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Jinesh Sheth In conversation with Varun S Bhatta (Assistant Professor, HSS, IISER Bhopal) January 2022 Jinesh Sheth (jineshsheth[AT]philosophy.mu.ac.in), after completing his graduation in Sanskrit and Jainism, pursued an MA degree in Philosophy. He is currently pursuing PhD as a UGC-JRF fellow at the University of Mumbai. His thesis focuses on a critical study of the Jaina theory of anekāntavāda. It engages with some of the foundations of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Varun : Hello Jinesh! Thanks for taking time and being part of this conversation. From the IPN members’ sheet, I gather that you are currently doing PhD at University of Mumbai. Can you tell us more about it? Jinesh : Hello Varun! Glad to be having this conversation with you. Yeah, I started my PhD in 2018 and I am working on anekāntavāda (non-one-sidedness) under the supervision of Prof. Meenal Katarnikar. Given the centrality of this theory to Jaina philosophy, a lot has been worked upon and yet, as I can now see, a lot remains to be uncovered. The central argument of my thesis is to make a case for different senses of the doctrine - methodological, metaphysical, epistemological - to name a few - and then deal with some of the issues that I think requires further investigation. It has been a nice journey so far reading Prakrit and Sanskrit Jaina texts, engaging with the contemporary scholarship, and along with it, trying to situate anekāntavāda in a larger philosophical discourse. Jaina’s theory of anekāntavāda has always fascinated me. However, till now, I had not had an opportunity to go beyond a superficial understanding of it. So, I am planning to make the best use of this conversation to know a bit more about it! First of all, what caught my attention is your translation of anekāntavāda as “non-onesidedness”. Why is this preferable compared to “many-sidedness”? The other question pertains to any notion of pluralism (in epistemology, metaphysics, etc.): how to make the stance more appealing without also accepting the trivial (and troubling?) dictum that “everything and anything is OK”? I am sure there would be at least one Nyaya philosopher who would have thrown this allegation at Jaina system. Would like to know your thoughts on these. I would be happy to discuss more on anekāntavāda . With respect to translation, the term non-one-sidedness is closer to the original Sanskrit as compared to any other translation. The emphasis in “non-onesidedness” is on the denial of a one-sided nature of reality, as captured by “ an ” (=denial), “ ekānta ” (=one-sided), and vāda (theory); therefore non-onesidedness. It is also possible to look at the term as “ aneka ” (not one, many) and “ anta ” (sided) but this interpretation appears to restrict the term to just ontology and is not a literal translation (the word 'anta' stands for 'dharma', which, in this context, means properties / characteristics). Some scholars translate it as ‘the doctrine of multiplexity of reality’. Non-onesidedness, on the other hand, can be taken as a theory which represents the Jaina view not only on reality, but also on thought (nayavāda, epistemic perspectives) and language (syādvāda, the theory of qualified assertion). As regards to pluralism and a kind of relativist approach towards everything, I find that these two can be differentiated to a certain extent. The interpretation of anekāntavāda along the lines of relativism is a very recent development. To say that ‘everyone can have a perspective’ is one thing, to say that ‘everyone is right from their own perspective’ is another thing and to call the latter as anekāntavāda lacks textual validation. (In the Jaina context, there is something like pseudo-nayas (false standpoints / false perspectives). Their falsity might consist in either the denial of their counterparts altogether or in seeing one part as the whole (like in the case of blind men and the elephant) or when they do not correspond to reality)). So far, I haven’t found any Jain text that would support such a view (=everyone is right from their own perspective). It is kind of self-refuting. To give an illustration from an altogether different context, Paul Feyerabend, who was greatly influenced by Thomas Kuhn as you too would probably be aware, while arguing for epistemological anarchism and for his own relativist understanding of science, builds upon Kuhn’s arguments but Kuhn never advocated such a relativist view and he even went on to categorically reject those relativist ideas while replying to his critics. So most of the criticisms of anekāntavāda - whether by Vedāntins (like Śaṅkara) or the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas (like Bhāsarvajña) or the Buddhists (like Dharmakīrti) - are more often than not directed either towards denying the possibility of two contradictory characteristics existing together in one thing or towards the problem of self-reference (is anekāntavāda absolutely true?) or some other issues. If you don't mind, may I also take the opportunity to know more about you, your philosophical interests and any current areas on which you might be working? Also, even though it has been a long time, I am curious about how did the transition happen from engineering to philosophy. Thanks for the clarifications on anekāntavāda! Have a better understanding of them now. Coming to your question, there are a few factors for the late transition -- from engineering to philosophy -- in my case. Of course, due to the parochial state education system, while growing up I was largely ignorant of the discipline. It is only during the first year of bachelors, I realised my interest for a few topics. It took some meandering and trial/error to realise that what I am interested in is called "philosophy" and another couple of years to find the conviction to change the lanes. So, the transition from engineering to philosophy happened gradually at various stages (from the interest to read a few books when I am free to pursue it "professionally"). What is your story? How did you end up pursuing research in philosophy? I see. That’s quite an interesting journey. I was primarily interested in Jaina philosophy and literature from a very young age and, for which, I went to Jaipur for five years to study at an institute (kind of a gurukul). Along with it, I completed my graduation with Sanskrit as the major subject from a college (SDJA Sanskrit college) affiliated to JRRSU , Jaipur. It was during that time that my teacher suggested me to see if philosophy might interest me. Since then, it has been a great adventure and I am amazed how it has played a role in shaping my understanding of almost everything. Jinesh, fascinating story! I want to know more about all of these “phases”. To begin with, I am jealous to know that you were interested in philosophy and literature from a young age! How did this happen? And what was your impression/understanding of philosophy in this phase (if you can recollect :) )? I am glad to know that you find it fascinating! I was fortunate to get that environment and culture where I was introduced to Jain principles from early childhood. There are paathshalas for various age groups run by the Jain community where children can get acquainted with basic ideas. My parents always motivated me to spend time going to paathshalas and some summer camps as well. My interests kept on advancing and I started listening to discourses by (non-academic) scholars which would, more often than not, involve texts. By the time I finished high school (10th grade), I can say that I might have covered basic Jaina philosophical concepts pertaining to metaphysics, epistemology and ethics that a one year diploma course in Jainology might offer. I was introduced to arguments that would deny the concept of creation of the universe by a supreme entity. I assumed I had gained some understanding of the doctrine of karma, suffering, the causes thereof, liberation, spirituality; and dualism (soul-body), consciousness, metaphysical pluralism, universals and particulars, substance, qualities, modifications etc. Of course, I had no idea about other philosophical traditions whether Indian or Western. I was also not aware of what exactly would constitute philosophy. Neither had I read any of the Jaina texts entirely. Just that now when I look back, I can locate what I had studied within a larger philosophical discourse. So it was during that time that I was given this opportunity, by my teacher as well by my parents, if I would want to study Jainism further and I eventually decided to go to Jaipur. Before we catch the thread of your story at Jaipur, I want to know more about the community paathshalas. I have heard about them, but know very little. The list of topics you mentioned does give an idea of the topics being discussed. Can you shed some light on other aspects of these communal educational practices? How were these nuanced topics taught by the instructors? And since most of the audience are young, how were these philosophical ideas made relevant to them? Given that you have studied in both traditional and university educational spaces, thought you might be in a good position to shed some light on the differences in pedagogic styles and methods. Yeah, sure. I am glad to revisit all those days because I don't recollect talking about them with great detail. If I remember correctly, I might have started going to paathshala when I was just 7 or 8. And as I reflect now, I am able to see many things which otherwise even I could not notice. And maybe I might fail to mention some other things which I don't remember now. Anyway, thanks for all the questions! Usually, most of the paathshalas are conducted in a temple. There are scholars who have written books specifically for the students at paathshalas. Along with the core topics related to Jaina philosophy, these books include poems, stories etc. as well. The books that I studied from had a conversational style (like Plato's Dialogues - the similarity being just of the style and not the content) which began with a question. Over a period of time, these have now become standard textbooks that are used almost all over India and perhaps abroad as well. Of course, this works within a community and other versions of something similar are not uncommon. The teachers are most of the time alumnis of the same paathshala or some other paathshala (if they have relocated). There were many co-curricular activities like plays, quizzes, art and craft etc. - all focused on making a particular topic easy to understand. And, of course, there were prizes. Nowadays, I also see quite a few inter-paathshala competitions taking place. Regarding how these topics were taught, I think the curiosity of the students, with respect to both knowing-how and knowing-that, was a major driving force. I too take a class once a week at the local paathshala and I am sometimes amazed at the kind of questions they ask - whether it's on ahimsa, or God, or karma or on the functioning of the universe. Sometimes, they come up with their own versions of the trolley car problem (what's the right thing to do?). Apart from that, the focus is also on memorizing the key concepts and much of the evaluation was based on that. Paathshalas used to prepare one for reading the texts (of course, the translations and not the original Prakrit or Sanskrit) and listening to discourses for further understanding. I hope I was able to answer the question. Adding here the cover page and the TOC of a few of them: The links to PDFs: Balbodh Pathmala, Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 and then it continues to intermediate ( 1 , 2 , 3 ) and advance levels ( 1 , 2 ). As mentioned earlier, I am sure there are many other books written by other authors and which are also used at various places. This is just one representation and from which I had studied. After reading your description, I would definitely want to visit one of these paathshala. No wonder you were convinced to pick up philosophy by class X. Can you tell us about the Jaipur institute that you went to subsequently? What did you learn there? And, do not mind me asking again, how was the pedagogy in this institute? Yeah! I started reading philosophical works, and from a philosophical perspective (!), only after I got enrolled into the Masters program at the University of Mumbai. But I was surely interested in reading and learning more about Jain philosophy at that time. And whatever I learnt about Indian philosophy in my undergrad years was via Jaina philosophical texts. I must say that I could not have taken that decision on my own. It was because my teacher suggested so and then my parents always encouraged me to pursue it. So this institute at Jaipur ( ptst.in ) is named in the memory of an 18th century Jain scholar, Paṇḍit Ṭoḍarmal. It has been running since almost five decades and students come over there to study Jainism for five years, and simultaneously, they continue their studies in Sanskrit from another academic institute - thereby graduating with a degree of Śāstrī (शास्त्री) which is equivalent to B.A. The graduate course in Sanskrit also offered several papers on Jaina philosophical texts as electives and we opted for them as well. Here are the links for the syllabus - first year (for electives on philosophy, see p. 23ff), second year (p. 18ff) and third year (p. 16ff) - for the B.A. program at JRRSU, Jaipur. And the syllabus for the course on Jainism can be found here . Starting from basic concepts to advanced texts on Jaina metaphysics, logic, epistemology, ethics, narratives, and spirituality, I had a really good time learning from all the teachers. There used to be weekly seminars throughout the year; the experts would give their critical comments and I think we learnt more from each other than on our own. We also received training on how to teach and deliver discourses. That shaped our learning as well. One starts thinking not just as a learner, but also as a teacher. Of course, there is a downside that the focus might shift, but with some caution, it added to the overall development. Another key element was memorizing the texts in their original language - Tattvārtha Sūtra being the most commonly memorized one. Now that I have spent another 6-7 years studying philosophy and Jainism in an academic atmosphere, I can say that the time spent in studying Jainism and Sanskrit was a kind of perfect beginning for me and philosophy has played a major role since then. There are several interesting aspects in what you described: importance of language training, weekly seminars, focus on teaching! Before we move further, I have one last question about traditional learning spaces that you have experience of (paathshalas and Jaipur institute). Your responses give a vivid picture of what happens in classrooms about reading/writing/teaching philosophy. Apart from discussions about “texts”, were there any other practices/activities/rituals that were taught or emphasised, either in the class or outside of the class? I am asking this for two reasons. First, I have heard that Buddhisht monastery pedagogy also emphasises on certain rituals and bodily practices (like meditation, dietary customs, etc.). Want to know whether you have experienced something similar in these places. The second reason pertains to the subsequent junction in your journey --- modern academic spaces, where “practice of philosophy” is largely understood as a mental activity and practice (writing papers, etc.), with no rituals, bodily practices being prescribed. I see. Among dietary customs, eating before sunset was an invariable practice. Students would gather in the temple (within the institute) and sing devotional hymns in the morning as well as evening. Outdoor sports like cricket, volleyball, badminton etc. were played almost throughout the year. One thing which worked in our favour during those days was not having access to the internet except while in the library. Smartphones were not allowed. All of this helped in gaining more focus and utilising time more efficiently. Of course, it seems impossible in the post-Covid world. Other activities like meditation etc. were not that much emphasized. Needless to say, all that I have mentioned so far is about one institute in which I studied and it is very much possible that other institutes might have different practices. I am sure the community living would have been quite an experience. How was your transition from this kind of place to a university system for your MA? Where did you do it and how was it? Did you find any noticeable difference in how philosophy, specifically Indian philosophy, is being taught in the university? True. It was a great experience. Having stayed away from home for five years, I wanted to come back to Mumbai. My teacher (the one who suggested me to go to Jaipur), who also happens to have a Masters degree in Philosophy, again helped me in deciding the career ahead. By the time I graduated, I had developed a further interest to pursue a career in academics. That is when I found the Master’s program at the University of Mumbai quite interesting. Besides, there is one faculty who specializes in Jain philosophy as well (my current PhD guide!). So I was thinking about spending another 7-8 years (MA + PhD) at the Department . I had not studied any of the Western philosophers until graduation. And hence I struggled a bit in my first semester, especially with contemporary analytic and continental philosophy. However, I received a lot of help from my friends as well as from a few senior members (who were pursuing PhD at that time) whenever I approached them. There is a wonderful departmental library as well. The faculty have always been kind and supportive. Also, events like seminars, guest lectures, conferences, workshops helped me in generating further interest into a diverse range of topics. I still vividly remember faculty members encouraging us (students) to ask questions and engage with resource persons! With respect to Indian philosophy, I think one of the major differences, in the modern space, is that the primary texts are not read that widely - unless the entire paper is on one