Indian Unity Research Articles

Feeling through Empathy, Judging through Sympathy: Environmental Ethics and Eco-terrorism in Fiction

This research paper explores the environmental ethics depicted in Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest eco-fictional novel The Ministry for the Future (2020) through an analysis of empathy, sympathy, and environmental justice. It also seeks to challenge the common division of empathy and sympathy reactions from characters as different from those of people in real life situations to theorize a case for how people might better react and understand their role in the face of climatic crisis as a consequence of reading fiction. In so doing, it accentuates the importance of reading environmental literature to awaken readers’ sensitivities and trace paths outside the “planetary crisis” (Ghosh, 2021). Methodologically, it borrows concepts from reading-response criticism (character, empathy, and sympathy) to navigate the fabric of eco-criticism: the ethics of climate change through the injustices portrayed in Robinson’s novel. In addition to this two-dimensional approach, this paper is clearly divided in three main sections. In the first section, I approach empathy and sympathy in various ways including the former being the precursor of the later for rhetorical purposes; that is, it is unique in the making of resonances for readers. Also, I argue that readers are lured to feel empathy through the novel’s imagery and through readers’ predilection to “read minds” (Zunshine, 2006) or take “imaginative leaps” (Sutrop, 2000). The second section inspects unity through climate outrage and nation-wide agency in the aftermath of the Indian heatwave. Such unity scaffolds the last section. The third part searches an ethical dimension to eco-terrorism in the novel given a shift of national intersubjective Indian unity that entitles climate justice to their own hands. This investigation concludes by suggesting directions to an analysis of empathy and sympathy within the realm of realistic, climate fiction.

Origins and Manifestations of the Modern Ecumenical Movement during the 19th and 20th Centuries and its Developments in India

The modern Ecumenical movement saw the formation of WCC globally and NCCI, CSI-CNI-Mar-Thoma unity in India. Indian national sentiments and the freedom movement influenced post-independence identity. Western missions promoted indigenous leadership amid colonial rule's end. However, the extent of ecumenical ideas among Christians and leaders is uncertain. Education and awareness can address queries about Christian divisions and foster unity.

Role of women in Swadeshi and boycott movement

In 1905, Lord Curzon decided to divide Bengal, the biggest center of nationalism, on 16 October to destroy Indian unity. The anti-dissolution leaders made a public announcement of celebrating "National Day of Mourning" on that day. The idea of running a Swadeshi and boycott movement at the time of the partition movement was first raised in the mind of Gopal Rao Deshmukh of Poona. Who was known as Lokhitwadi. He started the promotion of Swadeshi for the protection of Indian rural industries only in the decade of 1840-50. In the beginning of the decade of 1870-80, Mahadev Ranade propagated Swadeshi through his lectures and articles. The work of spreading it in the society was done by his wife Ramabai Ranade and her associates.

CENSORSHIP IN INDIA VIS-À-VIS FREEDOM OF SPEECH: COMPARISON OF THE EXTENT OF CENSORSHIP LAWS IN INDIA AND ABROAD

With the current outrage at the arbitrary method of censorship applied by the board of film certification in India, it was pertinent to understand and take a closer look at the methods and principles which guide the method of censorship in India, this is also an attempt to understand why censorship is a vital tool to ensure peace and unity in India. The paper also looks at the past and present of censorship, in the form of how it came to be, why it came to be and also what role it plays in society today. In order to get a bigger picture of censorship an attempt has been made to understand censorship in the United States of America, which is a champion of democracy and also in the People’s Republic of China which uses censorship to shepherd its populace in the other direction. The effects both schools have on censorship have been explored in this paper. India being a mixture of both influences has the right to expression subject to certain instances and therefore must understand that even though the right of free speech is indeed a requirement in these times and places, but why censorship as a necessary evil as well in India.

“Yours in Indian Unity”: Moderate National Indigenous Organisations and the U.S.-Canada Border in the Red Power Era

ABSTRACTHistoriography on the Red Power era has to-date largely focused on the direct action protests of the American Indian Movement, while overlooking the continuing political lobbying and transnational work of more moderate Native rights organisations. This article argues that the National Congress of American Indians in the U.S. and the National Indian Brotherhood in Canada rhetorically challenged the U.S.-Canada border, even establishing a Joint Agreement to foster collaboration across it. However, while their leaders purported to challenge nation-state borders, in practice the collaboration between the two organisations adhered to the settler-colonial structures dominant in North America. Shaped by these federal ties, the exchange was ultimately unable to achieve its aim of working towards self-determination through mutual cooperation. Moderate Indigenous organisations remain dependent on federal structures to operate, thus limiting their ability to effectively organise across settler-state borders.

