Souvenir of the 12th anniversary of Bangladesh Darshan Samiti; comprises articles on the study and teaching of philosophy in Bangladesh.

Many blame politicians, governments, and markets for the technically-driven problems the world faces. But why is it that there are almost always engineers and corporations willing to design and build the technologies that cause those problems, many times in spite of knowing about the negative consequences of those technologies? I offer in this paper practical guidance on how to engage in activist engineering, the goal of which is to get engineers to step back from their work and be able to (...) ask and have a conversation about the question, “What is the real problem, and does this problem ‘require’ an engineering solution?” Building on research in the history and philosophy of engineering, and engineering ethics and education, as well as current events—all of which highlight important issues of debate within engineering practice—I provide a list of questions that engineers can start with for self-reflection to better understand their motivations for doing engineering work, and to better understand the implications of their work. The questions relate to considerations engineers must make regarding the social, environmental, economic, and peace implications of their work, and relate to alternative and non-technical interventions to the problem at hand. I believe that each engineer should, in the end, be able to answer the questions: Why am I an engineer? For whose benefit do I work? What is the full measure of my moral and social responsibility? (shrink)

v. 1. The Jain philosophy, collected and edited by Bhagu F. Karbari.

In this paper, we reflect on current notions of engineering practice by examining some of the motives for engineered solutions to the problem of climate change. We draw on fields such as science and technology studies, the philosophy of technology, and environmental ethics to highlight how dominant notions of apoliticism and ahistoricity are ingrained in contemporary engineering practice. We argue that a solely technological response to climate change does not question the social, political, and cultural tenet of infinite material growth, (...) one of the root causes of climate change. In response to the contemporary engineering practice, we define an activist engineer as someone who not only can provide specific engineered solutions, but who also steps back from their work and tackles the question, What is the real problem and does this problem “require” an engineering intervention? Solving complex problems like climate change requires radical cultural change, and a significant obstacle is educating engineers about how to conceive of and create “authentic alternatives,” that is, solutions that differ from the paradigm of “technologically improving” our way out of problems. As a means to realize radically new solutions, we investigate how engineers might deploy the concept of praxis, which raises awareness in engineers of the inherent politics of technological design. Praxis empowers engineers with a more comprehensive understanding of problems, and thus transforms technologies, when appropriate, into more socially just and ecologically sensitive interventions. Most importantly, praxis also raises a radical alternative rarely considered—not “engineering a solution.” Activist engineering offers a contrasting method to contemporary engineering practice and leads toward social justice and ecological protection through problem solving by asking not, How will we technologize our way out of the problems we face? but instead, What really needs to be done? (shrink)

Articles on study of philosophy in Bangladesh; souvenir on the occasion of the national seminar of the Bangladesh Darshan Samiti, 1986.

Assembled with skill and sensitivity, this selection of brief and incisive quotations range from religion and theology, personal and social ethics, service, and international and political affairs, to the family, education, culture, Indian problems, and Gandhi's most original concept, satyagraha - group nonviolent direct action. Some quotes from this book: Ahimsa is the highest ideal. It is meant for the brave, never for the cowardly. Eating for the sake of pleasure is a sin like animal indulgence for the sake (...) of it. The real meaning of economic equality is 'to each according to his need'. Without prayer there is no inward peace. (shrink)

The Sai Baba movement, one of the most widespread and popular modern South Asian religious movements, owes its origin to a saint, Sai Baba of Shirdi (d.1918), who was probably born around 1838. Through his successor, Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), the movement has become a transnational phenomenon in the late twentieth century and has also expanded the main centers of its charisma, including today Shirdi town in the Indian state of Maharashtra and Puttaparthi town in the neighboring state of (...) Andhra Pradesh. While most of the available literature is hagiographical in nature, some aspects of the movement have been studied - the figures of Shirdi Sai Baba and Sathya Sai Baba, the middle-class constituency of the Sathya Sai Baba movement, role of miracles, and the pedagogical role of movement, for instance. These studies are part of a growing interest in new religious and reformist movements in South Asia in the past century, their impacts on civil society and its institutions, and their relationships to the nation-state. (shrink)

