India is today not only the largest producer of milk in the world, but the cooperative known as AMUL—Anand Milk Union Limited--has been emulated by other under- developed economies of the world, and held up as a model by the United Nations Development Fund.  The film was financed by each member of the Amul cooperative contributing Rs. 2 each (roughly the equivalent of the price of one litre of milk)—amodel for crowd funding we are so familiar with today.
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Bio: Poonam Arora holds a Ph.D. in Film Studies from the State University of New York, Binghamton, 1991. She began teaching Film at the University of Michigan, Dearbornin 1989. Subsequently, she shifted her focus to deploying film texts in teaching Humanities courses more broadly, including a course—American Cinema, American Industry--to union members of the United Auto Workers—UAW. A senior administrator for diversity, equity and inclusion, she retired in 2019 as the Associate Dean of the College, Grinnell College, a premiere liberal arts college in Iowa, USA. She now runs a you tube channel—Watching Films Intelligently (with Vibhu Galhotra)—devoted to visual literacy and informal Cultural Studies.

Anupama Mohan, IIT Jodhpur
"हमसबहवाकीबिरादरीहै, We are a community of air":
All That Breathes and the Paradoxes of Environmental Justice

All That Breathes (2023) is Shaunak Sen's award-winning documentary on two brothers in Delhi who have dedicated their lives to saving eagles and kites that fall out of the sky due to Delhi's changing environmental profile and, oddly enough, kite-flying, a sport that is popular in Northern India but is often fatal for birds. Sen's documentary, however, is not only about Delhi's dying birds but is a searing exploration of the 2020 religious riots that broke out in the wake of the national furore over the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. The film is a complex meditation on the kinds of justice that is wanting in today's India: there is the ideological goal of sociopolitical justice, still a shimmering dream for millions of Indians whose citizenship is under question and attack on a daily basis, and then, there is the larger planetary question of justice for nonhuman species whose lives have been torn asunder by human society and whose welfare requires humans to set aside their own squabbles and to look up into the sky. In my paper, I examine the documentary film for its moving portrayal of the paradoxical ways in which human and nonhuman worlds form "a community of air" and how entangled notions of justice lie at the heart of this difficult, dense interrelationship between two unequal actors.
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Bio: Anupama Mohan is Associate Professor of English at the School of Liberal Arts in Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur. She is the author of the monograph Utopia and the Village in South Asian Literatures (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2012) and the editor of the collection "Maritime Transmodernities: Literatures of the Indian Ocean"(Special Issue, Postcolonial Text, 2019), the novel Where Mayflies Live Forever (Picador, 2022), and the poetry collection, Twenty Odd Love Poems (The Writer's Workshop, 2008). Her critical essays have been featured in international peer-reviewed journals such as South Asian History and Culture, Asian Review of World History, University of Toronto Quarterly, Indian Theatre Journal, and Economic and Political Weekly, among others. Her research over time has been generously supported by the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Universities of Toronto, and Nevada Reno, Presidency University, and IIT Jodhpur. She was the 2021 Writer-in-Residence at the Samyukta Research Foundation, Thiruvananthapuram and the 2024 Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Germany.

Suddhaseel Sen, IIT Bombay
Competing Notions of Justice for Women:
Three Case Studies from Contemporary Hindi Cinema

Increasing media attention on violence towards women in India in the last fifteen years or so, coupled with various problems in the Indian legal system, has caused the topic of domestic violence to gain extensive coverage on social media. Concomitantly, vigilante justice has come to be endorsed more and more vociferously by many Indians. Commercial cinema, often a barometer of public opinion, has not been slow to reflect—and respond to—these developments. A comparison of three recent Bollywood films, Laapataa Ladies (“Lost Ladies,” 2023), Jigra (2024), and Do Patti (also from 2024) reveals that the films endorse different kinds of justice that are by no means compatible with one another. Do Patti endorses the manipulation of police records in order to bring the perpetrators of domestic violence to book; Jigra valorizes “woman power” by endorsing Indian exceptionalism; while Laapataa Ladies, by far the most acclaimed among these three films, departs from the others in denying the separation of means from ends, no matter how well-meaning they might be, and instead suggests more ethically viable alternatives. In my paper, I intend to establish my reading through close analyses of relevant sections from each of these films, bringing them into conversation with their critical and popular receptions.
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Bio: Suddhaseel Sen is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Bombay. He is the author of a critically acclaimed monograph, Shakespeare in the World: Cross-Cultural Adaptation in Europe and Colonial India, 1850-1900 (Routledge, 2021) and of several articles on literary and musicological topics.