text (=electives). While I read very little of (academic) secondary literature when I was at Jaipur and had no idea about contemporary developments in the field of Jaina studies, here the discourse (syllabus, suggested reading, lectures, events etc.) was more prominent on the secondary literature. Besides, as you might also be aware, students who come from a BA (Philosophy) program probably never get any exposure to Sanskrit. So that might also be a reason why a majority of students end up reading more on Western philosophical thought in comparison to Indian philosophy. The scholars who do have a strong background in Sanskrit and Indian philosophy are trained in the traditional way and are more comfortable in teaching in the same way. I hope I am responding to your questions! Jiinesh presenting a paper in a conference at University of Madras (7 January, 2020) Jinesh, I think you are raising very important questions relevant to the teaching of philosophy, especially, how Western and Indian philosophies should be taught? And I think your experience can inform and guide these questions. Therefore, would like to know your views about some of the hurdles you mention above. Let us focus on the last point: the way Indian philosophy is taught in university compared to traditional learning places. I completely agree with you that university curricula should also teach the required languages while teaching Indian and other philosophies (like Chinese and Islam philosophies). With no emphasis on language, as you mention, university education does not empower the students in pursuing these topics. With regard to the other point – primary vs secondary texts – one of the arguments for using non-primary sources (secondary sources) for teaching (either at BA/MA level) is that these texts provide an overview and presents a wider picture of a field/topic; primary texts become relevant only when focused research needs to be carried out. Thought of mentioning this argument to know your opinion. Since you have experienced both kinds of training – through primary texts (in Jaipur institute) and reading secondary texts (in the university) – what would be your suggestions for designing a philosophy curriculum? Do you think it is important to use and teach primary texts rather than secondary ones at BA/MA level? This response assumes that classical texts at the BA/MA level in the modern education space are more or less not introduced. If there are philosophy curriculums which offer a BA/MA degree in Philosophy and do involve the students into reading primary sources with respect to Indian philosophy, please let me / us know. I understand that there are always issues regarding what to include and what not to - even with reference to core philosophical topics. So further introducing primary texts would add the burden of learning a new language. Maybe summer programs/workshops can help the students to learn Sanskrit or maybe they are encouraged to take up a one-year certificate course during the BA program. Besides, the use of primary texts in the classroom at the undergraduate level need not be that rigorous (critical editions, going into the nuances of translations, manuscripts and variant readings, intensive grammar etc. can be ignored). I see quite a few students abroad who are in BA/MA programs, whether Indology or Religious Studies or Philosophy, and who are working on classical Indian texts, spending some time learning the primary language(s). Another issue that I think is that in the context of Indian philosophy, there are very few secondary sources which are completely objective and do justice to the text/tradition. I do not mean to say that being critical is not worth but that kind of critical scholarship is not helpful for an undergraduate student - especially when that student is getting introduced for the first time to a text/philosopher/tradition. I don’t think there is such a series of “Companion to” or a “very short introduction to” with reference to Indian philosophies and philosophers. Neither do we find good articles on each topic of Indian philosophy on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) or Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) (although they both cover a few topics) as we see with respect to Western philosophy. Lastly, from what I have observed, I also think that translating Sanskrit/Prakrit/Pali to English is not the same as translating Greek/German/French to English (though I hardly know anything about the latter three). So one can easily read “Republic” or “Critique of Pure Reason” (in English) without worrying to check the primary source at every instance but not so in the case of Sanskrit texts, and when there are very few good translations. So I think some access to the primary texts starting from the undergraduate level would go a long way in, as you rightly said, empowering the students in pursuing these topics. And maybe when the students pursue a Masters degree, they are equipped with skills for conducting further philosophical-textual research. Jinesh, thanks for these interesting points. I agree with your observations about the lack of academic works (like SEP, various Companions, etc.). I too miss this kind of ecosystem when exploring Indian Philosophy. However, I have a divergent opinion about Greek/Latin having a direct connection with the English language/tradition and this not being the case in the relation between Sanskrit and English. A lot of historical, social and political efforts have gone into establishing the seemingly no-gap between Greek and European traditions. Because of these efforts, it gives an impression that Aristotle and Kant are accessible in English. Also, another important query your response raises is the politics of language in the Indian context. Even though there are several classical languages relevant for studying Indian philosophies (Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit), it's usually Sanskrit that is emphasised. So we need to discuss how to tackle this issue in our graduate courses. Probably, we can continue this conversation at a later point. Moving on, I want to know how you relate/work with different traditions of Philosophy like Analytic, Continental and even the various schools in the Indian context? Given that your current work is situated within one tradition (Jaina tradition), how do you think your work (at present and in the near future) will be? Do you want to situate yourself in a specific tradition? Or are you interested in working on specific threads that spawn across various traditions? Interested to know your views on these questions as you have straddled between different spheres of philosophical practices (traditional and modern university spaces) and also encounter doing philosophy in different languages (working on Sanskrit texts, but writing a dissertation in English). It was indeed an interesting discussion and would be happy to discuss it further on some other day. And thank you for these questions! Regarding my work, I see quite a few domains in which I can extend my current research on anekāntavāda further or maybe take up another project (within the Jain tradition) with some other fundamental topic. Some of the core areas in which I think I can work in the near future in the wider philosophical context vis-à-vis anekāntavāda are related to epistemology, ethics and logic. It is all still tentative and I too am unsure in which direction I would progress. Nevertheless, my time spent so far while doing research on anekāntavāda has certainly helped me in many ways. Given its meta-philosophical framework (this can be debated), I sometimes try to approach philosophical problems and arguments - whether emerging from continental or analytic tradition - in a non-one-sided way. Doing philosophy in different languages certainly has its own merits and demerits. On one hand, a wide variety of literature opens up for me and, on the other, writing in English was not easy in the beginning. Things have improved to a certain extent but there is a lot to learn! Translation is another issue that I constantly face. I haven’t yet published on areas central to my thesis though have been presenting them at conferences and looking forward to publishing a couple of papers by the end of my PhD. Some of the other papers that I have presented and/or published but are not directly connected to my ongoing work can be found here (researchgate) and here (academia) - not all are public but I can share via mail. I haven’t spent much time with Indian philosophy (in a comparative spirit) in the last few years such that it would result in some good output but I would like to revisit it in future. Moving forward, I would still want to continue specializing in a field related to Jain philosophy. Some of the other areas in contemporary philosophy which are of interest to me include consciousness studies, philosophy of science and hermeneutics. Comparative philosophy is another area which I would like to explore in future. So, coming to the final stages of this exciting conversation, I (and the readers as well) would like to know a little more about you, about your ongoing and upcoming research. And if possible, I would particularly be also interested in knowing how philosophy has shaped your research in natural science(s) and/or the other way round. Jinesh, thanks for your interest in my views. For me, most of the "philosophy of ___" enterprises (like philosophy of language, art, film, law, etc.) are important exercises and interventions where core philosophical tools are used to understand something else. So, the philosophy of science has primarily taught me how to apply philosophy in addressing other disciplines questions. At present, some of my works are situated in the area of philosophy of physics. I am currently developing on a topic that I could briefly cover in my PhD research: the philosophical analysis of interference phenomena in classical and quantum optics. After this, I would probably want to spend some time with specific questions of metaphysics (individuation and compositionality of objects) that have always excited me. I want to end this conversation by seeking your opinion on one last thing. According to you, what initiatives and activities would be helpful/useful for the academic philosophy community in India? How do you think we -- philosophers in India -- should organise such that it not only supports us but also creates a vibrant ecosystem for philosophy in India? Your suggestions and ideas might resonate with other readers and this could mobilise into something concrete. Not to mention, these suggestions of yours would play a crucial role in the shaping of IPN. It is fascinating to know about your current and future research. I would like to know more, hopefully, when we shall meet someday in-person! As a student and a young researcher , I think a few initiatives that might help in the long run would include: Undergraduate and / or Graduate Peer reviewed Journal (I don’t know if there exist any) Conferences specific for graduate students (which could then also result into a publication into the above journal) Writing workshops / sessions (for PhD students) - I think writing sessions are a must for postgraduate students (I can volunteer for this if someone may guide). Database of submitted theses (and linking them with those which are available on shodhganga ) - I think if we do not know or if we do not have access to the PhDs submitted earlier, there is always a fear of reproducing what has already been done. Once in a quarter or six months, an online meet of IPN members - it could be informal as well: sharing experiences and problems that one faces in their respective areas (research, teaching etc.). Sometimes, this meet may also take shape of an academic event where a guest speaker might address the IPN community. I am not sure whether these suggestions or ideas are realistic. I am also not aware if something is already being planned. That being said, I am really grateful to all the moderators and founding members of IPN. The Telegram and WhatsApp groups have helped me. Once, I had a chance to listen to David Chalmers live! It would not have been possible if not for Phil-India Telegram / WhatsApp groups. The Google group too is great. I am indeed grateful to you for all the wonderful questions and your generosity that allowed me to express myself freely throughout the conversation. The errors are still mine and I am always happy to revisit my views. Lastly, thanks to the readers for their patient reading!

Hareesh A G In conversation with Siddharth S (Assistant Professor, Philosophy at Sai University, Chennai) August-September 2021 Siddharth: Hello Hareesh! Thank you for agreeing to this interview. It would be nice if you can begin with a brief biography, to let our readers know about your background. Hareesh: I am currently working as an Assistant Professor at the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani KK Birla Goa Campus. I did my Ph.D. at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Indore where I learned and explored different aspects of philosophy. All my studies before Ph.D. were in Kerala—bachelor’s and master’s from the Calicut university and B.Ed. from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam. I was born and brought up in a remote village of Kerala called Kondazhy (Thrissur District). In fact, it was life in that village that influenced me and shaped me to become a philosophy scholar. The last point you made is really interesting. But before we get to that, can you tell us what your research interests are? My specialisation during my doctoral study was in the area called the philosophy of biology and the title of my thesis was ‘Evolution and Ontological Realism: A Critical Interpretation’. It is still one of the major areas of my research interests. It is an area that has been meagerly explored in our country. I got into this topic through wondering about organic life. Since it is my focal research area, I have published some research papers focusing on the ontological issues related to evolutionary biology (' Ontological Indeterminism and Immanence – Some Aspects of the Metaphysics of Organism' ; 'Realism Through Relativism: Looking at the Possibility of Metaphysics in Species Problem' ; 'A Note on ‘Two-Way’ Ontological Practice in Biology' etc.) Apart from this, I have an intense interest in the metaphysics of science, philosophy of language (Frege, Wittgenstein, the concept of meaning and its relation to syntax). I am working on a project proposal focusing on the ontological aspect of meaning. Besides all these, I am developing an immense interest in the Indian philosophy; specifically, the naturalistic threads of Indian philosophical systems regarding the mind. In the future, I also would like to work on the ontology of memory. Could you tell us a little more about the philosophy of biology as an area of study—what are some of the key questions explored in it—and your doctoral work? In my doctoral studies I had focused more on the ontological issues related to the concepts which are unavoidable in biology. More specifically, I had analysed the ontological issues from an evolutionary point of view as it is a stringent belief that evolution theory of Darwin had given the theoretical base for biology. Remember Dobzhansky’s word that ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’. However, what interested me was the persistence of metaphysics even in our molecular biological explanations over the biologists’ claim that Darwin ‘murdered’ God by introducing a mechanism called natural selection. It is right that Darwin had put a full stop to the conventional mystic metaphysical explanations surrounding creationism. But that was not the end of the story. On the one hand he abandoned the metaphysical presence of God/deity/intelligent designer/creator etc. but on the other hand he paved the way to a new wave metaphysics concerning concepts without which the whole of biology become void. Say, life, organism, and species. Can we imagine a biological literature without a grounding in these concepts? No. But, biology still cannot define what they are. Evolution theory has an ontological commitment toward them and we take evolution theory as the theoretical framework for our explanation of living phenomena. So, I delved into these to find out a possible answer to the question of ‘why’ metaphysics in biology. How has your experience been of studying and being a part of academic philosophy in India? It was when I thought of doing bachelor’s, after higher secondary studies in science, that I first heard about philosophy. No one in my acquaintance has any idea about what-is-this-thing-called-philosophy. It was fortunate that I have got admitted to a bachelor’s programme in philosophy as the second last person among 60 students. At the time of admission, the Head of the Department told me, ‘Your mark/grade is very low, but don’t feel inferior. Study well’. Those words influenced me to move forward without humiliation. And the very first class was on logic which I found very interesting. After a few days, I held the first position in an internal assessment. And at the end, I graduated at second position in my college and came in the top 10 in the university. The master’s journey amazed me by taking me on a philosophical tour through different topics like science, mind, language, etc., which shaped my rudimentary research interests. I feel that the study of philosophy in Indian universities at bachelor’s level gets students well acquainted with the basic aspects. It is right that post-graduation is an advanced level, but most of our universities offers variety of courses that are still ‘introductory’. Instead of broadening the syllabus with different topics with superficial content, it would be better to focus on specific topics aimed at deep understanding. Could you share your reflections on philosophy as a discipline in India? How do you foresee the development of the discipline? I am proud to be a philosophy scholar in India which has an old philosophical tradition, since the Vedic period. However, I am greatly worried about the status of philosophy in India