This study examined whether transformational leadership would be affected by the predominance of a particular guna in a leader and his or her belief in Karma Yoga. An experiment was conducted using a sample of 110 marketing executives working in a financial services firm in eastern India. A 2 × 2 + 1 factorial design was used to manipulate the three gunas and Karma Yoga. Sattva and rajas were crossed with Karma Yoga to produce four cells, with tamas being the (...) fifth cell. Transformational leadership was the measured variable. Results show that compared to rajas, sattva enhances transformational leadership, whereas tamas reduces it. Further, Karma Yoga enhances transformational leadership when the leader is sattvic, but does not enhance transformational leadership when the leader is rajasic. Results imply that organizations interested in enhancing transformational leadership should develop s attvic qualities in their managers and encourage them to be duty oriented. (shrink)

The only Priestly pre-Exodus narrative to be framed in explicitly chronological terms is the Flood account. Here, in light of a recently published Akkadian text from Ugarit and Berossus’ version of the Flood story, I suggest that in this unique case P may be based on earlier models that were in possession of a precise temporal framework.

Land dispossession is a major source of protest in many countries. This article asks, How common are cases of mobilization against land dispossession relative to cases of nonmobilization? Why do we see protests against land dispossession for some projects and not others? These questions are taken up in the context of India, a major global hotspot for land dispossession protest. Using a database of all major capital projects in the country, the article looks at the effects of project characteristics and (...) context on incidence of delays or cancellations due to land acquisition problems. The findings demonstrate that a project’s sector and subnational location affect the emergence of opposition to land dispossession. Further, differences in political competitiveness and agrarian social structure are significant factors driving subnational variation. By identifying important factors shaping opposition to land dispossession, the article aims to stimulate comparative research that can advance a political sociology of dispossession. (shrink)

Hind Swaraj is Mahatma Gandhi's fundamental work. Not only is it key to understanding his life and thoughts, but also the politics of South Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. Celebrating 100 years since Hind Swaraj was first published in a newspaper, this centenary edition includes a new Preface and Editor's Introduction, as well as a new chapter on 'Gandhi and the 'Four Canonical Aims of Life''. The volume presents a critical edition of the 1910 (...) text of Hind Swaraj, fully annotated and including Gandhi's own Preface and Foreword (not found in other editions). Anthony J. Parel sets the work in its historical and political contexts and analyses the significance of Gandhi's experiences in England and South Africa. The second part of the volume contains some of Gandhi's other writings, including his correspondence with Tolstoy and Nehru. (shrink)

The Ugaritic expression “Baal, son of Dagan” has been the subject of several studies which attempt to resolve the contradiction between the depiction of Baal as El’s son on the one hand and the expression “Baal, son of Dagan” on the other. Despite the paucity of literary evidence, the majority of scholars have identified Dagan with either El or Baal, consequently attributing a single “real” father to Baal. This paper suggests a new solution in light of the literary traditions preserved (...) in the Hurro-Hittite texts—contemporary with those from Ugarit—and the development of these traditions in the writings of Philo of Byblos. Both these texts describe the storm-god as having two fathers: the grain-god and the veteran god of the pantheon, the god of Heaven. Given the close relationship among Ugarit, the Hurrians, and the Phoenicians, it is difficult to regard this parallelism as coincidental. (shrink)

This paper explores moments of democratising disorderliness that interrupt a vision of the sublime as a particular ordering of subjectivity. Situated within the context of the Narmada movement against the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in India in the mid-1990s, it argues that sublime regimes and ‘counter-sublime’ insurgences draw their energies from the figures of the dam and the bund, respectively. Where the dam’s walls establish the horizons of visibility, of who counts as subject, the bund’s curved surfaces reveal (...) a pluralising depth that folds the visible with/in the invisible, constituting the possibility of novel modes of seeing/subjectification. Working through oral histories, films, images, archival materials and ethnographic studies alongside the work of Foucault and the later Merleau-Ponty, the paper argues that the Narmada movement enacts a counter-sublime that contests the invisibility imposed by the dam in favour of an imbrication of the human and non-human disclosing radically different constellations of visibility and subjectification. (shrink)

The ideas of quantum simulation and advances in quantum algorithms to solve quantum chemistry problems have been discussed. Theoretical proposals and experimental investigations both have been studied to gauge the extent to which quantum computation has been applied to solve quantum chemical problems till date. The distinctive features and limitations of the application of quantum simulation on chemical systems and current approaches to define and improve upon standard quantum algorithms have been studied in detail. The possibility and consequences of designing (...) an efficient quantum computer that can address chemical problems have been assessed. The experimental realization of quantum supremacy defies the conventional belief of chemists, that millions of qubits would be required to solve fundamental chemistry problems. It is predicted that quantum simulation of quantum chemistry problems will radically revolutionize this field. (shrink)

Scarce resource allocation policies vary across the United States. Little is known about regional variation in resource allocation protocols and variation in their application. We sought to evaluat...

