bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Christian Philosophy and Christ Crucified
Authors: Moser Paul K.
Published: January 2019

What is distinctive about Christian philosophy? The history of Christian philosophy does not offer a consensus answer, and much of this history fails to offer a definite answer. One result is a widespread lack of understanding of what this Christian discipline consists of. In this chapter, Paul K. Moser contends that genuine Christian philosophy is Christ-shaped in putting the person of the crucified Christ at its center. Moser draws from the personalism of the apostle Paul regarding divine wisdom to clarify what is distinctive in Christian philosophy. He characterizes the relevant evidence for God in Christ crucified as scandalous power in its being contrary to human expectations. He also finds that the evidence is fragmentary relative to an adequate “worldview,” because it fails to answer many pressing questions, including many questions about unjust suffering. Moser names “resurrectionitis” as part of the problem: that is, an emphasis on the divine power of resurrection to the relative neglect of Christ crucified.
Beyond Two-Valued Logics
Authors: Ochs Peter
Published: January 2019

For this Jewish philosopher, the turn to Christian philosophy, stimulated by Alvin Plantinga and others, was a welcome event, challenging the hegemonic modern model of rationality. Twenty years later, Peter Ochs remains hopeful about the turn to Christian philosophy, but is also disappointed. He is hopeful because this turn has encouraged turns to other scripturally grounded traditions of rationality as well, including Jewish philosophy. He is also disappointed because the largest sub-society of Christian philosophers has tended to uphold the hegemony of the modern model of logic: practicing and promoting types of two-valued, propositional logic as the standard model of rationality even when applied to subjects toward which Christianity has privileged access. While his appreciation for the turn to Christian philosophy is stronger than his disappointments, he focuses here on the disappointments alone, so that, with limited space, he can address them more fully.
‘All Things are Full of Gods’
Authors: Lehoux Daryn
Published: January 2019

This chapter challenges the widespread claim that science in antiquity is, at least in part, characterized by a move to naturalistic explanations from mythological or supernatural ones. By looking closely at both the contents and the historical development of the sciences in antiquity, the chapter shows that theology plays important roles in ancient science, and does so along three distinct lines: the creationist (where the cosmos was made or shaped by some kind of superhuman agency), the divine-governmental (involving some kind of immanent deity, but not necessarily a creator), and the teleological (in which external forces guide or direct the universe).
Naturalist Tendencies in Medieval Science
Authors: Shank Michael H.
Published: January 2019

This chapter argues that the masters of arts in the new universities institutionalized approaches akin to methodological naturalism in the populous medieval faculties of arts. Explanations of natural phenomena were to be justified or refuted by reason and sense perception, without appealing to the supernatural. This arts faculty naturalism diffused widely as the universities spread, and deeply shaped the intellectual landscape (e.g. Galileo). The masters of arts’ vision of their methodological autonomy also characterized theologians, many of whom were masters of arts. The Parisian condemnations of 1277 illustrate this outlook’s strength, not its weakness. Leading intellectuals of the era illustrate these naturalistic trends by using natural causes to explain occurrences that their predecessors and contemporaries treated as marvels.
Removing God from Biology
Authors: Ruse Michael
Published: January 2019

The Scientific Revolution changed the root metaphor of science from that of an organism to that of a machine. Mechanism. This meant the expulsion from science of final-cause thinking. For two hundred years, biology resisted this demand. Adaptations like the hand and the eye must be understood in terms of ends. This led Immanuel Kant to state that ‘there will never be a Newton of the blade of grass’. Biology will forever be different, meaning—since the best explanation seems to be divine intervention—God-infused. Charles Darwin challenged this with his mechanism of natural selection, showing that the hand and the eye can be understood in causes of the same nature as those found in the physical sciences. This does not as such refute the existence of God. Moreover, close inspection shows that today’s evolutionary thinking still owes much to its Christian origins.
Christian Materialism and the Prospect of Immortality
Authors: Pfeffer Michelle
Published: January 2019

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at least thirty English writers developed a materialist position that they argued was consistent with their Christian faith. While their heterodox ideas were connected with developments in natural philosophy and medicine, what they found more pressing was arriving at a genuinely biblical view of the person. These writers attempted to recover what they saw as ‘true’ Hebraic anthropology, which understood the soul to be mortal and material, and held that the resurrection of the body, rather than the immortality of the soul, provided assurance of life after death. These writers deployed existing exegetical methods and hoped to defend Christianity by reforming corrupt doctrines. Thus, while Christianity provided many in this period with reasons to attack materialism, it also provided many with motives to be materialists.
The Science of the Soul
Authors: Roberts Jon H.
Published: January 2019

