Classical Buddhism, Neo-Buddhism and the Question of Caste

Classical Buddhism, Neo-Buddhism and the Question of Caste
Author: Pradeep P. Gokhale
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2020-10-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000202569

This book examines the interface between Buddhism and the caste system in India. It discusses how Buddhism in different stages, from its early period to contemporary forms—Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Tantrayāna and Navayāna—dealt with the question of caste. It also traces the intersections between the problem of caste with those of class and gender. The volume reflects on the interaction between Hinduism and Buddhism: it looks at critiques of caste in the classical Buddhist tradition while simultaneously drawing attention to the radical challenge posed by Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s Navayāna Buddhism or neo-Buddhism. The essays in the book further compare approaches to varṇa and caste developed by modern thinkers such as M. K. Gandhi and S. Radhakrishnan with Ambedkar’s criticisms and his departures from mainstream appraisals. With its interdisciplinary methodology, combining insights from literature, philosophy, political science and sociology, the volume explores contemporary critiques of caste from the perspective of Buddhism and its historical context. By analyzing religion through the lens of caste and gender, it also forays into the complex relationship between religion and politics, while offering a rigorous study of the textual tradition of Buddhism in India. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of Indian philosophy, Buddhist studies, Indology, literature (especially Sanskrit and Pāli), exclusion and discrimination studies, history, political studies, women studies, sociology, and South Asian studies.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India
Author: V. Geetha
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2021-12-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030803759

This book offers a reading of Bhimrao Ambedkar’s engagement with the idea and practice of socialism in India by linking it to his lifelong political and philosophical concerns: the annihilation of the caste system, untouchability and the moral and philosophical systems that justify either. Rather than view his ideas through a socialist lens, the author suggests that it is important to measure the validity of socialist thought and practice in the Indian context, through his critique of the social totality. The book argues its case by presenting a broad and connected overview of his thought world and the global and local influences that shaped it. The themes that are taken up for discussion include: his understanding of the colonial rule and the colonial state; history and progress; nationalism and the questions he posed the socialists; his radical critique of the caste system and Brahmancal philosophies, and his unusual interpretation of Buddhism.

Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages

Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages
Author: Prathama Banerjee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2024-10-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 135035502X

The essays in this volume explore the myriad ways in which caste (varna and jati) has been theorized and critiqued in multiple philosophical, religious, logical and narrative traditions in India. Spanning ancient, medieval and modern times, and in diverse classical and vernacular languages, the chapters show how the social fact of caste, and imaginations of kinship, community and humanity were historically subject to epistemological, spiritual, and existential debate in both elite and popular circles in India. Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages seeks to bridge the interdisciplinary gap between historians and sociologists by focusing on texts that help us think across the sociological and philosophical, the political and the religious, the epistemological and the aesthetic, and indeed, the elite and the popular. The volume also sets up a conversation between scholars specializing in different regions, archives, and historical periods and demonstrates how caste imaginaries have been deeply diverse and contested in India's past. Reconstructing these diverse traditions of social and existential criticism helps us in our contemporary struggles against caste hierarchy and untouchability and enriches our contemporary critical repertoire.

Bangalore Girls

Bangalore Girls
Author: Supriya Baily
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2024-11-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1538198029

Bangalore is looked at in depth in Supriya Baily's exploration of one of India’s most dynamic cities. Booklist praises the book, saying, "This deeply researched book is especially timely in light of recent gender-based violence in India.” Through the stories of a group of school girls in what used to be India’s most progressive city, Bangalore Girls reveals how the freedom women once enjoyed in the “Silicon Valley of India” has been eroded by the rising tide of right-wing nationalism, misogyny, and religious fundamentalism. Author Supriya Baily explores one of India’s most dynamic cities through the eyes of a group of women who grew up and went to school together in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As they enjoyed the trappings of a burgeoning middle class, these classmates also watched their country move to the right politically and socially, spurred on by the Ayodhya riots that tore down the Babri Masjid Mosque in 1992 and the sectarian violence that followed—a Hindu nationalist tide that continues to rise today. The book offers us a window into these women’s lives and shows us how they are responding to the breakdown of progressivism across multiple domains. They discuss not only their own safety and the educational opportunities and challenges confronting their families; they also talk about such society-wide issues as anti-Muslim sentiment, the backlash against science, and the dangers of independent thinking. Baily gives voice to their worries about political cults of personality and government policies that seek to marginalize and ostracize anyone who speaks out against the authorities, but especially women. As Indian prime minister Narendra Modi now consecrates the new Ram Temple in Ayodhya, it has never been more important to understand the wave of nationalism that began in 1992. The stories of these women told by Supriya Baily are a must-read tale of extremism’s threat to women’s rights and human rights.

