India, China and the New World Order : Is the Onus on India to Change and Adapt? Chandran Nair _ Democracy Dialogues - 43

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwuv8g-SP5s

 

Democracy Dialogues Series 43: 'India, China and the New World Order : Is the Onus on India to Change and Adapt?'

Speaker :

Chandran Nair

Author, Thinker and Political Analyst

Founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT)

Date and Time :

Sunday, 3 rd May, 2026, 6 PM (IST)

Join Zoom Meeting

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Meeting ID: 839 4558 8791

Passcode: 837048

Abstract:

In a conversational and interactive mode, the speaker will broadly be covering the following aspects of the theme:

1. Neighbourhood, Geopolitics, New World Order - The troubled relations between the two Asian giants have, by now, a history of several decades. In India, the constraints of domestic politics (largely flowing from liberal democracy and competitive electoral politics) appear to make it difficult for the Indian rulers to serve India's strategic interests and to formulate an appropriate foreign policy. How should India deal with the strategic challenges arising from the emerging New World Order?

2. Political Economy for India – India is often projected to emerge as the next economic powerhouse of the world, but the facts on ground pose many challenges. The path to export-led growth as traversed by China appears to be closed for India. Furthermore, a strong State that can guide and force private capital to work in national interest is impossible in the liberal democratic and capitalist India. How to visualize a political economy suitable for India?

3. Woes of Liberal Democracy – Competitive electoral politics often activates the social, religious and sectarian fault lines of Indian society. It has, for example, paved the ground for the rise of the Hindutva forces. What can be done about such challenges thrown up by liberal democracy?

4. Civilizational Discourse – China and India are often cited as the two glorious and largest ancient civilizations. China is cited as the civilizational state that has managed to tame modernity for its own ends. How can India accomplish something similar in its own way?

Speaker :

Chandran Nair is the founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow, an independent Pan-Asian think tank that explores the dynamic relationship among business, society, and the state, as well as the rules governing global capitalism

Nair was born in Malaysia, he studied chemical engineering in the UK, at 28, he joined the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, later earned a master's degree in environmental engineering from Bangkok.

He has authored / co authored many books, here is a representative list of his publications : Understanding China : Governance, Socio-Economics, Global Influence (2026) ;  Dismantling Global White Privilege : Equity for a Post-Western World (2022) ; The Sustainable State: The Future of Government, Economy, and Society (2018) ; Consumptionomics: Asia's Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet  (2011) ;  

He is also the creator of The Other Hundred, a non-profit global photo journalism initiative to present a counterpoint to media consensus on some of today's most important issues.

Chandran was chairman of Environmental Resources Management (ERM) in Asia Pacific until 2004, establishing the company as Asia’s leading environmental consultancy.

Chandran has served as Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. He is a Member of the Executive Committee of The Club of Rome and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

- New Socialist Initiative (NSI)

India in the World - Mostly Through the Lens of the Iran War _ Ravi Sinha

Abstract :

The unipolar world that came into existence at the end of the Cold War is on the way out and a new world order, potentially a multipolar one, is in the offing. This epochal change, as evidenced in the miraculous rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia on the world stage, appears to have gained acceleration with the war in West Asia in which the Iranian nation has handed an astonishingly courageous response to the aggressors. A broad framework to understand this epochal transition was presented in a study group by Comrade Ravi Sinha.

Part 1:

                                       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZzC-ak1I6Q

Part 2:

                                     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbkaQ3zrVck

Part 1 of this video contains the basic presentation followed by further elaboration of the argument in the Q/A session in Part 2.

Date: 05 April 2025

New Socialist Initiative (NSI)

Democracy Dialogues Series 42 _ India Under Modi: Shrinking Democracy, Growing Inequalities _ Professor Atul Kohli

Speaker: Professor Atul Kohli

David K.E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University, USA

Time and Date :

7 PM (IST)

Sunday 25 th January, 2026

----------------

Abstract:

Modi’s rule in India is characterized by shrinking democracy and growing economic inequalities.  The presentation will focus both on the rise of Modi and on Modi’s ruling record.  The following points will be emphasized: growing economic inequalities under Congress governments after 1991 fractured the party's voter base, paving the way for Modi's rise; religious polarization and corporate power have grown simultaneously under Modi; India’s billionaires thrive amid the democratic decline; institutional checks have been eroded and the opposition has been fractured: the judiciary, media, and election bodies have failed to counter executive power; and there is little evidence to suggest a superior economic record in India after 2014: industrial growth has been sluggish, job creation minimal, and welfare spending flat.