by realising the stagnancy after the establishment of conventional systems. What I mean by ‘conventional systems’ is the traditional philosophies—six orthodox systems and three heterodox systems (plus some related philosophers’ views, ancient and contemporary, on them). I am not indeed condemning contemporary Indian philosophy; there is merit in it, but it seems they have not explored enough to deal with the nuances of pragmatic life. It seems to me that Indian philosophy binds its explanations/descriptions with ethical threads whereas western traditions are bound with epistemological threads. This might be a reason for the above. Instead of preaching/teaching the conventional stuff, scholars should be ready to explore the hidden possibilities of our philosophy. We still teach different topics like philosophy of science or mind or language etc. by referring to western philosophers. Why don’t we think about the possibilities of developing our own contributions? Say, Indian philosophy of language or mind or science. I am happy that the emerging associations in India like Indian Philosophy Network and the Philosophy of Science Group in India etc. are aiming at the exploration of different aspects of philosophy. Yes, we need all philosophies irrespective of region/race. Every philosophy has its merit. May be, a comparative study of different philosophies would hint at the different hidden possibilities. Apart from these, it is our duty to make society understand the importance of philosophy in life by wiping out misconceptions about philosophy. Your mention of comparative approaches in philosophy raises an interesting question. It seems to me that in comparison to some of the other areas in philosophy, philosophy of science is still largely located within western philosophical traditions. Do you think there is scope for other traditions to contribute to philosophy of science and biology? What I find is that there are central and marginalized areas in philosophy. Most areas are centred around the west (western traditions). In eastern philosophies, such as Chinese, Indian and Middle-Eastern philosophies, we can see that there are nice contributions to medicine, and to philosophy of biology, especially from the middle-east. Whenever we check a syllabus of philosophy of biology or philosophy of science, we see that what is covered will be mostly, eighty to ninety percent, with respect to the western philosophy of science. I see very few philosophy of science or biology syllabi with mentions of eastern or middle-eastern contributions. We need to explore this. Why these became marginalized, I feel, is due to our own activities. I have searched the BA and MA Philosophy syllabi of almost all Indian universities, and I see that there very few universities introduce a critical approach to thinking and topics which people can themselves explore. In Calicut University, during my BA and MA programme, we studied the six orthodox and three heterodox systems and some contemporary Indian thought. This is the conventional practise. I believe that this will change if we give a chance—to teachers and students—to explore and put their views forward. I don’t think that Indian universities give the liberty to teachers to modify the syllabus, apart from IITs and central universities. At IITs, we have at least some liberties to modify. Of course, it is necessary to learn and teach the conventional philosophies, but apart from these, there should be room to discuss our own points—what we believe and what we think about these (conventional systems). Do you think such an approach can help in integrating Indian philosophical thought with philosophy of science? Yes. In the final year of my PhD, I learnt that many Indian contributions have greatly influenced scientific development. But they are not considered as contributions towards philosophy (of science). We started calling something as ‘science’ only after the seventeenth century. Even before that, we have made good contributions to scientific and astronomical fields. Before the seventeenth century, everything (in the west) was considered as Philosophy. But we don’t consider our ancestors who contributed to astronomy or mathematics as philosophers. When we consider them as philosophers and their contributions as philosophical contributions, and consider how these changed worldviews and social systems, we can then philosophise about them and understand them better as philosophy of science. You made a very interesting observation earlier, that it was life in your village that shaped and influenced you to become a philosophy scholar. Could you elaborate on this? I was born and brought up in a remote village. You can find that the people who lived there, or even now, are full of misconceptions, myths and false stories. For example, they believe that mumps and plagues are because of witches and witchcraft. Such kinds of misconceptions were there. I did my +2 in science and then shifted to the arts. When I started philosophy, my first aim was to concentrate on civil services. But, after a point in time, I understood that there were many questions that were unanswered in my mind since my childhood. Something like, ‘What is God?’. We all believe, we all go to temples, we all do prayers, we offer many things to God. Why do we do all these things? These were the questions that triggered me when I started doing philosophy. Then I found that many different answers could be found in philosophy. But, sometimes, our questions can be easily addressed by philosophical discussions. And we find that many of these philosophical discussions, at some point in time, will soothe our urge to know how or why something happens. One of the reasons why I became a philosophy scholar is because, I found that philosophy is solving, answering and at least partially addressing the questions that were formed in my mind through the interactions with my villagers. This is one way [in which my village life shaped my interest in Philosophy]. In my village, no one studied philosophy as a topic or as a subject for their degree. I was the first one—actually, I think I am still the only one who has studied philosophy in my village. When I joined the philosophy program, the educated people in my village blamed me: ’Why are you taking this subject. After you graduate, you are not going to get any job, or any opportunities that you can explore in the future’. My first motto was to focus on civil services. I believed that philosophy could help me in this. After my graduation, I stopped studying completely. I went to work as a truck cleaner in a quarry. I worked for almost one and a half years there. But while working in quarries and trucks, I understood that the questions in my mind were not completely answered. There were remaining questions, and I was not able to discuss them with anyone. My acquaintances then were mainly truck drivers and cleaners, and I was not able to discuss with them the questions that were on my mind. After a point, I understood that I need to go back to academics, and that my mind would cool down only if I get some answers to the different questions. It was not only metaphysical questions, but many questions that I had in my mind at that time. So, I re-joined academics, as a postgraduate student at Government College, Chittoor (Palakkad), in MA Psychology. At the same time, I got admission into MSW at Amrita University, MA Criminology and Juvenile Justice at Madras University, and MA Sociology at Loyola College, Trivandrum. I dropped all of these and joined the MA programme in Philosophy (at Calicut University). My villagers asked, ‘Why are you doing this? You belong to a family that is economically poor and you have to take care of your family. You have to focus on an area that will give you a job. Why are you focusing on philosophy?’ At that time, I did not answer them. Later, in the second year of my PG, I told them I knew how to get a job in philosophy. Apart from getting a job, in our lives, we have to address some of the basic questions that emerge in our minds. I believed that Philosophy could help me answer those. This was my answer to their questions. Apart from these, I was interested in the spiritual practises—we can even call them ‘black magic’ and sacrificial practises—in my village. When I used to watch these things, I used to ask the question, ‘Why?’. I later understood that many of the things that my family members and villagers do are nonsensical. I don’t want to be a nonsensical man in my life. This is how my village influence me in becoming a philosophy researcher. There could be some confusion when I say that some of these practises are nonsensical. It is nonsensical from a philosophical point of view, but it is very much sensible for them. What I understood was—people are going to temples, praying to God and offering many things because it soothes their mind at that point in time. Or they believe that it reveals some truth to them, or solves their problems. They believe in some ultimate reality which they call by different names. But, whenever they are doing something, they are rationally doing it, because they believe that there is a higher being that exists, which either created everything or is the cause of everything. And if we please that cause, our problem will be solved or we will get what we want—this is the rationale behind their activity. So, we cannot say that they are utterly nonsensical, but from a modern, rational point of view, or say a Marxist point of view, we might say that it is nonsensical. But there is a rationale behind it. You mentioned that after your bachelor's, you worked as a truck cleaner and you really felt the need to answer certain questions, which brought you back to academics. This, I think, raises an interesting question about the nature of the philosophy itself. Do you think that common people—people living in villages or those working in physically demanding jobs—engage, or can engage, in philosophy and philosophising? Or is philosophy restricted to academia and other ‘secluded’ institutions? I worked at an NGO sometime in 2008, which was working with sex-workers on problems related to their health. This happened before I joined as a truck cleaner—so I first finished my academics in 2008, joined this NGO and then worked as a truck cleaner. What I understood from these experiences is that everyone follows some philosophy in their lives. We can see that many of the complicated philosophical concepts are easily applied by the layman, without knowing that they are philosophical concepts. What I understood better was—they do what they need. We philosophy scholars may explore many different problems and a wide variety of concepts. Ordinary people focus, knowingly or unknowingly, only on the concepts or theories they need. What kind of career paths in philosophy are you interested in, and think are available in philosophy in India? Teaching still holds the major share among different career possibilities for philosophy scholars in India. And, in fact, I see teaching as a great profession to explore philosophy. It is good that professional and technical institutions also encourage teaching philosophy for their students by realizing its importance. What are some courses you have taught, at BITS or elsewhere? As a discipline, philosophy is dependent on dialogue and discussion, perhaps more so than other disciplines. How do you incorporate this in your teaching practise? I teach Introductory Philosophy and Applied Philosophy for UG students and Philosophical Foundations for Liberal Studies for the M. Phil. Students. As I am teaching in a technical institute, very detailed discussions on philosophical topics, beyond the syllabus, would be too ambitious. We have to stick to the syllabus and make them understand the subject. This is not easy for a large class of students whose orientation is towards technology. Some students are more enthusiastic towards philosophical discussions, so they keep asking doubts and clarifications. More or less, students have a logocentric attitude, in deconstructive terms, towards different disciplines. Most of them are scientistic in nature; an adamant attitude that what the sciences say is right. Thank you Hareesh, for a very interesting and lively conversation. I hope we get to meet each other in person sometime soon!

Review of Muzaffar Ali's book by Richa Shukla Richa Shukla Assistant Professor, IIT Bhubhaneswar Nov 13, 2023 Book review of Muzaffar Ali's India, Habermas and the Normative Structure of Public Sphere (Routledge, 2023) This text called India, Habermas and The Normative Structure of Public Sphere is an attempt by Muzaffar Ali, a contemporary Indian political philosopher, to make us revisit the hidden ambiguity behind Indian Public Sphere in reference to Habermas’s idea. He points to this ambiguity by making us think the public sphere is a space that makes us think and question. The book submits a proposition that public spheres and its institutions go hand in hand. He also mentions three criteria for calling a public space. I couldn’t help but notice a tension that Ali wants to point out between his method on how he would do Philosophy vs how ideally Indian philosophy has been done so far. The larger arguments reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s proposition while she discusses the nature of Philosophy, i.e., it's important to think about what we are doing in Philosophy.[1] The book consists of 5 chapters, excluding a preface and acknowledgements. It begins by pointing out a reflection as well as a theoretical concern on how the contemporary Indian situation is a possible glitch in the theorization of Habermas’s public sphere. Rather, it proposes ‘Samvada’, (संवाद) as a method of further analysis. The philosopher here submits that there is a coherence between contemporary Indian philosophy and Indian political theory which can very well be used to theorise the native idea of the Indian Public Sphere. It not only presents a picture of Habermas’s Public Sphere but also, brings in Indian philosophers, political theorists, and a few feminist scholars as well. The first part of the book dwells on a reflective theoretical need: Can we ever think of a native theory of the Indian Public Sphere? The book attempts to not only answer this theoretical concern but also create a 'theoretical toolbox' [2] for the same. Additionally, it revisits and re-reads old debates in Indian political theory and Indian philosophy. This, Ali suggests, can help us in rebounding the normative foundations of the Indian Public Sphere. I couldn’t help but notice that the book takes a good philosophical lurk from the past, present and future of the Indian public sphere in terms of establishing theoretical discourses. It makes an attempt to understand the timeline behind these discourses. The book concerns how one can do Indian political theory considering we no longer can use Western frameworks as it's incapable of capturing Indian reality. He has referred to political thinkers like, Aakash Singh Rathore, Gopal Guru, Sundar Sarukkai, Aditya Nigam and many others to set the theoretical tone of Indian political theory. For instance, along the lines of these thinkers, he argues that we need to understand the audience, the Indian audience horizontally as well, as so far, we have been burdened by the Western way of doing Indian Philosophy. We have been colonised in our approach to Indian Philosophy at times. While he re-visits the concept of ‘Samvada’ in this manner, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between this and Upanishad saying: वादे वादे जायते तत्त्वबोधः which implies that it's through diverse opinions that we get to know the truth. The book while, analysing Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, critically analyses key elements from the Indian domain as well whether it's the Indian debates on religion, caste, lived experience or the corporeal body. He writes, "The conceptualized Indian situation throws up two essential markers regarding the inadequacy of the Habermasian public sphere. At the social level, the hyper-presence of religion within Indian society needs a multi-pronged instrument of public debate rather than a unilateral notion of rationality to shoulder real and true public opinion."[3] At a time when globally, the phenomenology of the public sphere is altering, this text makes a few pertinent interventions while keeping in mind Indian lived realities. While trying to establish caste as a ‘unique public lived reality’, one can look at movies like Article 15, Mulk, Sairaat, Masaan and shows like Made in Heaven , Kota factory , and Class which capture the Indian essence and the complicated relationship which we share between religion, caste and Indian public sphere. Ali looks at religion as an important aspect of India’s social context. He establishes that the role of religion cannot be underestimated in evaluating the political and social contexts of Indian societies. This has been established by drawing from political thinkers like B.R. Ambedkar, and Valerian Rodrigues. In the Indian domain, while deconstructing caste and religion, Gopal Guru argues the same.[4] He writes caste has wings, it can fly, and that’s why it reaches a place before we reach it. These aspects have lived experience to their credit too. I could think of Feminist Philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir’s description of lived experience, in her book, The Ethics of Ambiguity . She takes the example of glue and paper. The way we put paper on glue and it becomes impossible to separate them, in a similar manner, it's impossible to detach 'lived experience', from human existence and our social reality. The book walks on a thin rope of some pertinent theoretical concerns, visible criticism of Habermas’s concept and an alternative that Ali is trying to provide for the same. [1] Dolan, M. Frederick. "Arendt on Philosophy and Politics". https://philarchive.org/archive/DOLAOP [2] Term used by Ali for the same. [3] Ali, India, Habermas And The Normative Structure of Public Sphere , page no. 111. [4] Guru, Gopal. "Dalits from Margin to Margin." India International Centre Quarterly , 27: 111-116.