In the English-speaking world, Christian thinkers played a fundamental role in laying the foundation for the scientific investigation of the mind. Those thinkers who equated the soul with the psyche and accorded the mind a privileged status in the overall scheme of things played a central role in shaping discourse in mental and moral philosophy and in opposing materialistic interpretations of the mind. During the late nineteenth century, research in neurophysiology, coupled with natural historians’ endorsement of the theory of organic evolution and the increasing use of experimental and quantitative methods of understanding the data of consciousness, led to the emergence of a ‘new psychology’. Although the new psychologists joined Christians in resisting efforts on the part of scientific naturalists to reduce mental phenomena to the activity of the nervous system, they insisted on eliminating ‘God-talk’ from their discipline, thereby differentiating their own preoccupations from those of religious thinkers.
Down to Earth
Authors: Rupke Nicolaas
Published: January 2019

The rise of naturalism in the earth sciences is discussed in terms of the disappearance from the geological literature of references to the Bible and God. From Immanuel Kant’s ground-breaking nebular hypothesis of 1755, such references were to be found with decreasing frequency in the leading treatises that dealt with the origin and historical development of Earth. Biblical cosmogony and God-talk were not included in the new earth and planetary sciences but relegated to the sphere of metaphysics. Especially Alexander von Humboldt, by the middle of the nineteenth century, proved trend-setting, and the Humboldtian approach of epistemological naturalism acquired predominance. All the same, in many instances, the disentanglement of geology and theology did not go with anti-religious sentiment but with what Ronald Numbers refers to as the privatization of religion.
Naturalizing the Bible
Authors: Prinster Scott Gerard
Published: January 2019

The modern development of secular knowledge exerted a powerful influence over the Protestant interpretation and use of the Bible. As German innovations in biblical scholarship spread in the early nineteenth century, scholars and their readership began to scrutinize more closely the historical and empirical accuracy of Scripture. Although these methods first met with widespread resistance in the United States, intellectuals continued to wrestle with the possibility of reconciling natural science and the Bible. Religious professionals attempted to insulate the laity from controversial scientific interpretations of Scripture, but a number of high-profile events such as heresy trials nevertheless attracted broad public attention. A growing schism in American Protestantism was deepened as more orthodox movements renounced the use of naturalism and historical criticism, while a significant number of religious liberals promoted scientific interpretations to keep the Bible relevant to the modern world.
A 1585 Oxford Ceremonial Student Oration
Authors: Martin Janice Gunther
Published: January 2019

Orations from university ceremonial occasions provide important evidence about standards of learning and rhetoric valued in university culture. At Oxford, the most significant yearly ceremony was the comitia, or Act. Preceded by the vesperies ceremony the previous Saturday, the Monday Act marked the occasion when students incepted, that is, received their licences to become masters or doctors and members of convocation, the university’s governing body. However, there are few surviving sixteenth-century speeches from the Act, and indeed few extant orations from other Oxford ceremonial occasions. An anonymous printer published the main master of arts speeches from the Acts of 1585 and 1586 in a single volume. This chapter focuses on the oration of 1585, perhaps authored by Thomas Savile, younger brother of the more famous polymath Henry. Besides being of interest for this possible authorship, it is significant for its connections, as yet unnoted by historians, to contemporary politics and to Jean Bodin.
Amicus Galilæus sed Magis Amica Veritas
Authors: Gattei Stefano
Published: January 2019

In the early 1960s, scholars attributed to Galileo an extensive set of annotations in the margins of a copy of the 1546 Latin translation of Philoponus’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics by Guglielmo Doroteo (c.1526–1571). This chapter establishes that the annotations are not Galileo’s. It provides overwhelming evidence drawn from an annotated copy of the Latin translation of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia, edited in 1523 by Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (1456–1531). The analysis is structured like a medieval quaestio: whereas the arguments quod sic show that the handwriting of the annotations and of Galileo’s manuscripts might well be one and the same, the arguments quod non offer compelling evidence to the contrary.
Constructing Hidden Narratives
Authors: Lauder Charlotte
Published: January 2019

This chapter reviews the history of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. The IASH, formally established in 1970, is the oldest Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Britain’s first, and Scotland’s only IAS. However, in its nearly fifty-year history, no effort has been made to tell IASH’s story. This can be partly attributed to a lack of understanding of IASs within the history of education, as well as a gap in the literature concerning IASs more generally. Investigating the history of IASH and its role in the development of postgraduate study not only adds to the scholarship on post-war Scottish higher education but also highlights the impact of academic research in Scotland since the 1960s.
Jan Loop, Alastair Hamilton, and Charles Burnett. The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe (The History of Oriental Studies, vol. 3).
Authors: Toomer Jan
Published: January 2019

This chapter presents a review of The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe edited by Jan Loop, Alastair Hamilton, and Charles Burnett. The book features a collection of essays that grew out of a conference with a similar title held in Leiden in 2013, but represents a thoroughly updated and expanded body of work. The title words ‘and Learning’ emphasize an important feature: whereas most existing treatments of Arabic studies in this period concentrate on their pursuit in the formal setting of the universities, several of the contributors examine how the language was acquired in other contexts. Notable in this respect is Mordechai Feingold’s ‘Learning Arabic in Early Modern England’, which illustrates the importance of self-study, even in the universities.
How Preplatonic Worlds Became Ensouled
Authors: Laks André
Published: January 2019