Europeans and Americans tend to hold the opinion that democracy is a uniquely Western inheritance, but in _The Common Cause_, Leela Gandhi recovers stories of an alternate version, describing a transnational history of democracy in the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of ethics in the broad sense of disciplined self-fashioning. Gandhi identifies a shared culture of perfectionism across imperialism, fascism, and liberalism—an ethic that excluded the ordinary and unexceptional. But, she also illuminates an ethic (...) of moral imperfectionism, a set of anticolonial, antifascist practices devoted to ordinariness and abnegation that ranged from doomed mutinies in the Indian military to Mahatma Gandhi’s spiritual discipline. Reframing the way we think about some of the most consequential political events of the era, Gandhi presents moral imperfectionism as the lost tradition of global democratic thought and offers it to us as a key to democracy’s future. In doing so, she defends democracy as a shared art of living on the other side of perfection and mounts a postcolonial appeal for an ethics of becoming common. (shrink)

The drives of white nationalism in the US and Hindu nationalism in India are found to be significantly similar in aim and methods. Witnessed in two large nations that are alike too in diversity and in constitutions, the two drives violate statutory norms as also the norms of democracy and equality acknowledged by the world. Contrasting these drives with Gandhi’s vision of partnership and mutual respect among communities and races is illuminating. It may be seen, in addition, that both (...) white nationalism and Hindu nationalism rest on a falsification of history. Stirring up and employing a sentiment of majority victimhood, and another sentiment of dislike for the minority “other,” the two drives present a challenge to all who regard humanity as one and human beings as equal. (shrink)

Given the popularity and success of the Hindu-Right in India's electoral politics today, how may one study ostensibly 'Western' concepts and ideas, such as the secular and its family of cognates, like secularism, secularisation and secularity in non-Western societies without assuming them simply as derivative, or colonial legacies or contrast cases of Western societies? While recognizing that the dominant language of political modernity of Western societies is not easily translatable in non-Western societies, The Secular Imaginary elaborates upon an intellectual history (...) of secularity in modern India by focusing on the two most influential political leaders – M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. It is an intellectual history of both idea(s) and intellectuals, which sheds light on Indian narratives of secularity – the Gandhian sarva dharma samabhava, Nehruvian secularism, and unity in diversity. It revisits this dominant narrative of secularity of the twentieth century that influenced and shaped the imagination of the modern nation-state. (shrink)

Gandhi expressed opposition to the Enlightenment and even to science. His view is best understood in the context of a radical critique of a certain orthodoxy that emerged after the Enlightenment. That orthodoxy insists that we take a detached, impersonal standpoint in relation to nature. By contrast, Gandhi and his forebears in the radical enlightenment see nature as suffused with value, and allow us to approach nature from the first-person point of view.

Published on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of the World's Parliament of Religions held at Chicago in 1893 A.D.

Over time our understanding of the 'political' has been progressively shaped by the secular rational calculations of modern European political thought. This paper aims to critique these 'calculations' with reference to crucial moments of departure and flight within western philosophy itself. It concludes by reclaiming fin de siècle radicalism/philosophy as a forgotten instance of empirical-metaphysical hybridity: a form of politics or ethics capable of housing the imperatives of both desire and prayer.

Introduction: moral imperfection: an ethics for democracy -- After virtue: the strange case of belle époque socialist antimaterialism -- On descent: stories from the gurus of modern India -- Elementary virtues: Great War and the crisis of European man -- Inconsequence: some little-known mutinies around 1946 -- Epilogue: paths of ahimsaic historiography.

All Men Are Brothers is a compelling and unique collection of Gandhi's most trenchant writings on nonviolence, especially in the context of a post-nuclear world. This compendium, which reads like a traditional book - "Gandhi without tears" - is drawn from a wide range of his reflections on world peace. "It is not that I am incapable of anger, but I succeed on almost all occasions to keep my feelings under control. Such a struggle leaves one stronger for (...) it. The more I work at this, the more I feel delight in my life, the delight in the scheme of the universe. It gives me a peace and a meaning of the mysteries of nature that I have no power to describe.">. (shrink)

In the recent past, it was common to hear complaints about the paucity of biographies on South Asian historical subjects. During the last few years, the situati.