Back to Liberal Basics Danish Hamid PhD Scholar, Department of HSS , IIT Bombay Feb 22, 2022 This article is part of the series of responses from philosophers on the hijab row . First a story, or what we like to call pretentiously – a thought experiment. Imagine that two brothers, Ravi and Vijay have ventured on a camping trip with a group of friends. They are all near the same age, there being no hierarchy between them. While walking through the forest, Vijay indulges his habit of plucking a single leaf from every low-hanging tree that he comes across. Ravi asks Vijay what he is doing. Of course, he can see what he is doing. What Ravi means is that he must explain his actions as being something worthwhile, sensible, and which someone might have a reason to do. In other words, ‘better give a good reason for doing this, or else, Stop.’ Is Vijay under any obligation to explain it to Ravi? I think not, unless he wants to. The others in the group agree with him. Ravi then turns back to Vijay and asks him to justify it, or offer an excuse for what he is doing. Now, “unlike explanations, justifications and excuses presume at least prima facie fault, a charge to be rebutted”. (Benn, 87) Is Vijay under an obligation to offer a justification for his innocent indulgence? After all, what’s so wrong about plucking a leaf every now and then? And it is not as if he was trespassing in a grove of threatened, near-extinct plants and trees, and neither is Ravi the resident Forest Officer, and last they checked, it was not a crime in any of the books of law. Such being the case, Vijay has “no obligation to meet a challenge to justify his performance until there is a charge to answer”. (ibid) Suppose, however, that in his capacity as an enterprising vigilante on behalf of Chlorophyll everywhere, Ravi decides to handcuff Vijay, thereby preventing him from his indulgence. Now, Vijay can properly demand a justification from him, and a mere ‘tu quoque’ reply (literally – ‘you also!’) that Vijay, on his part had also not offered Ravi a justification for plucking leaves, would just not fly. This is because Vijay’s actions had done nothing to interfere with Ravi’s. “The burden of justification falls on the interferer, not on the person interfered with” (ibid). So while Vijay might properly resent Ravi’s interference, Ravi has no ground of complaint against Vijay. Suppose now that the priggish Ravi does come up with a justification. Vijay, he says, is wasting his time – instead of pointless leaf-plucking, he could be doing something useful - helping the group plan the adventure, or listening to an ebook, or entertaining everyone with the song “Keh duun tumhe”. But, of course, Vijay doesn’t have to accept this justification for interference. Even if Ravi were right, and Vijay could have been doing something useful, what has it to do with Ravi? “An unfavorable evaluation of someone else's action does not necessarily warrant one's interfering to prevent it.” (ibid) The upshot for the Hijab Case – or any analogous case of interference Now, this story, a fabricated mish-mash from Yash Chopra’s Deewar and Stanley Benn’s A Theory of Freedom (1988) , is supposed to convey a simple point. Volatile and non-conformist though Vijay is, he is under no requirement to demonstrate to Ravi that he has good reasons for doing what he was doing. On the other hand, it is required of the conscientious but self-righteous Ravi that he must justify his interference in Vijay’s actions. The two demands for justification are incommensurable so to speak, which is philosopher’s talk to mean that they are not equal or equivalent and thus cannot be spoken of synonymously in any meaningful way. This is the most minimum, yet characteristic claim in liberal political thought – that unless your act is harming someone, nobody has a right to interfere in your actions, or prevent you from carrying them out. What constitutes harm in a given situation will be a job of a 500 page book by someone like Joel Feinberg in which the political philosopher will flesh out all her claims, followed by replies to all anticipated objections and counter-responses by other philosophers. How fun! However, this basic commitment of non-interference, if not an axiom in liberal political philosophy, is still something incredibly intuitive accepted by nearly all liberal political thoughts and its off-shoots, including modern day conservatives, socialists, many feminists, etc. It would just require a very strong argument to refute, and in the Hijab case, no one has offered any persuasive arguments yet. John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty is still the best place to begin thinking about this problem, and a fine example of philosophical writing where the writer anticipates many well worn counter-arguments and writes with characteristic verve. The upshot of this for the Hijab controversy should be clear enough. The Hijab is seemingly a harmless piece of clothing. To prevent women, or in this case specifically, pupils and teachers from wearing it to school would require a justification. Thus, the Preventers ought to justify why there ought to be no Hijabs in school. The Wearers, Donners, Hijabis, have to offer no justification on the liberal view that I laid out above, unless of course the Wearers, Donners, Hijabis, have themselves been forced to wear it (Some, primarily feminist thinkers, include conditioning and socialization also as reasons sufficient enough to question the Hijab. But very few go to the extent of supporting state coercion to wish to remove it). For the Preventers, matters complicate further when they want to single out Hijab over other religious symbols – the most obvious case being turbans sported by Sikh boys and men. But States are Special?! My readers might question me and say that I am misrepresenting the issue, and that the story I have related doesn’t fit the facts of the Hijab controversy. In my story, the characters are equal, there being, recall, ‘no hierarchy between them’. Those are not the facts in the Karnataka Hijab controversy. The state has decided that Hijabs are impermissible. The State is unlike Ravi and Vijay. Is the state, per me, under an obligation to provide any reasons of the sort that Ravi was sought to provide? Now we are in the realm of what Jeremy Waldron calls political Political theory – the nature of state and governmental institutions, political representation, accountability, secularism, the separation of church and state, and the rule of law. Explicating the limits and confines of state power, its relation with religion, with minorities, with religious minorities – that’s another 500 page book. What a fun topic – but certainly what a short article like this would hesitate to go into. It seems obviously true that a State is a different kind of animal, and certainly not like individuals. So while it isn’t OK for me to demand protection-money from you in exchange for protection, the state manages to collect taxes, and on my refusal to pay, may even fine me, or attach my properties, or send me to prison. So the State is special, apparently, and states have rights to make coercive laws and force individuals to do things which other individuals just don’t have. But this is too quick. Maybe the State has the power to do this, in exchange for protecting citizens' rights (and enforcing contracts, and preventing crime, and increasingly in the 20th century, in providing, healthcare, education, even jobs) because citizens agree that the state may be given these powers, along with all the corresponding duties, all neatly enshrined in a constitution, backed by the constituent power of the people. This doesn’t automatically mean that the State has the power to interfere in my personal life – what I eat, what I wear, who I worship, who I sleep with. Furthermore, it takes no philosopher to see that the State doesn’t speak in its own impersonal voice. It usually speaks in the voice of the Parliament, a legislative body, or occasionally the courts. On what grounds ought the Parliament decide an issue? Well, many, if not most liberals, would insist that any coercive rule argued for by any individual, or group which speaks for a proposition in the Parliament (from Parler. French, literally ‘talk shop’) ought to be based on a reason which is not sectarian, biased, or idiosyncratic in such a way that it is not acceptable to or justifiable, to all those persons over whom the rule is going to have authority. In a modern democracy, where free and equal citizens disagree with each other over profound or profane matters, including morals, religion, economics, and what constitutes the ‘good life’, how shall any moral or political limits be placed on us? The answer that is usually given by a version of liberalism called justificatory liberalism, is that any such imposition should be justified by an appeal to ideas, values, arguments that all those persons who are affected by said coercive rule, might be able to reasonably accept or endorse. Variations, qualifications, additions on this basic idea, will be a subject of, you guessed it, some more massive tomes by Rawls, Wolterstorff, Eberle, Talisse and other brilliant philosophers. The unsuccessful evasion of Philosophy So, philosophers might bring their tools to dissect and explore all these questions, and make us all the wiser about how the relationship between state, the individual and religious symbols in the public sphere all hang together, and some philosophers have offered to do in the (web)pages on this very network. But some others might suggest that in the interest of time and considering how disputatious philosophers are, there is no need to enter philosophical discussion in the first place. They might suggest that we ought to look instead at the nature of the Indian Constitution, its own version of secularism, the state of case-law and the practice of the Supreme Court. What do the courts say, and how to they decide these issues? What does the Constitution say? It is that document and no other that ought to tell us what the correct answer to this quandary is. So what does the Constitution say? Pertinent to this issue, a cursory look at the state of Indian Constitutionalism will tell us that it promises to its citizens the rights to equality, freedom of expression, right to life with dignity, and many others, while also giving the centre and state right to make laws such as the Karnataka Education Act. The truth is that whether the anti-philosophers like it or not, in deciding a question like this, the court will also have to dip into philosophical complexities. It will have to either balance the rights of the States and the individual (if that is meaningfully possible), or it will have to uphold the right of one party and not the other. In doing that, it will have implicitly and inevitably made a decision about which rights it deems inviolable. So as with everyone else, even the court will have to argue philosophically. One can do it well, and one can do it badly. And the truth is that, these questions are hard. So we might want to be humble, and err on the side of caution, and not be very confident in our considered opinions, to say nothing about our pre-reflective prejudices. The liberal view, I suggest, does just that. It keeps the peace, while seeking to protect the rights of all. And it often succeeds! Where do I stand? After this short explainer (written especially for non-philosophers), it should be obvious that on this Hijab issue, and any such issue where social or state interference prevents individuals from exercising their choice, I come down, unapologetically, on the side of the liberal principle. For me, Mill’s harm principle is not the last word on such matters, but it still ought to be first word. And therefore, I have to come down on the side of those who say that the girls have the right to wear the Hijab to school. I am not particularly invested in what the Muslim women in question choose to do eventually. They owe me or anyone else no explanations. In fact, I go even further. I do not like the mandate of uniforms. Sure, uniforms may have a useful purpose if they help channel the energies of pupils towards education, sport and play, and help them along in the direction of healthy socialization, instead of displaying the stark divides in wealth and incomes. On the flip side, they do seem to privilege regimentation and obedience over spontaneity and creative self expression. Be that as it may, in accordance with my liberal sympathies, I don’t agree that even these goods that I mentioned above are enough reason to force me to conform to uniforms, any uniforms (!), if I don’t want them. The reason you don’t see me (and many others like me) on the streets demonstrating against uniforms is perhaps because it doesn’t seem worth all the trouble, and frankly, a uniform isn’t egregious after all. I don’t like it in principle, but I’m willing to tolerate it. I’d prefer there weren’t any, but they don’t warrant a rebellion. [That’s the problems with us liberals, we did all the protesting we had to hundreds of years ago, when feudal and monarchical power didn’t respect our (liberal) rights to live, liberty and property, err...the pursuit of happiness. Now we wake up only when these rights are threatened...which is happening a little bit too often these days.] Between pragmatism and principle But I digress. There is a time to discuss the perils and benefits of uniforms. But this is not that time. Because the issue here is not merely about uniforms. If it were, then teachers wouldn’t have been seen removing Hijabs outside school premises before entering their classes (a scene which many onlookers have described as humiliating). This issue is after-all a conflict between religious self-expression and the right to education. Moreover, the mandate on ‘ uniform uniforms’ is sure to come a cropper, as soon as we consider other religious symbols such as the Turban. Considering that the mandate is soon to encompass the religious expression of other communities, in a country as diverse as India, one wonders whether an order like this is even rational. More importantly, to put a portion of a religious community in the unenviable position of having to choose between religious expression and education is prima facie unjust. In order to navigate around the above problem, we have seen recourse to pragmatic solutions in the past – such as that the courts shall decide whether a particular religious symbol is ‘essential’ to a particular religion. Now, given that different religious sects, trends, and tendencies in the same religion differ among themselves in their practices of reading, hermeneutical traditions, and their own debates of authority, it is difficult to see how even a constitutional court may be able to adjudicate on complex issues such as this. Anyone who knows anything about how scripture is interpreted is familiar with the deep and complex interpretive controversies, together with the demand of knowing the tradition in and out, along with expertise in a classical language, usually a dead one. What is essential to one sect is non-essential to another. I encourage readers to look up the case of Abdul Karim Shorish Kashmiri v The State of West Pakistan, where the Pakistani Court held that the legal process in incapable of determining the answer to the question ‘who is a Muslim?’, until this question was then determined by a Constitutional Amendment, leading to the change in the legal status of the Ahmadis from being Muslims to a non-Islamic religious minority. My own view is that Courts shouldn’t decide on such abstract issues of doctrine as what constitutes an essential practice, unless the rights of some individuals or vulnerable groups cannot be protected through any other means, or when the traditionalists are bent on abusing the rights of their congregants or other members of the community. Therefore, it is a mistake to go into the theological and scriptural niceties right now (or perhaps ever), about whether the Hijab is obligatory or optional in Islamic scriptures. What is important, however, is this Liberal minimum - that no organ of the state must interfere in the religious expression of a community as long as it doesn't harm people from another community or others within that religious community. Since no such prima facie case has been made, this rule appears coercive and oppressive. On the question of reform ‘Reform’ is a weasel word. What is reform to one section of a community is oppression and persecution for another. The liberal must take the principled stance against interference, without necessarily seeing every instance of it as morally pernicious per se. If an arm of the State is to be mobilized to protect the rights of those who do not wish to wear Hijab, and if this to be called ‘reform’, that is fair too, and that doesn’t by itself go against the principle of non-interference. However, if the reformist goal is the much ambitious one of ‘liberating’ Muslim, whatever that might mean, it is best that it must come from within the Muslim community itself, through dialogue, discussion, education. The truth is that only those who feel stifled by traditional authority and its imposition of Hijab will choose to call it reform. For many others, the word ‘reform’ is an affront against their avowal of religious identity. The state ought to protect those individuals who are harmed by those elements which seek to impose their view of the good life on them. But experience has shown that a purely statist ‘reformist’ interventions will only bury the problem and not solve it. The example of Ataturk’s and successive governments’ restraints on religious expression in the Turkish public sphere is right in front of us. As soon as political conditions in Turkey changed and the Erbakan- Erdogan Islamist governments came to power, Hijabs in a thousand flowery prints bloomed in Taksim Square. Therefore, one, the argument for coercive state intervention in this case needs to be very strong, and I haven't seen any one which I find persuasive. Two, even if those who wish to impose a Hijab-ban are right, their victory won’t be a permanent one. If they believe that educated, rational and reflective human beings would not wear a patriarchal relic like Hijab, they must allow girls to receive a good education, and one which inculcates critical thinking and see where the chips fall. The long march toward secular-reason Now, some might question me and say that the burden of my song has been to exonerate the Hijab, and its advocates. Quite the contrary. My position is that, as a non-Hijab donning man, it is not really my place to comment on the meaning of Hijab for many Muslim women. Although the more vocal among them have come for, against and even, believe it or not, for-and-against it. However, being a naive believer in the (liberal) dogma that correct opinions win out in the long term, if given enough breathing space and a conducive environment, I wish only to urge more discussion on the issue, which is not backed by the coercive arm of the state and the blunt instrument of the law. It seems to me that the correct (justificatory) liberal position is to let Muslim women decide. But what about the appeals to scripture, you may say. How can a liberal be pleased with a situation where religious people decide the issue invoking religious scripture, and speaking in a characteristically religious vocabulary? Well, one response is that ‘religious people, like all people, should get to decide what they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.’ That is the quintessential liberal claim. But this aside, there is an academic/historical question about the upshot of religious-style argumentation. I shall quote Jeffrey Stout on this point ...consider the early-modern debates among Christians of various types over moral and political questions. Here we have numerous groups, all of which were committed to treating the Christian Bible as an authoritative source of normative insight into how such questions should be answered. Yet they did not differ only on what this text says and implies. They also differed on who is entitled to interpret it, on whether it is the sole authoritative source of normative insight into such matters, and on who is entitled to resolve apparent conflicts between it and other putative sources of normative insight. Because they differed on all of these points, they eventually found themselves avoiding appeals to biblical authority when trying to resolve their ethical and political differences. The reason was simple; the appeals did not work. So the differing parties increasingly tried to resolve their differences on other grounds. In this respect, their ethical discourse with one another became secularized. (Stout, 93-4) Muslims, including both scholars and the laity, are increasingly coming towards discussions on all issues, about the proper role of religious, pietistic and rational or secular reasons in deciding all kinds of moral and ethical questions, and increasingly in the 20th Century the Muslim world is going through a similar process, that Stout has described above. The increasingly diverse conclusions that interpreters have come to after reading the verses that relate to, or at least seem to relate to something analogous to Hijab, tells us that in order to come to any sort of consensus on the topic, the discourse among Muslims themselves will have to eventually become secular, in that it will have to employ a vocabulary that doesn’t always invoke religious argument. Now, whether between all these competing tendencies it manages to reach a harmonious conclusion or merely a modus Vivendi, will be there for us to see. Regardless, statist interventions will only stifle this process of churning. If anything, the debate needs to be nudged along, not stopped. Unfortunately, in this case, it appears that some secular voices, and not religion, are becoming the conversation-stopper. And that is just not the ‘liberal’ thing to do. References Benn, Stanley. A Theory of Freedom, 1998. Cambridge University Press. Stout, Jeffrey. Democracy and Tradition, 2004. Princeton University Press ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Read other articles in this series: Ariba Zaidi -- A Word of Caution to 'the Uniformist' and 'the Reformist’ Danish Hamid -- Back to Liberal Basics Hina Mushtaq -- Can women decide for themselves? Sania Ismailee -- The Karnataka Hijab row is about Right to Education...