This article shows how two basic meanings of psuchē—namely, ‘breath’ and ‘life’—may have helped Platonizing, or for that matter Stoicizing, doxographers in endowing various Preplatonic philosophers with the view that the world is ‘ensouled'. Although I do not attempt a systematic reconstruction of how these cosmo-philosophers conceived the relationship between the world and what was to become ‘the soul’, I suggest that framing the problem in terms of ‘breath’ and ‘life’ helps us to arrive at a more adequate understanding both of the authentic evidence and of the history of its reception. Indeed, to the extent that it is possible I try to reconstruct the interpretative steps that led, with various degrees of legitimacy, from the original wording to its Platonizing or Stoicizing deformations, which remain all too often the framework of analysis in modern interpretations. Five case studies are considered: Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, some Pythagoreans, and Alcmaeon.
J. L. Austin’s Lecture Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics : Making Sense of Aristotle on Akrasia
Authors: Price A. W.
Published: January 2019

This piece selects from J. L. Austin's unpublished (and only recently retrieved) lecture notes on the Nicomachean Ethics pages relevant to the interpretation of book 7, chapter 3, which is central to his account of akrasia. It takes over many of the details of Austin’s treatment, and carries his thoughts further in two directions: (i) he suggests a tight relation between evaluation and desire that can be developed into one between prohairesis and action; (ii) he sees each lower stratum of Aristotle’s soul as relating to a higher as potentiality to actuality, with the danger of a relapse from higher to lower.
Leaving Nothing to Chance: An Argument for Principle Monism in Plotinus
Authors: Christopher Isaac Noble
Published: January 2019

Plotinus maintains that there is a single first principle, the One (or the Good), from which all other things derive. He is usually thought to hold this view on the grounds that any other thing’s existence depends on its participation in a paradigm of unity. This paper argues that Plotinus has a further, independent argument for adopting a single first principle, according to which principle pluralism is committed (unacceptably) to attributing good cosmic states of affairs to chance. This argument exhibits similarities to ancient design arguments, but is used to draw the more radical conclusion that there is only one non-derivative existent.
The Basic Logic of Plotinus’ System
Authors: Riccardo Chiaradonna
Published: January 2019

This article is a discussion of E. K. Emilsson, Plotinus (London and New York, 2017). Three themes are selected: causation; the holistic account of intelligible being; the status of matter and body. The discussion ends with some remarks about Emilsson’s approach to Plotinus’ philosophy. Emilsson’s account of Plotinus’ causation is based on the transmission model, what Emilsson calls ‘the principle of prior possession’. Here it is argued that the transmission model requires qualifications in order to be applied to Plotinus’ account of causation. The section on Plotinus’ holism focuses on two analogies: that of science and its theorems and that of craftsmanship. The section on matter and body addresses the issue of Plotinus’ dualism as different from Cartesian dualism. The final remarks assess Emilsson’s philosophical approach to Plotinus, his use of contemporary philosophical notions, and the problem of Plotinus’ philosophical mysticism.
The Function of the Historian
Authors: Jahanbegloo Ramin , Thapar Romila , Bhattacharya Neeladri
Published: January 2019

In this section Romila Thapar reflects on the function of the historian in general and more precisely on her approach to history. Nationalist historians had opposed some interpretations of Indian history made by colonial scholars but many were left unquestioned. Her generation of historians challenged colonial historiography on a larger scale and this also brought them into opposing some nationalist interpretations. Among these was the periodization of Indian history by James Mill into Hindu, Muslim, and British periods, and the theory that ancient India was a golden age that declined in the medieval period under Muslim rule. This questioning opened up many debates on a range of themes in the method of writing history, such as, the definition of a historical fact, priorities in historical explanation, testing the reliability of the data, as well as the incorporation of fresh and different data from archaeology.
The Historian and the Epic
Authors: Jahanbegloo Ramin , Thapar Romila , Bhattacharya Neeladri
Published: January 2019

The discussion in this section focuses on how a historian, who is a rationalist and follows a chronological sequence of events in history, analyses the assumptions of epic literature where historicity is of little consequence. Thapar explains that it is not necessary to prove that the events described in the epics are historically accurate, but clarifies that the historian can derive an understanding of the kind of societies represented in the epics from careful analyses of the texts. She discusses the two time concepts that prevailed then—the cyclic in the yuga theory and the linear in genealogies and the adoption of eras by rulers. There is also some discussion of the location of exile in epic literatures.
Activism and Law Making
Authors: Chakrabarti Rajesh , Sanyal Kaushiki
Published: January 2019