About the Speaker:

Professor Atul Kohli is a world-renowned political scientist. He is David K.E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University. His principal research interests are in the area of political economy of developing countries.

He is the author of Democracy and Inequality in India: Political Economy of a Troubled Giant(with Kanta Murali), (2025); Greed and Guns: Imperial Origins of the Developing World, (2022); Imperialism and the Developing World: How Britain and the U.S. Shaped the Global Periphery (2020); Poverty amid Plenty in the New India (2012) (a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2012 on Asia and the Pacific); State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery (2004) (winner of the Charles Levine Award (2005) of the International Political Science Association); Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability (1991); and The State and Poverty in India (1987).  

He has also edited or coedited ten volumes (most recently, Business and Politics in India, 2019; and States in the Developing World, 2017) and published some sixty articles. Through much of his scholarship he has emphasized the role of sovereign and effective states in the promotion of inclusive development.

Organised by New Socialist Initiative

Democracy Dialogues - 42 : India Under Modi: Shrinking Democracy, Growing Inequalities

 

Democracy Dialogues Series 42

Organised by New Socialist Initiative

Theme :

India Under Modi: Shrinking Democracy, Growing Inequalities

Speaker: 

Professor Atul Kohli

David K.E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University, USA

Time and Date :

7 PM (IST)

Sunday 25 th January 2026

Join Zoom Meeting :

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Meeting ID: 848 4079 3414

Passcode: 168537

The meeting will also be live streamed at Facebook ( facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.nsi).

----------------

Abstract:

Modi’s rule in India is characterized by shrinking democracy and growing economic inequalities.  The presentation will focus both on the rise of Modi and on Modi’s ruling record.  The following points will be emphasized: growing economic inequalities under Congress governments after 1991 fractured the party's voter base, paving the way for Modi's rise; religious polarization and corporate power have grown simultaneously under Modi; India’s billionaires thrive amid the democratic decline; institutional checks have been eroded and the opposition has been fractured: the judiciary, media, and election bodies have failed to counter executive power; and there is little evidence to suggest a superior economic record in India after 2014: industrial growth has been sluggish, job creation minimal, and welfare spending flat.

About the Speaker: Professor Atul Kohli is a world-reknowned political scientist. He is the David K.E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University. His principal research interests are in the area of political economy of developing countries. He is the author of India Under Modi: Changing State and Society (with Kanta Murali), (2025); Greed and Guns: Imperial Origins of the Developing World, (2022); Imperialism and the Developing World: How Britain and the U.S. Shaped the Global Periphery (2020); Poverty amid Plenty in the New India (2012) (a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2012 on Asia and the Pacific); State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery (2004) (winner of the Charles Levine Award (2005) of the International Political Science Association); Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability (1991); and The State and Poverty in India (1987).  He has also edited or coedited ten volumes (most recently, Business and Politics in India, 2019; and States in the Developing World, 2017) and published some sixty articles. Through much of his scholarship he has emphasized the role of sovereign and effective states in the promotion of inclusive development.

South Asian Futures in a Tri-Polar World _ Democracy Dialogues Series - Lecture 40

 

Democracy Dialogues Series - Lecture 40

Organised by New Socialist Initiative

Theme :

South Asian Futures in a Tri-Polar World

Speaker :

Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy

Eminent Physicist, author, public intellectual

Time and Date :

6 PM (IST)

Sunday , 27 th July 2025

The lecture will be held on zoom and will also be live streamed at facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.nsi  

The Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union are long behind us, and we're now hurtling toward a tri-polar world dominated by America, Russia, and China. These three powers vy to shape global influence, often competing but sometimes colluding. As the saying goes, "When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled." So, the central question for this lecture is: What path are the nations of South Asia—including Afghanistan and Iran—likely to take? What alternatives and tools do they possess to navigate this landscape? Most importantly, what vision of society and power should guide them toward a viable future?

