This book is a collection of essays by prominent thinkers on the historist and humanist transcendence of the caste system such that an authentic democracy can bloom in India. It locates caste as not only a social problem, but a moral evil and schizophrenia affecting India civilization.
Besides reflecting on Jotiba Phule, Karl Marx, and B.R. Ambedkar, this book also traverses through Nietzschean genealogy, communalism in colonial India, the need for radical education to fulfil the democratic revolution, the literature of Triveni Sangh, questions of social exclusion and inequality, the story of Eklavya in the Mahabharata and the asking of pertinent questions to the Indian left.
This book is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)
Introduction: Caste and the Need of Philosophical Humanism
Murzban Jal
1. Contesting Brahmanical Hegemony of Knowledge: Jotiba Phule’s Path for Alternative Education
Umesh Bagade
2. Developing a Nietzschean Genealogical Critique of the Metaphysical and Moral Underpinnings of the Hindu Caste System
Rajesh Sampath
3. The Communal Question in Colonial India: A Study of Ambedkar’s Approach
S.K. Chahal
4. Ambedkar, the Unfulfi lled Democratic Revolution and the Politics of Education
Dilip Chavan
5. Triveni Sangh in Literature and the Literature of
Triveni Sangh
Pramod Ranjan
6. Caste, Social Exclusion and Inequality in Independent India
Rajendra P. Mamgain
7. Thinking Identity Through the Mahābhārata: Story of Ekalavya
Daniel Raveh
8. Asking Questions to the Indian Left
Murzban Jal
9. Thoughts for the Indian Left
Murzban Jal
Contributors
Biography
Murzban Jal is Director and Professor at the Centre for Educational Studies, Indian Institute of Education, Pune, India.