This chapter seeks to outline the nature and extent of the elbow-room Indian democracy provides to various players and delve a little deeper to examine how well the established theories explain the Indian reality. It summarizes of the post-Independence institutional development of Indian politics before delving into a systematic exposition of major policy making frameworks. The theories expounded include, a) incrementalism; b) public choice; c) institutional rational choice; d) subsystems; e) advocacy coalition; f) punctuated equilibrium; and g) multiple streams approach. Next it provides a summary of the nine case studies covered in the subsequent chapters connecting them to the theories discussed. It concludes by pointing to the several questions that the case studies beget about policymaking in India. The observations from case studies would be held against the relief of these established models to check how well the models apply to the Indian setting.
Unfulfilled Promises
Authors: Chakrabarti Rajesh , Sanyal Kaushiki
Published: January 2019

This chapter chronicles the almost roller-coaster evolution of the Microfinance. It starts with a brief summary of the rise of the virtually unregulated sector from the 1970s to the 2000s till the 2011 crisis cause by the AP regulation brought it to a standstill, bringing several major players into crisis. RBI reacted with new regulation but the need for an overarching law for the sector was widely felt and sought by microfinance associations like Sa-Dhan and MFIN. The Ministry of Finance constituted a committee in 2011 and a bill was introduced in 2012 but it lapsed in 2014, like an earlier, 2007, attempt. The journey of this policy attempt does not really fit clearly into any framework, though it could arguably be pigeon holed in the advocacy coalition framework. The attempt failed despite collaborative activism and somewhat receptive government, owing largely to the lack of a trigger event.
Duality in the Language and Literary Style of Raskhan’s Poetry
Authors: Nagasaki Hiroko
Published: January 2019

Hiroko Nagasaki looks closely at the poet Raskhan’s signature chands, that is, the metrical forms in which he most frequently composed, focusing in particular on the savaiyā. What she finds is a metrical structure that combined Persian and Indic systems of prosody, allowing different methods of scansion and therefore different stylistic options. This discovery in turn reveals a connection between Raskhan’s poems of Vaishnava bhakti and the highly stylized world of the Persian ghazzal, a form heavily influenced by the idiom of Sufi devotion. These insights into stylistic crossover are especially significant in light of the hagiographical tradition surrounding Raskhan, which claims he was a Muslim who took up devotion to Krishna at some point in adulthood.
War and Succession
Authors: Pinch William R.
Published: January 2019

William Pinch explores Padmakar Bhatt’s Himmatbahādurvirudāvalī, an account of the ascetic warlord Anupgir Gosain’s victory over the Bundelkhandi prince Arjun Singh Parmar in 1792. Acknowledging that Padmakar occasionally subordinates historical fact to considerations of genre and politics, he asks whether realism is necessarily the best mode to represent the enormity that such a battle represents, its polysemous and elusive ‘truth.’ As Pinch posits, truth-telling is more than mere attention to factual detail. He explains how political theory and sociological transformation are implicit in Padmakar complex political and moral yet ever literary manoeuvres
Gopal Bhatt
Authors: Goswami Shrivatsa
Published: January 2019

Shrivatsa Goswami examines the ways in which Gopāl Bhaṭṭ, interacting with Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and being a southerner by birth, played a key role in establishing the philosophical perspectives and ritual practices that characterized the new Gaudiya sampradaya being formed at Vrindavan in the first half of the sixteenth century. In doing so, he analyses important features of Gopal Bhatt’s two major works, the Ṣat-Sandarbha (Six Treatises) often mistakenly attributed to Jīva Gosvāmī, and the Haribhaktivilāsa (The Pleasure of Worshiping Hari). It emerges, among other things, that there is an element of mystery as to how Gopāl Bhaṭṭ’s philosophical statements relate to his pronouncements on devotional practice.
Gadadhar Bhatt and His Family
Authors: Sharma Swapna
Published: January 2019

In this chapter, Swapna Sharma brings to light the special contributions of Gadādhar Bhaṭṭ and his family to the constitution of Vrindavan’s distinctive spiritual culture, relating these especially to the family’s Telangana origins and in their distinctive position as a bridge between Vallabhite, Chaitanyite, Haridasi, and Radhavallabhi religious communities (sampradāya). Among other things, Sharma draws attention to Gadādhar’s close relationship to Jīva Gosvāmī and his reputation as a practitioner of bhāgavata kathā, but it is the appeal of his Brajbhāṣā poetry that stands out above all.
Bhaṭṭs in Braj
Authors: Hawley John Stratton
Published: January 2019

A typical way of referring to the influx of southerners into Braj in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is to speak of these immigrants as gosvamis, which stresses their liturgical and perhaps institutional roles, but in this chapter John Hawley proposes another lens: the fact that crucial figures among them were Bhatts. Powerful new work by James Benson, Christopher Minkowski, and Rosalind O’Hanlon has focused on reconfigurations that occurred among Bhatt Brahmins in Banaras in the seventeenth century. Hawley attempts to discover similar connections among Bhatts who settled in Braj a century earlier. Their number and individual profiles are impressive: Narayan Bhatt, Sri Bhatt, Kesav Kasmiri Bhatt, Gopal Bhatt, and Vallabh Bhatt—that is, Vallabhacharya.
Quaternary of the Bengal Coast
Authors: Chattopadhyay Rupendra Kumar
Published: January 2019

