School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemGlobalisation: Good, Bad, and the Ugly; casualties of Indian Liberalisation - a Postcolonial Perspective(Levant Books, 2017)The paper discusses the views of three economists, Amartya Sen, Pranab Barhdan and Partha Dasgupta on the liberalization of the Indian economy, which has brought severe changes since the 1990s. The paper argues that despite this liberalist move there are multiple problems and injustices across the society remain unanswered, particularly in the areas of education, literacy, health and medical care, gender inequities, unemployment, farmers' suicide, and other societal challenges (including the entrenched caste hierarchy). What counts as the index of growth is a matter of some debate among the economists being discussed, but the real .concern is the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Case studies are entertained to explicate the ramifications of globalisation and its impact on Indian economy.
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ItemThe Meaningful "End" of God, Faith, and Scripture(SUNY Press, 2017-03-15)For the purposes of this short tribute I shall take up four salient insights and the ensuing attempted reformulations that the late and much celebrated Professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith had to offer to not only the discipline of Study of Religions, but also more specifically to the History and Philosophy of Religion in the cross-cultural context, and to Islam in the context of India’s religious cultural and – I would like to underscore – legal pluralism). From my experience as an Editor-in-Chief of Sophia I have come to learn a lot more – than from my own narrower training - about the sorts of issues Professor Cantwell Smith (hereafter, Smith) was tackling, and how the legacy that bequeathed the intellectual (albeit the academically circumscribed) world with, has a made a marked difference to the study of world cultures and life-patterns. These episthematics or aporias that I focus on in and from the thinking of Smith are: 1. The problem of ‘God’ 2. Faith vs Belief 3. Scripture 4. Ritual over Transcendence
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ItemThe Limits of Intolerance: A Comparative Reflection on India's Experiment with Tolerance(Lexington Books, 2017-10-24)The central contention of this chapter is that the Indian subcontinent exudes a much longer history than the West in its attempts to come to terms with intolerance, to set limits to it, and to develop a moral psychology of critically engaged tolerance between its multivocal groups and communities that might otherwise be rent apart by differences. India is known as a land of vibrant religious activity and variety where multiple exclusivist and inclusivist sects, as well as universalizing religious ideologies, have competed with and modified each other for millennia. To be sure, there have been tensions, shortcomings, and practices of exclusion––for example, within the caste-structure and toward women––as well as sporadic outbreaks of civil violence. Nevertheless, India may be said to be moving, at least in attitude or disposition, toward what Amartya Sen calls a trajectory of “symmetric tolerance,” meaning a balanced relation of mutual respect among and amidst contrary positions without foreclosing dialogic criticisms in a democratic spirit.
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ItemReinventing "Classical" Indian Dance with or without Indigenous Spirituality in Three Contemporary "Secular" Continents(SUNY Press, 2017-03-27)Selva J. Raj showed immense interest in Indian cultural productions and the ways in which a culture, along with its artifacts, historical nemesis, and also popular religiosity, could undergo transformation, even if it takes a subversive impulse to trigger that subtle or momentous change in the power relations. He tells us how after observing rituals occurring at a Hindu shrine for quite a few weeks, his desire to partake of the prasada from the coconut offering became irresistible, so much so that he finally dashed across to the shrine to receive a few slivers of the smashed coconut which he consumed with relish. This act was performed in a hybridly marked cultural space and, as Selva describes it, in “an interactive and assimilative spirit—some might say, transgressive spirit” (2008a, 48). The second narrative describes how, after a Hindu puja was performed at the construction site of his elder brother’s planned home, his Catholic sister-in-law proceeds to complement the Hindu mason’s vastu rites with her own idiosyncratic Catholic one, wherein she sprinkles holy water and places a crucifix and other Christian votive items around all four corners and pramanic-andaz the mason had chalked out.
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ItemKarma's suffering: A mimamsa solution to the problem of evil(Ashgate, 2017-03-02)