Geetha Ganapathy Doré, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord
Mrs Chatterjee v Norway – The Fight of a Migrant Indian Mother for Justice

Mrs Chatterjee v Norway is a Hindi film directed by Ashima Chibber, released in 2023, and available on Netflix. It is based on the real story of Sagarika Chakraborty and her husband Anurup Bhattacharya who had migrated to Norway in 2007. Their son Abhigayan (diagnosed with autistic symptoms) and baby-daughter Aishwarya were placed in a foster family in 2011 by Barnevernet, the Norwegian Child Welfare Service, because it deemed the mother to be mentally unfit to raise them. The migrant mother fought a custody battle in Norway with many twists and turns. Sagarika Chakraborty published her account of the ordeals she underwent in her book The Journey of a Mother in 2022.

 My paper proposes to analyze the fictional version presented in the film from the point of view of representation of justice. The film’s very title prepares us for a court scene narrative. Here a migrant Indian woman is pitted against a state ironically known for its peace-making role in conflicts. Debika Chatterjee is a double victim – of domestic violence in a foreign country and separation from her beloved children. She is isolated and alienated by the nexus of corruption and injustice. But she does not remain passive and turns into a Kali like Mater Furiosa to take all sorts of action, legal and illegal, to retrieve her children.  My paper will study the fundamental human right to have a family and the rights of the child involved in this case, the national and international laws on which the parties rely, the different procedures in the Norwegian and Indian courts, the various types of institutions and actors that participate in the cause of justice, the types of offences that are committed by the protagonist Debika in her singled-minded focus to get the children back and the forms of justice – punitive, cultural, mediatory, gender, adjudicatory - depicted in the film through visual and narrative strategies. In the trial of Norway’s justice by the film, the winner is a middle-class Indian woman who stands up for herself. Her empowerment mirrors the emergence of a postcolonial nation where women occupy high ranks in the government and make sure that women are heard when they speak.
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Bio : Geetha Ganapathy Doré is Associate Professor (Maîtresse de conférences habilitée à diriger des recherches) in English at the Faculté de droit, sciences politiques et sociales, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord. She is an active member of CREA, Université Paris Nanterre and affiliated member of IDPS, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord. She is the author of The Post Colonial Indian Novel in English (CSP, 2011) and Honorary President of the SARI.

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13h30   Conference: Giorgos Askitas, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord

Law, Film, and Nationhood in the Post-State, Pro-Legal Subject Era: Introducing Indian Cinema as Metalegal Jurisprudence

Moderation: Suddhaseel Sen, IIT Bombay
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Giorgos Askitas is an EU Qualified Lawyer. He holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, an LLM in International and European Legal Studies from the same institution, an LLM in Comparative Legal Studies from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and a Master 2 in International Cooperation and NGOs from Université Sorbonne Paris Nord. He has been pre-accepted for a PhD at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, where he will explore the relationship between international law and autobiographical literature.

In addition to his monograph, Law and Cinema: A Comparative Study (Ant. N. Sakkoulas, 2024), his research interests include law and the arts, law and interdisciplinarity, metalegal normativities, Critical Legal Studies, human rights, and the sociology of law—particularly the effects of capitalism on legal doctrine.

Nandita Wagle, Savitribai Phule Pune University
The Court Room in India Cinema: A diachronic study

The Court Room is a space that has always embodied the power, status and impact of Justice as an instrument of society and state. This is visible in multiple films of popular and parallel creation in Hindi as well as regional languages of India. An amalgam of language and image is used to represent both the inherent values of the society portrayed and the behavioural norms that become iconically associated to the concept and the space.

