A collection of essays by distinguished scholars, this book delineates a substantial conception of democracy, the great promise as well as the pitfalls of a democratic mentality and culture. These essays go beyond the institutional and formal descriptions of democracy to its underlying cultural context expressed both historically and analytically, descriptively and normatively.
Introduction
1. Liberal Democracy and its Critics: Some Voices from
East and West Fred Dallmyr
2. Value, Enchantment and the Mentality of
Democracy Akeel Bilgrami
3. Politics, Experience and Cognitive Enslavement:
Gandhis Hind Swaraj Vivek Dhareshwar
4. Moral Perfection and Political
Participation: The Indian Millions in Gandhis Hind Swaraj Mohamed Mehdi
5.
Politics and Violence: Gandhis Ambivalence to Democracy Uday Mehta
6.
Pragmatism and Deepened Democracy: Ambedkar between Unger and Dewey Lenart
kof
7. Constitutional Democracy and Hindu Nationalism Rajeev Bhargava
8.
Why Did Burke Impeach Hastings? David Bromwich
9. Whither European
Enlightenment? Pankaj Mishra
9. Popular Festivals, Populist Visual Culture
and the Modi Masks Parul Dave Mukherji
10. Globalization, Culture, and
Education Nachiket Patwardhan. About the Editor. Notes on Contributors. Index.
Akeel Bilgrami is at present Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Heyman Centre for the Humanities at Columbia University. He has written extensively on philosophy of mind and language as well as on political and moral psychology. He is the author of Belief and Meaning (1992), Self-Knowledge and Resentment (2006), Politics and the Moral Psychology of Identity (forthcoming), What Is a Muslim? (forthcoming), and Gandhis Integrity (forthcoming).
