Interrogating Development Seminar: Fragile Hope, Dr Sandhya Fuchs (Bristol)
Schedule
Wed Feb 25 2026 at 05:00 pm to 06:30 pm
UTC+00:00Location
Bush House, BH(SE)1.05 Bush House Lecture Theatre 4 | London, EN
About this Event
Join us for an exciting talk with Dr Sandhya Fuchs, a legal anthropologist from the University of Bristol. In this session, Dr Fuchs will talk about her new book ''Fragile Hope: Seeking Justice for Hate Crime in India'
Against the backdrop of the global Black Lives Matter movement, debates around the social impact of hate crime legislation have come to the political fore. In 2019, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice urgently asked how legal systems can counter bias and discrimination. In India, a nation with vast socio-cultural diversity, and a complex colonial past, questions about the relationship between law and histories of oppression have become particularly pressing. Recently, India has seen a rise in violence against Dalits (ex-untouchables) and other minorities. Consequently, an emerging "Dalit Lives Matter" movement has campaigned for the effective implementation of India's only hate crime law: the 1989 Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA).
Drawing on long-term fieldwork with Dalit survivors of caste atrocities, human rights NGOs, police, and judiciary, Sandhya Fuchs unveils how Dalit communities in the state of Rajasthan interpret and mobilize the PoA. Fuchs shows that the PoA has emerged as a project of legal meliorism: the idea that persistent and creative legal labor can gradually improve the oppressive conditions that characterize Dalit lives. Moving beyond statistics and judicial arguments, Fuchs uses the intimate lens of personal narratives to lay bare how legal processes converge and conflict with political and gendered concerns about justice for caste atrocities, creating new controversies, inequalities, and hopes.
To debate her work, Dr Jaysleen Ray (Department of International Development) will act as discussant
About the speaker
Sandhya Fuchs is Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Bristol. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the LSE, a MPhil degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Anthropology and Philosophy from Colby College. Her first book Fragile Hope analyses the social life of India’s only hate crime law: the 1989 Scheduled Castes /Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA). Fragile Hope won the 2025 James Busuttil Award for Human Rights Scholarship from the Royal Asiatic Society, and the 2025 Critical Anthropology Prize awarded by the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (APLA). Sandhya's recent research draws on ethnographic fieldwork at the Indian Supreme Court to explore which historical narratives, conceptions of citizenship, and theories of equality Indian judicial actors mobilise when evaluating acts of verbal discrimination targeting religious minorities and marginalised castes. Sandhya’s research has been funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation, The Leverhulme Trust and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
About the Interrogating Development Seminar Series
The 'Interrogating Development' seminar series is organised by the Department of International Development at King's College London. The series examines some of the most pressing issues of development facing global society today, with the authors of new books presenting cutting-edge research on a variety of topics related to development.
The talk will be followed by a wine reception. The event is open to everyone.
Where is it happening?
Bush House, BH(SE)1.05 Bush House Lecture Theatre 4, 30 Aldwych, London, United KingdomEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00
