27/06/2023
Mark Twain wrote “[India is] the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.”
A few days ago, our LL.M. student Carl Tsohatzis returned from India from his exchange from Université de Lausanne’s LL.M. Programme to the Gujarat National Law University.
After landing in Mumbai, he took the train to Gandhinagar and was picked up by officials from GNLU who brought him to a guesthouse with private washrooms near the staff residences on the GNLU campus where he would stay for the next weeks of his exchange.
He was introduced to staff and students immediately and was dazzled not only by the number of associations for theatre, sports, reading, yoga, and photography, but also by the warmth of the people who welcomed him.
His days in class would begin at 9am and end at 1pm though the campus library would remain open and full of students studying until 2am. He took a course on International Public Law and enjoyed the teaching style, which he noted was similar to the interactive teaching style of the LL.M. Programme at UNIL.
He was even assigned a research project and joined GNLU students on a life-changing field trip to interview migrant workers from the South of India regarding the education of their children. He listened as his classmates asked questions to these workers in Gujarati and Hindi: “Do your children attend school? What subjects are they taught? What materials are available to them?”
It quickly became clear that many were illiterate and incapable of communicating in one or the other language. They spoke of their children attending preschool but staying home once they could look after household chores. The ones that would attend school would only do so around lunchtime.
When Dr. Shaheeza Lalani asked Carl if he plans to return, he immediately spoke of the friends he made among students at GNLU. “These students undergo such a rigorous admissions process: only 1’000 are admitted of the 10’000 who apply.”
They took him to conferences off-campus, ate four delicious and unforgettable meals per day with him; they took him to visit an ornate temple by a beach; they took him to Indian concerts and dances; and, since “India lives in several centuries at the same time” (Arundhati Roy), our LL.M. student noted all the wonderful activities on campust, where teaching and communication is in English, that he hopes can be replicated in Lausanne in the future.
“They have a ‘Justice League’ where students of different universities compete in sports tournaments.”
Our LL.M. student was thus happy to hear that while he was away, the LL.M. students created two associations: Du Droit à l’Art and a Sports Law Association . Hopefully, with these two associations, we can start preparing the warm welcome that the staff and students at GNLU reserved for our LL.M. student, Carl Tsohatzis.
![Mark Twain wrote “[India is] the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not...](https://img3.glunis.com/843/653/734875768436539.jpg)