Review of "Quick and Concise: Philosophy" Vaishali Gahlyan Guest Faculty, Miranda House College, Delhi University Jul 24, 2025 Book review of Shamik Chakravarty's Quick and Concise: Philosophy (Hachette India, 2025). Shamik Chakravarty’s A Quick and Concise Introduction to Philosophy is a refreshing and intellectually sincere attempt to bring philosophical reflection into accessible terrain. If one had to recommend a single text to ignite philosophical curiosity without intimidation, this would be it. I suggest, ‘A must-read for minds that wonder and wander’. While most beginner-level philosophy books shy away from topics like the philosophy of art and Skepticism, Chakravarti boldly includes them and this choice alone elevates the book above typical primers. Structured into accessible, argument-driven chapters, the book journeys through serious philosophical questions of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, always grounding abstractions in vivid thought experiments—from Descartes’ Evil Demon, the Brain-in-a-Vat to Gettier cases, Swampman, and Ship of Theseus. The author made a bold attempt to draw strong cross-cultural comparisons: Dharmakīrti and Gangesa are placed alongside Putnam, while Nāṭyaśāstra’s rasa theory dialogues with Beardsley’s aesthetic intention. Author’s style is conversational yet not condescending; technical without being arcane, prose is elegant without jargon, philosophical without pedantry. He invites readers not into dogma, but dialogue—an approach invaluable for pedagogy. And because of this approach, the book is equally useful for undergraduate classrooms, civil services preparation, high school students or general readers hungry for clarity without compromise. And yet, it does not oversimplify; each chapter ends with open questions, gently nudging the reader toward deeper reflection. That said, some limitations remain. The Indian perspectives, though sincerely integrated, often appear in passing—more like philosophical footnotes than equal interlocutors. Similarly, some dense conceptual debates (e.g., skepticism or personal identity) are outlined with brevity that may leave curious readers wanting more. The book’s analytic focus also leaves limited room for continental traditions, feminist ethics, or existential urgency. Nonetheless, as a pedagogical tool, it is a powerful asset: precise in exposition, economical in length, and dialogical in tone. The book doesn’t pretend to be exhaustive—but in what it does cover, it teaches philosophy as both a method and Praxis, which is the need of hour as so much work is going globally in Philosophical Praxis, also the book offers a blend of theory and practical examples evident in almost all the chapters. Chapter 1 is a well-crafted entry point, presenting philosophy as a rigorous discipline rooted in argumentation, logical clarity, and the courage to scrutinize our most basic assumptions. In rejecting the popular image of philosophers as mystics or self-help sages, the chapter reclaims philosophy as an intellectual craft—one that thrives on both deductive and inductive reasoning, and demands precision in thought. It offers a panoramic view of philosophy’s major domains—ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, mind-body theory, and even aesthetics— making it an ideal outset for the book. Ethical debates like abortion or capital punishment ground philosophy in real-world dilemmas, while metaphysics and epistemology confront timeless puzzles about reality, knowledge, and truth. The discussion of Sellars’s “manifest image” versus the “scientific image” is a highlight, dramatizing the tension between our lived, human experience and cold scientific reductionism. Yet despite its strengths, the chapter suffers from what might be called analytic parochialism . It offers a “constricted portrait” that privileges logical rigor over ethical seriousness, spiritual depth, or phenomenological insight. There is little room here for the Socratic imperative to “know thyself,” the existential urgency of Camus (who declared suicide the only serious philosophical question), or Foucault’s vision of philosophy as “a practice of self, of freedom, and of critique.” In its precision, the chapter excels. Chapter 2 succeeds in presenting a panoramic and intellectually rigorous account of how different philosophical traditions have addressed the meaning of life. Chakrabarti charts a philosophically ambitious journey through the terrain of life’s meaning—without ever pretending that there’s a single, satisfying destination. With admirable clarity, he juxtaposes the mythic defiance of Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus with the sober skepticism of Thomas Nagel ( The Absurd ), who sees absurdity not in cosmic indifference but in our very ability to reflect.Chakrabarti balances metaphysical rebellion with grounded responses—like Richard Taylor’s Good and Evil , where meaning stems from inner desire, and Susan Wolf’s Meaning in Life and Why It Matters , which offers a hybrid view: meaning lies in passionately engaging with “projects of worth.” Chakrabarti insightfully connects this to Aristotelian eudaimonia and Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of narrative unity. However, it also raises unanswered questions: Can meaning be fully subjective? What is the standard for “worth”? Is cosmic purpose necessary or dispensable? In attempting to reconcile these views, the chapter not only educates but also invites readers into philosophy’s deepest and most personal question. As Viktor Frankl once wrote, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’” (Frankl, 1946/2006). The chapter does not give us that ‘why’—but it does illuminate the many paths by which it might be found. Chapter 3 is a philosophically alive, critically engaged, and pedagogically effective treatment of morality and normative ethics. Chakrabarti does not simply explain theories; he animates them, juxtaposes them, and tests their limits. The chapter’s strength lies in its refusal to offer easy answers. Instead, it leaves the reader with better questions—and a sharpened moral imagination. The chapter begins with Cultural Relativism, using Ruth Benedict to challenge moral universalism, while critics like Bernard Williams and Mary Midgley raise tough questions about ethical paralysis and judgment across cultures. Psychological Egoism is dissected through the Lincoln piglet anecdote, exposing the fallacy of reducing all kindness to self-interest. With Utilitarianism, Chakrabarti tackles the ethical arithmetic of Mill and Singer, showing both its appeal and its dangers—especially when happiness outweighs justice. Kantian ethics then shifts the focus to duty, dignity, and the Categorical Imperative, with Onora O’Neill’s famine ethics offering a striking real-world application. Chakrabarti skillfully presents Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics as a character-centered approach to morality, weaving in Hursthouse’s nuanced take on abortion and the concept of phronesis . He enriches this non-western ethical tapestry by integrating Buddhist mindfulness too and later through Greene’s neuroscientific dual-process theory offers cognitive depth. The chapter avoids moral dogma, leaving us not with answers, but better tools—and deeper questions. One might wish for more engagement with feminist or care ethics, or with contemporary debates in metaethics, but given the scope and purpose of the book, these omissions are understandable. Chapter 4, plunges into one of philosophy’s most tantalizing riddles: Are we truly free, or just well-dressed puppets of causality? Beginning with the bold moral act of whistleblower Dinesh Thakur, Chakrabarti raises the stakes—our legal systems, moral responsibility, and self-respect hinge on the assumption of free will. But determinism quickly enters like a philosophical wrecking ball: if every action is causally determined, could we ever have done otherwise? Libertarianism is explored through the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), then refined via Robert Kane’s “self-forming actions” that emerge from internal moral conflict. Agent causation theorists like O’Connor and Kevin Mitchell offer naturalized views preserving responsibility within a scientific worldview. Chakrabarti presents compatibilism— especially Frankfurt’s model of second-order volitions—as a powerful alternative, showing how one can be morally responsible even without alternative options. Yet, through Susan Wolf’s “JoJo” case, he questions whether internal coherence suffices for freedom when autonomy itself is shaped by corrupt contexts. Libet’s neuroscience experiments raise empirical challenges, but Chakrabarti resists reductionism, referencing critiques and newer studies that uphold deliberation in complex decisions. The tension between determinism and moral accountability is not resolved here (nor could it be), but readers come away better equipped to understand the stakes and structure of the problem. And though the chapter could have further engaged with existential and Eastern views,still it stands as a philosophically rich and accessible map of one of philosophy’s most enduring dilemmas: Do we choose, or are we chosen by cause? In Chapter 5, Chakrabarti undertakes the most classical and intense epistemological question—what is knowledge?—with philosophical precision and pedagogical finesse. Beginning with the tripartite model of Justified True Belief (JTB), Chakrabarti clarifies the concepts of necessary and sufficient conditions, illustrating with sharp analogies and conditional logic. Yet the chapter’s intellectual pivot comes with Edmund Gettier’s 1963 challenge, which shattered JTB’s sufficiency through clever counterexamples, revealing how epistemic luck can satisfy all conditions yet still fall short of genuine knowledge. He then moves systematically through responses: the No False Lemmas approach fails under Feldman’s variation; Goldman’s Causal Theory is tested by the Fake Barn case, thus leading to discussions on externalism, this also reflects Williamson’s “safety” condition. Nozick’s Tracking Theory offers an elegant model but stumbles under Kripke’s red-green barn puzzle. The No Defeaters theory introduces a regress problem—how many defeaters can be defeated before knowledge collapses? Chakrabarti critically engages BonJour’s Clairvoyant Norman, challenging Reliabilism, and introduces Zagzebski’s “inescapability of Gettier problems”, which undermines all definitions separating justification and truth. A comparative turn brings in Dharmottara’s mirage and the Nyāya theory of pramāṇa, revealing striking parallels with modern causal and reliabilist accounts. The chapter closes with experimental philosophy, the figure of the Ideal Knower, raising doubts about whether knowledge can ever be fully defined. While the chapter masterfully unpacks epistemology but its structure mirrors the very fragmentation it critiques—layer after layer of fixes that never quite resolve the problem. Through examples, Eastern and Western traditions, and sharp critiques, Chakrabarti suggests that the real task may not be to define knowledge, but to understand why it resists final analysis. Chapter 6, confronts one of philosophy’s most enduring anxieties: How do we know anything about the external world? Through Descartes’ Evil Demon and the Brain-in-a-Vat thought experiment, he illustrates how epistemic closure—if you know p, and p entails q, you must know q—is turned against us. Timothy Williamson, however, rejects this fragility by treating knowledge as a fundamental mental state, immune to decomposition. The chapter surveys a rich tapestry of responses. G.E. Moore’s “Here is a hand” reverses the skeptic’s premise through modus tollens, asserting that if I know I have hands, I can’t be a BIV. Contextualists like Keith DeRose, David Lewis, and Stewart Cohen rescue knowledge claims by showing how epistemic standards shift with context. Meanwhile, Putnam’s semantic externalism collapses the skeptical scenario under its own logic—if you’ve always been a BIV, you can’t meaningfully assert it. Vogel’s Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) refutes skepticism abductively: the Real-World Hypothesis explains our experience more simply than the Minimal Skeptical Hypothesis, invoking Occam’s Razor. Still, skeptics persist. Relevant Alternatives Theory (RAT), pioneered by Fred Dretske, narrows knowledge requirements— we need not rule out every fantastical alternative, only relevant ones. Chakrabarti draws brilliant parallels to Nyāya philosophers like Uddyotakara and Gangeśa, who also reject radical doubt unless specific defeating conditions ( bādhaka ) are present. Even Experimental Philosophy (x-phi) gets a voice, showing that lay intuitions often resist full-blown skepticism. While the chapter strikes a fine balance between analytic rigor and accessibility, it occasionally skims over unresolved tensions—especially around abductive reasoning and its philosophical limits. The chapter’s greatest strength lies in its intellectual restraint—it resists the temptation to offer premature closure—but this very openness leaves the reader wondering: is realism just the best story we can tell, or is it epistemically secure? Chapter 7, this expansive and provocative chapter examines the metaphysical enigma of personal identity. From Locke’s memory-based theory to Parfit’s psychological continuity and the soul theory’s spiritual roots, the chapter maps philosophical attempts to understand what makes us the same person over time. Through the iconic Teletransporter thought experiment, the reader confronts the clash between qualitative and numerical identity. Locke’s “Prince and Cobbler” case, Reid’s memory-gap objection, and Parfit’s q-memory innovation all test the viability of memory-based accounts. Shoemaker, Schechtman, and Butler deepen the debate with concerns over circularity and personality. Chakrabarti then surveys bodily and brain-based theories, presenting Bernard Williams’s torture cases and Olson’s animalism , while engaging the ethical dilemmas of Dissociative Identity Disorder. The split-brain studies of Sperry and Gazzaniga support the radical No-Self View , echoing Hume’s Bundle Theory and the Buddhist Nāgasena dialogue. Chakrabarti even includes the Soul Theory , but ultimately dismisses it as empirically vacuous. With references to MPD, feminist critiques, and metaphysical puzzles, the chapter leaves readers with a disquieting insight: perhaps identity is not a fixed entity—but a fluid, fragmented construction resisting neat philosophical closure. While most textbooks stop at ethics, knowledge, and metaphysics, Chakrabarti dares to ask: What is art? And more importantly— why does it matter? Chapter 8 is a masterful culmination of the book’s intellectual arc, taking the deceptively simple question on art and unfolding it into a profound philosophical investigation. From Plato’s suspicion of art as illusion to Aristotle’s rehabilitation of mimesis, the chapter begins by grounding readers in classical debates, different kinds of theories of art with their fundamental questions, only to subvert them with modern provocations. Opening with provocative examples like John Cage’s 4'33" and Duchamp’s infamous urinal ( Fountain ), Chakrabarti unsettles the reader immediately. What counts as art when silence or plumbing fixtures are exalted in galleries? Can a banana duct-taped to a wall (Cattelan’s Comedian ) command millions because of its context rather than content? From here, Chakrabarti traverses the aesthetic terrain with both classical insight and contemporary savvy. Beardsley’s definition—anchoring art in aesthetic experience—meets its match in Duchamp, who exposes the paradox of anti-aesthetic masterpieces, then moving fluidly from Bell’s formalism and Collingwood’s expressive theory. Danto’s conceptual theory picks up this thread: art isn’t just what we see, but the context and interpretation we attach to it. Dickie’s Institutional Theory follows suit, arguing that the “artworld” confers status. But what, then, of outsider art—like the haunting works collected by Hans Prinzhorn from psychiatric patients? Each theory is critically examined through vivid examples—Bruegel’s narrative art, Rothko’s abstraction, Duchamp’s urinal—and juxtaposed with cross-cultural insights like the Rasa theory of Indian aesthetics, the devotional art of India, which flourishes outside institutional validation? Crucially, this is a book with a conscience. It resists the temptation to offer easy Philosophical answers, and instead offers better questions and a mirror to thought itself: fallible, contested, and always in motion. Whether one is encountering philosophy for the first time or returning to its terrain anew, Chakrabarti’s work is both a reliable compass and a bold provocation. References Beardsley, M. C. (1958). Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism . Harcourt, Brace. Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s Search for Meaning (I. Lasch, Trans.). Beacon Press. (Original work published 1946) Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 8 (4), 529–566. Nagel, T. (1971). The absurd. The Journal of Philosophy , 68 (20), 716–727. Nāṭyaśāstra. (ca. 200 BCE–200 CE). Nāṭyaśāstra of Bharata . (See A. Rangacharya or M. Ghosh editions for scholarly citations). Philosophy Now. (n.d.). A magazine of ideas – covering beginner-friendly articles on ethics, art, and identity . https://philosophynow.org/ Putnam, H. (1981). Brains in a vat. In Reason, Truth and History (pp. 1–21). Cambridge University Press. Reid, T. (1785). Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man . (Reprint editions available from MIT Press and Liberty Fund). Sellars, W. (1963). Science, Perception and Reality . Routledge & Kegan Paul. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (n.d.). Plato, Aristotle, Aesthetics, Knowledge, etc. https://plato.stanford.edu/ Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and Its Limits . Oxford University Press. Wolf, S. (2010). Meaning in Life and Why It Matters . Princeton University Press. Yale University. (n.d.). Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 181) by Shelly Kagan. Open Yale Courses. https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-181 Zagzebski, L. T. (1994). The inescapability of Gettier problems. The Philosophical Quarterly , 44 (174), 65–73.

