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This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the reframing of Indian political thought (IPT). It discusses how IPT has gained distinctive tradition and highlights the fact that it remains undeniably rooted in the necessity to assume the thought of the nation as an ethnos. It analyses the issues raised by the construction of the tradition of modern IPT (MIPT) and describes the complex positions and patterns of practices of MIPT under colonial modernity. This chapter also highlights the importance of the issue of discontinuities in IPT, particularly in terms of borders and geographical spread of political traditions.

This chapter examines the postcolonial nature and content of international law in India, focusing on the writings on history and civilization. It analyses academic treatment of international law taking into account factors such as global convergence of policies to formulate uniform substantive and procedural structures of law and the shrinking policy space for the states. It also identifies key issues that changed the Indian academic thinking on international law, including trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, international environmental law and climate change.

This chapter studies the theories about how much the Indian thought and ways of life may have influenced Greek thought, and also considers the supposed connection of the Jews with India and the Indians. It begins with a study on the interpretations of Megasthenes' reference to the Jews, followed by an account of Megasthenes' life and works, as well as his comment on the Jews, which has survived thanks to Clement of Alexandria. The chapter then discusses Megasthenes' comparison of the opinions of the Brahmans and the Greeks, and also identifies the similarities and dissimilarities among the Brahmans, the Jews, and the “Ancient” Greeks.

This chapter examines the role of democracy and feminism in Indian political thought based on adivasi and Dalit-bahujan discourses. It explores the question of Buddhist identity through works on Iyothee Thass and the invention of a Dalit political identity while assessing the role of labour in the inter-subjective relationships between the Brahmin master and the Dalit. It also considers the unique position of Dalit feminists in the male-dominated Dalit discourse and suggests that feminism has been the object of internal criticism for its complicity with caste hierarchies and conventional sexual norms.

This chapter discusses the limitations of ‘universalist’ cosmopolitanism and offers an alternative in the form of a so-called postcolonial cosmopolitanism. It also considers a novel form of comparativism where the Western and the non-Western texts and ideas will be equal partners in intellectual search. This chapter also highlights the importance of cosmopolitanism studies in providing a better understanding of how the intellectual, cultural, and economic contests between the powerful and the subaltern inflect and are inflected by alternative spatial frames.

This chapter outlines the key challenges that psychology faces in India. It elaborates upon the four aspects of this challenge: the interdisciplinary nature of the problems of mind and behaviour; the need for integrative view of mental problems; the rigorous effort necessary for the development of appropriate methods and measures; and the need to relate psychology to cultural and social realities of the country. The discipline needs to reposition itself to meet the challenges of society and promotion of scholarship by adopting an integrative pedagogical approach. As the discipline has become multivocal, multidirectional, and struggling to reorient and address culturally relevant issues, a paradigm shift is needed. The signs of decolonization of mind are appearing. The teaching and practice of psychology is going beyond the received positivist and predominantly unicultural model. East and West do not stand face to face but pave the way for new integrative science of mind.

This book explores Arthur Schopenhauer’s encounter with Indian thought, with particular emphasis on his doctrine of representation and his account of the genesis of the will. It considers the extent and nature of the affinities between Schopenhauer’s thought and the philosophical and religious ideas of India by concentrating on the schools associated with Hinduism and Buddhism: the Advaita Vedānta and the Mādhyamika and Yogācāra schools. The book is divided into four sections. The first section provides the background to Schopenhauer’s interest in Indian thought and the growth and extent of his knowledge of Hindu and Buddhist ideas. The second section deals with the doctrine of representation and related views found in India, while the third section discusses the doctrine of the will and its relation to Indian thought. The fourth and lasr section focuses on the ontological status of the will and the nature of final reality.

This chapter examines Arthur Schopenhauer’s commitment to the idea of an Oriental Renaissance—a rebirth of the spirit resulting from contact with Indian thought. It first considers Schopenhauer’s views regarding Christianity, and especially the twin doctrines of original sin and redemption. It then discusses Schopenhauer’s commitment to India as the source of philosophical knowledge and spiritual renewal and goes on to compare his notion of philosophy with that of the Indians. It also explores the idea that a significant affinity existed between some of Schopenhauer’s ideas and the thought of India, citing Paul Deussen as the most influential writer in this respect.

This concluding chapter summarizes the numerous affinities between Arthur Schopenhauer’s ideas and Indian thought. It first considers Schopenhauer’s belief that a notable resemblance existed between the epistemological idealism of Immanuel Kant, which provided the starting point for his own philosophy, and Indian ideas then becoming known to Europe concerning the illusory nature of empirical reality. It then discusses similarities between Schopenhauer’s doctrines of representation and will and the teachings of the Mādhyamika school within Buddhism and Advaita Vedānta within Hinduism. It also examines other interesting points of contact between Schopenhauer’s philosophy and Indian thought, including the doctrine of Two Truths, the concepts of śakti and dependent origination, karmic impressions, store-consciousness, formative forces, better consciousness or final denial of the will, the pure subject of knowing, and salvation.

This chapter examines the works about the relevance of time and knowledge in Indian political thought by Indian academics. It analyses works that question the purity, priority, and universality of European modernity, and those that show the political entanglement of the discipline of history. It also evaluates research literature that investigates the idea of a singular world history governed by the logic of capitalism and those that sought to recover histories suppressed by the ‘nationalist temporal scheme’. This chapter also considers the distinctiveness of the experience of postcolonial societies and the entanglement of epistemologies and hierarchies of power.

The chapter discusses the ethical thoughts of the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore and analyses ways in which the Self has been conceived, focusing on the programme of a Hindutva Self. It explores the various sites in which different notions of the Self have been identified and reviews the ethical readings of classical Brahmnanical concepts which are deployed to understand modern conditions.

