India and Civilizational Futures

Description

This second volume based on the deliberations of the Backwaters Collective puts into serious question the most familiar categories that have informed humanistic inquiry and social science research until now. The contributors probe how the intellectual and cultural resources of Indic civilization might be deployed to introduce greater plurality into the world of modern knowledge systems and reinitiate metaphysics into the discourses of politics, with the hope that similar inquiries will in future be extended across the Global South.

The chapters offer newer perspectives on India’s past and intellectual traditions and suggest how we might liberate ourselves from the straightjackets of history, development, normal politics, the nation-state, and what globally passes for ‘common sense’ in various spheres of life and thought. While some contributors engage with a few figures who have been critical in shaping India’s intellectual life, such as Kabir, Narayana Guru, Ambedkar, Tagore, and Gandhi, others bring into the limelight equally compelling if somewhat neglected figures such as Rahul Sankrityayan, Ranade, and T.R.V. Murti. Conceptual papers on intercommunality, South Asian ideas of hospitality, and mnemocultural modes of learning complete the volume.

About the Editor

Vinay Lal is a cultural critic, blogger, public commentator, and professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He writes widely on the politics of knowledge systems, Indian history, public culture, the Indian diaspora, cinema, colonialism, contemporary American politics, and Gandhi. His books include Empire of Knowledge (2002); Of Cricket, Guinness, and Gandhi: Essays on Indian History and Culture (2003); The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India (rev. ed., 2005); and, co-edited with Ashis Nandy, The Future of Knowledge and Culture: A Dictionary for the 21st Century (2005). More recent books include two co-edited volumes: one with Roby Rajan, India and the Unthinkable: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics I (2016), the other with Ellen Carol DuBois, A Passionate Life: Writings by and on Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (2017).

Table of contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

1. India and the Challenge of the Global South: Some Thoughts on Pluralism, the Categories of Knowledge, and Hospitality

Vinay Lal

2. Learning and Happiness: Sketches for an Alternative Theorization of Indian Sociality

Vivek Dhareshwar

3. Another Cosmopolis: Living with Radical Diversities and Being One’s Own Self

Ashis Nandy

4. Backwater Ecstasis: Truth, Destiny, and the Co-Existential Analytic

Roby Rajan

5. Darsana as Theoria : Locations and Ends of Mnemopraxial Learning   
   
   D. Venkat Rao
   
6. History and Allegory: Affi nities between the Puranas and Kabir

Milind Wakankar

7. Rahul Sankrityayan and Ambedkar as Contrapuntal Contemporaries: Unpacking Their ‘Metaphysics and Politics’

Maya Joshi

8. M.G. Ranade and Bhakti as a New Grammar for Indian Political Life

Aparna Devare

9. The Transformative Power of the One World Vision of Sri Narayana Guru

George Thadathil

10. Sree Narayana Iconography: Its Transformation and Impact on Society and Politics

Sujit Sivanand

Editor and Contributors

Index