Competing Populisms: Public Interest Litigation and Political Society in Post-Emergency India
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation studies the politics of 'Public Interest Litigation' (PIL) in contemporary India. PIL is a unique jurisdiction initiated by the Indian Supreme Court in the aftermath of the Emergency of 1975-1977. Why did the Court's response to the crisis of the Emergency period have to take the form of PIL? I locate the history of PIL in India's postcolonial predicament, arguing that a Constitutional framework that mandated a statist agenda of social transformation provided the conditions of possibility for PIL to emerge. The post-Emergency era was the heyday of a new form of everyday politics that Partha Chatterjee has called 'political society'. I argue that PIL in its initial phase emerged as its judicial counterpart, and was even characterized as 'judicial populism'. However, PIL in its 21st century avatar has emerged as a bulwark against the operations of political society, often used as a powerful weapon against the same subaltern classes whose interests were so loudly championed by the initial cases of PIL. In the last decade, for instance, PIL has enabled the Indian appellate courts to function as a slum demolition machine, and a most effective one at that - even more successful than the Emergency regime. A recurring sentiment in these recent PIL cases is a deep impatience with the populism that is believed to characterize political life in India, and with the illegalities fostered by it. However, I argue that the enormous powers of PIL stem from its own populist character, which allows the appellate courts great flexibility in being able to maneouvre themselves into positions of overweening authority. With little or no procedure to regulate it, it is increasingly difficult to locate PIL within the conventional rubric of adjudicatory practice. With radical departures from legal norms that further empower the Courts, I argue, PIL has emerged as the vanishing point of jurisprudence. As a weapon of civil society, PIL appears to be a mere legal tool and there…
abstract: This dissertation studies the politics of 'Public Interest Litigation' (PIL) in contemporary India. PIL is a unique jurisdiction initiated by the Indian Supreme Court in the aftermath of the Emergency of 1975-1977. Why did the Court's response to the crisis of the Emergency period have to take the form of PIL? I locate the history of PIL in India's postcolonial predicament, arguing that a Constitutional framework that mandated a statist agenda of social transformation provided the conditions of possibility for PIL to emerge. The post-Emergency era was the heyday of a new form of everyday politics that Partha Chatterjee has called 'political society'. I argue that PIL in its initial phase emerged as its judicial counterpart, and was even characterized as 'judicial populism'. However, PIL in its 21st century avatar has emerged as a bulwark against the operations of political society, often used as a powerful weapon against the same subaltern classes whose interests were so loudly championed by the initial cases of PIL. In the last decade, for instance, PIL has enabled the Indian appellate courts to function as a slum demolition machine, and a most effective one at that - even more successful than the Emergency regime. A recurring sentiment in these recent PIL cases is a deep impatience with the populism that is believed to characterize political life in India, and with the illegalities fostered by it. However, I argue that the enormous powers of PIL stem from its own populist character, which allows the appellate courts great flexibility in being able to maneouvre themselves into positions of overweening authority. With little or no procedure to regulate it, it is increasingly difficult to locate PIL within the conventional rubric of adjudicatory practice. With radical departures from legal norms that further empower the Courts, I argue, PIL has emerged as the vanishing point of jurisprudence. As a weapon of civil society, PIL appears to be a mere legal tool and there…
author: Bhuwania, Anuj
language: English
keywords: Law--Political aspects, Citizen suits (Civil procedure), Ethnology, Law, South Asians
date published: 2013
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:44:31Z
provider: Columbia University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Columbia University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7916/D8TB168C