Abstract
Reflective teaching devises methodology for transacting the learning process. The creation of this methodology is largely an unspoken enterprise in India. This piece breaks that silence in tribute to Upendra Baxi, one of the most charismatic law teachers in the country. The purpose of sharing Baxi’s methodology of learning and teaching is to show how non-hierarchical learning happens and why such learning is sine qua non to mentoring students and nurturing scholarship. Good teaching practices can be replicated only if they are documented and disseminated. Such documentation can enable the institutionalisation of robust learning methods. Institutional incorporation will bring home the symbiotic relationship between learning and teaching, as well as teaching and research. This piece on Baxian teaching practices, and the lessons they impart, is an effort in that direction.
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Notes
His insistence on his students calling him Upen being one such method.
Teaching does allow scholars a space where they can test their ideas. However, most scholars do not see it that way and hence are often trying to escape their teaching duties. Baxi was always a passionate teacher and used his teaching to explore the interconnections between various areas of law. He has narrated in many a conversation as to how he changed the subject that he was teaching and tried his hand at teaching nearly every area of law, including taxation.
When I was dismayed by reports of families abusing their members with mental disorder, he asked me whether I was comfortable with handing over the power to the State and if not what was my third solution?
‘You cannot analyze cases in the style of legal commentaries’ and ‘all data does not have to be presented in prose’. These two comments taught me to present, especially the innumerable cases on the defence of insanity, in analytical tables. From spellings to grammar, he did not miss a thing.
I especially cherish the appreciative comments and one where commenting on the elegance of style, he asked ‘have you written it?’
Upendra Baxi, Law and Poverty: Critical Essays (1988).
Upendra Baxi, The Crisis of the Indian Legal System (1982).
Id; Upendra Baxi, Taking Suffering Seriously: Social Action Litigation in the Supreme Court of India, 4 Third World Legal Studies 107 (1985).
As I understand it, a jurisprudence of disadvantage would not have allowed the causes of people who could represent themselves to be brought before the courts by others relying upon the relaxation of the rule of locus standi.
Upendra Baxi, Introduction, in I.P. Massey, Administrative Law (2005).
Upendra Baxi, The Travails of Stare Decisis in India, in Legal Change: Essays in Honour of Julius Stone (A.R. Blackshield Ed., 1983).
Catherine Mackinnon, Mainstreaming Feminism in Legal Education, 53 J. Legal Educ. 199, 212 (2003).
This desire to shock is much more in evidence in the young Baxi who was angry and impatient for change. Possibly for these self-same qualities, I have more of the young Baxi in my readings.
I am using the first-person plural primarily to record two distinct initiatives. Firstly, I recall the very many conversations between Archana Parashar and me when many years back we had inaugurated a conversation on gendering legal education at the Trivandrum Law School with Prof Jayakumar and his colleagues. Secondly, I record the conversations that happened under the auspices of GALA (Gender and Law Association) which was again an initiative attempted by Indian legal academics and practitioners in collaboration with scholars from the American University, Washington.
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Amita Dhanda—Professor.
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Dhanda, A. Teaching Baxi and learning from him: the symbiotic relationship between learning and teaching. Jindal Global Law Review 9, 257–265 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41020-018-0069-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41020-018-0069-z