Normative Epistemology of Right to Self-Determination: A Case Study of Peoples of Jammu and Kashmir

This write-up surveys the applicability of right to self-determination in the elusive and curious case of Jammu and Kashmir. The paper keeps itself strictly within the ambit and scope of the right to self-determination as granted to peoples under United Nations Charter. I have divided the paper into three parts namely; Facts; the Law; and Analysis. The core question that needs to be answered for the normative application of self-determination is to find out if the State of Jammu and Kashmir is under alien rule. The central argument of this paper is that India was always a single unit, British consolidation and takeover of its reign did not change the characteristics of India as a political system or state. The scheme of British administration in India, structurally, had two units of administrations; one with direct administration under the Parliamentary supremacy of British Parliament and the second unit was the Indian States enjoying their autonomy but lost their sovereignty and international identity to British Empire. The relationship between the Indian States and English Crown was of paramountcy. I also try to examine the relationship among the Indian States inter se. When we throw some light on the jargon of Indian states and its legal relationship under the International Law, its crystallizes the concept the unity of India under the British Empire. I have also attempted to unfold the legal meaning of the term colony and has examined the legal connotation of the same. It is established that Kashmir has always found its place in the administration of British Empire of India and needless to say ancient India in incomplete without Jammu and Kashmir.

How the disabled body unites the national body: disability as ‘feel good’ diversity in urban India

This article analyzes both representations of disability in popular media and the role of disabled workers in urban India and demonstrates how the category of disability becomes a form of non-threatening ‘feel good’ diversity. Unlike other axes of difference such as class, caste, gender, sexuality, and religion, India’s disability rights movement, corporations, and mainstream media represent disability as largely apolitical. Drawing on Nehruvian ideals about ‘unity in diversity’, this article discusses how disability functions as a means of imagining and creating unity in India. As a result of skillful manipulation that collapses and conflates nationalist and neoliberal projects, the success of disabled people is considered to be synonymous with the success of the nation. This essay thus examines how thinking, feeling, and representing through disability provides a new way of conceptualizing the nation and critically engages with ideas and ideals of ‘disability publics’. Disability is rendered into a representation and while tension exists between feeling good and feeling bad, the specter of a contentious disability politics is kept at bay.

Ideas of Parity: Muslims, Sikhs and the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan

ABSTRACTHistorians have suggested that the politics of late colonial India centred on a battle between two discrete ideas: Indian and Muslim nationalism. Complicating this binary, this paper focuses on three conceptions of parity between religious groups, contending that this logic transcended Mohammad Ali Jinnah's and the Muslim League's call for constitutional equality between Hindus and Muslims to shape a wider debate about how to defy communal majoritarianism and exit identity politics altogether. Just as Jinnah sought to prevent Hindu dominance within a single state, the Akali Sikhs—influenced as much by a negative historical imagination as the contemporary logic of numbers—produced their own constitutional claim in order to avert Muslim supremacy in the Punjab. Meanwhile Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, president of the Indian National Congress between 1940 and 1946, posited a unique thesis: since modern India was the joint construction of Hindus and Muslims, parity already existed. Though he held that Jinnah's call for constitutional parity was consequently superfluous, Azad's idea of the shared nation led him to search for a genuine consensus, rather than a simple truce, between India's two major political parties. This paper argues that the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan, offering a degree of parity between communities whilst retaining Indian unity, represented the near-realisation of these three ideas.

Uniform Civil Code: Whether a Directive to Promote Unity? Rhetoric and Reality

The bedrock of the present legal system of India was laid down by the Britishers. They succeeded in laying down uniform substantive and procedural laws in almost all the areas of law. In some civil laws viz, marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption, guardianship and succession commonly known as personal laws no uniform law was laid down. The First Law Commission which was appointed in 1835 recommended that in personal matters viz, marriage, divorce, maintenance and like, the Hindu and Muslims would be governed by their respective personal laws. Same views were expressed by the second law commission which was appointed in 1853. Both commissions were asked to prepare a draft of uniform civil laws which would be applicable to all communities irrespective of religion. They doubted the wisdom of uniformity in these laws and consequently left them untouched. The second law commission even objected the codification of the Hindu and Muslim personal laws. After independence, legal position in this area was intended to undergo a change. The new Constitution which was adopted on 26th January 1950 incorporated a provision in this regard in the form of Article 44. The position did not change substantially as the provision did not create a definite obligation on the State in this regard. Consequently the personal laws continued to be administered as before. As time passed a need was felt to have a uniform civil code in order to bring unity in India. Presently even a debate is going on throughout India regarding the implementation of uniform Civil Code. The issue is not whether a uniform civil code is to be adopted or not but the real issue is whether it will bring unity? The present paper will make an attempt to peruse whether it is pragmatic to adopt such a code in heterogeneous society? The paper will also focus on the practicability of diversity in the family law and its essence in the country which is governed by the philosophy of freedom of religion in letter and spirit.

