Born in Allahabad

To be born in Allahabad
Is to be surrounded by
Different histories and shadows:
The graveyards, the old havelis,
The stone cathedrals and
The hubbub of intellectual audacity.

You carry it in your teeth
On your tongue,
In your skin,
In the style of your being,
And when you enter the darkness
You know which way to go.

Bon Odori (盆) 2010

On the 24th of July Takiyama 2 Chome celebrated the Bon Odori with dance, children performance and food. Bon originates in the Buddhist custom of remembering deceased ancestors but over the years the practice has evolved into family reunions and paying homage to ancestral graves or shrines. There are three kinds of Bon Odori. The first is called shichigatsu bon; it is celebrated in the month of July. The second is referred to as Hachigatsu bon and is celebrated in August. The last is called the Kyu bon which is celebrated on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month. Bon odori has been celebrated for over five centuries in Japan and has a rich musical and dance tradition. Today it is a community event where people drink, dance and socialize.

Travelling to Kyoto: The Fushima Inari Shrine

Mukesh Williams

This is the main shrine built in the 8th century in Kyoto and is at the apex of nearly 30,000 shrines spread over Japan. The shrine celebrates the god of rice and sake and has been quite popular with the monarchy. The shrine runs for nearly 4 kilometers along a mountain trail with many red gates or tori donated over the years by various organizations including the local government. It is possible to see the Kyukoku University in this area. The shrine is just in front of Inari JR Station.

If you are in the Tokyo area you could either take a bullet train or shinkansen from Tokyo Central or from Shin Yokohama to Kyoto. Any of the shinkansen called Nozomi, Hikari, Kodama would take you to Kyoto. The train takes two hours to reach Kyoto and is quite conformable. So if you take the train at 8: 59 a. m. you are in Kyoto at 11:02 a. m. The journey would cost you about 26000 yen and you can return the same day if you plan carefully. Please check the timetable at the following website:
http://www.hirokim.ph/common/pdf/Eastbound.pdf

MELUS/MELOW CONFERENCE CALL, September 2011 Hyderabad

CONFERENCE CALL

MELOW (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World) &
MELUS-India (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States)

Probable Venue: OUCIP (formerly known as ASRC), Hyderabad

Date: September 22-24, 2011 (to be confirmed)


IN SEARCH OF SOLUTIONS: THE CONVENTIONAL, THE EXPERIMENTAL AND THE BIZARRE

In a world that is rapidly changing it is inevitable that our parameters for the study of literature, culture and society are forever being re-defined. There are emerging spaces that cry for attention, black holes that have remained undetected for too long, alternative solutions that may provide an answer to many of our problems, and novel ways of negotiating issues related to the multifarious aspects of human life.

MELUS-MELOW 2011 focuses on these new approaches that (a) move away from the beaten track to clear fresh ground; (b) advocate the use of fresh critical / theoretical approaches to questions faced by human society; (c) focus attention on areas that have been under-represented ; or (d) provide new insights into prevalent issues.

Abstracts not exceeding 250 words may be submitted on the following sub-themes:

1. A Transcultural World: Emerging issues in a global approach to literature and culture

2. Global Solutions: From the national to the transnational

3. Strange and Unfamiliar ‘Other’ Worlds – the Fantastic, the Supernatural and the Surreal

4. Off the Beaten Track: Not-so-popular culture and cinema

5. Cyborg literature

6. The Old and the New: Re-interpreting the Classics

7. Lessons from History: The fictionalization of fact

8. Changing Seasons: Lessons from ecology, terror strikes, natural disasters

9. Watchdog Media: Journalistic literature, yellow journalism

10. A special MELUS-India Panel will be devoted to: Re-visioning the United States: The re-emergence of US Studies outside the Americas.

Tentatively, the Conference will be held in Hyderabad at the OUCIP (former ASRC). This venue will be confirmed at the soonest possible.

Prospective delegates will please note that we are focused primarily on literature but our attempt is to go interdisciplinary. We welcome approaches to literature from other perspectives.


The following information, in the given format, should be sent along with the abstract:

Title of Abstract

Name of Delegate

Official designation, Address and email id

Home address and Phone number

MELUS/MELOW conferences attended earlier (in which year and where)

Are you currently a member of MELUS or MELOW? Or do you need a fresh / renewed membership? Please specify.

