Indian Political Philosophy

Society for Positive Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies (SPPIS), Haryana .

First Session of Society for Positive Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies (SPPIS), Haryana on the theme -/- “The Contribution of Contemporary Indian Philosophy to World Philosophy” -/- 30th June, 2012 -/- Organizes by Centre for Positive Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies (CPPIS), Milestone Education Society (Regd), Pehowa,(Kurukshetra)-136128 (HARYANA) -/- Preface -/- Part-I: Contemporary Indian Philosophers -/- Swami Vivekananda’s response towards religious fanaticism -/- Swami Vivekananda philosophises Easts in the West -/- Four Yogas and the Uniqueness of Swami Vivekananda’s Philosophy -/- The Ethics (...) of Work-A study of Swamiji’s Karma-Yoga -/- The Philosophy of Education in the Vision of Swami Vivekananda: A Brief Analysis -/- Swami Vivekananda on Indian Culture -/- Bhagat Singh as a Surefooted Revolutionary and His Verdure: A Foster- son of Colonialism -/- SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF SAHEED BHAGAT SINGH -/- Karma as the main way in Gītā : Revisiting Tilak’s contribution to world Philosophy -/- Matter and Spirit: A True Reconciliation of Sri Aurobindo -/- A STUDY OF ECONOMIC IDEAS OF GANDHI AND NEHRU -/- Relevance of Gandhian Concept of Non-Violence in Today’s World -/- Science, Biotechnology and Yoga: An Aurobindian Perspective -/- Tagore’s Philosophy on Humanism -/- Casteism, Social Security and Violation of Human Rights -/- Part-II: General Themes -/- Materialism in the Śāstravārtasamuccaya of Haribhadra Sūri -/- Soul and Its Nature: Its Key Role and Impact in Development of Intellect in Man. -/- Faith and Worship: Two fundamental Human Concepts -/- Right System in Islam -/- Introduction to Theravada Buddhist Meditation -/- Annexures: -/- Programme Organised -/- Publications of the Centre -/- Organizing Committee . (shrink)

Contemporary engaged Buddhist scholars typically claim either that Buddhism always endorsed social activism, or that its non-endorsement of such activism represented an unwitting lack of progress. This article examines several classical South Asian Buddhist texts that explicitly reject social and political activism. These texts argue for this rejection on the grounds that the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix, and that political involvement interferes with the tranquility required for liberation. The article then examines the (...) history of engaged Buddhism in order to identify why this rejection of activism has not yet been taken sufficiently seriously. (shrink)

Secularism in India SECULARISM IN PRE-COLONIAL PERIOD Secularism in India is not something totally new. Its roots can be found in a history that traces back ...

The author critiques the expedient application of market valuation principles by the transnational corporations and other large firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry on a number of issues like patents, pricing, irrational drugs, clinical trials, etc. He contends that ethics in business is chiseled and etched within the confines of particular social structures of accumulation. An ascendant neo-liberal social structure of accumulation has basically shaped these firms' sharp opposition to the Indian Patents Act, 1970, government administered pricing, etc. The author (...) contends that the practice of neo-liberal economics is strongly associated with a "one dimensional" ethics that privileges market valuation principles over all others. This seems to inevitably generate a social counter-movement that struggles for social protections. He critiques neo-liberal business practices from a perspective that derives from the work of the economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi. Before the present phase of liberalization in India, markets were "managed", but without a "welfare state" in place. Moving toward deregulation of the markets without a welfare state in place is unethical. Keeping the debilities of the institutional framework of public policy in mind, the author adopts a Polanyian perspective that places its trust and hope in the growing social legitimacy of the counter-movement in opposition to both neo-liberal business practices and the degenerate behavior of state agencies. (shrink)

21st century India constructs itself as a neoliberal and consumerist superpower. In his cinematic career Shah Rukh Khan has become an icon of a rampant middle class, transforming himself from an antihero into a model story of Indian success. Focusing on identity politics, in this article his persona is utilized as a prism through which some representations of fears connected to 20th century India can be observed.

There is a long-standing myth that the history of modern India was foretold at the beginning of the nineteenth century by British liberals who predicted that the enlightened despotic rule of India's new conquerors would, by its beneficial effects, improve the native character and institutions sufficiently to prepare the people of that country one day to govern themselves. Lord William Bentinck, a disciple of Jeremy Bentham, while presenting as governor-general his case for the opening up of India to European settlers, (...) speculated on the possibility of “a vast change to have occurred in the frame of society . . . which would imply that the time had arrived when it would be wise for England to leave India to govern itself”, but added that such change “can scarcely be looked for in centuries to come”. The doctrinal basis within liberal theory for justifying a democratic country like Britain exercising despotic power in colonies such as Ireland and India was securely laid out by mid-century liberals such as John Stuart Mill. The project of “improvement” was revived at the end of the nineteenth century by Gladstonian liberals who inducted elite Indians into new representative institutions based on a very narrow franchise in preparation for some form of self-government. When power was ultimately transferred to the rulers of a partitioned subcontinent in 1947, the history of liberal progress in India was complete. The storyline was laid out, for instance, in Thompson and Garratt's Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India or in Percival Spear's revised edition of the hugely successful textbook by Vincent Smith. Even nationalist Indian scholars adopted at least a part of this story, nowhere more so than in the histories of constitutional law which traced the foundations of the postcolonial Indian republic to the progressive expansion of liberal state institutions under British rule. (shrink)

