Kakarala Sitharamam

Current Position: (Since March 2007)
Director & Senior Fellow
Centre for the Study of Culture and Society
Bangalore 560011, India.
Previous Professional Positions:
October 2003- February 2007: Senior Fellow, CSCS, Bangalore 560011, India.
1993 - 2003: Taught in various capacities subjects of Political Theory, Human Rights Law at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore 560072, India.

Education:
Masters in Political Philosophy, Madras University; LLM Human Rights Law, University of Nottingham, UK; Ph.D. Political Science, Centre for Social Studies, South Gujarat University, Surat, India.
Fellowships/Visiting Positions:
o Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) Doctoral Fellow, 1988-1993
o British Chevening Award in Human Rights, 1995-1996
o Commonwealth Post-Doctoral Fellow, Warwick Law School, 2001-2002
o Visiting Fellow, School of Law, University of Nottingham, 1999
o Visiting Faculty, Kosmopolis, University for Humanistics, Utrecht, 2004; 2005; 2006

Teaching:
CSCS: Law, Rights and Culture, an interdisciplinary course jointly offered to the PhD students of CSCS and the final year students of NLSIU.
NLSIU (1993-2003): Taught a number of courses offered both at the Post-graduate (LLM) and the Under-graduate (BALLB (Hons.)) levels, including,
o Human Rights Law and Philosophy
o International Human Rights Law (LLM)
o Democracy and Questions of Critical Citizenship
o Political and Legal Philosophy
o Law and Development
o Research Methodology (LLM)

Seminar or Optional Courses:
o Human Rights Law and Practice
o Human Rights and the Globalisation Challenge
o Science-Technology Advancements and Human Rights (LLM)
o Human Rights Responses to Ethnic Violence
Curriculum Development
Both at CSCS as well as at the NLSIU have been involved in curricular development process of a number of courses. Especially, was lead faculty in the development of LLM (Human Rights Law) and the Post-Graduate Diploma in Human Rights Law, both at the NLSIU. Currently Lead Researcher in the Law, Society and Culture Research Programme at CSCS.

Academic Seminars, Conferences and Events:
o Two day international seminar on Pluralism and the Challenge of Religious revivalism in South and South East Asia, 16-17 August, 2008, Bangalore.
o Two-day seminar on -Culture and Politics of Intolerance in South and South East Asia‖, 21-22 July 2007, Bangalore.
o International Seminar on -Enculturing Law‖: New Agendas for Legal Pedagogy, held in August 11th-13th 2005 in Bangalore).
o National Roundtable on Communalism and Human Rights jointly organised by the NHRC, New Delhi, and the NIHR, NLSIU in August 2002. The Roundtable raised a number of important issues of human rights in the background of communal violence and polarisation, including such issues as criminal responsibility, hatespeech, and genocide
o Member of the Organising team of the Commonwealth Judicial Colloquium on National Implementation of International Human Rights, Jointly organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat, London, Interights, London and the NLSIU, Bangalore, in December 1998.

Academic Interests:
Has long term interest in the ideas of law and rights and the trajectories of their circulation and transformation, especially in, but not confined to, India.
Work-in-progress:
o Comparative Constitutional Cultures. Currently the work is primarily in the area of South Asia, though the intention is to make it inter-asia. The project intends to engage with comparative experiences of law and rights in south aisa through the prism of culture defined in a broad sense. The first phase of work is creating an archive on Indian constitutionalism, and produce a monograph that captures some of the critical concerns that cultural studies highlighted in the recent times.
o ‗Grassroots Constitutionalism‘: The Story of Struggles for Civil Liberties and Democratic Rights in India. This monograph intends to analyse the role of middle class social movements, particularly those which are influenced by the developments in the western liberal democracy, and liberal democratic theory in general, in negotiating and shaping democratic political processes in modern India. During the analysis it tries to address some of the core questions concerning the ‗liberal project‘ in India, such as the issue of colonial modernity and the issue of law and rights, the contradiction of liberal ideas being pursued by radical political movements and its consequences, the sociological tensions between rights-based action processes and radical social movements seeking transformations beyond the liberal framework, and the impact of institutionalisation (bureaucratisation) of human rights regimes and the emergence of human rights NGO on rights-based action process.
o (With Arvind Narrain) A Politics for Human Rights: Towards an alternative perspective on Post-Independent State and Society in India. This is an analytical reader that represents eight themes pertaining to human rights situation in India with a view to provide an alternative view of state and society in post-independent India. Each of these eight themes will have readings drawn exclusively from the published (but not easily available for circulation) materials of civil liberties and human rights organisations, prefaced by an analytical outline that presents a frame to read the materials beyond the immediate context in which they were written.

