infringement, provides that any person who 'knowingly' infringes copyright or abets in the infringement of the same may be punished with imprisonment (minimum of six months and extendable to three years) and fined up to Rs.2 lakh. The new warning seems to have accounted for inflation and arbitrarily extended the fine amount to Rs.3 lakh, but that is only one part of its disingenuity. What the warning does is to conflate all the provisions and flatten them as though they all deal with a singular thing called infringement. It is important to remember that the provision of the Act itself distinguishes between commercial and personal infringement and it provides that where any infringement has not been made in the course of trade or business, the court may impose a term for less than six months and a fine of less than Rs.5,000. Sec. 63-A deals with repeat offences and provides for a higher fine and imprisonment term for someone who has already been convicted for an offence under Sec. 63. Sec. 65 deals with the possession of plates for the purposes of making infringing copies, a term inherited from print piracy which deals with mass reproductions of material such as bestsellers. And finally Sec. 65-A deals with the circumvention of technological measures for protecting copyright or what is popularly known as digital rights management with the intention of infringing rights. And even within this provision there are a number of exceptions provided where someone may legitimately circumvent a measure for technological protection. It is abundantly clear that the warning is neither accurate in law nor entirely honest in its invocation of the penal provisions of the Copyright Act. While it is true that some of these provisions penalise the infringement of copyright, the fact is that the provisions which have been cited

One of the hallmarks of absurdity-especially as manifested by government policies-is its ability ... more One of the hallmarks of absurdity-especially as manifested by government policies-is its ability to confuse our reactions, provoking umbrage when it ought to provoke raucous laughter. The Central Board of Film Certification (how ironic that they were renamed and are no longer the censor board) issued a guideline to all their regional officers with a list of swear words that are now officially proscribed in English and in Hindi, a list that has understandably provoked much anger in the blogsphere and Twitter verse. But hard as I try, I am unable to muster any anger at this list, and part of the reason may have to do with the fact that I am still too busy as they say in mobile lingo ROTFL. This is no ordinary laughter, however, it is a contagious laughter that borrows its mirth from an older look at the marvel of lists and taxonomies. Thanks to CBFC, we need to come up with better abuses today Let's collectively laugh at the absurdity of the CBFC list and hope that the prohibition of these words will make us more inventive.

In an insightful tweet, the renowned lawyer and former additional solicitor general, Indira Jaisi... more In an insightful tweet, the renowned lawyer and former additional solicitor general, Indira Jaising tweeted "Shreya, this could only have been done by a below 30s generation, congratulations for getting Sec 66A struck down". Apart from it being a generous compliment from a seasoned legal campaigner on various issues of public interest, Jaising's statement raises interesting questions about the nature of the campaign and the legal case that saw the Supreme Court striking down Section 66A of the IT Act. The campaign against 66A is not the first instance of individuals and organisations coming together to fight censorship in India, and yet it seems like it demonstrates a new kind of networked activism and mobilisation around free speech issues. We have had numerous campaigns in the past, and it is worth recalling them, but also to note the difference between them and the campaign against Section 66A. Lets consider for instance the experience of film censorship in India and the mobilisation by documentary filmmakers. A filmmaker like Anand Patwardhan has always taken a principled stand that he will make the kind of political films that he wants to, submit them for film certification and then challenge any cut demanded at the judiciary, and in that vein, he has successfully contributed to the development of jurisprudence of free speech, securing important decisions from the high court and the Supreme Court which extend the permissible levels of what may be expressed in documentary film. The decisions that he has secured for films like , are as valuable a contribution to the annals of free speech jurisprudence as they are to the history of political documentary. It was however largely about an individual filmmaker and the struggles that he faced with his own Father, Son and Holy War War and Peace Shreya Singhal verdict: Section 66A and how to take on censorship The victory of this case is not just of an individual petition, it is also the success of a model of activism and political action.

If wishes were horses, then we would be given a little more time to celebrate the sublime before ... more If wishes were horses, then we would be given a little more time to celebrate the sublime before we are forced to once again condemn the ludicrous. But that is clearly not to be, and less that five days after the Supreme Court's verdict in the Shreya Singhal case striking own Section 66A of the IT Act, we are gifted the latest act of farcical banning by the central board of film certification (CBFC). Their comic gesture would almost be touching (who can deny the sad charms of clowns) were it not so diabolic. Its latest salvo against a film, ironically titled , seeks to ban it on the grounds that it will ignite "unnatural passion" (sic). The film about a girl who escapes a forced marriage to be with her lesbian partner allegedly irked the board. Unfreedom If the basis of striking down Section 66A of the IT Act was based on " vagueness, over breadth and its chilling effects " , there is a clear case to be made for challenging the certification guidelines issues under the Cinematograph Act and Rules, and the urgent need of the hour is a Shreya Singhal like action to update the Cinematograph Act. If the terms " grossly offensive " , " menacing character " and " annoyance " were held to be vague in the Singhal judegment, consider the following from the film certification guidelines: (i) Antisocial activities such as violence are not glorified or justified. (ii) The modus operandi of criminals, other visuals or words like to incite the commission of any offence are not depicted. (iv) Pointless or avoidable scenes of violence, cruelty and horror, scenes of violence primarily intended to provide entertainment and Now CBFC bans film on lesbians. Why censorship picks on cinema