Speaker :

Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy is a nuclear physicist, a prominent activist, in particular concerned with promotion of freedom of speech, secularism, scientific temper and education in Pakistan;  founder-director of The Black Hole in Islamabad, and an author. As the head of Mashal Books in Lahore, he leads a major translation effort to produce books in Urdu that promote modern thought, human rights, and emancipation of women.

Prof Hoodbhoy received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT and has taught  physics and mathematics at Forman Christian College-University in Lahore, and previously taught physics at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)  and the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) in Islamabad.

He is a recipient of the Baker Award for Electronics and the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics. He was visiting professor at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland. In 2003 he was awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science.

Here is a list of a few of his publications :

- Pakistan: Origins, Identity and Future, published by Routledge (London, New York), 2023.

- Confronting the Bomb – Pakistani and Indian Scientists Speak Out, (edited) Oxford University Press, 2013.

- Education and the State – Fifty Years of Pakistan, (edited) Oxford University Press, 1998.

- Islam & Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, published by ZED Books, London, in 1991 with translations in Turkish, Malaysian, Indonesian, Arabic, Spanish, Sindhi, and Urdu.

- Proceedings of School on Fundamental Physics and Cosmology, co-edited with A. Ali, World Scientific, Singapore, 1991.

Indianity and Modernity _ Ravi Sinha

[ YouTube links of Ravi Sinha’s Informal talk in Lucknow in April 2025 on “Indianity and Modernity”.  Credits to Kumar Sauvir for recording, editing and posting. The title and intro are also by him ]

Part 1: भूखे-कंगालों का नेता नेहरू। खाये, पिये, छके का मोदी

 

Part 2: दलित, स्त्री, वाम जैसे आंदोलन भारतीयता में असफल

Part 3: भक्ति आंदोलन से ज्ञान, तर्क, दर्शन, सरलता को खदेड डाला

Class, Inequality, and the Current Political Moment in China and India _...

Dear Friends,       

Democracy Dialogues Series 39

Theme: Class, Inequality, and the Current Political Moment in China and India

Speaker : Professor Vamsi Vakulabharanam

Co-Director of the Asian Political Economy Program and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Time and Date: 6 PM (IST) Sunday, 11th May 2025

NEW SOCIALIST INITIATIVE (NSI)

Democracy Dialogues Series 39: Class, Inequality, and the Current Political Moment in China and India

 Democracy Dialogues Series 39

Organised by New Socialist Initiative

Theme : Class, Inequality, and the Current Political Moment in China and India

Speaker : 

Prof Vamsi Vakulabharanam

Co-Director of the Asian Political Economy Program and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Time and Date : 

6 PM (IST), Sunday , 11 th May 2025  

Join Zoom Meeting

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Meeting ID: 854 7722 9764

Passcode: 684127

The meeting will also be live streamed at Facebook ( facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.nsi).

-----------------------

Theme: Class, Inequality, and the Current Political Moment in China and India

This talk is based on a recently published book by the Oxford University Press – Class and Inequality in China and India, 1950-2010. China and India have seen a significant revival over the last three decades in terms of their place in the world economy. Two and a half centuries ago, they contributed 50 percent of the world output; after suffering a decline thereafter, their share fell to a paltry 9 percent in 1950 but has since resurged to over 25 percent today. Their growth and inequality experiences diverged for three decades following India's independence (1947) and the Chinese revolution (1949). Thereafter, there are remarkable underlying similarities in the experiences of both countries, especially in terms of their rising inequality patterns analyzed through a class lens. Vamsi demonstrates that the mutual interconnectedness between Chinese and Indian growth and inequality dynamics and the transformation and evolution of global capitalism is key to understanding the within-country inequality dynamics in both countries over the 1950-2010 period. Based on this analysis of class-based inequalities, Vamsi reflects on the current political moment in both countries, from a political economy perspective.

