India and Its Intellectual Traditions: Of Love, Advaita, Power, and Other Things

Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics III

Price: 1795.00 INR

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ISBN:

9780198887164

Publication date:

17/01/2023

Hardback

416 pages

Price: 1795.00 INR

We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.

ISBN:

9780198887164

Publication date:

17/01/2023

Hardback

416 pages

Vinay Lal

The book is a wide-ranging inquiry into Indian intellectual, cultural, and political traditions; with discussions on subjects and topics of great interest in India today, including caste, the idea and politics of history, power, and love.

Rights:  World Rights

Vinay Lal

Description

The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's ambition to put into question the certitudes of conventional social science discourse, decolonize the dominant knowledge frameworks, and understand how the intellectual and cultural resources of Indian civilization may be deployed to think both, about some problems in contemporary politics and culture, and to introduce greater plurality into the world of modern knowledge systems. Some of the collective's members remain deeply committed to reinitiating metaphysics into politics, and similarly, the collective's enduring interest in Narayana Guru is reflected in at least three chapters. Although engagement with Gandhi and Ambedkar is a familiar part of the Indian intellectual landscape, other chapters on offer pivot around histories of power, performative traditions, and modes of worship. Unlike the scholarship that is now the norm, organized around a distinct theme, this volume exhibits a more daring approach to India's intellectual traditions, traversing the world of Kannada intellectuals, the Kashmir Shaiva tradition, a Marathi Bhakti poet, and a contemporary Indian philosopher, as much as conceptual ideas drawn from a wide array of Indian texts and experiences.

About the author:

Vinay Lal is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Lal studied history, literature, and philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University, before earning his doctorate from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He has also taught at Columbia University and the University of Delhi. He is the author or editor of twenty books, eight of them from OUP, and his writings span a vast canvas of modern Indian and colonial history, historiography, public culture, global politics, cinema, political psychology, and the politics of knowledge systems.

Vinay Lal

Table of contents

Chapter 1   The Social Representation of Power in India: A History in Fragments

Chapter 2   Love in Future Tense

Chapter 3   Cities of the Mind: Lost Cities and Their Inhabitants

Chapter 4   The Uncommon through the Common: Of the Ramayana Performative Traditions

Chapter 5   The Kannada Intellectual Tradition: Transcending Dichotomies and Binaries

Chapter 6   Social and Political Role-play through the Theology of the Hindu Icon: An Exercise in Versatility

Chapter 7   What 'Bahena' Saw

Chapter 8   The Saddle of Experience: Adhyatma, Duality and Practical Knowledge

Chapter 9   Interpreting Catastrophes: God, Karma, and Martyrdom

Chapter 10   Backwater Infinitude: Pastness, Proprietariness, and the Symbolic Economy of Rupture

Chapter 11   Othering the Same: Narayana Guru's Engaged Advaita

Chapter 12   Beyond Binaries: Sreenarayana and the Political

Chapter 13   Ambedkar, Tarde, and 'Castes in India': Six Remarks

Chapter 14   Nature and Evil: Gandhi and Ambedkar on Caste and Untouchability

Vinay Lal

Vinay Lal

Vinay Lal

Description

The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's ambition to put into question the certitudes of conventional social science discourse, decolonize the dominant knowledge frameworks, and understand how the intellectual and cultural resources of Indian civilization may be deployed to think both, about some problems in contemporary politics and culture, and to introduce greater plurality into the world of modern knowledge systems. Some of the collective's members remain deeply committed to reinitiating metaphysics into politics, and similarly, the collective's enduring interest in Narayana Guru is reflected in at least three chapters. Although engagement with Gandhi and Ambedkar is a familiar part of the Indian intellectual landscape, other chapters on offer pivot around histories of power, performative traditions, and modes of worship. Unlike the scholarship that is now the norm, organized around a distinct theme, this volume exhibits a more daring approach to India's intellectual traditions, traversing the world of Kannada intellectuals, the Kashmir Shaiva tradition, a Marathi Bhakti poet, and a contemporary Indian philosopher, as much as conceptual ideas drawn from a wide array of Indian texts and experiences.

About the author:

Vinay Lal is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Lal studied history, literature, and philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University, before earning his doctorate from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He has also taught at Columbia University and the University of Delhi. He is the author or editor of twenty books, eight of them from OUP, and his writings span a vast canvas of modern Indian and colonial history, historiography, public culture, global politics, cinema, political psychology, and the politics of knowledge systems.

Table of contents

Chapter 1   The Social Representation of Power in India: A History in Fragments

Chapter 2   Love in Future Tense

Chapter 3   Cities of the Mind: Lost Cities and Their Inhabitants

Chapter 4   The Uncommon through the Common: Of the Ramayana Performative Traditions

Chapter 5   The Kannada Intellectual Tradition: Transcending Dichotomies and Binaries

Chapter 6   Social and Political Role-play through the Theology of the Hindu Icon: An Exercise in Versatility

Chapter 7   What 'Bahena' Saw

Chapter 8   The Saddle of Experience: Adhyatma, Duality and Practical Knowledge

Chapter 9   Interpreting Catastrophes: God, Karma, and Martyrdom

Chapter 10   Backwater Infinitude: Pastness, Proprietariness, and the Symbolic Economy of Rupture

Chapter 11   Othering the Same: Narayana Guru's Engaged Advaita

Chapter 12   Beyond Binaries: Sreenarayana and the Political

Chapter 13   Ambedkar, Tarde, and 'Castes in India': Six Remarks

Chapter 14   Nature and Evil: Gandhi and Ambedkar on Caste and Untouchability