• The subject line of your message should read “ABSTRACT 2011: [YOUR NAME] and [If applicable] - state if you are competing for the ISM award – for scholars below-40 from India"


Send the abstract with the necessary information by email (as part of the TEXT message, and NOT as attachment) to mjaidka@gmail.com with a copy to aneelraina@gmail.com

•Deadline for receipt of abstracts is August 31, 2010.

All abstracts will be peer-reviewed before they are accepted. Once acceptance letters are sent, full papers (approx 3,000 words) will be invited.

International Advisor: Mukesh Williams

India's new rupee symbol unveiled

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent
Friday, 16 July 2010 Independent UK

The winning design for the new graphic symbol of India's rupee
India has finally got a symbol for its currency, the rupee. The government announced it had selected one of five short-listed designs it hopes will become as recognisable as the shorthand for the dollar, the yen and the euro.

"It denotes the robustness of the Indian economy," said information minister Ambika Soni, as he revealed the winning design, a cross between the Roman letter R and its Hindi equivalent. Last year, in a move that experts said underscored India's increasing global economic ambitions, the government invited entries for a contest to come up with a globally recognisable sign for the currency. Normally the rupee is designated by R or INR. Officials hope the rupee could become more important for international trading. The winning entry was submitted by D Udaya Kumar, a teacher of design at the Indian Institute of Technology. He will receive a prize of $5,350 (£3,500).

Representing India

Representing India: Literature, Politics and Identities

Williams, Mukesh and Wanchoo, Rohit. Representing India: Literatures, Politics, and Identities. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008.

The last quarter century has seen a veritable explosion in the publication of books on South Asian history, politics and culture. The literature on South Asia reflects a whole range of ideological perspectives and academic traditions. As a result of the specialization within disciplines and the intellectual awareness of the need for inter-disciplinary work has not been sufficiently translated into academic discourses and practices. A fruitful interaction within and across disciplines is inhibited by the limitations imposed by the languages of discourse and disciplinary practices in different academic traditions and disciplines. The liberal and the Marxist, the modernists and the ‘critics of modernity’, the traditionalists and the progressives, postcolonial triumphalists and ‘critics of postcolonialism’ all possess languages and concepts of their own. Without subscribing to a principle of incommensurability, it is still an arduous task to pick up concepts from widely divergent perspectives. Nevertheless, there are insights in different perspectives, which would be of interest to students and scholars alike, if only, the pressures of specialization and academic production were less intense.

Extract from the Introduction, pages 1-5
This book analyzes and synthesizes work done in diverse intellectual traditions, with the objective of providing a framework for further inter-disciplinary studies on South Asia. Many Indian intellectuals have responded selectively, and with varying degrees of intensities, to Western intellectual traditions. Both postmodernism and dependency theory—two of the big intellectual influences from the West that have influenced scholars in Africa and Latin America—have enjoyed rather limited success in Indian universities and the media. It is possible to offer arguments for this intellectual preference, but the intellectual currents of the West have not been able to overpower South Asia. Indian universities may seem stagnant by Western standards, but they have developed a healthy skepticism about the intellectual fashions sweeping the West. A fear of Western intellectual hegemony, cutting across ideological barriers between the Left and the Right, has been the major factor in the selective response to Western intellectual traditions. The Indian intellectual tradition on the periphery has its own peculiarity that has to do with both the slow responses to Western tradition and skepticism about the relevance of ‘foreign’ traditions and their ulterior motives. There are some benefits of being on the periphery—a large number of academics are spared the effort to keep pace with dizzying change in academic fashion and discourses in the West. To be on the intellectual periphery has been a result of slow communication, limited academic exchanges and less significance and demand for academic publishing in the social sciences and literary fields. In the wired world, where students can download information from databases and websites at will, academics, whatever their personal predilections, have been dragged by their forelocks into discourses they may well have shunned earlier.

In the last two decades, the intellectual context of the Indian universities has changed. The performance of the IITs and their alumni have grabbed international headlines and influenced the way Indian education is perceived abroad. Critics of postcolonialism have often remarked somewhat cynically that one of the signs of postcolonialism is when third world intellectuals secure tenured professorships in the Western academies. Once Western universities accept intellectuals from the periphery, interaction between the Anglo-American world and South Asia increased substantially—the native informant has now become the postcolonial intellectual. The revolution in communication, neo-liberal globalization and recent migrations from India has had the effect of breaking down the moral and political certainties of the post-independent generation that has dominated the politics and society in India.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the retreat of the socialist ideal have had a deep impact on Indian academics and their liberal, Marxist ideas of universalism. While liberal and Marxists differed in their analysis of society and the programmatic conceptions of the future, they were completely unmoved by ideas of relativism and individualistic critiques of state power. For a long time, Indian scholars did not respond with enthusiasm to the ideas of Hayek, Nozick and Milton Friedman. On the contrary they were more influenced by Marx, Keynes or Gandhi.