About Speaker : Prof Vamsi Vakulabharanam

Vamsi Vakulabharanam is Co-Director of the Asian Political Economy Program and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has previously taught at the University of Hyderabad (2008-14) and the City University of New York (2004-07). His recent research focuses on inequality in India and China and the political economy of Indian cities through the axes of gender, caste, class, and religion. In the past, he has also worked on agrarian change in developing economies, agrarian cooperatives, and the relationship between economic development and inequality. Vakulabharanam was awarded the Amartya Sen award in 2013 by the Indian Council of Social Science Research.

Between Axiality and Modernity - Dr. Ravi Sinha

Bhakti Era as the Plebeian Plateau in the Civilizational Landscape of India

We have by now devoted several sessions to mapping the millennial trajectory of the Bhakti Movement across the history and the cultural geography of the subcontinent. Starting with the Tamil lands in the 7th century we followed Bhakti performing the pradakshina of the cultural landmass of the subcontinent, crossing the Vindhyas in its northward journey sometime in the 13-14th century. Our endeavour has been to understand the role of Bhakti in shaping the cultural and the civilizational mind of India. This, in turn, has been motivated by task of making sense of the role this mind plays in contemporary politics and in the rise of fascistic Hindutva in recent decades.

As we stated in the proposal to a previous session, we seek to understand the impact of Bhakti at two different time-scales. On the shorter time-scale of contemporary politics one looks at the phenomenon of communalism. The mainstream of the anti-colonial national movement considered Bhakti Movement as the harbinger of religious tolerance and syncretism that would help evolve the Indian brand of secularism. The subsequent history, however, paints a mixed picture. A social fabric and a cultural mind weaved by the Bhakti ideologies do not offer the kind of resistance to communalism and sectarianism as was expected of them. In our previous sessions we mainly stayed with evaluating the impact of Bhakti at the political-historical time-scale characterized by the problem of communalism and the rise of Hindutva.

On a longer – millennial – time-scale, however, one can evaluate the Bhakti phenomenon in the civilizational context. One can ask something like the Needham Question – why did the Indian civilization, despite its glory and accomplishments in the ancient and the medieval periods, fail to realize its cultural and scientific potentials? Why was it defeated often and why was it eventually colonized? Why did the West forge ahead, why has India lagged behind? Did the cultural mind and social ethos prepared by the Bhakti Movement play a role in the civilizational decline of India? These are very large questions not amenable to easy answers. But one must prepare to wrestle with them as they are of crucial importance for imagining and fashioning a desirable future for India. In this session, we finally arrive at the task of outlining a framework for asking and answering these questions.

For this purpose, we propose to take help of two large concepts – one of Axiality and the other of Modernity. The idea of axial revolutions was proposed for the civilizational breakthroughs that happened in the middle centuries of the first millennium BC in several different and unconnected societies – Judea (land of the Old Testament in the era of prophets), Greece (of pre-Socratic philosophers as well as of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle), China (of Confucius, Mencius and others) and India (of Upanishads, six systems of philosophies, and of Buddha) being the prime examples. We will briefly go through the idea of Axiality and see how we can understand it in the sequence of human cultural and cognitive evolution progressively from the mimetic (pre-linguistic, primarily based on gestures, rituals and body-language) to the mythic (linguistic but largely oral and narrative-based) to the theoretic (rational, abstract, normative and self-reflective). We will try to locate the Indian antiquity in the sequence of cultural evolution.

We will then make a millennial jump and outline the idea of Modernity, which can, in this context, be seen as a new kind of axial transition. The first axial transition did take the civilizations concerned from the mythic era to the theoretic era, but it still depended on the idea of the transcendental to reorder life in the realm of the mundane. The transition to Modernity, for the first time in human history, brings human autonomy to the centre-stage of history and civilization. Elimination of human dependence on the super-natural and on the transcendental is brought explicitly on the agenda and an objective and scientific knowledge of the cosmos is deployed into the service of human emancipation and freedom.

While the Indian civilization was a key example of the axial breakthrough two and a half millennia ago, its transition to Modernity has been faltering and patchy. While this may be true for many civilizations, it is especially disconcerting in the case of India which has had such a glorious antiquity at least in the domains of the mythic and of the theoretic. Of course, entire history of the intervening two millennia culminating in the colonial subjugation at the hands of the modernist imperialists is implicated in the complex and faltering progress of Modernity on the subcontinent and it cannot be explained on the basis of one cause or developments in any single arena. But one can be reasonably certain that the developments in the cultural-religious-civilizational arena play an important role in the civilizational transitions and transformations. The role of the millennial march of Bhakti must be assessed and evaluated in this context.

