At the frontiers of law-making: copyright and the protection of culture in India

This article will briefly consider four case studies that illustrate India’s experiments with cultural policy through copyright law: copyright and the protection of cultural property in Amar Nath Sehgal’s case, the extension of the copyright term in Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry, the issue of maintaining the integrity of Mahatma Gandhi’s works and the public ownership of Subramania Bharati’s copyright. An interesting dynamic that runs through all four examples is the interplay of judicial decision-making and legislative policy development in a country where demands on the legal system make justice practically inaccessible to the majority of people