Symbiosis Law School

So, it's been interesting being here at the law school. I've done a bunch of family law presentations and see that basic concepts are the same in India but that religious laws called 'personal laws' govern with separate sets of laws for Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Parsis. The formalization and codification of the law dates back to the British and something much more decentralized, amorphous, and oral in nature was in place before colonial rule. The laws have been amended repeatedly, especially under the Hindu Marriage Act so that one wonders how much of it can be said to derive from the religious texts any more. Some say the British created a mess and advocate for an Uniform Civil Code now. When I took a poll from one class on which legal system is preferable they clearly thought most Indians would not adopt an Uniform Civil code because religious identity is too predominant as a political identity now. I do think trying to interpret religious texts and glean codified law to apply in secular courts is an heavy task and one that hasn't been done too well so far...

The conversations and seminars on language access have been a lot of fun. The faculty are all multilingual, having some command and fluency of English, Marathi, and Hindi, and often communicating in all three languages in one conversation. So, they were fascinated by the concept of Title VI and the failure to provide language access as a civil rights issue. Language access is not a formalized concept here in India, although sometimes government agencies provide translation of documents where it's needed. The one area it's of most concern is in the criminal context. It also surprised the faculty to learn that there is a growing immigrant population that can't speak English in the U.S. and that language barriers overlap with poverty. So many of the dominant images that are exported of America make it seem like all Americans are Caucasian and wealthy. I was glad to disrupt that notion!