Arun K Patnaik

... Ramashray Roy's paperon 'swadhyaya', an educational experiment in Gujarat, highlights that compatibility between in-dividual good and collective good is. ... Reshma, a bhumihar, and Chuharmal, a dalit, form the nucleus of a love story in the contem-porary tragedies inflicted by ...

I BEGINNING in the early August 1992, in a remote village of Dubagmta of Nellore district in Andhra Pradesh, the agitation by women protesting against arrack auc-tions and demanding ban on the sale of arrack spread to almost all districts of the state. The movement against the sale ...

The relationship of political society and civil society is simultaneously a story of the relationship between subject and citizen. Whereas political society is about the recognition of subjecthood, civil society is about citizenship. Citizenship is embedded in the Aristotelian theme of regime formation, whereas subjecthood is embedded in the nature of the social formation. This sounds ambiguous. But ambiguities are inherent in civil society. There is a generic usage of civil society in the writings of Marx, Engels and Gramsci. But all these writers

A comparative perspective of pre-theoretical consciousness is presented here. By comparing Gramsci's common sense (from the interwar period; 1999) with Bourdieu's habitus (1977) and Taylor's social imaginary (2004)-the two most influential postwar conceptualisations-the paper argues that the latter two conceptually enrich Gramsci's common sense. However, both say that a theoretical system penetrates the non-intellectual (pre-theoretical) world from the outside and transforms it. In contrast, Gramsci claims that a theory constantly evolves in dialogue with the cognitive activities of the ordinary. The non-intellectual is a teacher, not simply a pupil waiting for transmission of philosophy from the above.

... As Madhu Kiswar argues, women in distress like Shah Bano usually seek community help and only a few could dare to approach the courts of ... swadeshi hero tells his sister-in-law (his elder brother's wife) that his elder brother knows everything "from Byron to Bankim" but knows ...

... Partha Chatterjee's recent publica-tion in EPW (2008: 53-62) is another ex-ample. ... Email: akpatnaiki@yahoo.com REFERENCES Chatterjee, Partha (2008): "Economic Transformation and Democracy", Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 43, No 16, 19 April, pp 53-62. ...

This paper argues that constitutional secularism in India has created problems for its own reform narrative by ignoring a narrative of reforms necessary for non-Indic religious minorities. It focuses two main issues of reforms needed to rebuild secularism in India. First, reforms are needed for Dalit Christians and Muslims. Second, reforms are required for the prevention of inter-religious domination. Both are missing in the Indian Constitution.

This paper argues that there is not much to choose between communalism and actually existing secularism. It tries to investigate the nature of violence in Kandhamal 2007-08 and suggests a way of out in the framework of Indian secularism. It combines two different narratives of conflict and peace in Kandhamal, India.

This paper argues that Ambedkar's thoughts, notwithstanding his occasional inconsistency a la Gail Omvedt, are better understood as a 'double struggle' (Cosimo Zene) with immanent and transcendental critiques. For him, the rationale of his critique is derived from the Western history as much as India's history.  This paper argues that most of his commentators miss out his 'double' reflections.

Though JP is critical of Rajniti, he does not give it up for Lokniti. He makes use of Lokniti and intends to reconstruct Rajniti in contemporary India. JP, in my view, is probably the first 'Indian communitarian' (to use JP's own description) thinker from India, long before communitarianism took its shape the world over.

Gramsci rightly argues that all concepts have many meanings. The paper claims that his political society also has diverse meanings and thus there are many modes of political society depending on the varied connections between the state, civil society and subaltern society.

This paper examines the ideological currents present in the three streams of communist parties in India by using Gramsci's notion of Modern Prince. It examines the relevance of one central position in Gramsci according to which "the party tends to be universal".

This paper argues that privacy is an encapsulated concept. It is necessary to separate positive aspects of privacy from its negative features in civil society. Its negative aspects refer to privatisation of social values. It must be criticised for it weakens commitment to public action.

Indian secularists compound difficulties for the emergence of a genuinely secular society by relying on an exclusively
constitutional rather than a dialogical approach to settle India’s religious disputes as manifested in Ayodhya and
elsewhere. There are, however, intellectuals who favour dialogue with religious communities to strengthen secularism but are afraid of suggesting dialogue with contending parties on contentious issues like the Ayodhya dispute for fear of legitimising religious fundamentalism. As a result, the notion of ‘contentious dialogue’ is avoided even while the need for dialogue is recognised. Instead of religious grievances getting resolved through law, they get embroiled over a period of time and result in the rise of religious fundamentalism and terrorism, thereby deepening the crisis of secularism. In the Ayodhya dispute, communities encouraged by the secular state have followed a legal approach to the settlement of their religious grievances since 1950. While the dispute languished in court, the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992, the emergence of religious terrorism and the riots in Gujarat in 2002 followed. All these developments are in some way interrelated and need a broad and holistic counter-strategy. Only a dialogic approach will induce communities to comprehend the interconnected nature of problems arising from the Ayodhya dispute and make them seek solutions outside the law. This paper proposes a model of reconciliation based on the themes of recognition of intrinsic faith, negotiation with extrinsic elements of each religion and sacrifice. This dialogical approach ought to be carried out by a non-sectarian political society that must involve ruling and opposition parties, NGOs, lawyers, administrators and contending religious organisations in order to seek a realistic solution to the Ayodhya dispute in the larger and long-term interest of a secular polity in India.

Theorists of political society, while drawing inspiration from Gramsci, have reduced its import in a singular and unitary usage. This paper argues that political society has many meanings in Gramsci's political theory.  Drawing on case studies from India and Nepal, this paper demonstrates how a mode of political society may depend on layered connections between the state, civil society and subaltern society.

This paper argues that it is necessary to go beyond the texts produced by B R Ambedkar to examine what is his theory of democracy as he belongs to what Hannah Arendt calls the intellectual tradition of vita activa rather than vita contemplativa. It is necessary to flush out ideas implicit in his practices. This paper is built around the above threads of Ambedkar’s democratic thought.  Unlike Socialists, Communists and Liberals, Ambedkar charts a middle ground theory of democracy.