The characters who are indissociable from this universe, their physical appearance, the social status that they embody, the relational politic between them will be studied through a visual and a linguistic analysis of excerpts from 5 to 7 films. The use of sound and editing cuts in the creation and enhancement of narrational dynamics will also be a part of this study. This paper proposes to showcase a diachronic study of the evolution of this space in Indian cinema.
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Bio: Dr Nandita Wagle is Assistant Prof for French Literature, Didactics, Translation and Subtitling Arts and Techniques at the Foreign Languages Department of the Savitribai Phule Pune University. Her research interests include cinema, performative aspects of language and creative methodologies and the use of new technologies in pedagogy of FLE.

Nishat Zaidi, Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi
Justice, State and Modernity: 
A Study of the decolonial Critique of Institutions of Law and Justice in Hindi Cinema of the1970 and 80s

The 1970s in Post-Nehruvian India was a period marked by significant unrest, culminating in the declaration of the Emergency in 1975, which is widely regarded as a dark chapter in the history of Indian democracy. This decade also witnessed the surge in several social movements, such as the Chipko Movement, the Silent Valley Movement, and the JP Movement. These non-party movements, on one hand, reflected what historian E.P. Thompson termed, the "moral economy" of the masses, while on the other, they symbolized a growing disillusionment with parliamentary democracy and the prevailing justice system, as noted by sociologist Rajni Kothari.

In the realm of art, literature, and cinema, these socio-political developments spurred a reflective engagement with the nation-building process and a critical re-evaluation of the colonial-era institutions of law and justice. This paper will examine the rise of films often associated with the "Angry Young Man" genre. Hindi films like Zanjeer (1973), Sholay (1975), Deewar (1975), Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978), and Trishul (1978)—while not all strictly fitting into the "Angry Young Man" category—play a significant role in critiquing the institutions of law and justice. These films boldly expose the endemic corruption within the legal system, its inaccessibility to the common man, and its deep-rooted flaws linked to its colonial origins.
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Bio: Nishat Zaidi is Professor of English at the Jamia Milia Islamia University. Her research interests include literature, postcolonial writing, feminist studies, Urdu literature as well as digital cultures in India. A recipient of several awards and grants, she is also the editor of Women’s Link.

Jitka de Préval, chercheuse indépendante/ Independent Researcher
La fabrique du spectacle juridique dans les films hindi. Émergence et évolution du genre.

L’objectif de cette contribution sera d’interroger les procédés de la fabrique du spectacle juridique dans les « courtroom dramas » ou « legal films » hindi, réalisés à partir de la période de postindépendance à nos jours. Quels sont les motifs récurrents dans les mises en scène du système judiciaire indien et de l'exercice de la justice ? Quelle part du réel juridique ces fictions intègrent-elles et de quelle manière ? Comment évolue leur discours ? Nous nous intéresserons autant à l’évolution de l’économie esthétique des films qu’à leurs contextes historique, politique ou sociétal.
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Bio : Jitka de Préval, chercheuse indépendante, affiliée à l’IRCAV, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, concentre sa recherche sur le cinéma des premiers temps et poursuit son intérêt pour le cinéma indien patrimonial. Elle est autrice de Camille Legrand, un opérateur Pathé sur la route des Indes, 1905-1920, publié en 2021 aux éditions Riveneuve et, en 2024, chez le même éditeur, Raj Kapoor, Le Maître de Bollywood.

This paper explores the representation of justice in Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan (2010) through a comparative lens, juxtaposing the film's depiction of legal and moral justice against broader cinematic traditions in Indian cinema. My Name is Khan tells the story of Rizwan Khan, a Muslim man with Asperger's syndrome, navigating a post-9/11 world rife with prejudice and systemic injustice. The film portrays justice as an intricate interplay between institutional frameworks, personal morality, and collective societal behavior.

Drawing on the works of Rachel Dwyer (Bollywood’s India), Tejaswini Ganti (Producing Bollywood), and M.K. Raghavendra (The Politics of Hindi Cinema), the paper positions My Name is Khan within a tradition of Indian films that grapple with questions of justice while simultaneously addressing global issues of human rights and systemic inequity. By employing a comparative methodology, the study will analyze the film's courtroom and social justice narratives alongside other landmark Indian movies such as A Wednesday (2008) and Court (2014), highlighting similarities and divergences in their approaches to institutional critique and societal accountability.

