The Law and Other Things Blog recently had the pleasure to interview Prof. Tarunabh Khaitan, Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory and the Hackney Fellow in Law at Wadham College, Oxford. Professor Khaitan is also the Future Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a visiting Global Professor of Law at New York University Law School.

LAOT’s Student Editors-in-Chief Dayaar Singla & Vishal Rakhecha talked to Prof. Khaitan on a range of issues including The Junior Faculty Forum for Indian Law Teachers which provides young Indian scholars a platform to workshop, discuss, and receive feedback on their papers.

Here is an extract from the interview where Prof. Khaitan discusses how his personal journey as a writer began:

My journey as an academic writer, I think, it began with an internship during my undergraduate years with the MKSS (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan), some of you might know, it’s a union of farmers and laborers in rural Rajasthan, and among others run by Aruna Roy.

I was in the 2nd year of my undergraduate law degree and I remember distinctly sitting in this little Mud hut, where Aruna was bent over a ‘chullah’ or a wood stove making Rotis for us all the interns, I think there were five of us, and simultaneously quizzing us about what we wanted to do in life.

I told her that I was thinking of the academy as an option, and in a very characteristic Aruna style, she sort of thought about it for a moment and then told me, I am paraphrasing, I think she said something along the line of “Yes, the democracy needs its scholars but make sure you write in a way that is accessible and that the people can understand.”

I think, that was an important lesson that stuck.

Watch the interview here.