Can women decide for themselves? Hina Mushtaq Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Aligarh Muslim University Feb 22, 2022 This article is part of the series of responses from philosophers on the hijab row . I have been following the long thread of the debate. I would like to present my views from the standpoint of a Muslim woman who chooses not to cover. There are diverging views on whether the Quran imposes any dress code like burqa, khumur, head scarf or jilbab (cloak) on Muslim woman. If we agree on a view that the Quran does not impose any universal dress code for women and that was a practice of the seventh century Arabia (read slave owning community) to distinguish between free women and slaves, the aim was to make it clear which woman was under the clan protection by the means of veiling. Still, I would not appreciate the measure of banning hijab/ burqa in the current context. Most of the people don't get to read and write their religious texts, especially women. What they term as religious or associate with is most of the time imparted to them by religious scholars. I don't want to get into how religious scholars have created patriarchal interpretations of the Quran. We leave it for some other day. It would not be easier for these women and men to grasp in one go what actually their religion prescribes. The idea of modesty or haya embedded in Muslim girls from a very young age cannot be taken away with just one ban. What has taken so many years to imbibe will not go away in one single day. It is again then taking away their agency to choose. I agree the hijab or burqa are imposed too, however, the idea that all covered women need saving is also superficial and misleading. Covering then becomes just a cultural practice, other factors crucial for women empowerment are overlooked. ( Abu Lughod has written extensively on this.) Each case is different, we cannot generalize and call the hijab detrimental to women's growth. As said by Sania, the ban on hijab will only stop women from going to educational institutions. They and their parents will prefer no education than sending them without coverings to schools or colleges. It is over glorification of the thought that religion (read conservative) will take a back seat with such bannings. Again, women who cover are in a dilemma whether to choose between a covering which has spiritual understanding, brings them closer to God/ gives them an idea of freedom (portable seclusion) and education which is also their right. I believe instead of jumping to the final step, it is important to start with gender friendly readings of the religious texts in schools. Women should have access to diverse views of opinions on different matters which would help in making decisions for themselves. Earlier men decided that women should cover and uncovered women were looked down upon, now men have decided that women should uncover for covered women denote regression. Who is asking these women what they actually want? Can women decide for themselves? ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Read other articles in this series: Ariba Zaidi -- A Word of Caution to 'the Uniformist' and 'the Reformist’ Danish Hamid -- Back to Liberal Basics Hina Mushtaq -- Can women decide for themselves? Sania Ismailee -- The Karnataka Hijab row is about Right to Education...

Academic writing support for philosophers in India IPN Writing Centre An important aspect of philosophers’ work is writing and publishing. It is also one of the areas that doctoral scholars and young researchers often find the hardest and have the least support for. IPN Writing Centre aims to address this gap through Writing Mentorship and Writing Rooms . Writing Mentorship This initiative is aimed at supporting researchers who would like to receive the guidance and feedback of peers on drafts of their written work (such as a research article or a thesis chapter). While many of us get feedback on our written work from our supervisors, advisory committee members and other senior faculty, it might be useful to have peers read and comment on them. For one, this provides a less ‘formal’ and freer environment, where Ph.D. scholars and others may feel more comfortable discussing their concerns and asking for feedback. How it works Interested people, who would like to have their work reviewed, will have to register and indicate the area in which their written work is situated. Based on the area of their work, each registrant will be assigned a mentor by the IPN coordinators. This would take approximately 1-2 weeks. The registrant will be introduced to the mentor, and can share their work with them.The mentor will read the registrant’s work and provide them written feedback within 3 weeks. Depending on the preference of the mentor and the registrant, they may want to meet and discuss the feedback and comments. The first round of feedback will be coordinated by the IPN coordinator. The registrant and mentor can have further rounds of discussion and feedback based on their requirement and preference. Who can apply : Philosophers in India (Ph.D. scholars and above) can apply. Even M.A. scholars who wish to work towards publication of their papers can also apply. Membership of IPN is not necessary. How to apply: Those who would like to receive feedback on their work, please register here . Coordinators : Siddharth S (siddharth.nias[at]gmail.com) and Varun Bhatta (varunsbhatta[at]gmail.com) IPN Writing Rooms This initiative aims at creating virtual meeting rooms for researchers who wish to write on a regular basis but haven't been able to execute it properly. IPN Writing Rooms will provide a shared space and would be of particular interest to those who like to have company while they are writing. Who can apply : Philosophers in India (Ph.D. scholars and above) can apply. Membership of IPN is not necessary. How to apply: Interested candidates, please register here . Coordinators : Jinesh Sheth (jineshrsheth13[at]gmail.com) and Siddharth S (siddharth.nias[at]gmail.com)

Modernity and its Futures Past Nishad Patnaik Faculty, IIIT Delhi Jan 8, 2025 An excerpt from Nishad Patnaik's book Modernity and its Futures Past: Recovering Unalienated Life (2023, Palgrave Macmillan, India). The basic claim of the book is that the contemporary figuration of modernity, in the positivistic understanding of nature, and capitalist form of society (as two sides of the same coin), constitutes the reification of the original universal, critical-rational impulse of the Enlightenment. Such reification sets up a tension between the universalizing and particularizing tendencies of reason, reflected, for instance, in the current dominance of the de-territorializing forces of globalized capitalism, on the one hand, and the simultaneous reemergence of xenophobic forms of nationalism, based on narrow, territorially bounded identifications along religious, ethnic or linguistic lines on the other. The tension between the universal and the particular, symptomatic of this deeper structural tendency towards reification, leads to a series of impasses in the interconnected theoretical, ethical, political and economic spheres, which come to constitute our sense of alienation. The book responds to this problematic by attempting to reconcile this tension in dialectical fashion, and thereby articulate an ‘alternative’, non-reified conception of modernity, from within the modernist tradition . Thus, instead of understanding the tension between the universal and the particular, the one and the many, the same and the other etc., as representing a mutually exclusive either-or choice, the book approaches these issues by elaborating their mutually constitutive co-dependence. As a corollary, it shows that the series of impasses to which modernity succumbs in the interconnected theoretical, ethical, political and economic spheres, stem from the attempt to reduce the ‘universal’ to the ‘particular’ or vice versa. The work argues that if we resist this tendency towards reduction, we can still renew the emancipatory promise that Enlightenment modernity once held, for providing a rational-universal self-foundation for humanity, while simultaneously avoiding the pitfalls of a reified form of universality. As we know, (and as Husserl elaborates with his evocation of the sense of ‘crisis’ in what he calls the ‘European Sciences’) the early optimism and ‘naïve faith’ in ‘universal reason’ has long since given way to skeptical resignation in the face of the positivistic form of reason that comes to dominate. The ‘positivistic reduction’ of reason has resulted in a morass of ‘posts’—'post-modernism’, ‘post-truth’, post-structuralism, post-Marxism etc., at the level of theory, which indicate a tendency towards the ‘empiricization’ of reason. The effects of such empiricization are felt in the intertwined ethical, political, and economic domains. And yet, at the level of socio-political and economic history, as the long, sordid past of the contemporary capitalist figuration of modernity, marked by the violence of colonialism, slavery etc., shows, any straightforward positing of the universal dimension of reason, in the face of such skepticism and resulting empiricization, is no longer possible. For, it is precisely in the name of ‘universal reason’, mediated through the inherent expansionary economic logic of capitalism, that colonial subjugation and exploitation (primary/‘primitive accumulation of capital’ in Marx’s terminology) unfolded (and I argue, continues to unfold in a transformed modality under the current neoliberal regime, which imposes its own neo-imperialist tendencies). Indeed, the skeptical reaction to the universal claims of ‘enlightened’ reason, leading to their empiricization (positivistic reduction), stems, in large measure, from these effects of an uncritical, reified universalism, which (qua concrete or determinate universal’ in the Hegelian sense) tend to exclude certain cultures, peoples (and their interests), and modes of thought. This is because, as many thinkers such as Charles Taylor, Judith Butler etc. have pointed out, any determinate universal, qua determinate, must necessarily be limited in its scope. The scope of the universal has historically determined, and continues to determine, the constitution of identity and difference, the ‘same’ and the ‘other’, that is, those that are included in, and excluded from, its scope. In modernity, as the scope of the universal is extended, at least in principle, to include all human beings (and now increasingly non-human species), it can set up a movement where the excluded can come to ‘haunt’ the universal, forcing its expansion (but also possible contraction). This also indicates the possibility of modernist ethics as an ethics without specific content, or a negative ethics, that is committed only to the ‘gap’ between any concretization of the universal—the ethically invested content/normative order of any political discourse, and the empty universal it represents—its indeterminate ‘horizonal beyond’ by which it is necessarily oriented, such that the former is always subject to critique and revision in light of the latter. Explicating this movement (‘hauntology’) Butler, for instance, writes, modern “democratic polities are constituted through exclusions that return to haunt the polities predicated upon their absence. That haunting becomes politically effective precisely in so far as the return of the excluded forces an expansion and re-articulation of the basic premise of democracy itself” (Butler, 2000, 11) . These considerations make visible, the basic dialectic between the ‘universal’ and the ‘particular’, in its enmeshed ‘theoretical’ and ‘material’ aspects. That is, they make visible both the constitutive interrelation and dependence between the universal and the particular, as well as the tendency towards reduction/reification of this interrelation to one of its poles (dialectical ‘one-sidedness’) that gives rise to the tensions or impasses inherent in our contemporary (alienated) modernity. It follows that the ultimately ethical task of renewing the emancipatory potential inherent in the critical-rational and universal dimension of reason that constituted the original impetus of Enlightenment modernity, in the face of its contemporary reified ‘theoretical’ and ‘material’ configuration, calls for a revised, non-reified conception of universality. The latter, I argue, can be nothing but a negative universality—a universality in constant ‘becoming’, (therefore, in its processive movement, nothing but a negative dialectic). Further, as I noted, the rearticulation of universality in this transformed, negative sense, in the face of reified (positivist and capitalist) modernity, amounts to the (re)articulation of an ‘alternative’, non-reified conception of modernity, from within the modernist tradition . For, as we know, the critical thrust of enlightened reason lies in the disenchantment of the world—stripping it of ‘meaning’ and ‘purposiveness’, which come to be seen as merely anthropomorphic projections. The disenchanted world, particularly in its capitalistic figuration, alienates human beings from nature and from each other. Thus, to rearticulate human emancipatory possibilities calls for the rearticulation of a non-alienated conception of both nature and society. However, the disenchantment wrought by the critical-reflective rationality of the Enlightenment cannot simply be undone in a return to pre-modern ‘enchantment’ —to a sacralised conception of the world, and to some posited ‘original’ unity with it in unalienated ‘immediacy’. For, on the one hand, the historically emergent critical-reflective experience of disenchantment (as an expression of reflective distance, transcendence vis-a-vis ‘immediacy’, inescapable mediation, or universality in a negative sense etc.), constitutive of our modernist form of consciousness and society, cannot simply be obliterated, in what would amount to ‘collective amnesia’ (although the dangers of such amnesia are always present, and become exacerbated in times of socio-economic and political crises). On the other, the earlier ‘enchanted’ conceptions of the world, with their naturalized/sacralised order and hierarchy, where the source of power and legitimacy lay in a transcendent ‘beyond’, were subject to their own modes of (unthematized) reification, and therefore, (implicit forms of) alienation. Thus, the rearticulation of human emancipatory possibilities, which can accommodate irreversible disenchantment, (or the negativity inherent in critical-reflective distance), must take the form of the recovery/renewal of an unalienated mode of existence, from within a non-reified modernity. The study begins by posing a question regarding our contemporary situation—why are we witnessing the resurgence of various forms of xenophobic nationalism, and the re-emergence of narrow, pre-modern solidarities along religious or ethnic lines, precisely when globalized, finance-driven capital is purportedly breaking down the traditional territorial and cultural boundaries of the nation-state? It elaborates this tension inherent in the present, by taking into consideration aspects of the arguments presented by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire (2000), as well as by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities (1983), while critiquing both. Whereas Hardt and Negri emphasize the supra-national tendencies of capital (captured in the de-territorialized sovereignty of ‘empire’), Anderson emphasizes the continued existence of nations and territorial boundaries. Yet, the present juncture is marked by both these tendencies, that is, both universalism (in the economic and juridical-normative domains) and particularism (nationalist parochialism). I argue that thinking of these tendencies as mutually opposed and exclusive, leads to an impasse both on the economic and political front, constitutive of contemporary capitalist modernity. More broadly, it results in a reified conception of modernity, which is the source of contemporary alienation. The latter then manifests itself in the regression to various pre-modern, parochial forms of identification and identity. This calls for a revised understanding of the present—one which does not merely emphasize one set of processes (universalistic tendencies), to the exclusion of the other (particularistic tendencies), but can account for their simultaneous co-existence. I account for this co-existence by arguing for their mutually constitutive co-dependence. By showing how the nation-state is essential to the wide-spread implementation of neo-liberal economic policies, I introduce the notion of hegemony (of the latter), as a possible, initial explication of this co-dependence. I take up this problematic in a concrete sense, through an analysis of the historical emergence of nationalist consciousness, and the ‘nation’, as a new, specifically modernist form of identity and political formation. It seems obvious that the modalities of nationalist consciousness and the conception of the nation itself, must differ depending on the historical and geographical contexts of their birth. That is, the birth of the nation state in the West, usually traced to the Westphalian peace treaties (1648) in Europe, and its emergence through the colonial encounter and anti-colonial struggle in Asia and Africa, in the 19th and 20th centuries, cannot be exactly the ‘same’ in their form, and certainly not, in their ‘content’. Yet, they do share certain continuities of form, arising from the universalizing tendencies inherent in capitalism, that give rise to colonial expansion, anti-colonial struggles, and the affirmation of nationalist consciousness/identities, on the part of the colonized. I elaborate these claims through an examination of Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism (1983) and Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983), to compare and critique their analyses concerning the emergence of the ‘nation’. I show that Gellner does not take the ‘universal’ (both in its ‘structural’ and ‘normative’) dimension, inherent in capitalism too seriously. Thus, he does not see the close interconnection between the emergence of capitalist modernity, the rise of modern ‘nation-state’ (in Europe) and colonialism, preferring instead to restrict his analysis to an empirical level. Anderson in contrast, does take the normative dimension of ‘universality’ into account in his idea of the nation as an ‘imagined community’, only to rigidly fix its structural aspect in a ‘modular’ form that first arises in Europe, and is then transplanted to other parts of the world, through the colonial encounter. I discuss Partha Chatterjee’s critique of Anderson’s ‘modularity thesis’, in relation to the emergence of nationalist consciousness in post-colonial ‘imaginations’, in his The Nation and its Fragments (1993). I argue that the colonial encounter cannot be understood either on the ‘modular’ conception, or on Chatterjee’s ‘inner-spiritual’ and ‘outer-material scientific’ divide and the communitarian alternative that, he thinks, flows from it. Rather, its processive movement (which Chatterjee captures, but interprets differently) reveals the ‘inner dialectic’ (where Chatterjee’s conception of the inner-outer can be accommodated terms of the ‘unhappy consciousness’ phase that emergent self-consciousness goes through) constitutive of the nationalist consciousness that emerges in colonized subjects, in and through the struggle for independence. This incremental critique of Gellner’s, Anderson’s, and Chatterjee’s positions clears the decks for rethinking the possibility of unalienated forms of co-existence under conditions of modernity. That is, without taking recourse to various, ultimately pre-modern, sacralized conceptions of ‘community’, understood as modernity’s suppressed ‘other’. One such articulation of the ‘conditions of possibility’ of an unalienated form of life, which attempts to accommodate modernist disenchantment, is represented by Akeel Bilgrami’s work. Bilgrami shows how the tension between ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’, running through the Enlightenment, becomes the defining feature of modern liberal-democratic (and capitalistic) societies and cannot be resolved within it. This sets up the basic coordinates within which an unalienated form of society, in a modern, desacralized sense, must be thought. For, such a society must be able to reconcile the tension between ‘liberty’ and equality, which hitherto have always been thought in an oppositional sense, that is, as an opposition between individual liberty and collective equality. In his essay, Gandhi (and Marx) (2014), Bilgrami, in a two-step argument, first prepares