Doco-legal and screened cultures: are we really that different?

Have you ever read a legal rule and thought, “This isn’t how it really works”. Yes? The Stanford Pogram in Law and Society has something that will help you find out how law works in action, outside of words and legal jargon.

The Program's International Documentary Mini-film series offers you a glimpse of different legal cultures around the world. Through the Winter and Spring quarters, the Series will screen documentaries from India, USA, Mexico and Israel followed by a conversation with the film makers or experts in the subject.

Feb 27, 2013 @ 7.15 pm “India Untouched: Stories of People Apart”

For four years, filmmaker Stalin K. travelled across India documenting the life of “Dalits,” a group of people subject to “untouchability”, the social practice of caste-based segregation of minority groups. The documentary exposes how discrimination is practiced in India through the rigidity of the caste system despite a strict legal ban on untouchability.

Following the screening, Dr. Sumeet Mhaskar will discuss how the social custom of discrimination on the basis of birth has strong roots in traditional and religious beliefs and what this implies for faith and the rule of law.

About the Speaker

Dr. Sumeet Mhaskar is a visiting scholar at the Center for South Asia, Stanford. Having completed his doctoral thesis at Oxford on Mumbai’s textile ex-millworkers, Dr. Mhaskar is pursuing research in caste, language and religious politics, social movement and urban development issues.

Related Media