Category: Legislative History

• Prevention of Atrocities Act: Part 2 Implementation, Violence, Rurality, and Disillusionment

  Feb 20

  The Prevention of Atrocities Act is passed four years after the enactment of anti-defection laws. Discussion in the lok sabha is largely agreeable and one note even as MPs discuss… more ›

• Prevention of Atrocities Act: Part 1 Caste, Class, and Responsibility

  Feb 20

  In the aftermath of the emergency increasing mob violence against dalits such as the Karamchedu Massacre are met with renewed calls for harsher criminal laws. Activists and parliamentarians engage in… more ›

• Protection of Civil Rights Act: Part 2 Emergency Law Making

  Feb 13

  The PCRA is discussed and passed during the 1975 National Emergency. Despite the opposition being in jail, members of parliament discuss the economic class struggle underlying the fight against untouchability,their… more ›

• Protection of Civil Rights Act: Part 1

  Feb 13

  Between 1955 and 1976 activist organisations and MPs push for committed implementation of the UOA while demanding an amednment act. The Elayaperumal Committee report recommends sweeping legal reforms. MPs in… more ›

• Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955: Part 4 Committment, Implementation, and Resources

  Feb 4

  Parliamentarians debating the UOA expressed deep distrust about whether the government would be interested in or able to end untouchability. They argued that the police and administrative machinery were complicit… more ›

• Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955: Part 3 Civil Rights or Criminal law?

  Feb 4

  Parliamentarians disagreed with each other about whether the UOA would be sufficient or necessary to realise equal civil rights for Dalit citizens. They expressed dissent with a simple penal approach… more ›

• Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955 :Part 2 Defining Untouchability, Religion, Legal Design, and Rurality

  Feb 4

  Members of Parliament disagreed with each other on how to define untouchability and whether untouchability was solely a rural problem when discussing the Untouchability Offences Act 1955 more ›

• The Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955 Part 1

  Feb 4

  Between 1949 and 1954 Dalit parliamentarians consistently spoke in parliament nudging and shaming the government into making an untouchability law more ›

• Article 17 in the Constituent Assembly: Part 3

  Jan 26

  Part 3 of this series delves into discussions about Article 17 on the floor of the Constituent Assembly in April 1947 and November 1948 more ›

• Article 17 in Constituent Assembly : Part 2

  Jan 26

  Part 2 of this series discusses debates within the Sub Committee on Minorities and the Advisory Committee of the Constituent Assembly on the abolition of untouchability. more ›

• Article 17 in Constituent Assembly: Part 1

  Jan 26

  Part 1 of this series interrogates legislative history of Article 17 in the Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights in the Constituent Assembly. We discuss B.R. Ambedkars States and Minorities Proposal and… more ›