Download or read book Pax Gandhiana written by Anthony J Parel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notwithstanding his contributions to religion, nonviolence, civil rights, and civil disobedience, among other areas, Gandhi's most significant contribution is that as a political philosopher. While he is not often treated as such, Gandhi was, as Anthony J. Parel argues, a political philosopher sui generis, both in his philosophical method of constant self-criticism and his framework of philosophical analysis. Gandhi wrote daily on politics, but he did so as an activist; political philosophy was to him not just a way of understanding truths of political phenomena but was directly related to understanding those truths in action. If realized in action these truths would give rise to new political institutions, which in turn would create a corresponding peaceful political and social order. Parel dubs this order Pax Gandhiana. The main contention of Pax Gandhiana is that peace cannot be achieved by politics alone. Peace requires the confluence of the canonical ends of life: politics and economics (artha), ethics (dharma), forms of pleasure (kama), and the pursuit of spiritual transcendence (moksha). Modern political philosophy isolates politics from the other three ends, but Gandhi's originality, according to Parel, lies in the way that he brings all four together. In fact Gandhi's political philosophy is relevant not only to India but also to the rest of the world: it is a new type of sovereignty that harmonizes the interest of individual states with the community of states. Arguing against scholars who dispute a theoretical unity in Gandhi's writings, Parel suggests that Gandhi is the preeminent non-western political philosopher, and in this book he seeks to identify the conceptual framework of Gandhi's political philosophy, the Pax Gandhiana.
Download or read book Antonio Caso written by John H. Haddox and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few men have had as much cultural and educational influence on their own countries as the philosopher and educator Antonio Caso (1883-1946). He was above all a patriot of his beloved Mexico, and he sought to deliver his humanitarian message to his countrymen. In his youth, after the revolt against Díaz, he was a member of the Ateneo de la Juventud, a group that sought to bring Mexico, spiritually and economically, back to the Mexicans. Caso realized that this effort involved the forming of a national consciousness among his people, whom he saw divided by their private and public interests. As an educator of Mexican youth for more than thirty years, Caso sought to imbue in his students the desire to search and to question. He saw education as a perpetual search for truth, and his own life and philosophy reflect this search. He rejected any system that proposed to describe all of reality, and he despised all dogmas—official or unofficial. He particularly fought against positivism and Marxism, systems current in his youth. The first part of this book is an introduction to the philosophical and educational ideas of Caso, as well as to the intellectual and political ideas in his life. Mr. Haddox skillfully shows the development of Caso's ideas and how they took shape from his own reading as well as from the experiences of his age and of his country. The second part contains Mr. Haddox's translations of selections from Caso's writings. They give a moving picture of Caso's hopes for Mexico and for humanitiy.
Download or read book Religion Power and the Rise of Shinto in Early Modern Japan written by Stefan Köck and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds new light on the relationship between religion and state in early modern Japan, and demonstrates the growing awareness of Shinto in both the political and the intellectual elite of Tokugawa Japan, even though Buddhism remained the privileged means of stately religious control. The first part analyses how the Tokugawa government aimed to control the populace via Buddhism and at the same time submitted Buddhism to the sacralization of the Tokugawa dynasty. The second part focuses on the religious protests throughout the entire period, with chapters on the suppression of Christians, heterodox Buddhist sects, and unwanted folk practitioners. The third part tackles the question of why early Tokugawa Confucianism was particularly interested in “Shinto” as an alternative to Buddhism and what “Shinto” actually meant from a Confucian stance. The final part of the book explores attempts to curtail the institutional power of Buddhism by reforming Shinto shrines, an important step in the so called “Shintoization of shrines” including the development of a self-contained Shinto clergy.
Download or read book Gandhi and Nationalism written by Simone Panter-Brick and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-12-16 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gandhi's nationalism seems simple and straightforward: he wanted an independent Indian nation-state and freedom from British colonial rule. But in reality his nationalism rested on complex and sophisticated moral philosophy. His Indian state and nation were based on no shallow ethnic or religious communalism, despite his claim to be Hindu to his very core, but were grounded on his concept of swaraj - enlightened self-control and self-development leading to harmony and tolerance among all communities in the new India. He aimed at moral regeneration, not just the ending of colonial rule. Simone Panter-Brick's perceptive and original portrayal of Gandhi's nationalism analyses his spiritual and political programme. She follows his often tortuous path as a principal, spiritual and political leader of the Indian Congress, through his famous campaigns of non-violent resistance and negotiations with the Government of India leading to Independence and, sadly for Gandhi, the Partition in 1947. Gandhi's nationalism was, in Wm. Roger Louis's phrase, 'larger than the struggle forindependence'. He sought a tolerant and unified state that included all communities within a 'Mother India'. Panter-Brick's work will be essential reading for all scholars and students of Indian history and political ideas.
