Voices of dissent - an essay

• Verfasst von: Thapar, Romila [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Voices of dissent - an essay
• Verf.angabe: Romila Thapar
• Verlagsort: London ; New York ; Calcutta
• Verlag: Seagull Books
• Jahr: 2023
• Umfang: viii, 205 Seiten
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: The India list
• Fussnoten: Interviews: Seite 155-196 ; Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 197-205
• ISBN: 978-1-80309-270-6
• Schlagwörter: (g)Indien / (s)Dissens / (z)Geschichte
• Sprache: eng
• Sach-SW: Asian history
• Sach-SW: Asiatische Geschichte
• Sach-SW: HIS062000
• Geograph. SW: India
• Geograph. SW: Indien
• K10plus-PPN: 1873096429

Abstract

Written by one of India s best-known public intellectuals,this book isessential reading for anyone interested in India s fascinating history as well as the direction in which the nation is headed. People have argued since time immemorial. Disagreement is a part of life, of human experience. But we now live in times when any form of protest in India is marked as anti-Indian and met with arguments that the very concept of dissent was imported into India from the West. As Romila Thapar explores in her timely historical essay, however, dissent has a long history in the subcontinent, even if its forms have evolved through the centuries. In Voices of Dissent: An Essay, Thapar looks at the articulation of nonviolent dissent and relates it to various pivotal moments throughout India s history. Beginning with Vedic times, she takes us from the second to the first millennium BCE, to the emergence of groups that were jointly called the Shramanas-the Jainas, Buddhists, and Ajivikas. Going forward in time, she also explores the views of the Bhakti sants and others of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and brings us to a major moment of dissent that helped to establish a free and democratic India: Mahatma Gandhi s satyagraha. Then Thapar places in context the recent peaceful protests against India s new, controversial citizenship law, maintaining that dissent in our time must be opposed to injustice and supportive of democratic rights so that society may change for the better