QAMRA

Evidence of Suppression, Suppression of Evidence: Queer Archiving Practices in India

Day 1, Session 3.2
10 DECEMBER, 2016

Panel Coordinator: Niruj Mohan Ramanujam, The National Centre for Radio Astrophysics,Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR), Pune and Orinam Collective

Chair & Discussant: Lawrence Liang, School of Law Governance and Citizenship,Ambedkar University, Delhi

“Who do I Tell My Story To?” Counselling Narratives and Their Impact on Legal Processes: Vinay Chandran, Swabhava Trust, Bengaluru

Video footage as Evidence: T. Jayashree, Zeytoon Films, Bengaluru

Designing Queer Archive Frameworks: Niruj Mohan Ramanujam, National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pune

Documenting LGBTI Experiences: Sunil Mohan and Sumathi Murthy, Independent Researchers, Bengaluru

The inaugural LASSnet conference was held at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi in 2009. A subsequent conference was held at the Foundation for Liberal and Management Education (FLAME) in Pune in 2010. In 2012 the third LASSNet conference was a collaboration between the Law and Society Trust, Colombo, and the Department of Law, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. These conferences identified a number of priorities for the research, study and practice of law in South Asia. Intimate connections between Evidence and Law is one such fundamental question. The indeterminacy in law could be read both as a problem of truth and also as one that plagues disciplines. The question of evidence has been central to the formation of disciplines and the claims that they make upon knowledge. For initiatives such as LASSnet, the imperative of thinking with evidence— in these times of virtual virality, forensic imaginaries and ephemeral archives — serves as a fertile ground on which we can stage discussions of the perils, pleasures, meanings and methods of inter-disciplinarity. While disciplines are defined partially by the evidentiary protocols that they follow, the very nature of inter-disciplinary enquiry calls into crisis the idea of a single protocol. The methodological concerns with the seeking and making of certainty and truth implicate a whole range of disciplines: anthropology, art, history, law, religion, philosophy, politics, economics, literature, theatre, and science, to name just a few. The stakes in thinking with evidence are very high since doing so raises the core epistemological claims, regarding not just of what, but also how we know. This is rendered all the more difficult because the very grounds of evidence are themselves shifting terrain, subject not only to developments in science and technology but also to forms of historical consciousness and social knowledge.