Events Centers: INDIC STUDIES IN LAW & JUSTICE (CISLJ)

The INDICA Center for Indic Studies in Law and Justice presents a conversation with Dr Madhusudhan Penna on the 26th of November 2022 (Sat) at IST 1100 hours. This conversation will look to foreground some of Dr Penna’s views on the contemporary relevance of the gargantuan Dharmaśāstra literature. Kavikulaguru Kalidas Sanskrit University, the university that Dr Penna helms as its Vice Chancellor, recently organised an international conference Dharma, Dharmaśāstra and Culture. Amongst the foci of that conference were topics such as २१वी सदी में धर्मशास्त्र की प्रासंगिकता (Relevance of Dharmaśāstra-s in the 21st century) and धर्मशास्त्र एवं आधुनिक न्यायव्यवस्था (loosely translatable as Dharmaśāstra and Modern Jurisprudence). Join us to take a dip into the Dharmaśāstra literature with the view to understanding Dr Penna’s perspective on how aspects of this vast corpus are relevant to our times.

This conversation seeks to primarily foreground insights presented by author and economist Sriram Balasubramanian in the chapter Rule of Law and Enforcements of Contracts of his book Kautilyanomics for Modern Times published in 2022 by Bloomsbury. This book, according to its author, seeks to do three things: first, to provide a structure and a context for Kautilya’s economic thoughts; second, to examine his work’s relevance today, and third to do it in a way that a lay reader can follow and grasp easily. This talk will focus on Kautilya’s philosophy behind rule of law and enforcement of contracts, some of the key trends in enforcement of contracts in the current scenario and how Kautilya’s ideas are relevant to these trends.