the ground for an alternative, modernist form of unalienated life by bringing to light the contingent ‘hegemony’ of late capitalism. By tracing the historical and intellectual genealogy of capitalist modernity, and how it impinged on emergent nationalist consciousness in India under colonial rule, Bilgrami underscores both the historically, and rationally contingent character of the capitalist form that modernity takes. Yet, its contingency is not seen as such. That is, capitalism appears not as one possible configuration of modernity (that was ‘in fact’ realized) among other, equally historically and rationally viable possibilities (that, it so happened, were not realized), but as ‘objective’ (universal, rational) ‘reality’. Yet, I argue that on the one hand, the historically extant alternative visions that Bilgrami invokes (Levelers and Diggers, Gandhi), involve a sacralized conception of nature and of the human (and are therefore, not really ‘modernist’, but invoke a certain nostalgia for the pre-modern past). On the other, insofar as his rational, counterfactual argument, based on ‘opportunity costs’ remains a primarily negative critique of the rational argument (based on social contract) for capitalism (the rational justification of the privatization of the commons), it does not sufficiently account for the skeptical consequences inherent in the notion of ‘contingent hegemony’. In other words, it does not address the possibility that these skeptical consequences end up undercutting not only the claim to the (rational) universality of capitalist social organization, but also that of any alternative conception of modernity based on universal reason, understood in its positive institutional-social configuration. Bilgrami’s argument ends up affecting a split between reason and history that is in keeping with the tendency towards empiricization, where the movement of history, and specifically the socio-political domain, becomes nothing but an endless series of contestations and provisional victories (in the form of a temporary hegemonic consensus). To mitigate these skeptical effects of empiricization/particularism, I turn to the dialectical model of thought which emphasizes the movement of history through the movement of determinate negation, which is itself based on the processive character of reification. Through the latter, the universal dimension of rationality inherent in the historical emergence of modernity comes to be ‘reduced’ to the capitalist form of society on the one hand, and inseparable from it, the techno-scientific understanding of nature on the other. Such reduction, constitutes the source of our alienation in relation to others, and to ‘nature’. I trace this sense of alienation and its basis in reified modernity, via the ‘disenchantment’ of nature and of human relations, brought about through the historical trajectory and shape that modernity comes to take in the Enlightenment. I elaborate the imbricated historicities of the techno-scientifically mediated conception of ‘nature’ (as disenchanted), and the capitalist form of social organization (which permits the fullest manipulation and exploitation of ‘disenchanted’, quantified nature), through a discussion of Hegel’s Husserl’s, Heidegger’s, and Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s writings. Once this idea of a reified modernity determined by the capitalistic and techno-scientific framework, is established, it brings to the fore the question of the possibility of an ‘alternative unalienated form of modernity’. Yet, on the one hand, as I noted, such a recovery cannot mean a return to a pre-modern, sacralized conception of community and nature, since these forms of existence involve their own unreflective modes of reification, (in terms of deified, hence, ‘naturalized’ social hierarchies etc.), and therefore, unthematized modes of alienated existence. On the other, it cannot entail an orientation which, either in the present or in the future, attempts to restore or realize the immediacy of the ‘real’ (a ‘metaphysics of presence’) in the objective-universal sense (conceived either as ‘material’ or ideal-rational reality), specific to reified modernity. From an epistemological perspective, such immediacy (presence) is ruled out in principle—as varied philosophical traditions, from transcendental idealism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction etc. have argued. But, in a related sense, it is also critiqued from a political-normative perspective, insofar as the attempt to realize the impossible ideal/telos of a ‘society without antagonisms’, leads to a totalizing conception, which can have totalitarian consequences—a charge often brought against communist societies, which are said to exemplify a reified, distinctly modernist form of totalitarianism. Thus, the task of articulating an ‘alternative conception of modernity’, in and through the articulation of unalienated existence, calls for a ‘non-reified’ account of modernity. More precisely, as I elaborate in my reading of Marx, since the process of reification is inevitable (due to our spatio-temporal finitude, as Kant had already shown) it calls for an account where this process is reflectively and institutionally acknowledged, and thus rendered ‘harmless’ (echoing the Kantian sense of the term in the Transcendental Dialectic ) that is, where the institutionalized modes of such reflective acknowledgment circumvent the deleterious consequences of reification. Insofar as this task is explicitly political, it gives rise to further issues concerning the very possibility and scope of political-emancipatory projects. I trace these issues to universalistic and particularistic tendencies in the political domain. I noted how, when seen merely as contradictory, or mutually exclusive, the universalistic and particularistic orientations result in the reification of modernity, and in the economic and political impasses that flow from such reification. On the political front, the impasse manifests itself in the perpetual back and forth movement between politics conceived as merely empirical, that is, as an endless game of conflicts and provisional hegemonic formations in the name of the universal; and as making genuinely universal claims based on ‘justice’, or as the historical struggle/‘progress’ towards the realization of a ‘universally’ just, non-hierarchical, equal society. In contrast, I show that these particularistic and universalistic tendencies are mutually constitutive in a dialectical sense. How the mutual dependence and interconnection between the ‘particular’ and the universal in the political sphere, and therefore, the notion of dialectics itself, is to be understood, is the subject of debate between Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek in their book— Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (2000). I analyze this debate, and focus on Butler’s notion of a ‘universal in becoming’, as an elaboration of the constitutive relation between the particular and universal within the political, and thus, of the recovery and articulation of a non-reified modernity. The notion of a ‘universal in becoming’ raises further conceptual and ‘practical’ issues. Are appeals to ‘universality’ (the appeals to justice, rights etc.) that articulate contemporary politics, appeals to a ‘ contingent universality’ (as Laclau contends), constituted by projecting particular claims as apparently universal, but which come to acquire legitimacy only by acquiring hegemony ? Or can political claims and struggles be articulated by a universality that remains explicitly empty—devoid of determinate content, hence a processive universal always in becoming, and it is this very emptiness that constitutes its normative legitimacy, as both Butler and Žižek argue, although in different ways? I address this problem through a return to the writings of Marx and Hegel, which form the background of this debate. In returning to Marx and Hegel, I underscore the centrality of the dialectic for explicating how the notion of a ‘universal in becoming’, plays out in the in the domain of political economy. However, with this return, the dialectic is no longer restricted to the present—to the oscillation between the particular and the universal constitutive of the impasse of the political in contemporary, reified modernity. Rather, I take up the notion of the dialectic in its historical movement, in order to provide a revised interpretation of both Marx’s (and Hegel’s) positions. This revision shows how Hegel’s theoretical conception of ‘absolute knowing’, and Marx’s political-normative project of overcoming (capitalist) alienation (and the realization of unalienated existence), does not culminate in the dead-end of absolute self-presence. That is, it does not entail the ‘end of history’, where the ‘subject’ and ‘object’ of history finally come together in reflective self-coincidence, in a society fully transparent to itself—without antagonisms, difference etc. Instead, I argue that since reification is inevitable, (Hegel’s and) Marx’s position cannot amount to the overcoming of reification (in reflective self-coincidence or transparency) but to its reflective acknowledgement, an acknowledgement that is institutionally realized in post-capitalist, unalienated society. In other words, I show how the post-Marxist, post-modern critique of Marx, based on the claim that he succumbs to a ‘metaphysics of presence’ conflates the processes of reification and alienation. Marx’s aim is to overcome capitalist alienation, but this does not entail overcoming (structural) reification. This interpretation provides fresh impetus to the ‘universalistic’ dimension of the political, thus, to the possibility of universal political-emancipatory projects, in the face of the hegemony of the capitalist form of reified modernity. In the final part of the study, I further explicate this universalist dimension, qua ‘universal in becoming’, by turning to Adorno’s notion of ‘ negative dialectics ’. Through a discussion of this idea, against the background of the Hegelian (and Marxian) conception of dialectics in our revised sense (not merely as ‘determinate negation’, as Adorno insists), I bring to light points of continuity (despite Adorno’s critique of Hegelian dialectics), between the two conceptions. The negative element of the dialectic (movement of thought), that is, a dialectic that does not culminate, each time, in a determinate negation, or assert ‘the identity of identity and non-identity’, but stays in the moment of negativity, that is ‘points beyond its own identifying movement’, amounts to a reflective awareness of our own finitude. It indicates the ‘non-closure’ of the social, from within the social, and not as (empirical) contingency etc. In other words, as Adorno, explicating the ‘double bind’ in relation to social, argues, Marx’s critique of ‘identity’ qua equivalent exchange under capitalism, does not aim at abolishing that equivalence as a ‘matter of fact’. For, not only is form/identity inescapable in principle, but a return to earlier ‘forms’ of non-equivalence/non-identity would reinstate the injustice inherent in those earlier societies. Rather, as Adorno asserts, it aims at making the “inequality within equality” visible, and thus, “aims at equality too”. When we criticize the barter principle as the identifying principle of thought, we want to realize the ideal of free and just barter. To date, this ideal is only a pretext. Its realization alone would transcend barter. Once critical theory has shown it up for what it is—an exchange of things that are equal yet unequal—our critique of inequality within equality aims at equality too […]. If no man had part of his labour withheld from him anymore rational identity would be a fact, and society would have transcended the identifying mode of thinking. (Adorno, 2003, 147) Therefore, the basic principle of negative dialectics, including the “double bind” inherent in it, that Adorno indicates, also holds for post-capitalist society. The difference, in relation to capitalism, as I have underscored, lies in reflective thematization of this necessary intertwinement and movement between identity and non-identity. In other words, ‘inequality’/non-identity becomes discernible only from within the seeming ‘totality’/’closure’ of ‘equality’, of equivalent exchange; and yet, the critique that uncovers ‘inequality within equality’ also ‘aims at equality’—in the sense that the recognition of inequality cannot remain in the negative moment of critique, but must take the ‘positive form’ of the realization of equality as a “matter of fact”. Therefore, the basic principle of negative dialectics, including the “double bind” inherent in it, that Adorno indicates, also holds for post-capitalist society. The difference, in relation to capitalism, as I have underscored, lies in reflective thematization of this necessary intertwinement and movement between identity and non-identity. In other words, ‘inequality’/non-identity becomes discernible only from within the seeming ‘totality’/’closure’ of ‘equality’, of equivalent exchange; and yet, the critique that uncovers ‘inequality within equality’ also ‘aims at equality’—in the sense that the recognition of inequality cannot remain in the negative moment of critique, but must take the ‘positive form’ of the realization of equality as a “matter of fact”. This, Adorno writes, “comes close enough to Hegel”. The difference with respect to Hegel lies in the direction of ‘intent’ of negative dialectics. The latter does not, theoretically or in practice, maintain the primacy of identity—claim that identity is ‘ultimate’ or ‘absolute’ in a final reconciliation (of identity and difference, universality and particularity etc.) that constitutes the telos of the dialectical unfolding of reason. Rather, for negative dialectics, “[…] identity is the universal coercive mechanism, which we, too, finally need , to free ourselves from universal coercion, just as freedom can come to be real only through coercive civilization, not by way of any “Back to nature””. (Adorno 2003, 147) In the book my endeavor also has been to open up the space of non-identity within identity, in order to (re)imagine a different world, a world where freedom (in noncoercive identity/equality) becomes a “matter of fact”. By reaffirming the possibility of the political in this specific sense of a ‘universal in becoming’ that is, one which involves neither a return to some pre-modern sacralized conception, nor to a reified modernist conception of universality qua ‘presence’, I bring to light the possibility and scope of an unalienated mode of existence from within the modernist tradition. The central claim that I make is that the recovery of unalienated existence in this modernist sense, implies an acknowledgement of our finitude and dependence, with respect to nature and to each other. This reflective realization of our finitude is nothing but the acknowledgement of the ‘double bind’ (oscillation between relative and absolute difference, negativity etc.) in which we are always caught. I attempt to show, how Marx’s vision of a post-capitalist society amounts to an institutional acknowledgement our finitude in this specific sense of the ‘double bind’, to which the movement of thought/reason is subject. It is in this sense therefore, that the recovery of an alternative, non-reified conception of modernity, covered over in the course of the historical emergence of contemporary modernity and the reified form it takes, must be understood. References Adorno, T. W. (2003). Negative Dialectics . New York, London: Continuum. Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities . New York, London: Verso. Bilgrami, A. (2014). Secularism, Identity and Enchantment . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Butler, J. (2000) “Restaging the Universal: Hegemony and the Limits of Formalism”. In, Butler, J., Laclau, E., Zižek, S., Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left . New York, London: Verso Chatterjee, P. (1993). The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Post-colonial Histories . New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism . Ithaca: Cornell University Press Hardt, M., and Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy . Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Mulla Nasrettin's Cogito Danish Hamid Independent Scholar Jan 13, 2025 One day, while wandering through the Old Venetian bazār, I, Mulla Nasrettin, stumbled upon a rather attractive looking leather bound book, titled Meditations written by a certain Descartes. Now, you know me—I’m a man of reflection, and the word "meditations" has always had a certain allure. “Perhaps,” I thought, “this book might guide me to some inner peace or reveal hidden truths of the soul that this French philosopher has discovered.” So I bought it, tucked it under my arm, and made my way home, thinking I’d sit down with it after Isha. The night was quiet, perfect for a bit of soul-searching. I lit a small lamp, sat comfortably by the fire, and picked up the book. Meditations by Monsieur Descartes. “Let’s see what wisdom your little book has for me,” I muttered to myself. I opened the book with great anticipation. But alas! The first few pages were filled with long-winded ramblings about method, and oh! How this Descartes fellow loved to talk about himself! His achievements, his credentials, his method—Method this, method that! I sighed. “Where is the meditation, the wisdom, the Lubbu'l-Lubâb of the matter?” I asked aloud. “Am I reading about the vanity of an old man or a guide to truth?” But then—finally!—I came across something more practical. This Descartes began doubting things. Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought. Doubting existence, doubting knowledge—this was something I could work with. Nasrettin Hoca likes a good doubt as much as anyone, especially when it comes to doubting about dreams, even in one's dreams. And so, I followed Descartes’s reasoning. I, too, would doubt the world around me, doubt my senses, doubt everything until only one thing remained. “I think, therefore I am,” Descartes concluded, and there it was—the grand revelation! I jumped from my seat. “Aha! I exist! I think, therefore I am!” But wait. This didn’t feel right. A different doubt now gnawed at me. Could it be that this Monsieur hadn’t doubted hard enough? He stopped too soon. He was content to rest at thinking. How could he be sure thinking was enough, enough to show I exist? I sat back down and rubbed my chin. “This Descartes fellow... He doubts, yes, but not quite as far as one must go. He should have doubted his own doubting! After all, if I’m to doubt everything, then why not doubt the very fact that I am doubting? Could it be that even my doubts are the product of someone—or something—else? I mean, who is to say these thoughts are mine at all?” With that thought, I stood again, pacing. “What if I am simply imagining my doubts? What if, in truth, I am a figment of someone else’s imagination?” And just then, my donkey, who had been lazily resting outside, brayed loudly. I turned to the door and squinted. “Ah, yes. The donkey. Could it be...?” My heart raced with this impossible thought. “What if it is not me imagining these doubts, but my donkey?” I strode outside to face the old beast. The donkey stared back at me, chewing slowly on his grass, completely indifferent to my hypothesis. “Tell me, old friend,” I said, crouching down to eye level with the creature. “Are you the one thinking me into existence? Is it you who doubts for me, making me question whether or not I exist?” The donkey blinked lazily. For a moment, the thought made me dizzy, but… I couldn’t dismiss it so easily. After all, if Descartes could doubt the existence of everything but his own thoughts, why couldn’t I go a step further? If I was to doubt everything, I must doubt that I am the one doing the doubting. Maybe the donkey—silent, patient, always observing—was the true thinker here, and I was merely his daydream. I stood, perplexed. “I doubt, therefore I am? No. Perhaps it is: The donkey doubts, therefore we are!” I walked back to my bed, shaking my head. This Descartes is too dubious a fellow, apart from being totally full of himself. The West must have come to really bad times when this guy is their star new philosopher. Oh to the good old days of Aristu, and Eflatun the Divine! But as I lay down to sleep that night, I couldn't help but worry. “Whether it’s my doubt or the donkey’s that gives me existence, one thing’s for sure—I can never look at the beast the same way again.” And with that, I drifted off, my mind slowly going into a haze….am I dreaming of the donkey, or does the donkey still dream of me?