In the last ten years, the older generation of middle class Indians and academics has received severe intellectual shocks from various sources—academic, technological and cultural. In a climate of heightened vulnerability the need for dialogue between different traditions has increased. It is possible to see a genuine search in our contemporary world for new ways to synthesize social changes and diverse intellectual traditions. The search finds expression in receptivity to multi-disciplinary methods. We would like to expand the new intellectual space opened recently, and, in doing so, contribute in some measure to its development. This ought to be the intellectual justification for such a book as this.

The book covers many large fields. Quite a few scholars have devoted their lifetime to some of the topics covered in a single chapter of this book. We have approached the subject of ‘nation and its representation’ in South Asia from the standpoint of those who are not burdened by the academic tradition or its specializations. It is not possible within the boundaries of the book to explore issues relating to gender and women’s empowerment, environment and sustainable development, nuclear power and disarmament, globalization and domestic liberalization. What we have tried to cover is ambitious enough by the standards of academic specialization, within which we have ourselves grown.

We can experience the impact of colonialism in several areas—the growth of academic disciplines like law, history and literature, on the one hand, and the enormous paper work and procedural culture in government, bureaucracy and trade, on the other. In a large measure, ‘orientalist ideas’ or other forms of colonial knowledge have influenced these areas. The early nationalists responded to colonial domination in primarily economic and cultural terms. The economic ideology of nationalism, and the critiques of colonialism, gained widespread acceptance amongst different shades of nationalists ranging from the Left to the Right and from Savarkar to Gandhi. The cultural critique was based on the benign perception of Indian society and religion deriving its power from the work of scholars like William Jones, Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Maurice Winternitz, Max Muller, Sir Henry Maine and others. The ideas about the significance of Sanskrit, the vitality of village republics and the spiritual heritage of India owed a lot to the work of these orientalists. Over the last twenty years, the work of scholars like Edward Said and Bernard Cohn have made us more sensitive to the power relations affecting the production of knowledge. Cohn has highlighted the role of the census and its impact on Indian self-perception. Scholars like Sudipta Kaviraj and Arjun Appadurai have brought out the transition from fuzzy identities to ones that are more rigid. Along the way, they have introduced the notion of majority and minority in understanding the dynamics of the South Asian body politic.

THE MAKING OF BHARATVARSHA AS ‘SOUTH ASIA’
Indians and non-Indians such as Persians, Arabs and Europeans have imagined India in quite different ways. Indian nationalists like Bipin Chandra Pal have argued that its people have always conceived of India as Bharatavarsha, a land located in historical antiquity, eliciting strong feelings of attachment. The Persians and the Arabs saw India as a geographical site located beyond the Indus River and called it Al Hind or Hindustan. For some Europeans of the early nineteenth century like the German philosopher Hegel, German orientalists and English colonizers, India was always a strange, far off land, rich in material, spiritual and linguistic wealth that was waiting for others to exploit. As its wealth began to be identified, exploited and categorized within a European intellectual tradition the understanding of India also underwent a change. From a land of economic and spiritual wealth in the nineteenth century, India became, by the middle of the twentieth century, a land of religious conflict, economic squalor, underdevelopment, epidemics and cheap labor. Since the 1980s, this rather negative image of India has once more transformed into a more positive one of professionalism in the areas of information technology, technical education and service industry.

The term ‘South Asia’ now effectively includes eight sovereign nation states—India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and the Maldives—and carries within this complex definition its own border geographies, political identities and intra-national hegemonies. We can map the geographical identity of South Asia within the Indian sub-continent. From the Himalayas in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south, and from the Indus valley in the west to the alluvial plains of the Brahmaputra River in the east, South Asia provides an expansive geographical terrain and cultural diversity not available elsewhere in Asia. We may further stretch the eastern limit of South Asia, through colonial proxy, to include the last frontiers of Myanmar. About two billion people inhabit this diverse cultural, religious and linguistic region, with about 1.2 billion in India alone. It is the demographic strength of India coupled with its political, military and economic prowess that gives it a dominant position as a major player in South Asia. It is no surprise that we often use the term ‘South Asia’ interchangeably with India, to the chagrin of other minor South Asian nation states. The understanding of South Asia becomes more complex when we place the region within its 5000-year old history and the politics of European imperialism of the last few centuries. Andre Wink would like to introduce the geographical perspective in the understanding of medieval South Asian culture and urban space. Given the state of historical knowledge at the moment it is a task too daunting for any single book to attempt. We have therefore tried to use this overarching paradigm wherever possible to understand modern South Asia.