M. K. Gandhi's a series of talks delivered to ashramites at Sabarmati during 1926 and 1927, provides a singular instance in Indian intellectual thought in which the Bhagavad Gita's message of action is transformed into a theory of non-violent resistance. This essay argues that Gandhi's reading of the Gita has to be placed within an identifiable general understanding of the political that emerged among the so-called in the Congress towards the beginning of the twentieth century. Gandhi, we argue, wrested from (...) the their vocabulary and their pre-eminent political text, the Gita, and put them to use in the cause of non-violent politics. But, more importantly, his discourses on the Gita after 1920 suggest an acceptance, on his part, of politics as it actually was. This is where he departed from the projects of Tilak or Aurobindo. The Gita, in Gandhi's hand, became a talismanic device that allowed the satyagrahi his or her involvement in political action while providing protection from the necessary and unavoidable venality of politics and its propensity to violence. (shrink)

The author examines the symbolism of the Indian politician's common dress: white coarse khadi cham pioned by Gandhi. Does its continued survival during the post-independence era signify merely hypocrisy, empty ritual? What does it implicitly communicate about the public and private intents ofpoliticalfigures? What values does the khadi conceal in its texture? Do they serve any purpose? Chakrabarty's analysis concludes by admitting that though khadi no longer conveys any message as to the prevalence of Gandhian convictions, yet it constitutes a (...) deep-seated resistance by Indian democracy and politics to the wholesale loss of their identity in the rising surge of global capitalism. (shrink)

The one great quality of Socratic gift is that thinking as an activity continues but not repetitively but every time thinking takes place, it takes place a new. Thinking is the one activity that cannot be repeated like prayers and other pieties. All philosophical thinking is new thinking; it has to be new in order to be thinking. Philosophy had to become the handmaid of sociology and could not be allowed to remain surrogate sociology. When this happened new concepts or (...) new conceptualizations became the need of the hour: in the place of the age-old hierarchic social stratification a novel concept of materialism had to be inducted - after all matter is what matters. And in India morally entangled sociology was holding down the rich human resources of the sub-continent and a development-oriented ideology had to convert this moral society into a legal society: An unlegislated, unlegislatable society is condemned to be unstable andcollapsible; in its place a stable, legislatable society had to be created. With this felt-need Dr. Ambedkar came into the Indian political arena and gave a modernist rethinking to the outmoded Indian social structure: His hallmark was think to change. (shrink)

The one great quality of Socratic gift is that thinking as an activity continues but not repetitively but every time thinking takes place, it takes place a new. Thinking is the one activity that cannot be repeated like prayers and other pieties. All philosophical thinking is new thinking; it has to be new in order to be thinking. Philosophy had to become the handmaid of sociology and could not be allowed to remain surrogate sociology. When this happened new concepts or (...) new conceptualizations became the need of the hour: in the place of the age-old hierarchic social stratification a novel concept of materialism had to be inducted - after all matter is what matters. And in India morally entangled sociology was holding down the rich human resources of the sub-continent and a development-oriented ideology had to convert this moral society into a legal society: An unlegislated, unlegislatable society is condemned to be unstable andcollapsible; in its place a stable, legislatable society had to be created. With this felt-need Dr. Ambedkar came into the Indian political arena and gave a modernist rethinking to the outmoded Indian social structure: His hallmark was think to change. (shrink)

This paper concerns the reformulation by British expatriates and the first generation of English-speaking Indian intellectuals of the key ideas of European constitutional liberalism between 1810 and 1835. The central figure is Rammohan Roy, usually seen as a of Hinduism. Here Rammohan's thought is set in the context of the Iberian and Latin American constitutional revolutions and the movement for free trade and parliamentary reform in Britain. Rammohan and his coevals created a constitutional history for India that centred on the (...) institution of the panchayat, a local judicial body. While some expatriates and Indian radicals discussed or for the country as early as the 1830s, Rammohan himself argued for constitutional limitations on the Company's power and Indian representation in Parliament. Under liberal British government, he believed, an Indian public would emerge, empowered by service on juries and the operations of a free press. (shrink)

Hope as a virtue is an acquired disposition, shaped by reflection; as a civic virtue it must serve the good of the community. Ernst Bloch and Lord Buddha offer help in constructing such a virtue. Using a taxonomy developed by Darren Webb I distinguish open hope from goal-oriented hope, and use each thinker to develop the former. Bloch and Buddha are very different. But they share a metaphysics of change, foundational for making any sense of hope.Buddhism would seem to repudiate (...) hope; it is a source of suffering. Seen more deeply, however, Buddhism offers material for a carefully limited virtue of hope: the habits of noticing good and acknowledging transience. This disposition, acquired through Buddhist practice among other ways, shields one against despair. The habit also frees up energy that would otherwise be wasted. Ernst Bloch gives us insight into how to use that energy, teaching us to value the yearning implicit throughout culture. Open hope becomes a civic virtue when it concerns civic matters; it can be threatened by hyperbolic discourse in political life. (shrink)