SARI will be holding a conference on the theme of Indian poetry and the Representation of Justice on 18th and 19th January 2027 at INALCO, Paris and online

CALL FOR PAPERS: INDIAN POETRY AND THE REPRESENTATION OF JUSTICE

While it might at first seem that, to paraphrase Kipling, “Law is Law, and Verse is Verse and never the twain shall meet”, there are in fact interesting connections to be made between these apparently parallel worlds. Traditional poetry has its own laws, with form as a determining factor: facilitating recitation, transmission and development over time through a community of contributors. Modern poetry, on the other hand, posits its own self-governing rules. As A.C. Bradley put it in his inaugural lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry:

Its nature is to be not a part, nor yet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase), but to be a world by itself, independent, complete, autonomous; and to possess it fully you must enter that world, conform to its laws, and ignore for the time the beliefs, aims, and particular conditions which belong to you in the other world of reality.

In that “other world of reality”, justice, as we commonly understand it, is determined by the ideology of any particular state, and this largely unspoken theory finds expression in various judicial proceedings, through laws enforced in courtrooms, by the police and prison systems, and by public opinion. The Indian legal system is particularly interesting for its eclectic drawing on a long and polycolonial history. Its foundation is the Constitution of 1949, a document which, though often called the longest in the world, has a preamble which is almost poetically concise, and which is worth quoting in full here:

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.

One of the functions of this conference is to examine to what extent these eminently enlightened principles have been tested not only in the real world, but also in poems, in the poetic realm in which we submit, in Seamus Heaney’s words, to “the government of the tongue”.

The idea of the poet as legislator —good or bad, acknowledged or unacknowledged— is a very old one and, since Plato, it has been approached in so many different ways that twenty-first-century readers, often unfamiliar with poetry and its ways, may be forgiven for any initial bewilderment at the idea of linking poetry, of all things, to the representation of justice. And yet …

The very terms poetic justice and poetic licence suggest ways in which poetry may work, not so much against as above the law, as Portia, tongue-in-cheek, so ably argued in the trial scene of The Merchant of Venice, As for poetic licence, according to John Dryden, it is “the liberty which poets have assumed to themselves in all ages, of speaking things in verse, which are beyond the severity of prose”. This raises the fundamental question of language and its uses, bringing into fruitful tension the precision required in a court of law with the uncertainty inherent in language itself. John Keats, we remember, insisted that poetry catered to that equally essential human need, that which flowers “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”.

Is verse always subversive, as the etymology suggests? Poetry is what best expresses the human drama which plays out in the courtroom, or in prison, or on legally-fixed borders. Shelley thought that poets were legislators, albeit unacknowledged, because poets, through their heightened sense of imagination, were more attentive than most to the moral sentiment behind our understanding of what is ‘just’:

The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively […] Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food.

Shelley was right: poetry is, fundamentally, about love. But can one legislate for love? By no mere coincidence, this very question is asked, both wistfully and wittily, in the poem which opens The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry (1994):

कराराच्या दोन अटी होत्या – तिच्या आणि माझ्या कराराच्या दोन अटी होत्या. पहहली : तिनें िो केवहाांहह मोडावा ; दुसरी : म ीँ िो कध ांहह मोडिाां कामा नये. पहाडाांिल्या प्रतिध्वन ला साक्ष ठेवून आमहीां शपथा घेिल्या, वाऱ्याच बिछाईि केली, चाांदण्याच दुलई ओढली, आिख काांहीां आणि काांहीां – पि अजून कराराच पहहली अट तिनें पाळलेली नाहीां. मग दुसरीचें म ां काय करायला हवें ?

The Pact There were two conditions to the pact— there were two conditions to the pact she and I made. First: she could break it at any time. Second: I could never break it. We took our vows with the echo in the hills as our witness, made a bed of the wind, and drew the sheet of the stars over ourselves— and there was more, much more. But so far she hasn’t kept her side of the bargain. What should I do now with the second condition? Is a pact merely a pact?

Given the already stimulating complexity of the conference theme, we have no wish to impose either temporal or spatial limits to what might be understood as ‘Indian poetry’. Discussions of poems written in English, or in any Indian language, and translated into English or French, by poets who have lived in India before or after 1947, or who are diasporically connected to India, are all welcome.

Suggested themes:
- the poet as legislator
- poetic justice
- questions of translation and le mot juste
- poems about crime and punishment
- justice claims and political combat through poetry
- trials of poets
- fact-checking poetry
- poetry and law enforcement
- poets and censorship
- plagiarism and copyright law
- poetry and the rules-based order
- “pushing the boundaries”
- biases and ways of judging

Bibliography
Bradley, A.C., Poetry for Poetry’s Sake, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1901.
Dharwadker, Vinay and A.K. Ramanujan, ed. The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1996.
Dryden, John, Preface to The State of Innocence, 1678.
Heaney, Seamus, The Government of the Tongue: Selected Prose 1978-1987, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989.
Keats, John, letter to George and Tom Keats, 21 December, 1817.
Rege, P.S., Priyal, Mauj Prakashan Griha, 1972
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, A Defence of Poetry, [1821]

SARI invites paper proposals in English or French, with - a title and a summary (300 words) - a short presentation of the author(s), specifying their name, research centre/university of affiliation, status, field of research (150 words) - and indicating participation intended (in person or online).

Proposed Calendar
Proposals to be sent by: 30th August 2026
Communication to authors: 30th September 2026
Finalization and dispatch of program: Beginning of November 2026
Dates: 18th and 19th January 2027

Email addresses for sending proposals and for information on attendance:
madhura.joshi@ut-capitole.fr  and  helen.goethals@orange.fr

Scientific Committee
Corinne Bigot, Université Toulouse 2
Anne Castaing, Chargée de recherche au CNRS, Membre du Centre d’études sud-asiatiques et himalayennes
Geetha Ganapathy Doré, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord
Anupama Mohan, Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur
Cécile Oumhani, Poet and academic
Nishat Zaidi, Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi

Organizing Committee
Helen Goethals, Université Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès
Madhura Joshi, Université Toulouse Capitole
Ada Lipman INALCO, Paris
Ahmed Mulla, Université de Guyane
Jitka de Préval, Independent Researcher, specialist of Indian cinema