1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to Indian Ethics Women, Justice, Bioethics and Ecology
This companion volume focuses on the application and practical ramifications of Indian ethics. Here Indian dharma ethics is moved from its preeminent religious origins and classical metaethical proclivity to, what Kant would call, practical reason – or in Aristotle’s poignant terms, ēhikos and phronēis –and in more modern parlance normative ethics. Our study examines a wide range of social and normative challenges facing people in such diverse areas as women’s rights, infant ethics, politics, law, justice, bioethics and ecology. As a contemporary volume, it builds linkages between existing theories and emerging moral issues, problems and questions in today’s India in the global arena. The volume brings together contributions from some 40 philosophers and contemporary thinkers on practical ethics, exploring both the scope and boundaries or limits of ethics as applied to everyday and real-life concerns and socio-economic challenges facing India in the context of a troubled globalizing world. As such, this collection draws on multiple forms of writing and research, including narrative ethics, interviews, critical case studies and textual analyses.
The book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students of Indian philosophy, Indian ethics, women and infant issues, social justice, environmental ethics, bioethics, animal ethics and cross-cultural responses to dominant Western moral thought. It will also be useful to researchers working on the intersection of Gandhi, sustainability, ecology, theology, feminism, comparative philosophy and dharma studies.
List of Contributors xiv
Preface xxiv
Foreword xxviii
Shyam RanganathanIntroduction
1
Purushottama Bilimoria and Amy Rayner
Prologue: India in the World: The Historical Context for Intercultural Ethicality 24
Dipesh Chakrabarty
PART I
Health, Ethics and Public Welfare 35
1 Public Health, Care and Bioethics in Modern India 37
Purushottama Bilimoria2
COVID-19: Lessons in Ethics for Social Assets 54
Om Prakash Dwivedi
3 Biotechnology and Ethics in India 63
Jyoti Dineshrao Bhosale
4 Moral Responsibility and Pharmaceutical Companies 75
Gauri Seth (Verma)
5 Mental Illness and Mental Health Justice 86
Purushottama Bilimoria
6 Embryo Ethics: Traditional Hindu Perspective 99
Piyali Mitra
7 Abortion, Reproductive Rights and the Unborn: Between Tradition and Modernity 108
Purushottama Bilimoria, M. K. Sridhar and Arvind Sharma
8 Female Infanticide: Ethics of Death in the Shadow of Motherhood and Childbirth in India 121
Purushottama Bilimoria and Renuka Sharma
9 The Theatre of Surrogacy: Ethics of Surrogacy in India 135
Kelly Amal Dhru and Purushottama Bilimoria
10 Dying with Dignity: Sallekhanā vis-a- vis Euthanasia – Normative, Bioethical and Legal Ramifications 142
Purushottama Bilimoria
PART II
Ecology, Sustainability and Spirituality 159
11 Ethics of Genetic Modification: Commerce without Morality and Science without Humanity – A Gandhian Response 161
Gunjan Pradhan Sinha
12 Ethics, Science and Sustainability: A Gandhian Alternative 170
Bidisha Mallik
13 Climate Change and Development Ethics after Amartya Sen 184
Lindsay Dawson
14 WATER: Rites, Rights and Ecological Justice in India 197
Purushottama Bilimoria and M. K. Sridhar
15 Protection of the Indian Coastal Ecosystem through Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notifications: An Analysis 211
M. Sakthivel and Nagma Khan
16 Sustaining Dharma, Sustainable Ecology: Dharma as Rural Environmental Ethics 223
Pankaj Jain
17 On Understanding the Tribe Person’s Worldview 233
Sujata Miri
18 Yoga as Therapeutic Animal Ethics 239
Kenneth Valpey
19 Animal Justice and Moral Mendacity 252
Purushottama Bilimoria
20 You Are What You Eat: Animal and Dietary Ethics in the Early Indian Traditions 264
Nishant Upadhyay
21 Nature and Humans in the 21st Century: Some Reflections 277
Manoranjan Mohanty
PART III
Engaged Ethics and Ecofeminism 281
22 Dharma Morality as Virtue Ethics 283
Nicholas F. Gier
23 Engaged Jainism: Jaina Ethics in a Living Universe 292
Christopher Key Chapple
24 Buddhist Spirituality and Social Activism in the 20th–21st Centuries 302
Sallie B. King
25 Ecofeminism from a Buddhist Critical Perspective 313
Rita M. Gross
26 Caregiver vs. Citizen? Reflections on Ecofeminism from Kerala State, India 322
J. Devika
27 Humanizing the Feminine Earth: An Ecofeminist Perspective on the Corporeal Nature 335
Meera Baindur
28 Ecofeminism and Hindu Tantra 350
Rita Sherma
PART IV
Ethics and Politics: Contexts and Applications 361