A group of diners seated around a dinner table engaged in small talk would be an innocuous scene ... more A group of diners seated around a dinner table engaged in small talk would be an innocuous scene in nearly any film, but in the hands of Spanish director Luis Buñuel, things can only take a bizarre turn. In The Phantom of Liberty (1974), Buñuel depicts a group of people seated on toilets around a dinner table, leafing through newspapers and magazines that have been laid out before them. Almost no conversation, including a detailed discussion of excreta, is taboo—but they are forbidden to talk about food. Then, one by one, they begin to excuse themselves to go surreptitiously into a small room where each person in turn furtively eats his or her dinner. This inversion of norms regarding what may be made public or must be kept private is a foreboding allegory for our media-saturated world. A contemporary Indian updating of Buñuel's scene might involve a middle-class family gathered around a dinner table, oblivious to hardcore pornography playing on the television set, while someone excuses herself in order to guiltily watch Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi alone. Pornography, which was a private secret, now becomes a public secret—a truth that is universally recognized even though it cannot be publicly acknowledged. The coexistence of archaic laws that outlaw obscenity and markets that openly sell pornography via cheap DVDs, along with legislators caught by television cameras as they watch porn in assembly meetings, is testimony to this paradoxical distortion of the public–private divide. New technologies and forms of media, and the activities they enable, have played an essential role in such distortions. Of these new phenomena, two are particularly ubiquitous: sting operations that use hidden cameras and other technologies of espionage to produce lurid accounts of corruption; and MBBIRDY/GETTY IMAGES

Former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's conviction by the special court in Bangalore ha... more Former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's conviction by the special court in Bangalore has predictably been accompanied by high level histrionics and drama, all of which serve as short term TRP boosters.

Op Ed from the Hindu, August 18th 2012

Op. ed co authored with Golan Naulak, The Hindu, February 4th 2014

Prologue e transgression of knowledge has always been punished with divine violence in all cultur... more Prologue e transgression of knowledge has always been punished with divine violence in all cultural mythologies. Not satis ed with the rather drastic punishment meted out to Prometheus for stealing re, Zeus decided that all of mankind had to be punished for stealing the wisdom of the gods. He ordered the master cra sman Hephaestus to take earth and water and sculpt the likeness of a lovely girl. Hephaestus constructed a gure that was marvelous in its beauty. All the gods gave one special gi to this girl.

Mulling over the difficult relationship between Law and Art

An article for Tehelka on hate speech laws in India

CENTENARY celebrations have a tendency to induce list mania—a condition which manifests itself th... more CENTENARY celebrations have a tendency to induce list mania—a condition which manifests itself through the creation of top hundred lists in various permutations and combinations. The celebrations around the 100 years of Indian cinema are no exception, and we have already witnessed newspapers and magazines breathlessly competing to create their lists. But all these lists are marked by a conspicuous absence: the contribution of censors to the making of Indian film history. This is not surprising given that censors would hardly be the persons you would invite first to a celebration of cinema and they are more likely to be seen as the surly party poopers of an otherwise glorious century. And yet, the history of Indian cinema would be incomplete without an acknowledgment of the central role of the men
with the scissors.

Theatre’s claim to uniqueness is premised on the experience of liveness and presence- a claim tha... more Theatre’s claim to uniqueness is premised on the experience of liveness and presence- a claim that seems to have survived despite serious challenges at the level of theory and practice. How can we think of the political and ethical promises of presence in an era of hyper mediation? Can theatre provide us with a unique experience of and insight into questions of justice which are not replicable in any other medium? How does a performance stake its own claims to authority in a way that challenges our imagination of sovereignty? In this talk I hope to raise questions about the relationship between theatre, performance and the imagination of justice.

Media piracy and do it yourself infrastruxtures

Withdrawal and politics in an era of ultranationalism

An examination of libraries that flourish in the shadows of the universal library

A guide to various open content licenses