Download or read book Gandhi after 9 11 written by Douglas Allen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-20 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 9/11 marked the beginning of a century that is defined by widespread violence. Every other day seems to be a furthering of the already catastrophic present towards a more disastrous tomorrow. With climate change looming over us, frequent economic instability, religious wars, and relentless political mayhem, life for what we have made of it seems more and more unsustainable. Douglas Allen insists that we look to Gandhi, if only selectively and creatively, in order to move towards a nonviolent and sustainable future. Is a Gandhi-informed swaraj technology, valuable but humanly limited, possible? What would a Gandhian world—a more egalitarian, interconnected, decentralized—of globalization look like? Focusing on key themes in Gandhi’s thinking such as violence and nonviolence, absolute truth and relative truth, ethical and spiritual living, and his critique of modernity, the book compels us to rethink our positions today.
Download or read book Farewell to Arms written by Rumela Sen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "How do rebels give up arms and return to the same political processes that they had once sought to overthrow? The question of weaning rebels away from extremist groups is highly significant in the context of counterinsurgency as well as pacification of insurgencies. Existing explanations focus mostly on state capacity, counterinsurgency operations, or on socioeconomic development. This book, drawing primarily on several rounds of interviews with Maoist rebels as well as other stakeholders in conflict zones, shows that from the rebel's perspective, what is of paramount importance in whether or not they quit extremism is the ease with which they can exit and lay down their arms without getting killed in the process. This fear is further exacerbated by the belief that while they could lose their lives, the Indian state, they believed, would lose nothing even if it failed to protect retired rebels and keep its side of the bargain. This created a problem of credible commitment, which, in the absence of institutional mechanisms, is addressed locally by informal exit networks that grow out of grassroots civic associations in the gray zones of democracy-insurgency interface. The book shows that a lot of Maoist rebels quit in the South of India because robust and harmonic exit networks in the South resolve the problem of credible commitment locally and create conditions for safety and reintegration of former Maoists. In the North, on the other hand, very few rebels quit the same insurgent organization during the same time because scrawny, discordant exit networks in the North exacerbate rebels' fear, discouraging retirement and impeding reintegration. This book also highlights how the various steps in the process of disengagement from extremism are linked more fundamentally to the nature of societal linkages between insurgencies and society, thereby bringing civil society into the study of insurgency in a theoretically coherent way"--
Download or read book Himalayan Histories written by Chetan Singh and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-12-27 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 difficult region. Small peasant communities lived in scattered environmental niches and tenaciously extracted from their harsh surroundings a rudimentary but sustainable livelihood. These communities were integral constituents of larger political economies that asserted themselves through institutions of hegemonic control, the state being one such institution. This laboriously created life-world was enlivened by myth, folklore, legend, and religious tradition. When colonial rule was established in the region during the nineteenth century, it transformed the peasants’ relationship with their natural surroundings. While old political allegiances were weakened, resilient customary hierarchies retained their influence through religio-cultural practices. Chetan Singh, former Professor of History at Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, has been researching and writing on the history and culture of the western Himalaya for more than two decades. He was Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla from 2013 to 2016. His books include Natural Premises: Ecology and Peasant Life in the Western Himalaya, 1800–1950 and Region and Empire: Panjab in the Seventeenth Century.
Download or read book Does India Negotiate written by Karthik Nachiappan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-13 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: India plays a key role in addressing multilateral issues like climate change, terrorism, piracy, humanitarian crises, and nuclear disarmament. Scholarly work mapping India’s multilateral behaviour ranges from covering the United Nations to a wide range of fora where India seeks to influence issues that affect its security and development. Yet, there has been no serious exploration of how India concretely negotiates international rules. In this book, Karthik Nachiappan investigates how India negotiated four key multilateral agreements: The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, The Framework Convention on Climate Change, The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Uruguay Round Trade Agreement. Based on untapped primary sources including archival documents detailing how negotiations transpired, official records of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, a series of interviews with former Indian negotiators, and newspaper sources, Does India Negotiate? demonstrates that India’s multilateral behaviour is fundamentally strategic—working to shape and ratify international rules that advance core interests while resisting rules that harm those interests.
Download or read book Rule by Aesthetics written by D. Asher Ghertner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rule by Aesthetics offers a powerful examination of the process and experience of mass demolition in the world's second largest city of Delhi, India. Using Delhi's millennial effort to become a 'world-class city,' the book shows how aesthetic norms can replace the procedures of mapping and surveying typically considered necessary to administer space. This practice of evaluating territory based on its adherence to aesthetic norms - what Ghertner calls 'rule by aesthetics' - allowed the state in Delhi to intervene in the once ungovernable space of slums, overcoming its historical reliance on inaccurate maps and statistics. Slums hence were declared illegal because they looked illegal, an arrangement that led to the displacement of a million slum residents in the first decade of the 21st century. Drawing on close ethnographic engagement with the slum residents targeted for removal, as well as the planners, judges, and politicians who targeted them, the book demonstrates how easily plans, laws, and democratic procedures can be subverted once the subjects of democracy are seen as visually out of place. Slum dwellers' creative appropriation of dominant aesthetic norms shows, however, that aesthetic rule does not mark the end of democratic claims making. Rather, it signals a new relationship between the mechanism of government and the practice of politics, one in which struggles for a more inclusive city rely more than ever on urban aesthetics, in Delhi as in aspiring world-class cities the world over.