The second chapter is about the Quaternary of the east coast in India in general and the Bengal coast in particular. This discussion on the Quaternary is crucial in the context of the evolution of settlements not only along the coastal line but also its immediate hinterland areas. It is well known that the Orissa–Bengal coastline is formed over a deep tectonic trough underlain at a great depth by the older rocks of the continental crust. Here, an attempt has been made to explain the processes responsible for shaping this narrow part of the coastline and how they are different from those along the other part/parts of the east coast. A major section of this chapter is devoted to how the Quaternary processes related to the Bhagirathi–Hooghly/Gangetic delta formation have influenced the development of the present-day serrated coastline of the Bengal Basin.
Distribution of Sites/Settlements
Authors: Chattopadhyay Rupendra Kumar
Published: January 2019

The fourth chapter delineates the distribution of sites/settlements and the recorded archaeological assemblages, both excavated and explored. The sites/settlements have been traced out on the basis of the three arbitrary zones and they have been classified for each zone under excavated sites and explored sites. While discussing the individual sites the author has provided an elaborate description of the location, discoveries of antiquities through antiquarian efforts, corroborative references from ancient literary sources, if any, as well as a detailed report of the archaeological findings. The contexts of the findings if known have also been highlighted. In case of excavated sites, details have been given on the basis of the concerned excavation reports. Different aspects of the settlement matrices in association with their chrono-cultural developments have been traced out in the site reports. This chapter constitutes the nucleus of the present reconstruction of the settlement history of coastal Bengal.
Inscriptions and Coastal Life
Authors: Chattopadhyay Rupendra Kumar
Published: January 2019

This chapter explores the possibility of reconstructing the coastal life based on epigraphic sources found from the study area. Apart from the Pala and Sena inscriptions, the area under consideration yielded a significant number of epigraphic records issued by several regional lineages from the post-Gupta period onwards. The evidence found from them highlight different aspects such as coastal ecology, riverine traffic, navy, the coastal way of life, polity and, of course, the socio-cultural parameters that were equally witnessed both in the hinterland and the coastal regions. The portrayal of the epigraphic sources clearly shows that their contents supplement the archaeological sources in various ways.
Epilogue
Authors: Chattopadhyay Rupendra Kumar
Published: January 2019

This chapter is not merely a summary or recapitulation of the vast archaeological data that has been utilized to reconstruct the settlement dynamics of coastal Bengal. Rather, it raises various relevant issues that are connected with the mentioned reconstruction and, above all, discusses the unresolved questions pertaining to various aspects of coastal life including culture, religion, and the trading and maritime network. While reconstructing the mechanism of contact between the hinterland and the littoral an attempt has been made by the author to explore the possibility of at least three ‘contact zones’ that were crucial in formulating not only a cultural whole but also the monitoring agencies behind this reciprocation. The involvement of religious ideologies particularly Buddhism also received special attention towards the involvement of the major and minor centres connecting the development of the Ganga valley, the Chittagong and Myanmar coast and that of the rest of Southeast Asia and obviously the participation of Buddhist establishments in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. The Epilogue concludes by tracing a long chrono-cultural sequence of coastal Bengal from the BRW-associated early village farming cultural phases to the 12th–13th centuries CE. The imagery of a greater cultural orbit has been adhered to in this concluding chapter.
Circuitous Routes
Authors: Allen Margaret
Published: January 2019

The chapter traces the history of several families whose ancestors migrated as indentured labourers to sugar plantations in Fiji, the Caribbean, and to the French colonies of Réunion and New Caledonia. Once indenture ended these migrant workers travelled to Australia in search of a better life. These stories of migration across imperial boundaries, struggle against racial discrimination and restrictive immigration rules offer evidence of agency and enterprise, rather than benign profiles of helpless indentured labourers. This chapter sheds new light on the issues of gender and agency in migrant lives through the stories of matriarchs who showed courage and enterprise in keeping their families united and making a living in the hostile environment of colonial Australia. It also traces intergenerational mobility and shows how the later generations proudly reconstruct that genealogy of displacement, discrimination and agency as badges of their historic transnational identity.
‘Not as a Stranger or a Tourist’
Authors: Ghosh Devleena , Goodall Heather
Published: January 2019

This chapter narrates and contextualizes the story of the Australian educationist Leonora Gmeiner, an Australian teacher who travelled to India in the 1890s inspired by the ideals of Theosophical education. Gmeiner lived in India for twenty-nine years, participated in Gandhian campaigns to abolish the indenture system, took part in Annie Bessant’s Home Rule League activities, and served as the principal of the Indraprastha Hindu Girls’ School in Delhi, where she was joined by other similarly inspired Australian women. Gmeiner dedicated her life to the physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual training of Indian girls to bring them out of purdah and make them politically active full citizens of the emerging Indian nation. This chapter argues for an alternative to ‘White Australian’ attitudes to India and demonstrates that the circulation of knowledge and ideas flowed from the Antipodes to India as well as through Indian migration south.
Class and Caste Consciousness
Authors: Sarwal Amit
Published: January 2019

