Sumedha Ray Sarkar
Sumedha Ray Sarkar is an Assistant Professor at Tamil Nadu National Law University where she currently teaches Constitutional Law and Legal Methods. She is an alumna of both ILS Law College, and Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi, and has read for her Masters at Columbia Law School. Prior to teaching, Sumedha has worked as Research Assistant to Prof. (Dr.) Kamala Sankaran at the University of Delhi and served as law clerk to Hon'ble Justice S. Ravindra Bhat while he was at the Delhi High Court, and later to Hon'ble Justice R.F. Nariman at the Supreme Court of India. Her areas of interest include judicial review, legal interpretation, and empirical legal studies. As a Samvidhaan Fellow, Sumedha will be tracing the connection between language, education and federalism by conducting a predictive, interpretative exercise on the constitutional permissibility of a link language and its implications for the linguistic federal structure of India. Given the historical trajectory of the language issue in India and the distribution of legislative powers in the Constitution, her project posits that a likely route for the link language is a Central law mandating its use as the medium of instruction, or its compulsory inclusion in the curriculum in primary education. She hopes for her project to contribute to an understanding of the constitutional ramifications of a link language within the unique federal design of India, and begin a more tangible, objective discussion on its legal feasibility.
- Samvidhaan Fellowship