Gandhi's Concept of Action and Identity Politics

Pani, Narendar (2010) Gandhi's Concept of Action and Identity Politics. Asian Philosophy, 20 (2). pp. 175-194. ISSN 0955-2367

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Abstract:	The paradox of Gandhi being treated as an ivory-tower idealist despite being one of the most successful political leaders of the twentieth century, can be traced to his using a method to understand social processes that is fundamentally different from the dominant tendency to reduce reality to an underlying system. The fact that his method did not fit into the ideological systems that dominated the twentieth century contributed to it being ignored. This paper seeks to revisit the Gandhian method by first identifying the limitations of viewing democracies entirely in terms of systems. It then goes on to explore Gandhi’s alternative view of reality as a mass of actions. It finally uses this philosophical method to understand a rather violent example of identity politics, namely the destruction of the Babri Masjid in the Indian town of Ayodhya.
Item Type:	Journal Paper
Additional Information:	Copyright belongs to the Publisher
Subjects:	School of Social Sciences > Sociology
Divisions:	Schools > Social Sciences
Date Deposited:	07 Sep 2011 11:08
Last Modified:	08 May 2015 09:48
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2010.484953
Related URLs:
Funders:	UNSPECIFIED
Projects:	UNSPECIFIED
DOI:	10.1080/09552367.2010.484953
URI:	http://eprints.nias.res.in/id/eprint/209

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