The Ambedkar–Gandhi Debate

The Ambedkar–Gandhi Debate
Author: Bindu Puri
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9811686866

This book reconstructs the philosophical issues informing the debate between the makers of modern India: Ambedkar and Gandhi. At one level, this debate was about a set of different but interconnected issues: caste and social hierarchies, untouchability, Hinduism, conversion, temple entry, and political separatism. The introduction to this book provides a brief overview of the engagements and conflicts in Gandhi and Ambedkar's central arguments. However, at another level, this book argues that the debate can be philosophically re-interpreted as raising their differences on the following issues: The nature of the self, The relationship between the individual self and the community, The appropriate relationship between the constitutive encumbrances of the self and a conception of justice, The relationship between memory, tradition, and self-identity. Ambedkar and Gandhi’s contrary conceptions of the self, history,itihaas, community and justice unpack incommensurable world views. These can be properly articulated only as very different answers to questions about the relationship between the present and the past. This book raises these questions and also establishes the link between the Ambedkar--Gandhi debate in the early 20th century and its re-interpretation as it resonates in the imagination and writing of marginalized social groups in the present times.

Ethical Theory in Global Perspective

Ethical Theory in Global Perspective
Author: Michael Hemmingsen
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2024-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438496877

Ethical Theory in Global Perspective provides an easy-to-teach introduction to ethical theory from a uniquely global perspective. In addition to key Western ethical theories—such as virtue ethics, consequentialism, various deontological theories, and care ethics—moral theories from a range of East Asian, South Asian, and African philosophical traditions and schools are also discussed, including Akan philosophy, Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and both orthodox and heterodox schools of classical Indian philosophy. In short, this book is a key resource for educators who want to diversify their ethical theory curricula but are not sure how, as well as those currently teaching comparative ethics looking for a single textbook that covers a range of philosophical traditions in a clear, approachable way.

Land of No Buddha

Land of No Buddha
Author: Richard P. Hayes
Publisher: Windhorse Publications
Total Pages: 302
Release: 1998
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781899579129

Writing with a perspective that comes from more than twenty years of study and practice, Richard Hayes casts a critical eye over modern society and the teachings of Buddhism as they flow into the West.

Ambedkar's Political Philosophy

Ambedkar's Political Philosophy
Author: Valerian Rodrigues
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2024-09-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0198925417

Ambedkar's Political Philosophy is a critical exploration of the political theory of B R Ambedkar, the Indian thinker and leader who championed the cause of the socially oppressed. Rodrigues examines the key concepts that Ambedkar used to envision a new framework of public life that would overcome the problems of marginality, degradation, and domination. This framework is based upon an idea of the human endowed with the attributes of reasoning, moral capacity, self-respect, and a unique dignity that collectively entitles human beings to a distinct consideration as moral equals despite other differences. Ambedkar deployed the idea of the human not merely to contend against the social institutions of caste, untouchability, and other forms of marginalities but also to interrogate texts, traditions, and modes of social dominance. In a democracy, the representational, constitutional, and institutional architecture of state power is geared to sustain and reinforce itself. Such an architecture, however, may prove feeble unless shored up by the moral foundations of societies and backed by religious sanction. In Ambedkar's view, only Buddhism, as a religion, fits the bill. In this book, the author engages with Ambedkar's primary works in both English and Marathi and the debates around them, and situates his ideas in the South Asian context, making it a comprehensive and insightful commentary on his political philosophy and its relevance for contemporary society.

The Yogasūtra of Patañjali

The Yogasūtra of Patañjali
Author: Pradeep P. Gokhale
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2020-05-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000041611

This book offers a systematic and radical introduction to the Buddhist roots of Pātañjala-yoga, or the Yoga system of Patañjali. By examining each of 195 aphorisms (sūtras) of the Yogasūtra and discussing the Yogabhāṣya, it shows that traditional and popular views on Pātañjala-yoga obscure its true nature. The book argues that Patañjali’s Yoga contains elements rooted in both orthodox and heterodox philosophical traditions, including Sāṅkhya, Jaina and Buddhist thought. With a fresh translation and a detailed commentary on the Yogasūtra, the author unearths how several of the terms, concepts and doctrines in Patañjali’s Yoga can be traced to Buddhism, particularly the Abhidharma Buddhism of Vasubandhu and the early Yogācāra of Asaṅga. The work presents the Yogasūtra of Patañjali as a synthesis of two perspectives: the metaphysical perspective of Sāṅkhya and the empirical–psychological perspective of Buddhism. Based on a holistic understanding of Yoga, the study explores key themes of the text, such as meditative absorption, means, supernormal powers, isolation, Buddhist conceptions of meditation and the interplay between Sāṅkhya and Buddhist approaches to suffering and emancipation. It further highlights several new findings and clarifications on textual interpretation and discrepancies. An important intervention in Indian and Buddhist philosophy, this book opens up a new way of looking at the Yoga of Patañjali in the light of Buddhism beyond standard approaches and will greatly interest scholars and researchers of Buddhist studies, Yoga studies, Indian philosophy, philosophy in general, literature, religion and comparative studies, Indian and South Asian Studies and the history of ideas.