The geographical boundedness of the Asian sub-continent provides a metaphor for the cultural traditions of the peoples living in it, giving rise to the notion of cultural unity. This has allowed people to imagine South Asia as a region signifying ‘unity in diversity.’ Since the 1950s and 1960s, the growth of regionalism and nationalism in the region has weakened the belief in ‘unity in diversity,’ introducing the notion of ‘heterogeneity’ in culture, belief and language. Now, we can view almost everything ranging from national economies, infrastructure to diaspora and literature within the overarching framework of cultural heterogeneity. Undoubtedly, South Asia is a multi-religious and polyglot region. Its peoples speak over twenty important languages and two hundred different dialects. It is possible to find here, adherents of practically all the major religions of the world such as Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. There are nearly one billion Hindus (if we include India, Nepal and Sri Lanka) and four hundred million Muslims (if we include India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) in this region.

South Asia as a term to describe the subcontinent owes its emergence to three important factors—a legacy of colonial rule, the growth of American area studies, and the self-representation of the South Asian intelligentsia. First, South Asia owes its origin to colonial rule and expansion in India. The colonial rule encompassed most of the countries of South Asia, excluding Nepal but including Burma. Second, South Asia emerged as a political and academic category within the specialization of American area studies. Finally, the emergence of South Asia is born out of a need for regional cooperation in the subcontinent that responds to the changing economic and social realities. Many academics, media people and politicians of the third world find a self-description in the third meaning. In using the term ‘South Asia,’ we recognize not only the historical legacy of the British Empire but also the aspirations of the erstwhile colonized people to achieve greater cooperation and economic progress within the region.

The category of South Asia is more deeply rooted in history than the identity of South East Asia. The level of economic cooperation in ASEAN, although not very high as Benedict Anderson has argued in The Spectre of Comparisons, is nevertheless higher than that of SAARC countries. The discipline of South Asian area studies as it has emerged in America may not be as wide-ranging as we may wish it to be, but it studies the common features and interests of a large number of people in the South Asian subcontinent. For some time to come the appropriate unit of analysis for school curriculum may still be the nation state in all the countries of the subcontinent. At the level of academic research, the unit of analysis cannot remain just the nation state because of the shared problems of national and linguistic diversity in the region and problems of developing countries that transcend national boundaries within the region.

If you wish to read more please buy the book at Amazon.com

The French Revolution and Enlightenment

© Mukesh Williams


The French Revolution was a watershed in the history of hereditary imperative and political privilege. It initially began as a financial crisis and gradually went out of control as the French elite began to seek political reform at the expense of the French monarchy. It rode on the twin wings of the American Revolution and the Enlightenment ideas. The first phase of the French Revolution saw emergence of constitutional government and the curtailment of the privileges of the Old Regime. The next phase saw the rise of radicalism in response to the threat of foreign invasion and the various maneuvers of the King, legislators and people. The radical phase became intense when Robespierre initiated the Regime de la terreur. At last a French general Napoleon Bonaparte seized power and initiated an unstable conservative government.

MARQUIS DE CONDORCET
In July 1793 Marquis de Condorcet wrote his now famous essay Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progres de l’espirit humain or The Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind. In April 1974 he was executed by the Jacobins. The essay was published in 1795. The essay became the central text of the French Enlightenment and the idealistic manifesto of the post-Thermidorian reconstruction in France.

Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat or Marquis de Condorcet as he was called (1743-1794), was an aristocrat, a mathematician, an official of the Academy of Sciences, and a friend of Voltaire (1694-¬1778). He was one of the early French enlightenment figures who supported the French Revolution of 1789, but during its short-lived Radical period became a victim through betrayal and frankness. Though he could hide for a short while after the completion of the Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, he was arrested. It is said he killed himself by taking poison. Others say he was poisoned by someone as he was loved by the people too much and the authorities could not afford a public execution.