Multiculturalism, Minority Rights and Democracy in India

The question of Indian unity has never been settled beyond all differences and disputations. We have no culturally homogeneous, dominant and majority ethnic and religious group that could both dominate as well as effectively claim to represent all Indians. Group rights act as the regulatory devices for the accommodation of differences. From egalitarian view of justice minority groups have a moral justification for demanding cultural rights, which is the structure for belongingness. Many liberals call for greater tolerance of minority groups. Indian democracy is not consociational, but has adopted consociational devices for dealing with diverse conflicts within society. It has sometimes proved possible for various political parties (multiethnic) to co-operate, form coalitions after elections and even before that and reach agreements on controversial matters affecting the cultural and group rights.

India: A Divided House

Sub regionalism remains a controversial issue in the present. The speed of economic integration has further placed the prospects of regional movements at the forefront of internal political scenario. The forces of regionalism are playing a critical role in shaping the new India. The recent demand for the creation of the separate state of Telangana in Andhra Pradesh and the raging controversies related to it has once again opened the debate, whether smaller states are better for the development of the nation. The demand for smaller sates has started again and no one knows where this will all lead and end. The number of states in India has increased in the past decade which makes me ponder over the future of India and hinges me over the point of unity of India. In the end however the question remains as to whether the growth of these regional groups helps or hinders in the development of the nation. The method of research adopted for this particular project and study is doctrinal in nature. As the project analyzes the impact of sub-regionalism movements in India and also throws light on the present political scenario. The aim and objective of this project is to do a detailed study of the sub-regionalism movements and the political scenario getting affected by it. The researcher attempts to do this by studying the history of formation of states and the reasons for the newly formed states and all the developments backdrop of the entire concept, also an attempt has been made to make certain suggestions and recommendations on the issue emerging. The hypothesis behind this research is that Sub-regionalism movement for new states is a threat to unity of our country. Therefore the basic question which emerges is “Can sub-regionalism movement lead us in the direction of a balanced and equitable modernization?”

Gandhi, citizenship and the resilience of Indian nationhood

This article examines Gandhi's legacy in the shaping of citizenship in India and its implications for the resilience of Indian nationhood. I contend that a conception of citizenship that can be extrapolated from Gandhi, and that persisted as a practice, as well as a political language, instilled in the dynamics of Indian citizenship attributes that played an important role in securing the resilience of Indian unity and its democratic viability. The Gandhian conception of citizenship was developed after independence in conjunction with three other primary concomitant notions of citizenship. The ongoing multifaceted interplay between the four competing conceptions of citizenship, and the tensions and shifting balance of power between them became part of the mechanism that enabled the sustainability of some conflicts within the Indian polity to the detriment of other more threatening divisions. In the effect of this process Indian citizenship has been able to inhibit the tensions that had the potential to break the country apart.

The Mutiny to Come

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was by far the most serious anticolonial insurrection of the nineteenth century and is generally held to constitute the last great act of traditional resistance to British rule. This essay is concerned with delineating another vision of the mutiny’s modernity than the one retailed by colonial and nationalist writers. It was neither the unity of India in any political sense, nor its division in any religious one, that the revolt brought to light, but rather an empire of distinctions where the native was not set against the alien but existed alongside it within a moral compact. And if much of this moral compact was drawn from tradition, its hesitant achievement during the rebellion of 1857 had unexpected consequences for India’s modernity. These became evident in the next period of anti-British mobilization across northern India, Gandhi’s movement of noncooperation that began with his defense of the caliphate in 1919. The extraordinary similarity of themes and arguments between these two events must give us pause for thought, even if we do not link them in any causal fashion. Whether it is the sacrifices made by one religious group for another or the practice of noncooperation itself, such elements appear to have been reincarnated from one historical moment to the next. For it was in the mutiny that these factors were transformed out of traditional recognition and made into the stuff of Indian modernity, destabilizing nationalist verities even as they made the nation itself possible in Gandhi’s spiritualization of politics.

THE SPIRIT AND FORM OF AN ETHICAL POLITY: A MEDITATION ON AUROBINDO'S THOUGHT

This article elucidates the meaning of Indian nationalism and its connection to religious universalism as a problem of ethics. It engages in that exercise of elucidation by interpreting a few of the key texts by Aurobindo Ghose on the relationship between ethics and politics in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Both secularist and subalternist histories have contributed to misunderstandings of Aurobindo's political thought and shown an inability to comprehend its ethical moorings. The specific failures in fathoming the depths of Aurobindo's thought are related to more general infirmities afflicting the history of political and economic ideas in colonial India. In exploring how best to achieve Indian unity, Aurobindo had shown that Indian nationalism was not condemned to pirating from the gallery of models of states crafted by the West. By reconceptualizing the link between religion and politics, this essay suggests a new way forward in Indian intellectual history.