The paper also critically engages with how Johar’s directorial choices, including his use of melodrama and the star power of Shah Rukh Khan, elevate the moral stakes of Rizwan’s journey. Drawing on Judith Butler's concept of performative identity, the paper examines how My Name is Khan critiques Islamophobia and the stereotyping of marginalized communities. The analysis reveals how Johar integrates themes of redemption, love, and resilience into a narrative that challenges the conventional portrayals of justice in Indian cinema.

By situating My Name is Khan in both a local and global context, the study aims to contribute to broader conversations about the intersection of law, identity, and cultural representation in Indian cinematic traditions.
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Bio : Frédéric Lefrançois est Maître de conférences en études anglophones à l'Université des Antilles qualifié en arts (11ème et 18ème section CNU). Membre du CRILLASH UR 6_2 (Centre de recherches interlangues littératures arts et sciences humaines), il est associé à l'UAR 2999 - Etudes aréales. Ses champs d'études portent sur les arts vivants et le cinéma de la diaspora américano-caribéenne.

Shakila Zamboulingame, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier, EHESS
Jai Bhim : formes et réception d’un courtroom drama tamoul

Depuis ses origines, le cinéma tamoul a été marqué par son grand intérêt pour le système judiciaire, comme le montrent les nombreux courtroom dramas qui jalonnent son histoire mais aussi les personnages d’avocats et de juges qui peuplent ses nombreux films à portée sociale et politique. Cette fascination pour l’univers de la justice s’explique en partie par la porosité de la frontière entre cinéma et politique dans le Tamil Nadu.

Ainsi, Jai Bhim, de T.J. Gnanavel (2021), s’inscrit dans cette histoire mais se démarque par sa forme comme par sa réception : c’est un film très réaliste qui met en exergue la mécanique de la justice et qui a eu un grand retentissement dans la société tamoule. Le film s’inspire, en effet, de faits réels qui se sont déroulés en 1993 : l’arrestation de Rajakannu, Mosakutty et Iruttapan, trois membres de la communauté des Irulars, une scheduled tribe du Tamil Nadu, et le combat pour les retrouver que mènent Sengenni, la femme de Rajakannu et l’avocat ‘Justice’ K. Chandru, connu pour son engagement auprès des communautés marginalisées (il a offert son expertise pour l’écriture du scénario). Le film navigue entre les codes classiques du courtroom drama, ceux du thriller d’investigation, et une représentation très documentée des réalités de la communauté Irular, entre violence castéiste, brutalité policière et exécutions extra-judiciaires. Ainsi, Jai Bhim est un exemple rare de film dont le sous-texte politique marxiste, ambedkariste et periyariste très marqué n’a pas empêché un large succès commercial, qui a, par ailleurs, débordé dans la sphère politique (menaces de groupes et partis politiques castéistes contre l’acteur et producteur du film, Suriya ; action politique du gouvernement du Tamil Nadu en faveur des Irulars). Ainsi, analyser les formes et la réception de ce film unique dans le contexte tamoul permettra de comprendre comment le cinéma peut être le lieu d’une représentation de la justice comme miroir et tribunal de la société, mais aussi un espace de réparation symbolique.
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Bio : Shakila Zamboulingame est doctorante en études cinématographiques et en anthropologie. Sa thèse intitulée « Le cinéma tamoul en diaspora : culture filmique, expériences spectatorielles et identités » est co-dirigée par Madame Chloé Delaporte (Université Montpellier 3 Paul Valéry, laboratoire RIRRA 21) et Monsieur Mathieu Claveyrolas (CESAH-EHESS). Sa recherche transdisciplinaire vise à comprendre l'expérience sociale, culturelle et intime que constitue le cinéma tamoul dans les communautés de l'immigration et de l'exil tamouls en France, communément appelée diaspora tamoule. Elle explore la réception de ces films chez ces spectateurs, au prisme des identités et pratiques diasporiques, un champ de recherche encore peu exploré en France. Son travail de thèse s’ancre dans un projet d’écriture, « 1916, about Tamil cinema » qu’elle a initiée en 2016 pour réfléchir au cinéma tamoul au prisme de son identité hybride franco-tamoule et qui touche aujourd’hui une audience en Inde et parmi la diaspora tamoule mondiale.

