The paper explores the dynamics of the phenomenon of Development Induced Displacement and the theoretical, legal, and policy level issues which have impeded the fluent process of implementation of development projects in India. Modern India has found itself embroiled in this tussle between the development plans of the State at the macro level and their undesirable consequences for the specific project affected people. Though the exigencies of time and the logic of the liberalization policy demand the continuous articulation of development (...) projects, it is equally imperative to transcend the disempowering effects of displacement on its people. Despite recent initiatives by the government, concrete policy statements and laws governing the issues of compensation and resettlement are found wanting. The paper argues that there is an urgent need for the state to reach a necessary balance between its efforts to augur development and to make it sustainable, just, and equitous. The problems encountered in the allocation of compensation and resettlement in such projects form the focus of the article. The experiences of dam-induced displacement at the Sardar Sarovar Project in the Narmada River Valley Project in Gujarat in India are highlighted to serve as illustrations. (shrink)

The cult of the Kanphata Yogis is a definite unite within Hinduism, and its study is essential for understanding this phase of the religious life of India. the book is divided into three sections. The first two sections comprising chapters 1 - 13 deal with the cult and history of this sec. the third section containing chapters 14 - 16 opens with the Sanskrit Text Goraksastaka and its English rendering and annotations. The book is fully documented. It has a preface, (...) Glossary, Bibliography, Plates and General Index. This book is an attempt to present a systematic and consistent account of the philosophical background of the spiritual culture associated with the names of Yogi Gorakhnath and other adepts of the natha school. (shrink)

The piece contrasts the functioning realities of the British Asian diaspora - music, violence, sex, food, life - with the institutionalized production of knowledge about that diaspora, in particular as regards its expressive cultures. It focuses on the emergence of the so-called `Asian Underground' within a contemporary Benjaminian context of `mechanical reproduction' and explores the opportunistic relationship between middle-class elites and their efforts to appropriate a certain radical chic. It goes on to suggest that this is a deliberate process, which (...) not only absolves a voyeuristic whiteness of its hegemonic associations, but also allows the Asian middle class to conjure out of sight class differentials, even as it struggles with its own dependency on the cultural lifeblood of the urban poor or the semiotically disadvantaged. (shrink)

The success of India's democracy hinges on the pivotal role played by its auxiliary institutions in negotiating major challenges through slow and persistent transformation. However, an objective audit of the performance of these institutions in the recent past would indicate a decline in operations and an acute crisis of corruption. Key institutions responsible for governance have been put under the spotlight by an alert and mobilized civil society, urging immediate measures for ensuring their operational efficiency and integrity. This essay undertakes (...) a critical examination of the present performance and efficiency of major democratic institutions in India, in the light of their prescribed roles and the malaise of corruption that plagues them. It argues that in order to articulate a comprehensive institutional response to the problem, relevant measures of political reform and constant vigil by civil society would prove crucial. The article is divided into six sections; first, a brief outline of the structure and changing nature of the institutional political set-up in India is provided; the second section examines the existing literature on , and the third section highlights the increasing incidence of corruption in India at various politico-administrative tiers. The fourth section delineates the inception and role of anti-corruption institutions in India, signifying the early response to corruption. The fifth section critically reviews the theoretical and statistical evidence of performance-decline in the major institutions at present and gauges the potency of corruption; the sixth section explores the existing and prospective institutional responses for tackling corruption and the final section presents concluding observations. (shrink)

This article investigates the changing currency of racial politics in jazz music formations, with a comparative focus on Nazi and contemporary Germany. While it is noted that music articulates politics in an oblique or metonymic way, in highly-charged contexts music is lent further propositional capacity. This is highlighted in Nazi Germany where jazz music was seen as barbaric, `dark' and uncivilized, and classical music represented order and cultural supremacy. These dynamics continue but, often, in a slightly askew form for contemporary (...) articulations of racial essentialisms: present-day fascist music is a repository of whiteness, but `darkness' is sought in this putatively `white' music, while jazz now serves as a moniker of comfort, and an `antiquated civility'. Each of these musical cultures invokes hybridity in a differential sense - either hybridity is suppressed or it is masked within racially essential matrices. These musical trajectories form the backdrop to an appreciation of the overlooked yet significant jazz dance fusion scene in contemporary Germany - where hybridity is fetishized, arguably as a means of renegotiating violent histories and contemporary racisms in Europe. (shrink)

Quest after values and their realization constitute innate necessity for human being. This presupposes knowledge of Reality and knowledge of the value-schema. In this context, a distinction can be drawn between descriptive awareness of Reality and prescriptive awareness of Values. For the latter, the pῡrva mimāmsā system postulates ‘codanā’ as a means of knowledge. In Indian Culture, two types of values are enunciated, viz. preyas and śreyas. The Taittirῑya upaniṣad puts forth a five-dimensional theory of human constitution and accordingly advocates (...) a fivefold value-schema. In general, theory of puruṣartha has been accepted by all the cultural traditions of India with variant details. It would be interesting and enlightening to discuss different aspects and issues concerning this theory. Knowledgeable scholars may delineate on related issues as well. (shrink)

If the good is what people desire or strive after, the Indian thinkers very early on developed a theory of hierarchy of goods: these are artha (material wealth), kāma (pleasure), dharma (righteousness), and mokṣa (spiritual freedom). Leaving aside the question about precisely how the first two in this list have to be ranked, one might suggest that the first two are what human beings do strive after, while the last two are what they ought to strive after. Such a distinction (...) between what human beings in fact strive after and what they ought to strive after is indicated in a distinction between the śreya (morally good) and the preya (pleasant) found in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, although it may have to be conceded that the is – ought distinction did not come to the forefront of Hindu moral thinking. One may as a matter of fact construct an argument to prove that even mokṣa, the supreme value, is not a mere ought – to‐be. The argument would run as follows: we do want to get rid of pain and enjoy a state of happiness. This natural desire, by implication, may be extended to a complete freedom from pain and enjoyment of an uninterrupted state of bliss (even if no one ordinarily posits this as his or her goal). It is only on reflection, and after reaching the first two goals and finding oneself dissatisfied with them, that one self‐consciously posits the last two goals – the third to begin with and, as a result of experiencing a similar dissatisfaction once it has been reached, subsequently the fourth and highest good, which is not a mere ought‐to‐be but an ideal state of being. If the English phrase “the highest good” translates into niḥśreyasaḥ in Sanskrit, then mokṣa is that state of excellence than which there is nothing greater and which leaves, upon attainment, nothing else to be desired. (shrink)

As a pioneer Christian apology written as early as 1862, this work previously titled differently such as Hindu Philosophical Systems : A Rational Refutation (1862). A Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems (1897) and A Mirror of the Hindu Philosophical Systems (1911), is rated as scholarly as Krishna Mohun Banerjea's Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy of 1861. The approach of both these works to the Hindu philosophical systems was negative and it is not acceptable to Indian Christians any (...) more. There have been many later works from Indian Christians scholars emphassing the possible contributions of one or other school of Indian philosophy to Christian thought. Whereas the merit of these two pioneering works was that they provide a Christian response to all the six systems of Hindu philosophy together comprehensively. For the later Indian Christian scholars to follow Inclusivism in Theology of Religious, somebody had to start at the school of Exclusivism and the two pioneers Goreh and Banerjea undertook this task. (shrink)