We will also engage with the theoretical issues that arise in this context of the materialist explanation of historical progress. There is no doubt that the historical breakthroughs and the transitions from one stage of history to the next happen through the push of advancing forces of production and, in this respect, the cultural-civilizational transformations are correlated with the developments in the material conditions of life. But there is a significant difference between the respective dynamics of systems and civilizations. While history progresses through replacement of one system by the next, in case of civilizations the older ones never entirely go out of existence. The older ones merely become the subterranean layers on which new layers arise or get deposited. The mimetic-ritualistic and the mythic, for example, have not disappeared from human civilization even after the axial-theoretic and the modernist-scientific stages have become increasingly entrenched.

Once again, I am not sure whether all this can be covered in one session even at the level of very sketchy outline of the argument. But the idea is to start thinking about these issues which, abstract and theoretical as they may sound, are of critical importance in making sense of contemporary politics and history.

Select Bibliography

1. Johann P Arnason, “The Labyrinth of Modernity: Horizons, Pathways and Mutations”, Rowman and Littlefield, 2020
2. Robert N Bellah, “Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age”, Harvard University Press, 2011
3. S N Eisenstadt, “The Great Revolutions and the Civilizations of Modernity”, Brill, 2006
4. Neville Morley, “Antiquity and Modernity”, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009
5. Sheldon Pollock, “The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Pre-modern India”, University of California Press, 2006

Dr. Parakala Prabhakar @ Democracy Dialogues Lecture Series on 26th May 2024

 

Democracy Dialogues Lecture Series (Online )
Organised by New Socialist Initiative

31th Lecture

Theme: The Political Economy of New India

 Speaker:   Dr. Parakala Prabhakar(Author, economist and public intellectual)

Date and Time:  26 May 2024 at 6PM (IST)

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 will share the details soon

It will also be live streamed at:

facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.com

About the Talk :

Relentless in exposing the sinister nature of the communal politics of the current ruling dispensation and meticulous in exposing the voodoo economic policies pursued by them which are disastrous to the Indian economy, Dr Parakala Prabhakar is going to speak on ‘The Political Economy of New India’ in this lecture.

About the speaker

Dr. Parakala Prabhakar, is an author, economist, and public intellectual.
He  served as Communications Advisor, held a cabinet rank position in Andhra Pradesh Government between July 2014 and June 2018. He was also a former spokesman and one of the founding general secretaries of Praja Rajyam Party.

For several years he presented a current affairs discussion programme on television channels of Andhra Pradesh. His programmes included Pratidhwani on ETV2 and Namaste Andhra Pradesh on NTV  .

His book of essays ‘The Crooked Timber of New India : Essays on a Republic in Crisis‘ was widely discussed.

Dr Parakala completed his doctorate from the London School of Economics. He did his Master of Arts (M.A.) and Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.

(Video)Bhakti Era in North India - A Talk by Dr. Ravi Sinha

 

Dr. Ravi Sinha, Marxist Scholar and author delivered a talk on 'Bhakti Streams of Religious Movements in Medieval North India

Please find pasted below a YouTube link of the lecture. 

Main Presentation Part 1 

Q  &  A session Part 2 

Q & A session Part 3 

Theme : Bhakti Streams of Religious Movements in Medieval North India

Outline

The idea is to take up discussion of the Bhakti Movement as it moves to medieval North India. It is often stated that the Bhakti Movement was born in the Tamil land in the 6th-7th centuries and over the next millennium it made its way to the northern and eastern parts of the subcontinent. In his famous Patel Lectures of 1964, the famous Sanskritist Professor V Raghavan engagingly described the pradakshina yatra (clockwise circumambulation) of the Bharat Bhumi by Bhakti carried on the shoulders of singing saint-poets. Such a narrative, however, can contain only partially the historical truth. It is difficult to locate a singular source of a phenomenon that covered the entire subcontinent and took twelve hundred years to accomplish that. Given its scope and complexity and its temporal span, it is even more difficult to attribute to it a linear historical momentum that would carry it along an identifiable trajectory across the subcontinent.