This chapter examines the texts, practices, and material culture associated with early Indian political thought (IPT). It discusses the ideal of kingship as it emerges through two recent translations of the classics of the Sanskritic tradition, the Manusmriti and Santi Parvan. It suggests political thought of early India was not confined to the shastric tradition alone and explains that works on regional settings show how a variety of regional deities and non-Brahmanical cults were related to political processes and aspirations to power.

This chapter examines the main features of Arthur Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the world as representation, with particular emphasis on his thoughts about the reality-status of the world. The discovery of Indian thought, and especially the Oupnek’hat, appeared to Schopenhauer as a remarkable corroboration of the insights into the nature of the empirical world that had been achieved by Immanuel Kant only some twenty years earlier. Schopenhauer regarded himself as belonging to—and perhaps, indeed, as being the flag bearer of—the central tradition of European thought going back through Kant, Bishop G. Berkeley, and John Locke to René Descartes. This chapter first discusses Schopenhauer’s doctrine of representation which he articulated in his book The World as Will and Representation and developed into one of the twin pillars of his philosophy. It then considers Schopenhauer’s ideas about understanding (Verstand) and reason as well as causality as the root of intuitive perception.

After deep and wide-ranging study and extensive writing, Hegel’s conclusions regarding the beauty of Indian art, the sublimity of Indian religion, and the complexity and significance of Indian philosophy may precisely have led to his bias vis-à-vis his own system of philosophy. Self-contradictions arise in his writings. Hegel had inherited (and perpetuated) many of the vices of his era: racism, chauvinism, religious bias, sense of cultural superiority. But, his philosophical bent enjoined repeated engagement with the newly discovered treasures of Indian philosophy, and his irrepressible intellectual hunger and curiosity engendered his study of Indian mythology, history, art, and religion. In fact the uneasy resemblance of Indian philosophy may have posed a deep threat to him. The chapter concludes that whatever objective evidence presented itself to the contrary, nevertheless the logical framework of his philosophical system demanded, for its tenuous success, that Indian thought be merely emergent, nascent, childlike—representative of the morning Spirit.

Conservative political thinking has a long intellectual lineage in India. We explore the intellectual roots of this tradition by examining older texts as well as more contemporary writing on the role of the state. In one strand of conservative political thinking, the state is subservient to social norms, and it can only have a limited, if any, role in social and economic transformation. We contrast these conservative ideas with the views of more liberal thinkers who seek to use the power of the Indian state to transform society and the economy. A reading of the debates in the Constituent Assembly of India shows that there was significant division on the role of the state in social transformation and on whether special provisions should be made for religious minorities and disadvantaged groups. The ideological dimensions of conflict that we have identified were of deep concern to the framers of India’s constitution and they resonate in contemporary India.

The chapter examines the texts, practices, and material culture associated with Indian political thought (IPT) of the ‘middle period’. It looks into works on the internal differentiation and historical developments within both the ‘mirror of princes’ literature on one hand, and the shastric tradition on the other. It discusses works on the role of language and literary culture on IPT and describes how paintings and architecture served as symbols of power and ways of communicating the majesty of the ruler.

Buddhist scholastic tradition speaks of a classification of five “sins of immediate retribution”: killing one's father, mother, or an arhat; drawing the blood of a buddha; and creating a schism in the monastic community. These are crimes so heinous that their inevitable karmic result of descent into hell takes place immediately in the next life, rather than at some unspecified vague point in the future, as is usual for generic karmic results. These are the most serious crimes catalogued and studied within Indian Buddhist literature. This chapter examines indigenous Indian Buddhist thinking about the stock set of crimes of which Mahādeva is accused. Interestingly, no great stress is put on his incest, the focus being rather on his murders (for having murdered his father, he goes on to kill a Buddhist saint and his mother as well). The overwhelmingly positive nature of Buddhist ethics is highlighted in this context by the fact that commission of even the worst imaginable crimes does not lead to eternal damnation, that idea playing essentially no role in Buddhist thought or mythology.

What place does Indian thought occupy in the history of philosophy? In this chapter Hegel’s response is that while the oriental history is the “first” in the history of philosophy — one which has developed the “form” of thought to a considerable extent, it is a thought that is unfree, both politically and objectively. It is excluded from the body of a history of philosophy although the Spirit arises, or is born, there, because such a form, for Hegel, will be inadequate to hold the concept of spirit, the impersonal universal substance that expresses the philosophical spirit of reason, the concrete and absolute Idea. Hegel discusses the classical heterodox schools of Indian Philosophy at length: the epistemology and metaphysical postulates of Sankhya-Yoga, Nyaya-Vaisheshika; the concept of Brahman as Absolute; the trinity Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva (and the similarity with Christianity); and the conceptual implications of the statement “I am Brahma,” among other major themes.

This chapter examines the ontological status of Arthur Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will. It begins by addressing the question that has dogged Schopenhauer’s philosophy: how the will can be said to deny itself. Schopenhauer argued that the denial of the will was an act of the intellect that had, in exceptional persons, somehow struggled free from the will that gave it birth. But since throughout his writings Schopenhauer insists that the intellect is “originally a mere instrument in the service of our will,” this argument has not seemed to convince many skeptics. This chapter considers whether the will, as conceived by Schopenhauer, is absolute and final reality, or whether self-denial of the will is a somewhat misleading figure of speech. In particular, it expounds on what Schopenhauer means by the term “thing-in-itself” as it relates to his doctrine of the will. It also discusses the ways in which Indian thought helps elucidate Schopenhauer’s difficulties concerning the relation of the will to ultimate reality.