This chapter moves across the temporal boundary to the more recent migrants—the so-called ‘new’ diaspora—who have entered Australia and New Zealand after the opening up of the skilled labour market and relaxation of immigration rules. It considers the first wave of these migrants—highly educated middle-class professionals—as they reinvent their diasporic identity in a cultural milieu that not only accepts, but even celebrates difference. This chapter uses examples from selected short narrative pieces by South-Asian-Australian writers and academics to illustrate the diversity and clash of caste and class experiences within the South Asian migrant community in Australia. It contends that in the diasporic situation the complex, often conflicted, dynamic of ethnicity, caste, and class consciousness is manifested psychologically and symbolically in actual practices in the public sphere.
Rule of Law in India
Authors: Narasappa Harish
Published: January 2019

Rule of law is the foundation of modern democracies. It envisages, inter alia, participatory lawmaking, just and certain laws, a bouquet of human rights, certainty and equality in the application of law, accountability to law, an impartial and non-arbitrary government, and an accessible and fair dispute resolution mechanism. This work’s primary goal is to understand and explain the obvious dichotomy that exists between theory and practice in India’s rule of law structure. The book discusses the contours of the rule of law in India, the values and aspirations in its evolution, and its meaning as understood by the various institutions, identifying reason as the primary element in the rule of law mechanism. It later examines the institutional, political, and social challenges to the concepts of equality and certainty, through which it evaluates the status of the rule of law in India.
India’s Rule of Law
Authors: Narasappa Harish
Published: January 2019

The provisions of the Constitution, mainly the Preamble and Parts III and IV are examined and analysed to evaluate if they go beyond formalism. Focusing on equality, fraternity, and liberty as revolutionary concepts that were introduced by the Constitution, this chapter seeks to answer the question whether the Constitution heralds a complete break from India’s past. The Constituent Assembly debates and the works of Ambedkar, Baxi, Austin, Khilnani, Mehta, and Kothari are reviewed and analysed to understand the values and choices made in the Constitution and whether they were a mere continuation of existing values and choices or if they were a completely new set of values and choices. An extremely important factor that needs to be studied in the Indian context is the central role attributed to the state in the fulfilment of political, social, and economic goals.
Rule of Law in Practice
Authors: Narasappa Harish
Published: January 2019

In the first part, the interpretation and application of the rule of law by Indian courts, primarily the constitutional bench of the Supreme Court of India is analysed. A review of the major principles laid down by the Supreme Court in relation to equality and liberty is followed by a critical examination of the innovative jurisprudence developed by the Court while interpreting Article 21. The principles of judicial independence, separation of powers, and evolution of the basic structure doctrine, as well as their relationship with the rule of law is critically evaluated. In the second part the political understanding of the rule of law is examined, particularly focusing on Nehru’s comment that the rule of law should follow the ‘rule of life’ and its meaning and continued impact on lawmaking. The chapter concludes by identifying four broad themes of the Rule of Law in India.
Enforcement of Rights and Laws
Authors: Narasappa Harish
Published: January 2019

The true test to determine if a society is governed by the rule of law lies in the enforcement of its laws and the ability to protect the rights of citizens. The proper performance of the executive and judiciary is key to achieve such a society. The primary reason attributed to the permanent dichotomy of the rule of law in India is improper implementation of laws and the lacunae in enforcement of rights. The chapter attempts to identify and analyse various reasons for improper implementation of the laws and the inability of citizens to enforce their rights. It also examines whether the crippling judicial delay is a significant contributor to the defects in enforcement.
Quest for Reason
Authors: Narasappa Harish
Published: January 2019

This chapter comprises the conclusions derived from the analysis in the previous chapters. The major conclusions, relating to (i) the theoretical foundations of the rule of law in India and (ii) the reasons for the permanent dichotomy regarding the status of the rule of law, are discussed. The exercise and application of Reason is fundamental to the rule of law in India. The lack of such reason and its replacement with violence is the major challenge to the rule of law in India. In addition, the challenges to equality, the lack of internalisation of legalism and the continued convergence of legality and illegality in everyday affairs has meant that the quest for the rule of law is facing serious challenges in India.
France
Authors: Roy Kaushik
Published: January 2019

This chapter details the story of the IEFA (Indian Corps), which fought in France. We tackle the question whether the IEFA faced a breakdown of morale; if not, how was it able to cope with the challenges of mass industrial trench warfare in the cold damp region of north France and the Low Countries? How the sepoys and sowars were able to make a transition from waging small wars to conducting mass industrial warfare centring round mud-filled trenches and mass infantry attacks supported by voluminous heavy gunfire is an issue discussed here. The first section deals with tactics and techniques of warfare for which the sepoys and sowars were prepared before the onset of the Great War, and the second section discusses the adaptation and adoption on part of the Indian troops in face of combat along the Western Front. The third section relates the soldiers’ experiences with issues of morale and discipline.
Egypt and Palestine
Authors: Roy Kaushik
Published: January 2019