Our considerations of the Bhakti Movement in the North will primarily focus on the period of 14th-18th centuries, although its antecedents go as far back as the periods of epics, puranas and Bhagavad Gita and its consequences operate and reverberate till today. In North India this movement clearly separates into two streams – the Saguna (worshipping the gods with attributes – invariably anthropomorphic gods) and the Nirguna (worshipping the abstract God without attributes). It is the Saguna stream, represented by the likes of Sur Das, Tulsidas, Mirabai and so on, that claims its ancestry in the Sanskritic era of the epics, the Bhagavad Gita, the Puranas and in the philosophical systems such as the Vedanta. It also fits more easily into the narrative of Bhakti performing the circumambulation of India starting in the Tamil region. The Nirguna stream represented by the likes of Kabir, Ravidas, Nanak and Dadu are more embedded in the North India of 15th-17th centuries, although they too at times claim ancestry in the Sanskritic era. The impact of Islam, especially of the Sufi stream, is clearly identifiable in this stream. Overall, we will attempt to identify the connections of the North Indian Bhakti phenomenon to three separate sources:

-        Vedantic and Pauranik (mostly in the case of the Saguna stream)

-        Yogic and Tantric (as, for example, the Nath Yogis)

-        Influence of Sufi Islam and also of Christianity, Buddhism etc

Time permitting, we will briefly discuss the emergence of a new religion – Sikhism – out of the Nirgun stream of the North Indian Bhakti Movement.

Our discussion will attempt to cover three separate but interconnected aspects of the Bhakti phenomenon:

-        Theological-ideological

-        Social-cultural

-        Civilizational-historical

There exists an enormous corpus of literature on the first two aspects of this phenomenon. We will very briefly summarise the salient features and the debates. It is the third aspect – the civilizational-historical – that brings forth a new flavour to our discussion. Bhakti Movement has often been lauded for its socially progressive impact on Indian culture and civilization. Scholars have contextualized the phenomenon in the social and political settings of medieval North India and many of them have underlined its plebeian and subalternist character that challenged the Brahmanical orthodoxy and the hierarchy of the varnashrama dharma. But the civilizational consequences of the Bhakti Movement have seldom been commented upon. We bring this dimension too into our considerations.

The cultural mind of India and the social fabric at the ground level have been structured and weaved primarily by the Bhakti Movement. It is evident in the role religion plays in personal conduct as well as in the social public sphere. This in turn begins to influence, deeply and widely, the modern political arena of nation, state and democracy. Even if one were to claim that the Bhakti phenomenon played a socially progressive role in medieval India, can one say the same with equal confidence about its ramifications in the contemporary social and political arena?

We ask this question at two different time-scales. On the shorter time-scale of contemporary politics one will have to look at the phenomenon of Communalism. The mainstream of the anti-colonial national movement considered the Bhakti Movement as the harbinger of religious tolerance and syncretism that would help evolve the Indian brand of secularism. The subsequent history, however, paints a mixed picture. A social fabric and a cultural mind weaved by the Bhakti ideologies do not offer the kind of resistance to communalism and sectarianism as was expected of them.

On a longer – millennial – time-scale one can evaluate the aftermath of the Bhakti phenomenon in the civilizational context. One can ask something like the Needham Question – why did the Indian civilization, despite its glory and accomplishments in the ancient and the medieval periods, fail to realize its cultural and scientific potentials? Why was it defeated often and why was it eventually colonized? Why did the West forge ahead, why has India lagged behind? Did the cultural mind and social ethos prepared by the Bhakti Movement play a role in the civilizational decline of India?

Of course, all these are very large and very complex questions. We cannot expect to deal with them in one discussion. But it is important to start looking at the Bhakti Movement in these contexts and in these perspectives. This is what we are trying to do in our series of discussions on this phenomenon.

