Prof. Saptarshi’s research and teaching spans family law, disability law, sexual violence and sociology of law. In a previous professional life, he has worked in various capacities in a number of NGOs in New Delhi, such as the Lawyers Collective, Multiple Action Research Group and Partners for Law in Development. He has consulted with international NGOs like the Amnesty International and CREA and continues to conduct legal literacy trainings for a range of constituencies. He was a member of a sub-committee (2014-2015) constituted under the Twentieth Law Commission of India that recommended large scale reforms to child custody and guardianship laws.

Saptarshi’s current research revolves around three themes: (a) intercaste marriage as the object of law in modern India; (b) the legal and constitutional dimensions of social reproduction by and in the family; and (c) conceptualizing legal change in group- and region-specific family law in India. He has been a TLSI Fellow at the inaugural Transnational Law Summer Institute, King’s College, London (2015) and has held visiting fellowships at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Oñati, Spain (2015), and the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (2012).

Journal Articles

• {forthcoming} Ambedkar’s Illegal Marriage: Hindu Nation, Hindu Modernity, and the Legalization of Intercaste Marriage in India, Indian Law Review, 2021.
• Biology, Intention, Labour: Understanding Legal Recognition of Single Motherhood in India, Socio-Legal Review, 2019, Vol. 15, Issue 2, 131-150.
• Out of Shah Bano’s Shadow: Muslim Women’s Rights and the Supreme Court’s Triple Talaq Verdict, Indian Law Review, 2018, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 89-107
• “Taking a gun to kill the mosquito”: Law, Deterrence and Protection in the Legislative Debate on Criminalizing Triple Talaq, Jesus & Mary College Review, 2018, Vol. 2
• (With Rukmini Sen) Indian Feminisms, Law Reform and the Law Commission of India (Introductory Essay), Journal of Indian Law and Society, 2018, Vol. 6 (Monsoon), i-xxxvii
• The Wife as an Accomplice: Section 377 and the Regulation of Sodomy in Marriage in India, Hong Kong Law Journal, 2016, Vol. 46, Issue 1, 33-48
• (With Sachin Dhavan) Religious Family Law and Legal Change in Comparative Perspective (Introductory Essay), Jindal Global Law Review, 2016, Vol. 7, Issue 1, 1-8
• The Impossibility of Marital Rape: Contestations around Marriage, Sex, Violence and the Law in Contemporary India, Australian Feminist Studies – Special Issue on Sex and Violence, 2014, Vol. 29, No. 81, pp. 255-272
• The Burden of Intelligibility: Disabled Women’s Testimony in Rape Trials, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 2013, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 1-29
• Adjudicating Disability: Some Emerging Questions, Economic and Political Weekly, December 4, 2010, Vol. XLV, No. 49, pp. 22-25
• Right to Privacy in Naz Foundation: A Counter-heteronormative Critique, NUJS Law Review – Special Issue on the Naz Foundation Judgment, 2009 Vol. 2, No. 3, p. 525-540
• (With Renu Addlakha) Disability Law in India: Paradigm Shift or Evolving Discourse?, Economic and Political Weekly, October 10, 2009, Vol. XLIV, No. 41, pp. 62-68
• Edited Journal Issues
• Rukmini Sen & Saptarshi Mandal (eds.) Journal of Indian Law and Society, Vol. 6 (Monsoon), Indian Feminisms, Law Reform and the Law Commission of India: Special Issue in Honour of Lotika Sarkar (2018)
• Saptarshi Mandal & Sachin Dhavan (eds.) Jindal Global Law Review, Vol. 7, Issue 1, Special Issue on Religious Family Law and Legal Change in Comparative Perspective (2016)
  
  

Book Chapters

• Towards Uniformity of Rights: Muslim Personal Law, the Domestic Violence Act, and the Harmonization of Family Law in India in Indira Jaising & Pinki Mathur (Eds.) Conflict in the Shared Household: Domestic Violence and the Law in India. Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 171-199.
• {forthcoming} Familiarizing the Unfamiliar in Marriage: The Case of Sodomy as a Ground for Divorce in Pushpesh Kumar (Ed.) Familiarizing the Unfamiliar: Sexuality, Abjection and Queer Existence in India. Routledge, 2021.
• {forthcoming} Conditions of Possibility: Law, Patriarchy and Single Motherhood in India in Tanja Herkoltz & Siddharth de Souza (Eds.) Mutinies for Equality: Contemporary Developments in Law and Gender in India. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  
  

Book Reviews

• Bans and Bar Girls: Performing Caste in Mumbai’s Dance Bars by Sameena Dalwai, Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.), Vol. 55, Issue 1, 142-145
• Women and Domestic Violence in Bangladesh: Seeking a Way Out of the Cage by Laila Ashrafun, Jindal Global Law Review, Vol. 10, Issue 2, 345-347
• Women’s Studies in India: A Reader (ed.) by Mary E. John, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 2013, Vol. 20, Issue 3, 473-477
• Law like Love: Queer Perspectives on Law (eds.) by Arvind Narrain & Alok Gupta, Biblio: A Review of Books, Vol. XVII, No. 3&4, 2012