In Egypt, the Allied troops remained on the defensive during 1914 and 1915. In 1916, there was a half-hearted advance to the Sinai Peninsula. The tempo picked up in 1917 resulting in advance across Palestine, and by 1918, the Ottomans were in headlong retreat. At this juncture, the Indian infantry and cavalry were present within the Allied force in substantial number. Indianization of the imperial force in Egypt–Palestine was speeded up due to the Ludendorff Offensive. Two issues stand out as regards this campaign: one, the contribution of Edmund Allenby in making the transition from defensive to offensive warfare, and second the decisive role played by the Indian cavalry during the Allied advance across Sinai.
Conclusion
Authors: Roy Kaushik
Published: January 2019

In 1914, the Indian Army was not prepared either conceptually or materially to participate in a high-intensity conventional war. It was an occupation force geared for policing purposes and launching punitive expeditions across the frontiers of India. Before the First World War, the industrializing/industrialized nations of West Europe depended on mass armies based on short-service conscripts. The Indian Army comprised of long-service volunteers numbering to 180,000 men. Sepoys and sowars were enlisted for a service of 3 years, but with the option of continuing serving for 18 years. The recruits were trained for 10 months and then they joined the regiments. After the end of 18 years’ service, they became eligible for pension. Most Indian soldiers signed for long service. For the regiments that enlisted in north India, accommodation for families of the personnel was fixed at 5 per cent of the strength. The Indian soldiers lived in hovels made of earth, which were filthy and dilapidated, hence, unsanitary. Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions of the Indian soldiers’ lines caused diseases such as tuberculosis and so on....
Brief Outline for the Case Study
Authors: Govindaraj V.C.
Published: January 2019

Conflict of Laws or Private International Law, as it is also known, is a tough branch of jurisprudence. Transactions across frontiers in the globalized village we live in are so frequent and so numerous that courts of law, and, in particular, the higher judiciary, namely the Supreme Court and the High Courts, are called upon to resolve them in order to render justice to the parties before them....
The Law of Obligations
Authors: Govindaraj V.C.
Published: January 2019

Professor Dicey in England and Beale in the United states propounded the ‘jurisdiction selection’ rule, according to which the law to govern a foreign contract is the law of the country where the contract is entered into, and the law to govern issues of performance is the law of the place of performance. Similarly, in the case of a foreign tort, the governing law is the law of the country where the tort is committed. This jurisdiction selection rule held sway till the first half of the twentieth century. As opposed to the above doctrine, Professor Morris propounded the ‘proper law’ rule to govern the Law of Obligations, whether it be a foreign contract or a foreign tort. According to the proper law doctrine, in Morris’s opinion, it will help achieve results which are ‘commercially convenient and sound’ in the case of foreign contracts and ‘socially convenient and sound’ in the case of foreign torts.
Validity of Marriage
Authors: Govindaraj V.C.
Published: January 2019

Strange as it may seem, courts in general have a tendency to treat marriage and its validity as an all-purpose concept, may we say omnific, vis-à-vis correlative issues such as adoption, legitimacy and rights of succession, testate or intestate, of a surviving spouse and children born of such marriage. Marriage may be good for the purpose of one issue and yet invalid for the purpose of another; as Professor Willis L.M. Reese says. The same attitude they bring to bear in respect of adoption. They blindly follow the opinion of authoritative law givers, ignoring the rules of conflict of laws.
Thinking Sociology
Authors: Gupta Dipankar , Jahanbegloo Ramin
Published: January 2019

This section provides a detailed account of Gupta’s life during and after his PhD, on urban migration in the metropolis of Mumbai and its impact in setting-off a right-wing movement, the Shiv Sena, at JNU. Gupta discusses his journey from being a PhD scholar of movement studies at JNU studying Shiv Sena to being a professor in Canada (West), heading the Business Ethics Division at KPMG, and writing journal articles for popular newspapers. In this section, Gupta reflects on how these experiences influenced his philosophy and choices, and how his philosophy affected his decisions. He also talks about his experience of doing business with Indians. Gupta closes this section with a discussion about the time when he interviewed Levi Strauss, and also talks about the contrast between the ideologies of Strauss and Pierre Bourdieu.
Citizenship and Democracy
Authors: Gupta Dipankar , Jahanbegloo Ramin
Published: January 2019

