Accepted Panels

Genealogy of Legal Positivism in India: The paper offers to investigate the impact and treatment of Legal Positivism in India throughout the course of history till the present times . Legal history has viewed Legal Positivism as a contentious legal philosophy which countered the universalist and moralist tendencies of natural law. Legal positivism with its formalist and logical structure has been more concerned with the ‘form’ of law rather than its substance. The narration of Legal Positivism has been monopolized primarily by the Europeans and the sub-continental cognition, interpretation is largely missing. Legal Positivism in India is majorly viewed as a colonial import which eased the colonial process for the British and made India a legal laboratory. In a nutshell , it can be said that Legal Positivism was primarily cognized as an imperial experience. Positivism with its Eurocentric approach was considered the conceptual opponent of the indigenous legal system of India. The paper proposes that the interpretation of Legal Positivism solely as a Western phenomenon is a misconception. The paper seeks to investigate whether India had its own Positivist tradition in its indigenous legal system and the positivism of India differed from that of the West. The similarities between the two aspects of positivism are also open to investigation. An attempt will be made to search for positivist traditions in post- independent and contemporary Indian legal system.