Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article revisits Rabindranath Tagore's critique of nationalism as well as his interventions on the theme of samaj. The claim is that contained within Tagore's reflections on nationalism and samaj is a vision of political community that is stipulated as an alternative to the one espoused by the nation-state mode of politics. Tagore's formulations of the possibilities within samaj suggest his commitment to normative orders grounded in a notion of relationship as a basis for social cooperation. Tagore contrasts and prioritizes the relationship-based orientation of samaj with what he calls the 'mechanical' emphasis of forms of community associated with the nation-state. Tagore articulated his views during the high noon of anti-colonial nationalism in India, and he offers a striking secular and modern political alternative to nationalist visions of community, which I classify as upholding a vision of societal politics. In underscoring the modern and political bases of Tagore's critique of nationalism and his endorsement of social and political forms related to samaj, I suggest that it would be a mistake to classify Tagore's perspective on nationalism and samaj as reflecting anti-political, or local-traditionalist, or aesthetic responses to the problems attached to national models of community.

This essay seeks to complicate the intellectual landscape of late-nineteenth-century colonial India by probing the manner in which Indian social reformers negotiated the possibilities for social change in the context of colonial rule. Particular attention is paid to the views of the prominent social reformer Mahadev Govind Ranade during the controversy over the Age of Consent Bill. Ranade noted the relevance of the instrumentalities of the state in securing the vital interests of those subject to relations of domination; he was able to do so without neglecting to address the issue that state power in his time vested in a colonial regime. By providing resources to delink state power from colonial power, the conclusions yielded by the analysis in this essay unsettle an influential hypothesis according to which Indian nationalists, from the late nineteenth century onward, did not want the colonial state to intervene in the reform of "traditional" Indian society. Unsettling this hypothesis has at least two implications: it enables a fresh appraisal of the resources of modern Indian political thought, and it creates positive conceptual space for considering the role of state power in alleviating relations of domination in times marked by the advent of neocolonialism.

The aim of this paper is to create some positive conceptual space for the relevance of the instrumentalities of the state when it comes to the politics of religious and multicultural accommodation. The challenge is to steer a cautious middle course between two views about the role of the agencies of the state in enabling a regime of non-domination: One of these views decries any relevance of the agencies of the state in establishing accommodative schemes - owing to the negative consequences of the disciplinary power of statist institutions - whilst the other relies on state power without adequately accounting for the dangers attached to the employment of such power in schemes for addressing the justice-based claims advanced by non-hegemonic minorities.