Hello everyone, my name Mithilesh Kumar Jha
and I teach political science in the department
of humanities and social sciences, IIT - Guwahati
and the course I am offering this semester
to you is introduction to modern Indian political
thought. This course is open to UG and PG
students of humanities and social sciences,
as well as the natural science and engineering
students.
This course modern Indian political thought
is one of the fascinating areas of the scholarly
debates and discussion in contemporary India.
It also signifies a shift away from excessive
reliance upon Eurocentric views, methods and
concepts to study and interpret Indian society
and politics. The major objective of this
course is to introduce you all to some of
the key modern Indian thinkers and their ideas,
which helped in shaping the society and politics
of modern India.
We have a number of thinkers in this course,
and I have tried to make them representative
of all saids and opinion and intellectual
tradition that help in shaping the modern
Indian political discourse. So we have a number
of thinkers starting from the father of modern
Indian political thought Rajaram Mohan Rai,
and his views on religious reforms, modern
education and also on freedom of press.
Through Rabindranath Tagore, we will study
the ideas on nationalism, cosmopolitanism
and also his idea of men. Aurobindo Ghose,
through him we try to study the concepts of
self, community, and religion in Indian tradition.
Through M. K. Gandhi, we will try to study
and examine his views on Hind Swaraj or Swaraj,
and his critique of modern civilization. Through
the ideas of Mohammed Iqbal we will try to
understand community, religion and nation.
Through V. D. Savarkar we will study this
various interesting ideas on Hinduism and
Hindutva, which continue to save our modern
Indian politics in contemporary times.
Through the thinkers like Jawaharlal Nehru
and B. R. Ambedkar, we will try to examine
some of the key or fonding ideas that shape
the modern Indian politics like secularism,
liberal democracy and constitutional morality.
Through the ideas of Pandit Ramabai, we will
examine or study gender and caste.
Similarly, through Ram Manohar Lohiya, we
will examine some of the tenets of socialist
ideas and thought that was there in modern
Indian political thinking and tradition. So
we will examine his ideas on caste and class
and also his views on Indian languages. So
this course is very fascinating and designed
in such a way where we will examine or study
at least most of the said and opinions of
intellectual traditions in modern India, which
continue to resonate in our contemporary politics.
And interesting fact about these thinkers
are, they were also deeply engaged in the
politics of their time, and also the most
articulative of the major challenges and also
they have the vision for the future of India.
And we are in a way influenced by their thoughts
and ideas and we discuss about some of the
contemporary challenges of our politics like
be it caste, democracy, secularism, nationalism,
or cosmopolitanism.
So I hope this course will be fascinating
for all of us, and I look forward to more
interaction and invite you all to join this
course. The evaluation for this course is
weekly assignments which will constitute 30%
of marks and there is also written exam. I
would like to tell you something about the
method of the teaching, where I request you
all ask your questions, queries and comments,
and you will get my response or from my TAs
within 24 hours.
Some of the text that we are going to do in
this course, is by Ramachandra Guha makers
of modern India or Thomas Pantham and Deutsch,
their edited work Political Thought in Modern
India, and also the recent work of P. K. Datta
and Sanjay Palshikar Indian Political Thought
published from OUP in collaboration with ICSSR
in 2013. We will be also looking at some other
text which I will tell you like V. R. Mehta,
Akash Singh, and Shikha Mohapatra, Faisal
Devji, and many others as we proceed in this
course.
So I look forward to hear from you and once
again I invite you all to join this course
and thank you for listening to me. Thank you
all.
