Understanding Gandhi on Caste and Modernity
After ten years of its dark night of the soul, Indian politics found, on the 4th of June, that it had groped its way into a tentative shaft of light; and though the sour stink of fascism is still in…
Response: Understanding Gandhi on Caste
The thoughts on Gandhi and caste that Akeel Bilgrami’s lecture give rise to, have been intellectually most stimulating, as have been his explorations of the subject. This in itself makes one look forward to reading his forthcoming book. We also…
The ‘Other’ Max Mueller: Beyond the Vedas
Almost all seminars on Max Mueller held in my country begin or end with one of the many euphoric eulogies Max Mueller uttered to underline his deep attachment to ancient India, that is, India of the Vedas and the Upanishads.…
Reassessing Responses and Reimagining Needs: Nattukar and Dowry Deaths in Kerala
After Cyrus Mistry’s death in a car accident, National Transport Minister Mr Nitin Gadkari posted a video on Twitter on 9 September 2022, emphasising the importance of airbags in cars.1 The video, which starred Akshay Kumar and carried a logo…
Agrarian Slavery and Serfdom of ‘Palerus’: Bonded ‘Farm Servants’ of Colonial Andhra
One of the striking features of the South Indian rural milieu is the large number of farm labourers who have served the same families of landowners, year after year. Quite often, they are bound to their masters by deep-rooted traditions…
OBITUARY: C.T. Kurien, 1931–2024
Christopher Thomas Kurien, scholar of distinction and social conscience, and an inspiring teacher of economics, died on 23 July at the MOSC Medical College Hospital in Kolencherry, Kerala. He was 93. CTK’s entry into economics was inspired by the vision…
OBITUARY: Remembering Tirthankar Chattopadhyay, 1942–2024
Tirthankar Chattopadhyay passed away on 23 June 2024 in Kolkata, at the age of 81. He had been suffering from cancer in his last years. I was one of his close friends for the last six decades and his comrade…
Book Reviews
S. Irfan Habib, Maulana Azad: A Life, Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2023, xii+306 pages, Rs 899 Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a polymath, nationalist, secularist par excellence, and a key figure in India’s nation-building process. The life and thought of the…
Editorial Note, May -June, 2024
This edition of Social Scientist carries the second part of Aditya Mukherjee’s Presidential Address to the Indian History Congress, in which he provides an assessment of the distance we have travelled from the India of Nehru’s dream. In that perception…
Jawaharlal Nehru in Our Past, Present and Future – II
The threat to Indian democracy posed by communalism, or by ‘communal fascism,’ as Amartya Sen, perhaps first, described it,1 is now perceived globally. Michelguglielmo Torri, arguably the foremost Italian scholar on India, has outlined the rapid growth in recent years…