Jour 2 - 10 mai 2025

Caroline TRECH, Université de Rouen
L’évolution des hijras justicières, à l’écran, de Daayra à Monkey Man

Le cas des hijras ou personnes transgenres, en Inde semble être particulièrement paradoxal, longtemps respectées et craintes, elles ne sont ni hommes ni femmes mais font partie intégrante de la société indienne. Au XIX siècle, le régime colonial britannique a criminalisé le statut des hijras, en les associant aux malfaiteurs. Ce n’est qu’en 2014, que la cour suprême indienne, a reconnu l’existence des personnes transgenres et d’un 3ème genre.

Néanmoins, ce sont des personnages récurrents dans les films indiens, et sont même quelques fois des personnages principaux. Dans le film Daayra, réalisé par Amol Paleka en 1996, une hijra protège une jeune femme en fuite sans parvenir à une fin heureuse. Plus tard en 2005, le film Shabnam Mausi de Yogesh Bharadwaj, s’inspire de la vie d’une hijra, de ses combats juridiques et politiques. Elles deviennent au fil des films des combattantes contre l’injustice. Dans les films Kanchana de Raghava Lawrence en 2011, le personnage récurrent est une hijra rejetée, puis assassinée, qui revient hanter ses bourreaux dans un esprit de vengeance. Ces films ont la particularité d’appartenir au genre comedy horror cher au cinéma indien. La province indienne du Tamil Nadu a été en première ligne dans le combat pour la reconnaissance des hijras et dans la prise en charge de leur chirurgie de changement de sexe par le gouvernement. Les films Kanchana ont très certainement eu une influence sur le statut juridique des hijras.

En 2024, nous retrouvons des hijras dans un film de la diaspora indienne, Monkey Man de Dev Patel. Ce film de combat ultra violent impose les hijras comme des membres d’une communauté de protectrices hindoues venant au secours du héros, se révélant en combattantes et guerrières contre l’injustice et la corruption omniprésente. Elles sont désormais visibles dans des films touchant un public international.

Après une évolution certaine dans les films indiens, comment ce double regard britannique et indien met-il en scène ces personnages porteurs de justice ? 
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Bio : Caroline Trech, Docteure qualifiée aux fonctions de MCF, Labo ERIAC, Université de Rouen, membre de la SARI, secrétaire. Actuellement Prag à l’université de Rouen, sa thèse a porté sur « L’identité britannique dans les films British-Asians. » Ses domaines de recherche sont le cinéma britannique et indien.

Ada Lipman, INALCO, CERLOM, EA 4124
L’empereur moghol Akbar comme symbole de la justice dans les films historiques hindis.