On a structure dedicated to Sita (Hindu deity) in the disputed Babari Masjid (Faizabad, India), with observations on Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, and a suggestion to solve the Ramjanmabhumi-Babari Masjid controversy, by an Indian philosopher.

This Is The Second Edition Of The Book. Seeks To Give An Exposition Of Aurobindo`S Social Philosophy And Of His Vision And Work For The Evolution Of Humanity. 5 Parts-Part I Has 8 Chapters-6 Chapters In Part Ii, Has 7 Chapters Part 4 Has 3 Chapters- Part 5 Has 6 Chapters, Bibliography. Slightly Shopsoiled.

The paper traces the parallel paths and mutual influences of these three activists in South Africa. The paper points out that Gandhi often took steps in building his movement that echoed some of the same steps that Dube had done just before him. Also, Abdurahman, who had become Gandhi's friend in 1909, advocated for involving women in nonviolent action, and advocated the use of general strike, shortly before Gandhi incorporated both methods in his movement.

'those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means' Mahatma Gandhi was a profound and original thinker as well as one of the most influential figures in the history of the twentieth century. A religious and social reformer, he became a notable leader in the Indian nationalist movement, made famous for his advocacy of non-violent civil resistance. His many and varied writings are essentially responses to the specific challenges he faced, and (...) they show his maturing ideas and political will, as well as his spirituality and humanity, over several decades. This new selection demonstrates how his thinking was truly radical, dealing with problems from the roots upwards: in the lives of individuals, of societies, and of political structures. It underlines the supreme importance of non-violence, and Gandhi's unique and unrealized vision of a new India after the departure of the British. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 182-184.

These are both critical as well as constructive, and thus inspire the reader to be a better Hindu and a better citizen of India and the world.

Hypnosis is associated with profound changes in conscious experience and is increasingly used as a cognitive tool to explore neuropsychological processes. Studies of this sort typically employ suggestions following a hypnotic induction to produce changes in perceptual experience and motor control. It is not clear, however, to what extent the induction procedure serves to facilitate suggested phenomena. This study investigated the effect on suggestibility of a hypnotic induction and labelling that procedure ‘hypnosis.’ Suggestibility of participants was tested before and after (...) an adapted hypnotic procedure, which was either labelled as ‘hypnosis’ or as ‘relaxation.’ The hypnotic procedure produced a modest increase in suggestibility when it was called ‘relaxation,’ but a very significant increase if it was labelled ‘hypnosis.’ The results are important for both clinical and experimental applications and indicate that labelling an induction procedure ‘hypnosis’ is an important determinant of subsequent responses to suggestion. (shrink)

A couple and their five‐year‐old daughter are in a car accident. The parents are not expected to survive. The child is transported to a children's hospital, and urgent treatment decisions must be made. Whom should the attending physician approach to make decisions for the child? When such cases arise in, for example, the hospitals where we work, the social worker or chaplain is instructed to use the Illinois Health Care Surrogacy Act as a guidepost to identify a decision‐maker. But in (...) our state and the country overall, the limitations of such statutes leave hospital workers to make a judgment call among friends, family, and clergy who may come forward. While surrogate decision‐making statutes comprehensively address surrogate decision‐makers for adults, a patchwork of laws—permanency statutes, kinship provider statutes, standby guardianship statutes, and, in some cases, surrogate decision‐making statutes—provide variable decision‐making pathways for children. (shrink)

The Mughal court was the main sponsor of Persian works on Vedānta, broadly conceived, from the late sixteenth until the mid-seventeenth century. Thereafter, the audience for such works shifted outside the court. Several Hindus literate in Persian composed or circulated Vedāntic writings. This article surveys three hitherto neglected Persian texts treating Vedānta that appear to have been composed independently from court sponsorship. All three are attributed to Banwālīdās Walī (d. 1674). They comprise the Gulzār-i ḥāl [Rose-garden of ecstatic states], which (...) is itself a translation of the Prabodhacandrodaya; a translation of the Rāma Gītā, which is a dialogue between Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa from the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa; and the Om-nāma [Book of Oṃ], a poem loosely based on the Yogavāsiṣṭha that incorporates Vedāntic themes. In general, Indo-Persian authors such as Walī associated Vedānta with a non-dualist doctrine, even when they did not specifically refer to Advaita Vedānta. The article discusses the approaches to translation that these texts take. It also reflects on the functions of these Persian translations in a context where conveying the meaning of the source texts was not the only motive. (shrink)