V. Krishna Saraswat has posted The Citational Cartography of Power: A Post-Colonial Semiotics of the Indian Supreme Court on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper examines a fundamental tension in Indian constitutional practice: the Supreme Court’s continued reliance on Western legal frameworks despite India’s rich and distinct juridical heritage. Through detailed analysis of fifty landmark judgments delivered between 1950 and 2020, this study identifies a persistent “citational asymmetry”—a systematic judicial preference for Anglo-American jurists that marginalizes Indian legal thought, from classical dharmaśāstra to contemporary theorists. Drawing on post-colonial theory, I argue this practice constitutes a form of epistemic violence that silences indigenous conceptions of justice. In response, I propose semantic disobedience: a deliberate judicial methodology that integrates Indian legal philosophy into mainstream jurisprudence. This approach seeks not to reject Western influence altogether but to establish a more balanced, authentically Indian constitutional discourse that reflects the nation’s unique legal identity and intellectual traditions.