Download or read book Public Affairs written by and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book 65 The Best Years of Your Life written by Peter Bowden and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the key to happiness in later life? Since the time of the ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, the human race has questioned and written about what makes us happy. But with the rise of life expectancy and rapidly ageing populations, happiness in later life has become a major topic of debate. Drawing on three sources, the lessons of history, a survey of 150 people aged over 65 and the findings of the present-day positive psychologists, this book analyses and considers what it means to be in happy in later life and how it can be achieved. Bowden reflects on our many and differing views of life after retirement and finds lessons that can also contribute to our happiness in earlier years. Importantly, this book also asks, and answers, what role governments and our social institutions play in bringing about happiness. This valuable and well-informed insight into happiness in later life leaves the reader with little doubt that the post-65 years can indeed be your best.
Download or read book Costs of Democracy written by Devesh Kapur and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-13 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most troubling critiques of contemporary democracy is the inability of representative governments to regulate the deluge of money in politics. If it is impossible to conceive of democracies without elections, it is equally impractical to imagine elections without money. Costs of Democracy is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study of money in Indian politics that opens readers’ eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political veins of the world’s largest democracy. Through original, in-depth investigation—drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, pioneering surveys, and innovative data analysis—the contributors in this volume uncover the institutional and regulatory contexts governing the torrent of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the reasons for such large spending; and how money flows, influences, and interacts with different tiers of government. The book raises uncomfortable questions about whether the flood of money risks washing away electoral democracy itself.
Download or read book Creating a Nationality written by Ashis Nandy and published by Oxford India Collection (Paper. This book was released on 1997 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Book Narrates How Ayodhya`S Inhabitants Experienced The Events That Led Upto And Followed The Destruction Of The Babri Mosque.
Download or read book Performing Representation written by Shirin M. Rai and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven decades after India’s independence women members occupy 1 in 10 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament. In analysing women’s limited presence in the Indian Parliament, Performing Representation breaks new ground in scholarship on gender and politics. It explores the possibilities and limits of parliamentary democracy and the participation of women in its institutional performances. This book offers new insights into the gendered nature of the performance, aesthetics, and norms of parliamentary life through an examination of electoral data, legislative debates, and life stories of women MPs. The authors avoid both the framing of women MPs either simply as challengers of masculinized institutional politics or only as docile actors in a gendered institution. Making a strong case for taking parliamentary politics seriously in these times of populism, the book raises critical questions about the politics of difference, claim-making, representation, and intersectionality and addresses these as part of global feminist debates on the importance of the women’s representation in political institutions.
Download or read book Gandhi s Thought and Liberal Democracy written by Sanjay Lal and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an intense focus on both the depth and practicality of Mahatma Gandhi’s political and religious thought this book reveals the valuable insights Gandhi offers to anyone concerned about the prospects of liberalism in the contemporary world. Gandhi’s Religious Thought and Liberal Democracy makes the case that for Gandhi, in stark contrast to commonly accepted liberal orthodoxy, religion is indispensable to the public life, and indeed the official activity, of any genuinely liberal society. Gandhi scholars, political theorists, and activist members of a lay audience alike will all find much to digest, comment upon, and be motivated by in this work.
Download or read book India in a Warming World written by Navroz K. Dubash and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Riven with scientific uncertainty, contending interests, and competing interpretations, the problem of climate change poses an existential challenge. For India, such a challenge is compounded by the immediate concerns of eradicating poverty and accelerating development. Moreover, India has played a relatively limited role thus far in causing the problem. Despite these complicating factors, India has to engage this challenge because a pathway to development innocent of climate change is no longer possible. The volume seeks to encourage public debate on climate change as part of India’s larger development discourse. This volume brings together leading researchers and practitioners—negotiators, activists, and policymakers—to lay out the emergent debate on climate change in India. Through these chapters, the contributors hope to deepen clarity both on why India should engage with climate change and how it can best do so, even while appreciating and representing the challenges inherent in doing so.
Download or read book Comparative Political Philosophy written by Anthony Parel and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Lexington Books edition of Comparative Political Philosophy brings back into print a volume that was one of the first to move beyond a Eurocentric bias in the study of political philosophy and provide a well-balanced critique of the perilous transition from tradition to modernity. The book is evidence of the benefits to be reaped from comparison, from a reading of Aristotle together with the Arthashastra, of Mahatma Gandhi with Eric Voegelin, of Voltaire with Confucius. Focusing on key texts from Chinese, Indian, Western and Islamic political philosophy, chapter authors both describe the very different contexts from which philosophic traditions arose and discover basic tenets they have in common. In a new introduction, editors Anthony J. Parel and Ronald C. Keith discuss the changes in political contexts since the book's first publication, and they underscore the increasing importance of the comparative approach.
