The Common Cause [electronic resource] : Postcolonial Ethics and the Practice of Democracy, 1900-1955
Gandhi, Leela.
Europeans and Americans tend to hold the opinion that democracy is a uniquely Western inheritance, but in The Common Cause, Leela Gandhi recovers stories of an alternate version, describing a transnational history of democracy in the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of ethics in the broad sense of disciplined self-fashioning. Gandhi identifies a shared culture of perfectionism across imperialism, fascism, and liberalism-an ethic that excluded the ordinary and unexceptional. But, she also illuminates an ethic of moral imperfectionism, a set of anticolonial, antif
Description based upon print version of record.
Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction - Moral Imperfection: An Ethics for Democracy; 1. After Virtue: The Strange Case of Belle Époque Socialist Antimaterialism; 2. On Descent: Stories from the Gurus of Modern India; 3. Elementary Virtues: The Great War and the Crisis of European Man; 4. Inconsequence: Some Little- Known Mutinies Around 1946; Epilogue: Paths of Ahimsaic Historiography; Notes; Index
Europeans and Americans tend to hold the opinion that democracy is a uniquely Western inheritance, but in The Common Cause, Leela Gandhi recovers stories of an alternate version, describing a transnational history of democracy in the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of ethics in the broad sense of disciplined self-fashioning. Gandhi identifies a shared culture of perfectionism across imperialism, fascism, and liberalism-an ethic that excluded the ordinary and unexceptional. But, she also illuminates an ethic of moral imperfectionism, a set of anticolonial, antif
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on print version record.
Anti-imperialist movements -- India.
Democracy -- Moral and ethical aspects.
Postcolonialism -- India.
Postcolonialism -- Moral and ethical aspects.
Democracy
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism
Anti-imperialist movements
Political Science
Law, Politics & Government
Political Theory of the State