Review of Meera Baindur's novel by Manish Sharma Manish Sharma Assistant Professor, Kurukshetra University Nov 24, 2023 Book review of Meera Baindur's Sharvay (Speaking Tiger, 2023) When it comes to women philosophers in India, Maitreyi, Gargi, Meera, and Sulabha come immediately to mind. However, these are little more than names, since their philosophies and lives are rarely discussed, let alone their teachings. We need stories of the women who devised wings, dared to take flight in the gusty winds of oppression, and sailed to otherwise forbidden heights. It is equally important to understand how they were bruised, how they grieved, and most importantly, how they failed. Sharvay is one such attempt that envisions the journey of a mixed caste (mishra varna) girl from the claustrophobic confines of a palace where she was born and brought up. The novel presents the concrete circumstances of the socio-cultural and historical setting of south-central India in the 8th century. It depicts the life of a human being of that era from one of the most vulnerable sections of its society and explores what it might be like for her to become a philosopher. Besides presenting the obstacles on the way to becoming a philosopher, the writer also suggests what kind of position that philosopher would take in the given situations. Spider Web around the Elephant Statue This novel explores the socio-economic circumstances from the viewpoint of a mishra varna woman. It was the era of Buddhist Rinpoche Padmasambhava, Sankara, and Dantidurga's uncle and successor, King Krishna. The story takes us through several locations, starting in the palace and concluding in a little town called Kolahalpur after passing through jungles and towns like Amravati. Born as a child of unknown parentage, Sharvay, the protagonist, was fostered by a woman in service of the Queen. She grew up alongside the haughty princess as herpeekadhari and socha-upcharika holding a silver spittoon in her hands for the princess to spit out her chewed betel leaves. Here, Sharvay shows first signs of curiosity as she wonders how the green leaves turn red upon chewing. However, her desire to learn was limited by her duties towards her mistress, the princess. She secretly stole knowledge as much as possible in circumstances that came her way accidentally. Since the pursuit and practice of knowledge were generally restricted. Even though all her faculties including her hands were growing more capable with time, she still wasn’t allowed to reach for anything beyond the spittoon. “Both Sharvay and Karmani grew within the palace like lengthening shadows in the setting sun”, writes Mansi (pen name used by Meera Baindur), depicting precisely the desolate condition of working women in a place. In the very beginning of the novel, Sharvay is shown preoccupied by the sight of a spider building a web across the large carving of an elephant on one of the pillars. And she thought, “Can a spider trap an elephant in a spider web?” In this metaphor, we may see that Sharvay was wondering about her fate. Would she, a feeble spider with her delicate web, tame and fetter the giant, elephant-like oppression of regime and social structures? Can she overcome the overarching constraints with her little efforts? The picture does not change much as Sharvay moves to a new town with the princess when the latter gets married, until she meets a fatal accident which proves to be a blessing in disguise. This accident freed her from the bondage of her mistress and the tethers of her previous identity as a mishra varna. She comes across an exciting chance to create a new identity, a new name, and a different role in life. So now, Sharvay was Kumbaja, an upper-caste woman and because she now found a foster father in a Vaidya, she was a healer and medicinal practitioner. Thereon, she finds a friend till her last in Bakumi, a partner in Madhavakara, and a guide in Tara (a Buddhist Bhikkhuni). The community of healers dwelling in the forest, of which her foster father was a part, saw frequent visits by travellers, healers, and philosophers. In the favoured social circumstances, she could chase after her long-drawn curiosities, although not without the challenges of being a woman. Gradually Sharvay learns and grows bold and ultimately starts to emit what she has absorbed. She embarks on a journey that tries to free knowledge from the stranglehold of a few and make it ubiquitous. Quest for Self-discovery In this novel, you'll be enthralled by a woman's bravery in defying all social conventions to venture into the uncharted realm of knowledge. You might discover that she can still get support from other women and forge an affiliation with them even under the direst of circumstances. This is the story of a woman's struggle, bravery, uncertain future, and release from the shackles of prevailing socioeconomic and cultural conventions. Sharvay embarks on a journey of philosophical development and lives her life with various identities and names to find integrity eventually. In the novel the issue of identity is raised when Sharvay wonders, “Why am I called 'peekadhari?'… Am I a person who does the work or has my work itself become me?" (Mansi, 2023, pp 98-99) No philosophy can remain untouched by the social, economic, and cultural circumstances of its time, rather these circumstances of the philosopher's life shape her philosophy. I have attempted to view this novel written by Mansi based on this thought. The beauty of the novel lies in its ability to depict the philosophical viewpoint through the protagonist's decisions and actions taken in different situations instead of relying on lengthy arguments. This novel will give you a taste of the famous philosophical debates called Shastrarthas and the influence of their patronage on their workings both from the public and the kings. If Shastrarthas were organized by public funding, they were under the pressure of being entertaining. However, if they were funded by kings’ money then they were influenced by the king’s religious or philosophical preference. The author expresses curiosity about having heard the names of numerous women philosophers in India's history but is unable to access their concrete lives and philosophical ideas. Hence, it becomes impossible to create a clear thought about their life choices and philosophies. In this novel, the author attempts to portray a clear image of one such female philosopher; how they would have dealt with the discourses and situations of their time. Freedom versus Social Structure At times, this novel reminds us of Sartre’s notion of freedom and suggests that humans always have the choice to be free. Let’s look at this line of the novel, “Every time she was called Peekadhari, she repeated 'Sarvamedhini' to herself. She wanted a name that described who she was and did not just represent what she did.” (Mansi, 2023, p.100) This way of thinking implies that, despite being in more impoverished circumstances, a person can overcome them by having the proper kind of self-image. In another instance, the debate between social conditions and the so-called spiritual awakening is raised in a very subtle way when the author comments on the working conditions of Sharvay, the peekadhari, and her adaptation to these conditions. The author writes: She had learned long ago that being mindful in these moments only caused her to be upset and angry. It was best to be mindless, except as needed to make her body obey other people's words. She had trained her mind to stay in an indifferent state. (Mansi, 2023, p.40) These lines hint towards what Erich Fromm calls 'the pathology of normalcy' which suggests that there are certain aspects in every society where pathological behaviour is normalized. In the above situation, being aware would be problematic for Sharvay as her working conditions do not allow it. Thus, while accepting the will to be free, the novel does not emphasize the unlimited capability of human freedom but rather suggests the limitations of freedom by the given choices. Moral Dilemma: Truth or Freedom? In this novel, along with accompanying Sharvay on her philosophical journey, you also set out on a philosophical journey of your own, reflecting on your obstacles, readiness, and mysteries. Numerous circumstances in her life would shock you and cause you to ponder. For me, this moment comes when Sharvay had to camouflage as an upper caste woman and as a man to participate in a debate on the truth and metaphysics. Let’s see her dilemma, when she talks to herself while hiding her caste from her saviours, "Should she tell these people everything and go back to her old life? Or should she be free now and take her steps into a new life, away from the limits of her past?" (Mansi, 2023, p.103) At this juncture, philosophical debates appear to be nothing more than a farce. It awakens us to our lack of ability to hear the truth. Many times, we turn a common phenomenon into a mystery by giving it a mythological shape and tend to forget the truth in that mystery. In this condition, Sharvay had to choose between truth or freedom and she chose freedom over truth as the society was not ready to listen to her truth. Dialogue with the Author The author's philosophical vision can be inferred from various instances in this novel. For example, the author wants to portray a picture of a woman philosopher, but for this work, she tries to raise those philosophical thoughts in the mind of the reader through her story. Although, many times, as a reader, it came to my mind that it would have been better if the philosophical debate initiated in the novel had been longer. The novel's plot implicitly raises philosophical questions at many points. It occasionally reminds us of Sophie’s World and suggests the possibility of a similar book in the context of Indian philosophy. When it comes to the author's philosophical assumptions, she has been very explicit on the significance of Apta Pramana but not limited to some special ones. She has also emphasized the body's epistemological significance numerous times. In this context, the author has acknowledged the significance of Ayurveda , which emphasizes observation as an epistemological tool. Besides, the author seems to value observation and analysis over philosophy's speculation. In addition, she believes that the kind of philosophical speculation, that reduces people to objects, is the cause of social inequity. In this novel, she investigates the possibility of the philosophy that places the human body and experience at its core and that may be developed based on the reality that each person encounters. If I examine the author's presumptions regarding the freedom of women, her picture of women's independence with the family appears challenging. She thus presents Sharvay's figure as being more independent without family. In addition, despite emphasizing the importance of the body, the author did not highlight the impact of pregnancy on a woman's life, though it is a significant part of a woman's physical life. One explanation for this would be that she considers this trait to be a weakness in women. I also find the kind of comradeship portrayed in the novel among the women, especially between Sharvay and Bakumi seems quite imaginary and imposed from our times. I believe this kind of comradeship was absent at that time even nowadays. This is the main reason, women have not been able to become a political pressure group in Indian political discourses yet. This novel was also interesting to me because it portrays a vivid picture of the historical cities of Central and South India which are completely new to me. It brings up some historical characters that I was unaware of, being a North Indian. It provides detailed pictures of the cities, their economies, artists, and artworks. There is an unknown thrill while reading this novel, especially the character of the Buddhist Bhikhuni, Tara, who has been presented in a very mysterious and attractive manner. The character of the protagonist, Sharvay, is also heartfelt and real. It has not been portrayed in an unnecessarily romantic style. This is the reason why the novel has been quite successful in highlighting the inhumanity prevalent in the society of that time. This work will be thought-provoking and interesting to philosophy students, anyone who is interested in issues about women, and to the readers of historical fiction. This book may make you reflect on a variety of subjects, including the veracity of existentialist philosophy, freedom, and potentiality, questions of identity and integrity, the advantages and disadvantages of public and private funding, etc.

IPN Blog IPN blo g is a platform for philosophers and others to write about philosophy in India and also to express philosophically informed opinions. Given the aim of the IPN blog is to enable a dialogue between philosophers and the public, both philosophers and the public can submit articles. See the submission guidelines . Review of "Ecophenomenology and the Environmental Crisis in the Sundarbans" Read the article Sourav Garain Aug 12, 2025 Review of "Quick and Concise: Philosophy" Read the article Vaishali Gahlyan Jul 24, 2025 Review of "Quick and Concise: Philosophy" Read the article Shivangi Shanker Jul 22, 2025 Review of "Quick and Concise: Philosophy" Read the article Neeraj Umesh Jul 17, 2025 Review of Modernity and its Futures Past Read the article Bhakti Gaikwad May 17, 2025 Review of Social Scientists in the Civic Space Read the article Shami Ulla Mar 24, 2025 Mulla Nasrettin's Cogito Read the article Danish Hamid Jan 13, 2025 Modernity and its Futures Past Read the article Nishad Patnaik Jan 8, 2025 Review of R. Krishnaswamy's Book Read the article Adreeja Sarkar Jun 2, 2024 Review of Bhaskarjit Neog's Book Read the article Abhishek Anant Nowbagh May 16, 2024 What Responsibility? Whose Responsibility? Read the article Bhaskarjit Neog Feb 7, 2024 Review of Venusa Tinyi's book by Aribam Uttam Sharma Read the article Aribam Uttam Sharma Dec 28, 2023 Traditional vs Colonial: Navigating Dichotomies of Philosophy in India Read the article Ankita Kushwaha and Megha Kapoor Dec 14, 2023 Review of Meera Baindur's novel by Manish Sharma Read the article Manish Sharma Nov 24, 2023 Review of Muzaffar Ali's book by Richa Shukla Read the article Richa Shukla Nov 13, 2023 Review of Muzaffar Ali's book by Satya Javvaji Read the article Satya Javvaji Oct 26, 2023 Philosophy Education and Job Competencies Read the article Nishant Kumar Nov 6, 2022 Translating philosophy: DR Nagaraj's Allamaprabhu Read the article N S Gundur Jul 3, 2022 A Word of Caution to 'the Uniformist' and 'the Reformist' Read the article Ariba Zaidi Feb 22, 2022 The Karnataka Hijab row is about Right to Education, not Freedom of Religion Read the article Sania Ismailee Feb 22, 2022

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