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This book brings together the political thought of Gandhi and Tagore to examine the relationship between politics, truth and conscience. It explores truth and conscience as viable public virtues with regard to two exemplars of ethical politics, addressing in turn the concerns of an evolving modern Indian political community. The comprehensive and textually argued discussion frames the subject of the validity of ethical politics in inhospitable contexts such as the fanatically despotic state and energised nationalism. The book studies in nuanced detail Tagore’s opposition to political violence in colonial Bengal, the scope of non-violence and satyagraha as recommended by Gandhi to Jews in N...
Is it true that the ancient Indians had no sense of History? The book begins with this question, and points out how the ways of perceiving the past could be culture-specific and how the concept of historical traditions can be useful in studying the various ways of memorising and representing the past, even if those ways do not necessarily correspond to the methodology of the Occidental discipline called 'History'. Ancient India had several historical traditions, and the book focuses on one of them, the itihasa. It also shows how the Mahabharata is the best illustration of this tradition, and how a historical study of the contents of the text, with comparison with and corroboration from other...
This book explores dialogue as a transformative form of philosophical practice by unveiling the method behind the unique dialogue developed by mystic and thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986). While Krishnamurti himself generally rejected the cultivation of systems and techniques, Shai Tubali argues that there are easily identifiable patterns through which Krishnamurti strove to realize his dialogical aims. For this reason, he refers to this method, whose existence has evaded Krishnamurti’s followers and scholars alike, as the Krishnamurti dialogue. He suggests that these discursive patterns serve to broaden our understanding of the possibilities of philosophical and religious dialogues...
These two books offer readers a fresh perspective to re-examine and revaluate the so-called “China Threat” and the non-Western way of conducting foreign relations exercised by Asian countries due to the lasting impact of their traditional cultures on their diplomacy. 此書著為讀者提供全新視角來重新檢驗和評估所謂的”中國威脅論”和亞洲國家之非西方式外交及其傳統文化外交之影響.
This volume brings together eminent Tagore scholars and younger writers to revisit the concepts of nation, nationalism, identity and selfhood, civilization, culture and homeland in Tagore’s writings. As these ideas take up the centre-stage of politics in the subcontinent as also elsewhere in the world in the 21st century, it becomes extremely relevant to revisit his works in this context. Tagore’s ambivalence towards nationalism as an ideology was apparent in the responses in his discussions with Indians and non-Indians alike. Tagore developed the concept of ‘syncretic’ civilization as a basis of nationalist civilizational unity, where society was central, unlike the European model o...
This book attempts to unravel the worldview of two prominent Indians of recent Indian history — Tagore and Vivekananda. Both suggested emancipation through political struggles but without transgressing the boundaries of humanism. This is significant, as identifying an enemy was an intrinsic part of nationalistic formulations. The larger philosophy of life, for Tagore and Vivekananda, was to reach out across geographical borders. In this work, their alternative idea of India is analysed in the larger context of the many formulations of nationalism with special reference(s) to theoretical as well as literary works in European and Indian contexts. The author brings on board critiques that have emerged recently —secularist, feminist and postcolonial — and defends his subjects against them. This book is essentially an intellectual interrogation of two eminent thinkers of their time, and falls within the rubric of intellectual history.
The Mahabharata, one of the major epics of India, is a sourcebook complete by itself as well as an open text constantly under construction. This volume looks at transactions between its modern discourses and ancient vocabulary. Located amid conversations between these two conceptual worlds, the volume grapples with the epic’s problematisation of dharma or righteousness, and consequently, of the ideal person and the good life through a cluster of issues surrounding the concept of agency and action. Drawing on several interdisciplinary approaches, the essays reflect on a range of issues in the Mahabharata, including those of duty, motivation, freedom, selfhood, choice, autonomy, and justice, both in the context of philosophical debates and their ethical and political ramifications for contemporary times. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers engaged with philosophy, literature, religion, history, politics, culture, gender, South Asian studies, and Indology. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in South Asian epics and the Mahabharata.
A rare look at the history of Himalayan peasant society and the relationship between culture and environment in the Himalayas. Himalayan Histories, by one of India’s most reputed historians of the Himalaya, is essential for a more complete understanding of Indian history. Because Indian historians have mainly studied riverine belts and life in the plains, sophisticated mountain histories are relatively rare. In this book, Chetan Singh identifies essential aspects of the material, mental, and spiritual world of western Himalayan peasant society. Human enterprise and mountainous terrain long existed in a precarious balance, occasionally disrupted by natural adversity, in this large and diffi...
This companion volume focuses on the application and practical ramifications of Indian ethics. Here Indian dharma ethics is moved from its preeminent religious origins and classical metaethical proclivity to, what Kant would call, practical reason – or in Aristotle’s poignant terms, ēhikos and phronēis –and in more modern parlance normative ethics. Our study examines a wide range of social and normative challenges facing people in such diverse areas as women’s rights, infant ethics, politics, law, justice, bioethics and ecology. As a contemporary volume, it builds linkages between existing theories and emerging moral issues, problems and questions in today’s India in the global a...
The Mahabharata is at once an archive and a living text, a sourcebook complete by itself and an open text perennially under construction. Driving home this striking contemporary relevance of the famous Indian epic, Mahabharata Now focuses on the issues of narration, aesthetics and ethics, as also their interlinkages. The cross-disciplinary essays in the volume imaginatively re-interpret the ‘timeless’ classic in the light of the pre-modern Indian narrative styles, poetics, aesthetic codes, and moral puzzles; the Western theories on modern ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy of science; and the contemporary social, ethical and political concerns. The essays are all united in their effort to situate the Mahabharata in the context of here and now without violating the sanctity of the ‘written text’ as we have it today. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of Indian and comparative philosophy, Indian and comparative literature, cultural studies, and history.