Princely states, peasant protests, and nation building in India: the colonial mode of historiography and subaltern studies

The postcolonial unity of India as a single nation state incorporating the princely states covering two-fifth of the territory and a quarter of the population that remained outside the direct jurisdiction of the colonial state has not been problematized in the colonial and postcolonial historiography of India. This problematization is nonetheless essential in order to understand the internal dynamics of the colonial social formation in India, especially the agency of peasant movements in princely states in the dissolution of tbe colonial state and in preparing the ground for the postcolonial unity of the Indian state. The tendency to ignore the agency of peasant movements in princely India during the colonial rule is what I have characterized as the colonial mode of historiography. Subaltern Studies project which claims to distinguish itself for its role in restoring the agency of peasant insurgency in colonial India is indeed a continuation of the colonial mode of historiography.

Regional Renegotiations of Space

In recent years, Indians of different ethnicities in Chiapas have come together in regional and national forums around a sense of shared Indian identity. Calls for Indian unity at these forums are based on common experiences of discrimination, lack of representation and power in the national political system, and the absence of government services in indigenous regions, as well as on the shared practice of communal work and similar decision-making procedures within indigenous communities. Since the organization of the first of these meetings, the Indian Congress in San Crist6bal de Las Casas in 1974, increased collective organization across Indian ethnic boundaries has occurred, as Chiapas's Tzotzils, Tzeltals, Chols, and Tojolabals have joined in a historic discussion about common problems and potential solutions. The bringing together of indigenous ethnicities throughout the state was an important contribution in itself, providing the participants with a broader vision of themselves both as members of particular ethnic groups and as Indians in the larger context. Participants formed new alliances as they sought to establish links with other organizations in the state, in Mexico, and in the international community. Although ethnically based solidarity provided a way for Chiapas's indigenous people to begin addressing their common problems, turning that solidarity into political and economic power is still in a formative stage and has been more problematic. Nevertheless, especially since the Zapatista uprising, indigenous activists have taken advantage of the disarray in Chiapas's constitutional government to undertake political and administrative reforms unilaterally at the local and regional levels. These experiments in rearranging government to include people who have for 500 years been excluded from power have faced unrelenting opposition from the state and national govern-

Postcolonial Lack and Aesthetic Promise in The Moor’s Last Sigh

Research Article| December 01 2001 Postcolonial Lack and Aesthetic Promise in The Moor’s Last Sigh Alexandra W. Schultheis Alexandra W. Schultheis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Twentieth-Century Literature (2001) 47 (4): 569–595. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2001-1006 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Alexandra W. Schultheis; Postcolonial Lack and Aesthetic Promise in The Moor’s Last Sigh. Twentieth-Century Literature 1 December 2001; 47 (4): 569–595. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2001-1006 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsTwentieth-Century Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © Hofstra University2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Secularism out of its place

A major source of the problems in recent discussions of the continued relevance to contemporary Indian political life of the secular state and the practices associated with secularism lies in the heavy burden that has been placed upon these terms. Secularism, properly speaking, is an orientation and a set of practices. However, in India, it has become an ideology seen as both contesting with Hindu communalism by those who uphold it, and as contesting against the faith of the Indian peoples by those who lately stand against it. Secularism as an orientation and a set of practices is indispensable to India's future as a liberal democracy. However, it loses its force as a binding principle of Indian unity if it is transformed into an ideology.

The ICRC's activities on the Indian subcontinent following partition (1947–1949)

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, the British government clearly stated its intention of granting independence to India.The conflict between the British and the Indian nationalists receded into the background, while the increasing antagonism between Hindus and Muslims came to the fore. The Hindus, centred round the Congress Party led by Jawaharlal Nehru, wanted to maintain the unity of India by establishing a government made up of representatives of the two communities. The Muslims, under the banner of the Muslim League and its President, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, demanded the creation of a separate Muslim State, Pakistan. The problem was further complicated by the fact that the approximately 300 million Hindus, 6 million Sikhs and 100 million Muslims in British India were not living in geographically distinct regions, especially in Punjab and Bengal, where the population was mixed.

Marryshow House—A Living Legacy

This is about a house, a very distinctive and historic house located on Tyrrel Street, St. George's Grenada. It is the former home of the late Theophilus Albert Marryshow Grenadian statesman and advocate of West Indian unity.1 It currently houses the School of Continuing Studies (Grenada) of the University of the West Indies, and it is fortuitous that this building which witnessed important thrusts towards the binding of the Caribbean into a unified whole should today continue in the service of one of the oldest shared West Indian Institutions.