Welcome to CFLR- Centre for Feminist Legal Research

The Centre's research focus and library materials address gender from a postcolonial and feminist legal perpective. The activities of the centre are focused broadly on the following areas:

Freedom of speech and expression

The research draws a distinction between the legal regulation of sexual speech and of hate speech - two very different kinds of speech, with two very different kinds of laws. Hate speech laws addresses a specific harm - promotion of hatred towards different racial, caste and religious groups. The dimensions of hate speech and the handling of such speech by the courts, has become an increasingly sensitive issue in the context of the contemporary communal environment and the ascendance of the right wing.

Sexual speech laws or the legal regulation of sexual speech are designed to reinforce traditional and highly conservative sexual moralities. The Centre examines how interventions by right wing political forces, human rights groups or feminist groups on issues such as sexual harassment or obscenity compromise the right to free speech, especially to sexual speech, and the implications of this move on the rights of sexual subalterns.

Culture, Media and Censorship Sexual speech and sexual expression, whether in the form of Hindi film songs, beauty contests, advertisements, or satellite broadcasting, constitute zones of contestation where culture is invoked either to legitimize or delegitimize sexual speech. The call to censor sexual representations has come from progressive and conservative groups alike. This call also implicates deeper issues of nationalism and cultural authenticity that reinforce an us/them, west/rest divide. The Centre examines the different meanings of culture that inform debates on speech and expression, how culture is used to justify censorship and the implications of these cultural moves on media today.

Right to Freedom of Religion & Secularism

The right to freedom of religion is of particular concern in the context communal politics and the assertion of the Hindutva agenda. This right is about the protection of the rights of religions minorities, the cornerstone of democracy. The meaning accorded to this right depends, in part, on the meaning of secularism. Secularism in India is based on the equal treatment of all religious. The meaning of secularism is contingent on the meaning that is given to the right to equality. If equality means treating everyone the same, then it is a call for minority groups to give up their special rights – to education, personal law, and special educational institutions. If equality is based on a substantive model, that is, redressing the disadvantage that groups or communities have historically endured on the grounds that they are different, then temporary special measures are justified to accomplish that end.

Right to Equality

The right to equality is also subject to different meanings within and outside the courtroom. The dominant understanding of equality has meant treating likes alike, that is, if you are the same, then you are entitled to equality. This is described as the formal model of equality. Difference precludes any further equality analysis of the group in question.

However, another understanding of equality is based on examining if the difference has been a basis for historical disadvantage. This model is based on a substantive understanding of equality. If the difference has been the basis for historical disadvantage, such as race, gender, or religion, then certain institutional, state, and legal measures may need to be put in place in order to redress this historical disadvantage. The difference would not preclude entitlement to equality. Indeed the difference would be treated as integral to the meaning of equality.

The Centre’s research in this area has focused on discrimination against religious and sexual minorities and women.

Right to Sexual Autonomy and Bodily Integrity

The right to sexual autonomy and bodily integrity encompasses a broad array of concerns.

·Sexual Subalterns:

The Centre has focused on the issue of agency and subjectivity in its research areas. The notion of the resistive subject has been a central feature of postcolonial theory and subaltern studies. The subaltern subject has been able to articulate resistance in deeply coercive circumstances, namely, under the conditions of colonialism. This history is useful in the contemporary struggles for empowerment of religious minorities as well as sexual minorities in postcolonial India. The subaltern exposes how liberalism has operated to exclude certain voices from the enjoyment of rights and benefits. These exclusions were justified on the ground that the `other’ was infantile, civilizationally immature, naturally different and backward, or simply dangerous and threatening. The subaltern exposes how the legal treatment of difference in the area of sexuality reinforces sexual norms and stigmatizes sex, and excludes and penalizes sexual speech and conduct that falls outside of these norms. The Centre’s research has highlighted how contemporary sexual subalterns, including sex workers, gays, lesbians, kothis, hijras, and girias (a unique variety of transgendered/transsexual subjects) are bringing a significant challenge to dominant assumptions about sex in a postcolonial context and cultural claims around sexual purity.

Sexual Rights

Sexual wrongs have been the core focus of contemporary feminist engagements with law and development of policy in India. Rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and obscenity have all been the subject of law reform. As important as these issues may be, the Centre also draws attention to limitations of this strategy. There has not been a similar focus on the articulation of sexual rights. Sexual rights claims are often confronted by competing claims about Indian cultural values, sexual morality, the family and violence against women. The articulation of a sexual rights strategy within a postcolonial context is important to develop. It is distinct from the way sexual rights and issues of sexuality have been articulated in other contexts which have been influenced by a psychoanalytic perspective.

·Migration and Trafficking in Women:

The Centre works with the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women to address issues of trafficking and migration of women in terms of both law and policy. This particular initiative focuses on research and evaluation of the discourses and interventions on trafficking, migration, sexuality and sex work.

The Centre is also engaged with the Sex Workers' Rights movement in India, and is an active ally of the National Network of Sex Workers (NNSW). It facilitates conceptual and strategy meetings amongst the sex workers community. Its research examines how the treatment of sex workers is based on dominant sexual ideology and cultural essentialism. It also examines the rights claims of sex workers and other sexually marginalised communities,, how they contest assumptions about sexuality (and culture) that inform the law and policy, expand the right to sexual speech, and expose the discrimination they experience based on sexual stigma