REASON AS THE HERO OF ESQUISSE
The hero of Condorcet’s work is reason that first appeared in philosophy, then in natural sciences and afterwards in moral and political sciences. With the coming of the printing press the full possibilities of reason, through the publication of books, became possible. Reason triumphed over the stratagems of priest, tyrants and hypocrites and gained great energy.

Condorcet’s concept of progress was teleological and involved the infinite possibilities of human perfection. He believed that the future could be predicted based on the general laws of the universe but it was more of a utopian dream. Condorcet thought that eventually everyone would enjoy racial and sexual equality and nations would share economic wealth as equal partners. This would allow the transformation of our biological nature and lead to the extension of human life. Condorcet’s Esquisse seems ironic today in the light of the atrocities of the two world wars in the twentieth century and various other human shortcomings. Condorcet confused faith in scientific progress with virtue and human happiness. But even today many hope that his dreams may come true through healthy public debates and enlightened mass education.

THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT
A century later Max Weber began to expose the myths, stage models, social evolutionism and the dark side of Enlightenment. He argued that freedom and republican democracy did not constitute the telos of human history. The rise of capitalism posed a significant threat to freedom and democracy.
No one ever believed that the human mind would exhaust all the ‘facts’ or facets of nature, all the refinements of measuring and analyzing these facts, the inter relationship of objects, and all the possible combinations of ideas.

Condorcet believed that over the centuries nations had come to realize that they cannot conquer and colonize without losing their hard-fought freedoms. It was only in global federations that nations could find their interdependence and independence. If nations sought security then acquiring power was not the means to get security. The increased power of nations invariably brought in an increased sense of insecurity. The whole idea of economic progress at the cost of others had only resulted in bloodshed. He felt that his utopian conceptualizations would eventually come true.

He further stated that the false mercantile economy based on self-interest and prejudice must give way to an intimacy of peoples based on foundational principles of politics and morality. In such a world skills based on industry or exploitation of nature will be shared equally amongst natives and foreigners. This will become the surest way to eradicate national animosities and stereotyping. He avowed that,

Every thing tells us that we are approaching the era of one of the grand revolutions of the human race. What can better enlighten us to what we may expect, what can be a surer guide to us, amidst its commotions, than the picture of the revolutions that have preceded and prepared the way for it? The present state of knowledge assures us that it will be happy. But is it not upon condition that we know how to assist it with all our strength? And, that the happiness it promises may be less dearly bought, that it may spread with more rapidity over a greater space, that it may be more complete in its effects, is it not requisite to study, in the history of the human mind, what obstacles remain to be feared, and by what means those obstacles are to be surmounted?

Condorcet’s was a rather simplistic vision of the future for Kant who saw a gap between the “is” and the “ought. Kant argued that the only way to bridge the gap between the two was to introduce a universal moral imperative.

The New Indian Middle Class and Japan-India Partnership: Legal Restraints and Economic Opportunities

(Lecture delivered at Ryokoku University, Kyoto Monday 12th July 2010)
© Mukesh Williams

The lecture deals with new trends in the rise of the new Indian middle class, middle class consumerism, Indian demography, the stability/instability of economic institutions, continuous women empowerment, Khap panchayats, strategies of economic survival, what Japan can learn from Indian example, the rise of elite institutions such as IITs and St. Stephen’s College, NRIs, the power of design, cooperation between Indian and Japanese business companies, areas of possible investment, and overcoming legal restraints and legal reforms.

In the last two decades India has seen tremendous economic progress and technological boom, giving rise to the new Indian middle class and opening economic and scientific opportunities for all classes both domestically and internationally. Since the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991 by the then finance minster and now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh India’s Gross Domestic Product has steadily risen from just 4 percent to over 10%. Even after the global economic recession in the wake of Lehman Brothers scandal in 2008, India still performed well. Its GDP has continued to grow at a rate of 6.5% per annum. Though China’s GDP is much higher, it is more from the manufacture and production side that China gains its strength. India’s strength lies more in the intellectual and professional class. It is speculated that China’s heated economy will cool down in the coming years while India’s intellectual strength will not decline.

INDIAN DEMOGRAPHY
Indian population is around 1.11 billion. And India has all religions of the world including Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Islam. There are 14 official regional languages. The Mughals came in the 16th century and ruled until the 18th when they were displaced by the colonizing British until India gained freedom in 1947. The Muslim rulers bought Persian while the British English. India became a polyglot nation where most intellectuals were able to master more than two languages. Today both English and Hindi are used for official purposes. However it is English which dominates. There is a suggestion of evolving a common national language with Hindustani in Roman script. Till then Indian English rules the roost.