Recent Academic Publications:

Edited Volumes:
(With Mathew John) Enculturing Law: New Agendas for Legal Pedagogy (New Delhi: Tulika, 2008).
(With Anita Abraham & Sarasu Thomas), Human Rights Law: Essential National and International Documents, NLSIU, 2004.
Articles:
-Of Pedagogy and Suffering: Civil Rights Movements and Human Rights Teaching in India‖ in Enculturing Law, 2008.
-‘The Counter-Terrorist Advantage‘: The Rise of Authoritarian Security State and Future of Cosmopolitan (Global) Citizenship‖, Import-Export: Cultural Transfer, Berlin: Parthas, 2005.
-Between State and Revolution: Trajectories of Civil Liberties Movement in Andhra Pradesh‖ (forthcoming in G. Ajay and G. Vijay eds, Contemporary Andhra)

-Direct Funding and ‗Civil Society Building:‘‖ Law, Social Justice and Global Development, Vol. 2, 2001.
-Universality v Relativity in Human Rights: A Reappraisal of the Debate‖ Human Rights Law Review (University of Nottingham), Vol. 1, No. 3, 1996.
-Human Rights Movement in Colonial India: An Historical Perspective‖, National Law School Journal, Vol. 6, 1994.
General Publication:
The Challenge of Democratic Empowerment: Exploring the role of civil society in India, 2004.
-Colonialism, Law and Women‘s Rights‖ (Review), Law, Social Justice and Global Development, Vol. 2, 2001.
-Contextualising POTA‖ NAPM Bulletin, 2002.
-Human Rights Action Groups in India‖ Voices, Jan-March 1999.
Human Rights: Past and Present, 3rd Chandra Mouli Memorial Lecture, 1996.

Select Academic Papers :
Some questions of ontology in rethinking the future of the secular, brief response to Abdullahi An N‘iam, Utrecht, 25-26 May 2009.
The emergence of International Criminal Law and the Changing nature of Responsibility for gross human rights violations, Rajeev Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala, 28-29 Feb. 2009.
Thinking about Pluralism in the times of Religious Revivalism-issues and Challenges in the Indian Context, NLSIU, Bangalore, 16-17 August 2008.
-Human Rights in the times of Terrorism, State Security and Humanitarian Disasters‖, seminar organised by ICRC New Delhi and the Bangalore University, December 2007.
-Between Fundamentalism and Pragmatism: Searching a Politics FOR Justice‖, presented at a workshop on Fundamentalism, Democratic Pluralism and Sustainable Development, Utrecht, Feb. 2007.
-The South as a New Political Imagination‖, CIEDS, Bangalore, March 2007.
The Culture Question in Indian Constitutionalism, International Seminar on the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Cultural Experience, IISC, Bangalore, Jan 2007.
-Justice in Malleable Times‖, paper presented in a seminar on Social Justice organised at JNU, June 2006.
The Place of South Africa in the Making of Indian Constitutionalism, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, May 2006.
-Forging higher education links in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies with UK‖ at the South India Commonwealth Scholars‘ Meet, held at Mangalore, 19th March, 2005.

-State obligations and Rights of Victims‖ at the Human Rights preparedness workshop organised by the Norwegian Human Rights Fund, Bangalore on 6th March, 2005.
-International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: A third world perspective‖ at the workshop on Human rights for third world lawyers organised by the Law and Society Trust, Sri Lanka and NLSIU Bangalore, 4th January 2005.
-Terrorism, States of Emergency and future of Civil and Political Rights‖ at the workshop on Human rights for third world lawyers organised by the Law and Society Trust, Sri Lanka and NLSIU Bangalore, 5th January 2005.
-Literature and Human Rights: A Perspective on the Obscenity Trials in early 20th Century Europe‖ in the seminar on Role of Literature in upholding Human Rights organised by Idara-E-Adab-E-Islami, Bangalore, held on 11th December 2004.
-Invoking Gandhi in our times‖ at CSCS, Bangalore on 10th December 2004
-Towards a Genealogy of Civil Society Conceptualisations in post-independent India‖ at a workshop on Networks and Collaborations organised by ALF, Bangalore and Sarai, New Delhi, held on 27th -28th November 2004
-From Nuremberg to Rome (ICC): A Perspective on remedies for Gross Human Rights Violations,‖ paper presented at a workshop on ICC jointly organised by ICC-India, PUCL (Karnataka) and Alternative Law Forum (Bangalore), 26th May 2004
-International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights: The emerging challenges,‖ Lecture at the South Asia Teaching session on International Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law, organised by ICRC, UNHCR and NLSIU, 17th May 2004
-Rethinking ‗Remedies‘ for Gross Human Rights Violations,‖ Paper presented at the Inter-Asia Cultural Conference, Bangalore 23-25 February 2004.
-Teaching Human Rights‖ & -A Perspective on the Theories of Human Rights‖ Lectures at the Academic Staff College, Mysore University. 3rd January 2004.
-Human Rights Movement and the Question of Violence‖ Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore. 7th November 2003.
-Human Rights Approaches to Governance‖ Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore. October 2003.
Globalisation, Human Rights and the Developing World: Hegemony and Resistance in Human Rights Discourse. Paper presented in a talk at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, November 2002.
Human Rights Protection and Administration of Justice. Paper presented in a seminar organised by Bangalore University in March 2000.
Globalisation and the Future of Right to Development. Paper Presented at a Seminar at the School of Law, University of Nottingham, February 2000.
Rethinking Human Rights: UGC Seminar on Human Rights held at School of Legal Studies, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi, 18-20 December 1998.