Depuis ses débuts, le cinéma hindi abordait dans ses productions des sujets reflétant les soucis et les questionnements de la société indienne. Souvent, de divers problèmes sociaux caractéristiques de l’Inde moderne étaient transposés par les cinéastes, avant et au cours des premières années de l’indépendance, dans les films historiques (Dwyer & Patel 2002), ce qui leur permettait de montrer l’intemporalité de certains dilemmes, suggérer des solutions ou sensibiliser leur public. Dans ce genre, les films historiques musulmans (‘Muslim Historicals’, Bhaskar & Allen 2009) traitaient notamment de la question de la justice et du pouvoir du monarque, reflet ou modèle pour les leaders politiques du XXe siècle, en mergeant la figure du patriarche avec celle de la loi (Chakravarty 1993). Dans ma communication, je propose d’analyser comment un des Grands Moghols – l’empereur Akbar – fut montré comme symbole de la justice dans quatre films hindis : Baiju Bawra (Vijay Bhatt, 1952), Anarkali (Nandlal Jaswantlal, 1953), Mughal-e-Azam (K. Asif, 1960) et Jodhaa Akbar (Ashutosh Gowariker, 2008). À travers ces films, j’étudierai les questions suivantes : comment les questions de justice et d’injustice sont-elles traitées dans les films historiques portant sur l’empire moghol ? Quels types de cas sont présentés comme nécessitant l’intervention de l’empereur ? Comment les procès et l’exécution de la justice sont-ils mis en scène et à quelle symbolique font appel les réalisateurs pour représenter la loi ? La justice du système incarnée par le monarque est-elle toujours la même que la justice morale ? L’empereur est-il systématiquement montré comme idéal d’un juge juste ? Sa représentation comme juge mais aussi comme symbole et garant de la justice reflète-t-elle les aspirations de l’Inde en matière des institutions gouvernementales à l’aube de son indépendance et aujourd’hui ? Enfin, l’importance accordée à la justice dans les films historiques musulmans a-t-elle changée au cours de presque six décennies ?
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Bio : Ada Lipman est depuis 2020 doctorante à l’INALCO à Paris, où elle enseigne les cinémas d'Asie du Sud. Elle y prépare au CERLOM (Centre d'Etude et de Recherche sur les Littératures et les Oralités du Monde, EA 4124) une thèse de doctorat intitulée L’Empereur Akbar, personnage de fiction littéraire et audiovisuelle en Inde et dans la diaspora indienne, de l'indépendance à nos jours, sous la direction de Stéphane Sawas et Harit Joshi. Dans sa recherche, elle s’intéresse aux relations entre différents arts, aux échanges entre l’Inde et l’Europe, ainsi qu'à la manière dont la culture populaire indienne d’aujourd’hui puise dans l’histoire du pays. Elle a publié deux articles en 2023 : « Ludique et tragique – le rôle des chansons dans la trilogie shakespearienne du cinéaste indien Vishal Bhardwaj » dans Comparative Literature Review (https://doi.org/10.26262/clr.v0i1.9374), et « La pièce de théâtre The Great Debate de Mrinal Mathur (2018) et la gestion de l’héritage musulman en Inde » dans Revue d’histoire culturelle. XVIIIe-XXIe siècles (https://doi.org/10.4000/rhc.5030).

 Madhumeeta Sinha, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad
Possibilities of Feminist Justice

This paper attempts to look at instances of feminist justice in three incredibly powerful documentary films: Naari Adalat (2000), Invoking Justice (2011) by Deepa Dhanraj and Gulabi Gang (2012) by Nishtha Jain. These films trace different locations to counter patriarchal and statist legal practices and redefine justice located in the everyday lives of the poor and marginalized. Nari Adalat is a document of lower caste rural women arbitrating justice in three cases focussing on family relations. Invoking Justice with a similar theme takes us to a small town in Tamil Nadu. It is a powerful narrative of the workings of a women’s Jamaat which was formed when women recognised that the law of the land as well as the customary legal systems set up under its tutelage fail to deliver justice to women, and act to protect the patriarchal community interests. The third film by Nishtha Jain is based in Bundelkhand in Central India and has Sampat Pal at its heart with a group of fierce vigilante women working with her against gender and caste violence. This film like the other two by Dhanraj shows the power of community and its ability to confront the local patriarchy as well as the bureaucracy.

My reading of these documentaries will include some of the following questions:
1)   What does it mean to think of law as a site of feminist inquiry?
2) How do women create possibilities for alternate justice while also challenging the propositions of the secular-modern framework of women’s movement?
3)  What are the possibilities of deprivatizing the “personal” into a communitarian “public”?
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Recent Indian cinema has increasingly focused around issues related to the modernisation of Indian society in conflict with traditional mentalities. This has led to plots that depart both from the structures of the traditional extended Indian family and the very formula of Bollywood cinema, which used to be hard to imagine in the absence of singing and dancing meant to entertain the audience. The purpose of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s 2016 movie Pink is not to entertain, but to raise serious questions about Indian society and the very foundations of a primarily patriarchal world. Gender equality and individual freedom as opposed to patriarchal, family-based rigours that justify abuse become critical issues when three independent-minded working young women, who rent a flat in Delhi together, find themselves in conflict with three young men due to ambiguous gender messages leading to the serious injury of one of the latter after a rock concert. In the trial that follows, which takes up most of the second half of the film and in which the three women are defended by a retired lawyer whose progressive vision on the world is pathbreaking, important gender-connoted structural features of Indian society are questioned.