THE NEW INDIAN MIDDLE CLASS
Marx once defined the middle class on the means of production comprising of small business owners, self employed, managers and supervisors. The Indian middle class is estimated at about 300 million about the same as the population of the United States of America. As people from different strata and regions are joining the middle class it is becoming more diverse and heterogeneous. The rise of the middle class is a function of neoliberal policies of the government in the early 1990s celebrating the victory of capitalism over socialism. Since then there has been a great emphasis on market and privatization and retreat of government intervention.

The growth of the new middle class has been a function of the globalization of economy. This has created class conflict and friction between lower and new urban classes and resulted in the rise of the new poor and the new rich. Leela Fernandes in India’s New Middle Class locates the origin of the new middle class much earlier in the colonial period when they got access to English education, employment in modern professions, enhanced political awareness of public representation and self identification as neither colonial subjects nor marginalized groups (Fernandes, 2006 2). McKinsey Report suggests that today India has about 50 million new middle class who have disposable incomes of 200,000 to one million rupees.

NEW MIDDLE CLASS CONSUMERISM
As recently as 1985 about 90% Indians lived on less than a dollar. Now they are consuming high end cars and designer clothes. In 20 years India will surpass Germany, with its 5th largest consumer market. Today the middle class is over 50 million but in 2025 it will be about 583 million about 41 % of the population. These households will see their incomes balloon to 51.5 trillion rupees ($1.1 billion)—11 times the level of today and 58 percent of total Indian income. The popular cars for the upper middle class, new middle class and middle class are Audi A4 Sedan 16 million; Maruti Esteem 1 million yen; Maruti 800 half a million yen. They are also buying white goods such as refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, computer and music systems.

INDIAN INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY
India missed the agricultural revolution. It missed the industrial revolution but it caught the technological revolution. Why did this happen? It is to do predominantly with the starting of higher technical institutes in the 1950s called Indian Institute of Technology or IIT. The idea of starting the IITs along the lines of MIT in America was initiated by Sir Ardeshir Dalal in 1946. The first IIT was established at Kharagpur in May 1950. Jawaharlal Nehru called it “India’s future in the making.” The IITs of the 1950s paved the way for India’s economic and intellectual progress in the 1990s. I am also a product of IIT Delhi and have taught at IIT Madras and St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. St .Stephen’s College began producing skilled students in the 1960s and 1970s who joined the civil services like Montek Singh Aluwalia, became lawyers like Kapil Sibal, professors like Manmohan Singh or went aborad to work in the Silocon Valley in California. Many joined the IMB, Microsoft and NASA increasing the Indian representation in these companies to 30% of the total workforce. Today the Indian community in the United States is called a ‘model minority’ for its intellectual excellence, law abiding nature and contribution to the American economy.

NON RESIDENT INDIANS
Indians aboard are called immigrants in other countries but NRIs or Non Resident Indians at home. NRIs have contributed substantially to India’s wealth through investment at home. The Indian banks especially the State Bank of India provides them with tax free foreign currency fixed deposits in USD, Deutschmark, English pounds and Japanese yen from 2.5% to 4 % per annum. Today there are 24 million Indian overseas making the Indian Diaspora only next to China in terms of intellectual and economic presence. About 24,000 live in Japan and 2.7 million in the United States. In Nepal there are about half a million living as expatriates.

THE POWER OF DESIGN
The demand for innovative and cheap design in India is really high—whether it is a car or a treadle water pump. The Nano model was produced by Tata Motors and priced at 200,000 yen. It is the cheapest car in the world and therefore rightly called “The People’s Car.” The Treadle Water Pumps
it is a human powered Pump which lifts water from 25 feet from below the earth and saves on energy and resources. It is now used in rural India. It increases cropping by 200-300 % and is marketed by IDEI under the Krishak bandhu ‘farmer’s friend’ program in east India here are roughly 7,50000 such pumps each pump costs 2400 yen.

ENLISH COMPETENCE
India’s competence is further accelerated by high competence in English proficiency and mathematics skills. English has been for all intents and purposes the official language of the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia. English is used as a tool to knit the country together, advance intellectual and scientific competence and conduct business. It is not used to understand the ‘culture of the other country.’ Schools in India teach English language but not universities where it is expected of students to use it as the medium of English at most universities is English.

