Link to the online publication
Link to the online publication
Abstract: The principles of liberal political theory are often said to be “freestanding,” but are they indeed sufficiently detached from the cultural setting where they emerged to be intelligible to people with other backgrounds? To answer this question, this essay examines the Indian secularism debate and develops a hypothesis on the process whereby liberal principles […]
This essay investigates the possibility of formulating a much needed new direction for postcolonial studies by focusing on a certain thread of argument in Edward Said’s Orientalism, one that suggests that Orientalism is more an account of how the West experienced the Orient than it is a description about a place in the world, […]
One of the convictions in religious studies and elsewhere is about the role dialogues play: by fulfilling the need for understanding, dialogues reduce violence. In this paper, we analyze two examples from Hinduism studies to show that precisely the opposite is true: dialogue about Hinduism has become the harbinger of violence. This is not because […]
Review of: Religion and the Secular: Historical and Colonial Formations. Edited by Timothy Fitzgerald. London: Equinox Publishing, 2007. 288 pp. ISBN-10 184553266X, link to the publisher download the publication here
In the aftermath of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), European representations of Eastern cultures have returned to preoccupy the Western academy. Much of this work reiterates the point that nineteenth-century Orientalist scholarship was a corpus of knowledge that was implicated in and reinforced colonial state formation in India. The pivotal role of native informants in the […]
Early modern political thought transformed toleration from a prudential consideration into a moral obligation. Three questions need to be answered by any explanation of this transition: Did religious toleration really become an obligation of the state in this period? If this was the case, how could tolerating heresy and idolatry possibly become a moral duty […]