Democracy Dialogues Series 36

Organised by New Socialist Initiative

Theme :Democratic Dogmas and Disquiets

Speaker : Prof Niraja Gopal Jayal

Avantha Chair, Professor of Politics,

King’s India Institute , King’s College London

Livestreamed on : facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.nsi

Abstract:

The erosion of democracy worldwide has placed all those who self-identify as democrats in a conundrum. We are loath to recognise the inherent imperfections of democracy because it is by championing democracy that we seek to challenge authoritarian rule. However, the failure to acknowledge the potential distortions of democracy has consequences, obliging us to confront the question of the ways in which democracy must be safeguarded, if necessary against itself.

About the Speaker :

Niraja Gopal Jayal joined King’s India Institute as Avantha Chair in October 2021. She was formerly Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and presently also Centennial Professor (2019-23) at The London School of Economics, in the Department of Gender Studies.She has also held visiting appointments at, among others, Princeton University, King’s College, London, and the EHESS, Paris.

Her book Citizenship and Its Discontents (Harvard University Press and Permanent Black, 2013) won the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association of Asian Studies in 2015. She is also the author of Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (OUP, 1999). She has co-edited The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, and edited, among several others, Democracy in India (OUP, 2001) and Re-Forming India: The Nation Today. (Penguin Random House, 2019) Her most recent book is Citizenship Imperilled: India’s Fragile Democracy (Permanent Black).