includes index and biblioraphy

This rare comprehensive critique of criminology in India brings together widely respected activities, advocates, bureaucrats, scholars and practitioners who share their concerns about the Indian criminal justice system through an interdisciplinary lens and discuss the need to entrench human rights in Indian polity. It is a significant step towards mapping the ways in which interdisciplinary research and human rights activism might inform legal praxis more effectively and holistically. Challengeing the rule(s) of Law: Colonialism, Criminology, and Human Rights in India contests unproblematic assumptions of the rule of law and opens out avenues for a renewed and radical study of criminal law in the country. The collection looks at criminal law from the early colonial period to the present, examining the problem of overt violence by state actors and their compliance with dominant private actors. It calls into question the denial by the state of the wherewithal for bare life, which compounds people`s vulnarability to a repressive rule of law. This work is must read for students, researchers, and faculty of Law, Criminal Law, Criminology, Legal History, Human Rights, Sociology of Law, Political Science, Anthropology, Social Exclusion Studies and Colonial History. It will also be invaluable for law historians, legal scholars and policy makers, especially the judiciary.