Short Bibliography

1.     David N Lorenzen – “Religious Movements in South Asia – 600-1800”

2.     John Stratton Hawley – “A Storm of Songs – India and the Idea of Bhakti Movement”

3.     Patton E Burchett – “A Genealogy of Devotion - Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga and Sufism in North India”

4.     P Govinda Pillai – “The Bhakti Movement – Renaissance or Revivalism?”

5.     Richard M Eaton – “India in the Persianate Age – 1000-1765”

About the Speaker :

Ravi Sinha is an activist-scholar who has been associated with progressive movements for nearly four decades. Trained as a theoretical physicist, Dr. Ravi has a doctoral degree from MIT, Cambridge, USA. He worked as a physicist at University of Maryland, College Park, USA, at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad and at Gujarat University, Ahmedabad before resigning from the job to devote himself full time to organizing and theorizing. He is the principal author of the book, Globalization of Capital, published in 1997, co-founder of the Hindi journal, Sandhan, and one of the founders and a leading member of New Socialist Initiative.

Prof Sucheta Mahajan @ Democracy Dialogues Lecture Series on 28 April 2024

 

Democracy Dialogues Lecture Series (Online )
Organised by New Socialist Initiative

30th Lecture

Theme: Secularism in a Religious Mode ?-  Gandhi's Practice during Partition '

 Speaker:   'Prof Sucheta Mahajan, Professor of History Centre for Historical Studies, JNU ( retd)

Date and Time:  28 April 2024 at 6PM (IST)

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Meeting ID: 810 5682 9791

Passcode:  433470

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Abstract

The talk looks at the practice of Gandhi in his struggle against communalism in the years leading up to Partition. This is a hugely controversial subject with polarised positions taken by his followers and critics.

The perspective of the talk emerges from Gandhi’s oft quoted but not heeded statement, My Life is My Message. The talk is a reading of a life text in this sense: Gandhi’s mission in Noakhali to mend the social fabric torn by communal riots and spread of communal ideology.

Gandhi’s search for a way out may offer some insights to those sharing his concern for a secular, plural society and polity today.

About the speaker

Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, till the end of February 2023, Professor Mahajan has been visiting professor and Fellow at different International and National  Institutions.

She was member of the prestigious international research projects such as SPECTRESS and CHCI-MELLON Crises of Democracy, Global Humanities Institute. She has authored and edited many books on India’s Independence Struggle, Partition, Challenge of Communalism, Composite Culture etc

 Publications :

 Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India, 1947, Parts One and Two, (edited and with an Introduction) OUP, 2013 and 2015.

 Education for Social Change: MVF and Child Labour, National Book Trust, New Delhi, 2008.

RSS, School Texts and the Murder of Mahatma Gandhi- The Hindu Communal Project (with Aditya and Mridula Mukherjee) Sage Publications, 2008.

Composite Culture in a Multi-Cultural Society (Co-edited with Bipan Chandra), Pearson India & National Book Trust, New Delhi, 2006.

 Rites of Passage, A Civil Servant Remembers: H.M. Patel, (ed.), Rupa & Co., New Delhi,2005.

Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2000.

(Video) Democracy and Religion in Modern India: Critical and Self-critical Reflections by Professor Rajeev Bhargava

 

Professor Rajeev Bhargava delivered the 29th Democracy Dialogues Lecture on 31th March 2024

Abstract

 "It is widely accepted that 'secular' is an alien category in India. This is too simplistic a view. But even if we agree with it, how come no one has asked if 'religion' is alien to India? My claim is that it is or at least it is as foreign to India as secular is. What are the implications of this thesis? What have been the consequences of religionization on Indian society and polity? How has it shaped Indian democracy? In my presentation, I shall expand these views and show why India needs secularism and in what form."

 

About the speaker

Renowned political theorist and former director of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies ( CSDS), Delhi Prof Rajeev Bhargava is currently an honorary fellow at the Centre and the director of its Parekh Institute of Indian Thought. He has taught at the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi) and has lectured, taught and held visiting professorships at several international universities.

Prof Bhargava’s work on individualism and secularism is internationally acclaimed. His publications include Individualism in Social Science (1992), What Is Political Theory and Why Do We Need It? (2010) and The Promise of India’s Secular Democracy (2010). His edited works include Secularism and Its Critics (1998), Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution (2008) and Politics, Ethics and the Self: Re-reading Hind Swaraj (2022), Bridging Two Worlds : Comparing Classical Political Thought and Statecraft in India and China (2023)