Post-colonial law and legal institutions are inscribed in the history of colonial power, its legal epistemology and the ways in which these constructed colonial and consequently post-colonial legal subjects. Employing the concept of choreographic occultation,1
Choreography here refers to a designed management of people or events to effect consent, control and domination. Occultation refers to a designed concealment of intents. However, choreographic occultation as a concept constitutes a deeper meaning as we shall see further in the text.
the article examines the ways in which law—as it has evolved over a long span of time—contributes, as an occultating constitutive, crucially in the construction of inverted truth, meaning and subject through an examination of various domains of legal practices such as capital punishment, rule of law, trial and alternative subject formation in post-colonial India. Although the article deals with specific examples from Indian jurisprudence, the general concerns with the colonial/post-colonial legacy of juridical/legal practice and critique of the Western/liberal notion of law as choreographed give it a general focus as well.
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