BOOK REVIEW, "POLITICS FOR A NEW INDIA: A NATIONALISTIC PERSPECTIVE" EDITED BY PROF SHRI PRAKASH SINGH (original) (raw)

Review Article: Changing Trajectories of Indian Political Thought

South Asia Chronicle, vol. 4

There has been a sudden expansion and interest in Indian Political Thought (hereafter IPT) and this review article seeks to map the changing trajectories of IPT. The four books under review are: Ananya Vajpeyi, Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012. C.A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Gurpreet Mahajan, India: Political Ideas and the Making of a Democratic Discourse. London: Zed Books, 2013. Pradip Kumar Datta, Sanjay Palshikar and Achin Vanaik, eds.: Indian Political Thought: Volume 3, ICSSR Research Surveys and Explorations: Political Science, Volumes 1-4. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013.

India: political idea and the making of a democratic discourse

Contemporary South Asia, 2015

Gurpreet Mahajan's "India: Political Ideas and the Making of a Democratic Discourse" examines the evolution of indigenous Indian political theory. It explores how Indian reformers like Rajaram Mohan Roy, Jyotirao Phule, Mahatma Gandhi, and B.R. Ambedkar challenged Western paradigms of social science and advocated for a more inclusive and congruent system of thought. The book highlights key themes such as inequality, freedom, and the coexistence of religious cultures. Mahajan emphasizes the democratic nature of Indian social sciences and the unique ways the Indian community has historically configured the political.

Contemporary Indian Political Theory: A Critical Analysis

Democracy is an important milestone marking people's history and present. Quintessentially, people's democracy or hoi polloi democracy has two components. The first component informs us that people's participation in institutions is sine qua non of democracy. The second component depicts the realisation of being participants. Thus people's participation in institutions and the realisation of being participants together constitute democracy. The celebration and adoption of first component and ignorance or omission of second component pave the way for a fragmented (non-inclusive) democracy. Liberal democracy is essentially a fragmented democracy due to the adoption of first component and negation of the second. Therefore, liberal democracy becomes fragmented and hoi oligoi democracy. In this backdrop, it becomes crucial to examine the Indian democracy not only from the celebrated liberal formula of 'one person, one vote' but also by exhibiting the real componen...

Political Sociology in India At a Glance

isara solutions, 2019

Political sociology in India emerged after India gained independence and became a democratic republic. For the disciplines in the social sciences, especially political science and sociology, such a transformation made necessary the need to not only understand the functioning of modern political institutions, but also how the traditional social base of Indian society would function within such modern political system. It is this particular emphasis on the social in the understanding of the political in India that gives rise to the discipline of political sociology. In the period after Independence a number of sociologists and social scientists sought to understand the changing social context of political behaviour in India. It is this inter-disciplinary terrain of the interface between the political and the social that resulted in the need for a separate discipline of political sociology. However, this neither reduced the relevance of sociology nor of political science as political sociology developed as a sub-discipline of sociology, notwithstanding the fact that both are closely inter-related. Dipankar Gupta (1996) provides an excellent understanding for the development of Political Sociology in India. His book gives us a clear idea on the social and political conditions that prevailed before and after independence and how the modern principles that were adopted after independence managed to survive along with the traditional ones that already existed.