Righteous republic : the political foundations of modern India / Ananya Vajpeyi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vajpeyi, Ananya.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political science--India--Philosophy--History.

Political science.

Self-determination, National--India.

Self-determination, National.

Nationalism--India.

Nationalism.

India--Politics and government--Philosophy.

India.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiv, 342 p.)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What India's founders derived from Western political traditions as they struggled to free their country from colonial rule is widely understood. Less well-known is how India's own rich knowledge traditions of two and a half thousand years influenced these men as they set about constructing a nation in the wake of the Raj. In Righteous Republic, Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, a ground-breaking assessment of modern Indian political thought. Taking five of the most important founding figures-Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar-Vajpeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. The diverse sources in which these leaders and thinkers immersed themselves included Buddhist literature, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit poetry, the edicts of Emperor Ashoka, and the artistic and architectural achievements of the Mughal Empire. India's founders went to these sources not to recuperate old philosophical frameworks but to invent new ones. In Righteous Republic, a portrait emerges of a group of innovative, synthetic, and cosmopolitan thinkers who succeeded in braiding together two Indian knowledge traditions, the one political and concerned with social questions, the other religious and oriented toward transcendence. Within their vast intellectual, aesthetic, and moral inheritance, the founders searched for different aspects of the self that would allow India to come into its own as a modern nation-state. The new republic they envisaged would embody both India's struggle for sovereignty and its quest for the self.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Introduction

1 Mohandas Gandhi

2 Rabindranath Tagore

3 Abanindranath Tagore

4 Jawaharlal Nehru

5 Bhimrao Ambedkar

Conclusion

Appendix A: The Indexical Complexity of Tagore's Meghdūt

Appendix B: Thirteenth Rock Edict of Aśoka

Appendix C: The State Emblem of India (Prohibition of Improper Use) Act, 2005

Appendix D: From Ambedkar's Published Introduction to The Buddha and His Dhamma

Appendix E: From "Gospel of Equality: The Buddha and the Future of His Religion," 1950

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Formerly CIP.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [263]-319) and index.

ISBN:

9780674071834

0674071832

9780674067288

0674067282

OCLC:

1041188740