Bidyut Chakrabarty
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199951215
- eISBN:
- 9780199346004
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199951215.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, Comparative Politics
The aim of this book is to understand the complex evolution of the socio-political ideas of Gandhi and King and also their confluence in the specific context of India and America respectively. Based ...
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The aim of this book is to understand the complex evolution of the socio-political ideas of Gandhi and King and also their confluence in the specific context of India and America respectively. Based on a threadbare analysis of socio-political ideas of Gandhi and King, the book argues that the moral politics of redemptive love and non-violence that they consistently pursued represents an appealing vision for the present century. Their commitment to non-violence and their desire for social justice shine forth in the darkness of an age of nuclear weapons and genocide. They thus remain a major source of inspiration to each generation of thinkers and activists in the political tradition of non-violence that bear their names. In four long chapters, the argument - defending the ideological compatibility between Gandhi and King given their commitment to non-violence - is forcefully made on the basis of a critical scrutiny of their socio-political ideas, which they had articulated in various texts that they had left for the posterity. Not only is the book a critical statement on ‘the confluence of thought’, it has also probed into whether non-violent civil disobedience is a viable strategy in an era of the growing consolidation of the social Darwinism at the behest of neo-liberal political competition.Less
The aim of this book is to understand the complex evolution of the socio-political ideas of Gandhi and King and also their confluence in the specific context of India and America respectively. Based on a threadbare analysis of socio-political ideas of Gandhi and King, the book argues that the moral politics of redemptive love and non-violence that they consistently pursued represents an appealing vision for the present century. Their commitment to non-violence and their desire for social justice shine forth in the darkness of an age of nuclear weapons and genocide. They thus remain a major source of inspiration to each generation of thinkers and activists in the political tradition of non-violence that bear their names. In four long chapters, the argument - defending the ideological compatibility between Gandhi and King given their commitment to non-violence - is forcefully made on the basis of a critical scrutiny of their socio-political ideas, which they had articulated in various texts that they had left for the posterity. Not only is the book a critical statement on ‘the confluence of thought’, it has also probed into whether non-violent civil disobedience is a viable strategy in an era of the growing consolidation of the social Darwinism at the behest of neo-liberal political competition.
