1st Edition
Indian Modernity Contradictions, Paradoxes and Possibilities
Indian Modernity (first published in 1998) acquires a new meaning today. While it critiques a techno-militaristic model of modernization, it visualizes alternative possibilities to give a distinctively new definition to our modernity. It engages the reader in dreaming of a new path to modernity beyond its present contradictions and paradoxes with its lyrical style, philosophic insights, sensitivity to deep religiosity, life-affirming femininity and, most of all, sociological imagination.
This book continues to hold relevance for social science students and researchers, teachers, and visionaries, despite the passage of time.
This title is co-published with Aakar Books. Print editions not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)
Preface to the New Edition
Preface
Introduction—Critical Engagement with Modernity
I. Sociology and Modernity
II. Advent of Postmodernity
III. Modernity and Indian Social Reality
1. Intellectual Traditions in Modern India
I. Intellectuals and Their Ideals: A Conceptual Clarification
II. Birth of Modern Intellectuals: Colonialism and the Vision of New India
III. Intellectuals and the Project of Modernity in Post-Independence India
IV. Need for Self-Introspection
2. Limits to Secular Modernity: Religiosity and its Possibilities
I. Soft Secularism and its Gains
II. Beginning of a Militant Agenda: Secularism an Modernity
III. Religion and its Altered Modes of Functioning
IV. Discontents of Secular Thinking and Necessity of Spiritual Religion
V. Religion, Secularism and Contemporary India
3. Assertion of Femininity: Modernity and its Ambiguities
I. Cultural Ideals of Indian Womanhood
II. Imagining a New Woman
III. Feminist Challenge
IV. Feminist Journey to Emancipation: Overcoming Communalism
V. Consumerism: Yet Another Obstacle
VI. Towards an Alternate Agenda
4. Culture as an Arena of Struggle: Debates on Tradition, Modernity and Revival
I. Understanding Culture
II. Great Cultural Ideals
III. Onslaught of Modernity
IV. Globalization, Consumerism and Mass Culture
V. Colonization of Religion
VI. Limits to Cultural Relativism
5. Conflict of Worldviews: Imagining an Emancipatory Vision
I. Mythologization of Development
II. Cultural Narcissism
III. Dalit Assertion
IV. Emerging Conflicts
V. Alternative Worldview
Conclusion—Spiritualizing Modernity
Index
Biography
Avijit Pathak is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
