CLT Seminar: Constitutional Imagi-Nations: Images, History, Law with Dr Sabarish Suresh

In this seminar, ” Constitutional Imagi-Nations: Images, History, Law” held on 13 November 2023 by Centre for Legal Theory (CLT), Dr Sabarish Suresh observes that the functionality of the visual representations present in original ratified copy of the Indian Constitution through elaborately crafted artworks — of totemic animals, sages, gods, religious teachers, sovereign rulers, national leaders, emblems, epic myths, mountains, sculptures, and seas — structured in the form of a teleological and linear narrative, encompassing a claim of an unbroken link to an immemorial civilisation. His paper will demonstrate that these constitutive images adopt the function of representing, and legitimising, a symbolic construction of national identity and historical subjectivity, inducing fantasy and affective attachments to a mythically projected nation. This paper will also show how this undermined function is closely related to a foundational ambivalence that endures in constitutional law.

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