29 Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee and Certain Scenes of Teaching 363
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
30 Towards an Ethics of Location 378
Morny Joy
31 The Question of Universalist Justice: Transnational Encounters in Feminism 387
Sara Ahmed
32 Activating the Imagination: Harmony, Justice, and Gender in Tagore’s Thought 394
Esha Niyogi De
33 Violence and Humanity: Or, Vulnerability as Political Subjectivity 402
Anupama Rao
34 From Victim to Survivor: Then and Now Interviews with Flavia Agnes 413
Flavia Agnes and Amy Rayner (Interviewer)
35 Marking Time: The Gendered Present and the Nuclear Future 424
Kumkum Sangari
36 The Gandhian Touch: Morals in Politics 435
Devaki Jain
37 Approaching Gandhian Metaethics: Some Methodological Issues 444
Samiksha Goyal
38 Globalization, Gandhi and Free Trade 454
Sanjay Lal
PART V
Women and the Limits of Traditional Ethics 461
39 Women and Ethics in Hindu Thought and Practice 463
Mandakranta Bose
40 Women and Values in Traditional India: A Feminist Probe 471
Anindita Niyogi Balslev
41 Normalization of Dowry 479
Praveena Kodoth
42 The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA): Gandhian Ethics and Feminist Ethics in Action 489
Margaret A. McLaren
43 The Emergent Moral Agent: A Feminism-Buddhism Exchange 498
Vrinda Dalmiya
44 Gandhian Ethics and Feminist Perspectives: In a Somewhat Different Voice 508
Bindu Puri
45 Is Controlled Śakti to the Bharatanāṭyam Practitioner as Uncontrolled Śakti Is to the Devadāsī? 518
Sandra Sattler
Index 527
Biography
Purushottama Bilimoria works in the areas of Indian and cross-cultural philosophy, continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, critical thinking and diaspora studies. He is a Distinguished Professor of Law and International Philosophy at O. P. Jindal Global University, and a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University, Delhi-NCR, India. A Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne, he is also Permanent Fellow of the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies; he was named Lead Scientist (in 2021–2022) of the Purushottama Centre for Study of Indian Philosophy and Culture at Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, in Moscow; Co-founder of Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and also serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Sophia and Associate Editor Journal of Dharma Studies. They have been a recipient of several awards: Distinguished Fulbright-Nehru Excellence in Teaching and Research Fellowship; Rockefeller Foundation, Templeton Foundation, Ford Foundation, Australia Research Council. His recent publications include Testimony in Indian Philosophy (revised, 2018); History of Indian Philosophy (with Amy Rayner, 2018); Religion and Sustainability (edited with Rita D. Sherma, 2021); Contemplative Studies and Hinduism (edited with Rita D. Sherma, 2021); Contemplative Studies and Jainism (co-edited with R. Sherma and C. Bohenac, 2023); The Routledge Companion to Indian Ethics: Women, Justice, Bioethics and Ecology (with Amy Rayner 2023); Engaging Philosophies of Religion; Thinking Across Boundaries (with Gereon Kopf, 2023); Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion (with Andrew Irvine, 2009, 2024); and under 200 articles in professional journals. A scholastic institution in its own right, he continues to teach and be a mentor at Cal State University (San Francisco and Long Beach, California) and periodically at the University of California, University of San Francisco, Ashoka University, and the University of Melbourne.
Amy Rayner is a graduate of the University of Melbourne (philosophy). Amy has worked alongside Purushottama Bilimoria for 15 years, assisting with editing, research and writing. She was the editorial secretary of Sophia and is an editorial assistant for Sophia Studies in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures. She served as Assistant Editor and Project Secretary for publications including Globalization, Transnationalism, Gender and Ecological Engagements (2015); Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion (2009); and Routledge’s acclaimed History of Indian Philosophy (2018). Her experience in Buddhism has ranged from an interest in philosophy and meditation to engagement with social change, education and well-being. She qualified as a Buddhist Chaplain and secular spiritual carer in Canberra, Australia, in 2011 and worked at a Buddhist school and orphanage for children living with HIV in Bihar, India. Inspired by the authors of this book, in 2022, Amy trained and now teaches secular ethics at her local primary school in regional Australia.
