Mind and Society

Abstract

Seamless in approach and rigour of method and seated very much in the post-modern present, this book spans a wide spectrum of historical periods, cultures, religions, regions and politics. This is a reflection of the author’s search for a theory of vernacular pluralism suitable for Indian society and modernity. The book has three sections. The first engages with the question of swaraj or independent nationalism versus internationalism in the context of knowledge, programmes of research and the university as a social institution. The essays are written to represent the author’s viewpoint on the political conflict between imperialism and nationalism as it relates to the academic pursuit of knowledge in the university and the profession. The second group of essays comprises selected critical reflections on aspects of the modern Western world, academic, theoretical and practical, all here considered as inherently social, but remaining unexamined in our everyday life and practice. They begin with questions of social science and philosophy and conclude with a discussion on the working lives of the industrial worker (West) and the ecological household farmer (East). The third group of essays explores the original project of a vernacular Indian modernity in relation to the Hindu and Muslim cultures of medieval India and in the context of Sikhism as an example of Indian modernity. The thrust of this final section is to establish the ground for a concept of society in the vernacular usage, labour and language, rather than in the concept of ‘tradition’ as general social science and the Orientalist classicists have hitherto done.