India Studies Program Presents The Annual Radha Devi Joshi Foundation Lecture.
Thursday October 26, 2017 at 3:30 p.m. Arjona Lecture Hall 105
"The Grammar of Anarchy or the Safeguard of Freedom? Gandhian Satyagraha and Democratic Politics"
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Co-sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and UConn Global Affairs.
Keynote Speaker KARUNA MANTENA, Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University and a Chair of the South Asian Studies Council at Yale University, focuses her research on modern political thought, modern social theory, the theory and history of empire, and South Asian politics and history. She currently focuses on political realism and the political thought of M.K. Gandi.
The lecture will discuss what role should satyagraha, or nonviolent direct action, play in democratic politics? Gandhi insisted that satyagraha was an important tool for social and political change in all regimes, even in a free and democratic India. But in the transition to independence, many Indian liberals disagreed. Such unconstitutional methods were deemed not only unnecessary in a working liberal democracy but also dangerous. In Ambedkar’s famous warning, they were “nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy.”
This talk explores the place of satyagraha in democratic politics, and opens with how Gandhi thought satyagraha could be differentiated in practice from lawlessness or anarchy, on the one hand, and pure power and coercion, on the other. The talk also considers examples of nonviolent political movements in post-independent India and the challenges they have faced.
The ANNUAL RADHA DEVI JOSHI FOUNDATION lecture brings distinguished speakers to the University of Connecticut who address important issues of global significance.
For more information, contact: Cathy Schlund-Vials at cathy.schlund-vials@uconn.edu