Rewriting Charu Khurana and Others v. Union of India and Others for the Indian Feminist Judgments Project: Some Reflections

Abstract

This article is semi-experiential, written from the vantage point of a critical insider/outsider as the author has no formal degree in Law but her research at the intersections of law and feminism and her teaching experience as a Political Science faculty in a law school, for seven years, mark her as an insider. This specificity or rather ambiguity of her location aids in an act of appropriation and subversion in keeping with the vision of the Feminist Judgments Projects from different parts of the world, to rupture the Law’s/judges’ claim to exclusivity of judging. The key objective of the article is to engage with methodological and epistemological challenges that a feminist rewriter of a judgment has to face in a neo/post-colonial context like contemporary India. The author draws attention to the lack of interdisciplinary perspectives in legal education curriculum and pedagogy in India and argues that reimagining of justice by supplying radical interpretive frameworks requires re-imagination of the system that educates students of law who then enter legal practice in various capacities and roles. The article also locates judicial privilege and hierarchy in everyday practices and technicalities of law insisted upon in courts; exhibited in complexity of legal language and discursive gestures; and the materiality of judicial authority inherent in spatial practices, symbols and monuments.