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LL.M. (Central European University, Budapest)

BA LL.B. (Hons.) (WBNUJS, Kolkata)

Prof. Saptarshi Mandal

Associate Professor

Email saptarshi@jgu.edu.in
Main Discipline Family Law
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ORCID ID 0000-0003-2188-3298
Key Expertise Family law; Disability and Mental Health Law; Law and Society/Socio-Legal studies.

LL.M. (Central European University, Budapest)

BA LL.B. (Hons.) (WBNUJS, Kolkata)

Biography

I have primarily been a scholar of Indian family law and have published on various aspects of its history and politics. A current project involves examining care labour using queer and social reproduction theories. A second project involves using legal realist bargaining theory to analyze divorce bargaining in India. I also have an interest in the laws governing sexuality, disability, and mental health, and have published on each of these topics. But beyond specific areas of law, I like to think of myself as a doctrine-informed, socio-legal scholar. This means two things. One, I am interested in asking what people do with particular legal rules and towards what ends. And two, I approach law as a social phenomenon, and study it in terms of its history, politics, aesthetics, performances and so on. At JGLS, I teach on both the 3 and 5-year undergraduate law programs and supervise masters dissertations. As with my research, my teaching is geared towards giving students a sense of the legal phenomenon, rather than telling them what the law in the books is (they have plenty of resources to figure that out on their own).

Prior to academia, I worked in a number of human rights NGOs in New Delhi and beyond, in various capacities. I continue to be associated with that world as a trainer in workshops and expert contributor to law reform initiatives specifically pertaining to family, disability, and mental health. Relatedly, I have also contributed to state-led law reform initiatives, both directly (I was a member of the family law sub-committee under the 20th Law Commission of India) and indirectly (my articles have been cited by the Supreme Court of India and the Madras High Court in three judgments).

Core Courses

  • Family Law
  • Succession Law
  • Labour Law
  • Interpretation of Statutes
  • Law and Social Transformation

Elective Courses

  • Comparative Disability and Mental Health Law
  • Law and Society in India
  • Uniform Civil Code: History
  • Theory
  • Politics
  • Indian Law Review Best Article Prize 2022 for “Ambedkar’s Illegal Marriage: Hindu Nation, Hindu Modernity, and the Legalization of Intercaste Marriage in India” (2022) 6(2) Indian Law Review 147-169
  • Co-recipient (with faculty members from Tilburg Law School; King’s College London; Universidad des los Andes; and Jindal Global Law School), Law School Global League’s Seed Fund Grant (2018)
  • Travel Grant to attend the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting in Mexico City, Research Committee on Sociology of Law (2017)
  • TLSI Fellowship, Transnational Law Summer Institute, King’s College, London (2015)
  • Visiting Fellowship, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (2012)
     

“The Fabulous and the Fascist: LGBT Rights in Modi’s India” in Anmol Jain & Tanja Herklotz, eds., Indian Constitutionalism at Crossroads 2014-2024 (Verfassungsbooks, 2025) 189-201

“Bringing Governance Home: Feminists, Domestic Violence, and the Paradoxes of Rights in India”, (2024) 32 Feminist Legal Studies 77-97

“The Difference Method Makes: Judicial Restraint and Judicial Creativity in Rana Nahid v Sahidul Chisti”, (2023) 17(1) National Law School Journal 49-59

“Ambedkar’s Illegal Marriage: Hindu Nation, Hindu Modernity, and the Legalization of Intercaste Marriage in India” (2022) 6(2) Indian Law Review (Special Issue on New Voices, New Directions in Indian Family Law) 147-169

“Colour Blindness: An Account of Disability Rights and Judicial Compassion in Indian Constitutional Courts” (2021) 12(2) Jindal Global Law Review (Special Issue on Law and Dis/Abilities) 247-262

“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) 204-222

“Familiarizing the Unfamiliar in Marriage: The Case of Sodomy as a Ground for Divorce” in Pushpesh Kumar, ed., Sexuality, Abjection and Queer Existence in India (Routledge, 2021) 151-164

Review of “Bans and Bar Girls: Performing Caste in Mumbai’s Dance Bars” by Sameena Dalwai. (2021) 55(1) Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 142-145

Biology, Intention, Labour: Understanding Legal Recognition of Single Motherhood in India, Socio-Legal Review, 2019, Vol. 15, Issue 2, 131-150.

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.

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

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)

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

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)

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

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

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
Email saptarshi@jgu.edu.in
Main Discipline Family Law
ORCID ID 0000-0003-2188-3298
Key Expertise Family law; Disability and Mental Health Law; Law and Society/Socio-Legal studies.
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