This section discusses the major works of Dipankar Gupta. It brings forth Gupta’s opinion on secularism, religion, citizenship, democracy, middle class, and Gandhi along with discussing other Western philosophers. Gupta’s inspiration and vision behind writing Revolution from above, Mistaken Modernity, and Citizen Elite are also presented. Gupta also talks about his experience at Bilbao in Spain. He discusses his learnings about India by looking at Western societies. He found that our understanding of the ‘middle class’ was in need of urgent modification only after he observed the way people casually interact with one another in the West. Gupta deliberates about his belief in elections, but feels that leaders must set the agenda so we know what we are voting for or against. He presents his views on empathy, ethics, sympathy, and fraternity and talks about the importance of each.
Modern Institutions and Cultural Spaces
Authors: Gupta Dipankar , Jahanbegloo Ramin
Published: January 2019

This section ties together Gupta’s life-long research and ideology to his vision for India. He discusses the concepts of space and non-space and posits the nation state as a cultural space. Gupta underlines the distinction between secularism and secularization and argues that in India, secularization is still at a very unfinished state. While we have a democratic system, citizenship and modernity have not progressed. The deification of politicians in Tamil Nadu is discussed. When politicians start patronizing religious functions and use religious symbols in public acts, secularization is compromised to indulge in the politics of majoritarinism and minoritism. India is progressive in intent but it is compromising in deed. The goals of citizenship move ahead, once a victory is achieved, new obstacles appear.
Lack of Authority
Authors: Gur Noam
Published: January 2019

This chapter considers what was entitled in Chapter 2 the no-authority reply. The discussion revolves around prerequisites of legitimate authority that could ground this reply in a manner consistent with the pre-emption thesis’s core tenets. Section 3.1 considers the legitimacy prerequisites stated in Raz’s ‘service conception of authority’, and Section 3.2 focuses on jurisdictional and procedural limitations on authoritative power. It is found that these different prerequisites cannot rule out the possible occurrence of disobedience-warranting situations under a legitimate authority. Section 3.3 discusses the suggestion that authority is limited to the effect that its directives are not binding if clearly wrong. It is shown that Raz is disinclined to accept this suggestion, and that accepting it would collapse his pre-emption thesis (with the notion of exclusionary reasons at its heart) into a substantively different model.
Scope of Exclusion
Authors: Gur Noam
Published: January 2019

The discussion in this chapter centres on what was entitled in Chapter 2 the scope-of-exclusion reply. The chapter considers various possible scope-demarcating criteria, which involve arguments about the type of reasons authorities have power to pronounce upon as well as tools of interpretation that can help determine their directives’ scope of application. It is argued that, in at least some of the relevant disobedience-warranting situations, the reasons that warrant disobedience fall within the scope of exclusion, or cannot be marked out of that scope without relying on demarcation criteria which are themselves inconsistent with the pre-emption thesis.
The Phenomenological Argument
Authors: Gur Noam
Published: January 2019

This chapter focuses on phenomenological arguments about authority, that is, arguments about the way authority characteristically features in our experience. Following an explanation of the relevance of phenomenology, a phenomenological argument of Raz is presented (Section 5.1). Different phenomena highlighted by this argument are considered, such as the mixed feelings sometimes experienced when one complies with an authoritative requirement despite disagreeing with it (Section 5.2.1); and the sense of normative bindingness often involved in the recognition that someone has authority over us (Section 5.2.2). Another aspect of the relevant phenomenology is then highlighted and considered: the experience associated with occasions of principled disobedience to authority. The picture emerging from this analysis is a composite picture that partly corresponds with the pre-emption thesis and partly corresponds with the antithetical weighing model.
The Functional Argument
Authors: Gur Noam
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses law’s capacity to fulfil its conduct-guiding function within different frameworks of practical reasoning. A functional argument of Raz is initially presented: according to this argument, authorities—including legal authorities—would not be able to fulfil their intended function if their directives operated as reasons for action that compete with opposing reasons in terms of their weight, rather than as pre-emptive reasons (Section 6.1). Several grounds for this argument are considered and found to be inadequate (Section 6.2). The spotlight is then directed onto another relevant consideration: law’s structural suitability to counteract several situational biases operative in contexts of individual and collective action (Sections 6.3.1–6.3.5). It is argued that law’s pivotal role in addressing practical problems linked with those biases strongly militate against the weighing model (Sections 6.3.6). Finally, the implications of those biases for the pre-emption thesis are discussed (Sections 6.3.7).
The Dispositional Model Expounded
Authors: Gur Noam
Published: January 2019

In this chapter, an alternative understanding of law’s relationship with practical reasons is introduced, which is labelled the dispositional model. According to this model, the existence and operation of a reasonably just and well-functioning legal system constitutes some reasons that are neither ordinary reasons for action nor pre-emptive ones, but rather reasons to adopt an (overridable) disposition that inclines its possessor towards compliance with the system’s requirements. Following an initial description of this model (Section 1), several aspects of the model are elucidated in further detail, including the sense in which notions such as ‘attitudes’ and ‘dispositions’ are used by the model (Section 7.2); the formation and components of the law-abiding attitude that features in the model (Section 7.3); and the key distinguishing traits that set this model apart from the pre-emption thesis and the weighing model (Section 7.4).