I will rely on legal and sociological theories on feminism and justice, as well as on criticism of Bollywood cinema that follows Amitabh Bachchan’s trajectory as an actor with a social agenda to argue that, in Pink, director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury constructs the impact of individual character as a mechanism meant to challenge deeply established communal mentalities, thus making film a key tribune for social change with respect to gender and individual rights.
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Bio: Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru is Associate Professor of American Studies and Postcolonialism at the University of Bucharest. Her research interests include: ecocritical and ecofeminist perspectives on global writing (with a main focus on contemporary South Asian fiction in English), interactions between narrative and performance, minority cultures in the media, postcolonialism and postcommunism, gender studies. She has published articles in journals such as Comparative Literature Studies, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Perspectives, The European Journal of American Culture and others. She has authored and co-edited books, most notably: Between History and Personal Narrative: East-European Women’s Stories of Transnational Relocation (co-edited; Vienna and Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2013) and Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English (Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2015). She is currently working on a book on private spaces of the mind in contemporary women’s writing (forthcoming DeGruyter Brill, 2025).  µ

Ahmed Mulla, EA 7485 MINEA Université de GuyaneIncriminating Ideal Scapegoats: Identity Politics and 'Justice' in Mulk (2018) and Shaurya (2008)

Some directors of Hindi films choose to question the mechanisms that lead to the “scapegoating” strategy, when it comes to the representation of Muslims in contemporary Indian cinema, often portrayed as villains, trouble-makers or crooks. Indeed, when the media and political power line up behind the same agenda to accuse a member of the minority, the spectator has no reason to doubt what appears as a “truth effect”.

In Mulk (2018) and Shaurya (2008), filmmakers Anubhav Sinha and Samar Khan examine notions of truth and justice through a trial where everything seems played out and lost in advance, and where the challenge is to restore the principle of adversarial debate, on which the judicial institution is based. These filmmakers use the art of nuance to show how arbitrary judgments condemn and sometimes kill innocent people, but also how they jeopardize Indian society itself.

This presentation proposes to analyze the staging of the judicial process in the feature films of Sinha and Khan, through the confrontation between common beliefs and certainties, on the one hand, and the difficult quest for truth, on the other. We will use the methods of movie analysis, and we will also draw on the theories of identity politics and scapegoating (René Girard).
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Bio: Ahmed Mulla is an Associate Professor of American and Anglophone literatures at the Université de Guyane, in French Guiana. He holds a PhD in Postcolonial Anglophone literatures from the Université de La Réunion. His thesis dealt with the notion of identity conflicts in Jhumpa Lahiri's works. A member of MINEA research center (Migration, Interculturality and Education in the Amazon region) and of SARI (a research association devoted to Indian studies based in Paris), he has published several articles on the theme of identity in diasporic contexts, especially in the works of Indian authors, or writers of Indian descent (Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitav Ghosh, Nathacha Appanah, Abhimanyu Unnuth, etc.).

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12h  Conference: Anil Nauriya, Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Law and Justice: Some Cinematic Portrayals in India
Moderation : Geetha Ganapathy Dore

Anil Nauriya will speak on some Indian films having a direct bearing on the Justice Delivery system (Kabuliwala, Bandit Queen, Article 15, Aitraaz, Andhaa kanoon, Jolly LLB, Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway).

Secondly, he proposes to look at some of the "political films" that have been made in recent years. These would include films such as some recent ones on Kerala, Kashmir, certain Indian martyrs of 1931 and the Emergency of 1975-77. Although these films may pertain to various time periods in the 20th century and some of them address pre-independence themes in which legal issues are presented, the objective behind these productions has been to influence the current post-independence political discourse.

Thirdly, heI proposes to discuss the changing intent and impact of Indian films in upholding or undermining, as the case may be, the basic values of the Constitution of India.

Bio: Anil Nauriya studied Economics, qualified for the Bar and since the early eighties, has been counsel at the Supreme Court of India and the High Court of Delhi. He has written on contemporary history and politics in India and has contributed to various books and journals. He was Senior Fellow (2013-2015) at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. His writings include The African Element in Gandhi (2006), English Anti-Imperialism and the Varied Lights of Willie Pearson (2014) and Non-violent Action and Socialist Radicalism: Narendra Deva in India’s freedom movement (2015).

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13h30 Concluding Remarks: Michel Naumann, Honorary President of the SARI
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