In the last 160 years Indians have learnt the English language and transformed it into a local Indian vernacular. They can write it with ease and speak it fluently. The Indian accent has prompted some people to call it Indian English just as American accent has made English spoken in America as American English. Today there are 750 million English speakers more than the combined population of America (300 million; only 94% speak English) and Britain (61 million).The added strength of English speakers in the two countries is less than that of India.

ELITE ENGLISH EDUCATION
Where do the young who make the middle class come from? Obviously they come from elite English medium institutions such as St. Columbus, Jesus and Mary Convent, Mayo College, Xaviers, St. Joseph’s and Ravenshaw. A lot of them are referred to as Mission schools as they were either set up by the British to promote English education, opinions, morals and intellect or run by convent nuns or Jesuit priests. During the colonial period they served British interests but today they impart quality English education based on Scottish or English Enlightenment values of sound scholarship, critical inquiry and Christian brotherhood. Recently public schools like the Kendriya Vidhlaya or central schools have also come up to cater to the needs of the urban middle class. As compared to American or British schools, Indian schools are relatively cheap. The average annual fees for a student until high school would be approximately one million yen (for foreign students) and 250000 yen (for Indian students). Students studying at university colleges and living on campus may spend about 200,000 to 250,000 yen a year pursuing humanities or science courses.

UNIVERSITY ELITE COLLEGES
These students enter elite institutions of higher learning such as St. Stephen’s College Delhi, Loyola College Madras or Presidency College Calcutta. I taught for nearly 20 years at St. Stephen’s College where 99 % students go to the US universities with full scholarships and at the top of American colleges. St. Stephen’s was established in 1881 by the Cambridge University Brotherhood and has a strong connection with Gandhi, The Gadar Party and the Freedom Struggle. Originally it was set up to cater to the needs of the poor but today it is seen as an elite institution catering to the bureaucracy, politics and education.

This does not mean that Indian students will not come to Japan even when they are wooed. India is a vast country with 369 universities and 18064 colleges. Over eleven million students are enrolled at these universities and colleges where English is largely the medium of instruction. Japan has 726 universities with over 2.8 million students. There are thousands of students in India who do not belong to the prestigious institutions named earlier. They come from middle-level universities and see Japan as a possible destination to secure a future. Such students may not have found a good American or European university to go to and they would be most willing to try their hand at a Japanese university. The bind however is that Japanese universities do not want such students; they want the very best. More and more Japanese students should also be allowed to study at Indian elite institutions and find jobs wherever they wish to.

THE STRANGLEHOLD OF CASTE
As a result of both elitist and egalitarian learning the stranglehold of caste is gradually loosening. Caste has not gone altogether, nor will it ever go, but it is getting linked to other social factors such as class and lower caste job reservations. It is possible to see students from various minorities (such as Muslims and Christians (and backward castes and tribes (such as SCs and STs) getting education alongside upper caste Hindus. In urban area excellence and skill has replaced caste lineage, though in matters of marriage caste still plays a significant role.

THE KHAP
There is a greater preference amongst the young to choose their own partner from their school, college, workplace or other associations they belong to. These days the new trend is a mixture of arranged and love marriage where the girl or boy first select each other, then their families arrange their match according to custom and practice. However in some village in Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh, Rajashthan and Punjab there is a reemergence of prohibiting same clan marriages. The khap means a group of villages of the same clan. The khap panchayat or clan court was established by upper caste jats in the 14th century to oversee same clan marriages called gotra marriages. The idea is that all boys and girls within a clan are considered siblings and therefore are ineligible to marry. The khap forces such couples to either commit suicide or conduct honor killings. Honor killings have got much publicity in the media. The national government is now formulating a legislation to seek criminal indictment in khap killings. The khap on the other hand either deny this altogether or justify their acts and want the marriageable age to be reduced to 15 to prevent adolescent girls from running way with their lovers. However in cities more women are choosing their own partners and entering elite work places which were earlier reserved for men.

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT
It is now possible to see women working in information technology, space technology, education, business, medicine and bureaucracy. Today’s India’s ruling Congress Party chairman, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the President Prathiba Patil, many governors of states, chief ministers are women. However the disparity in opportunity between rural and urban women is great. Most rural women do not have access to proper education or rights to self-empowerment. Though sati, johar and devadasi practices are banned, women still do not enjoy a safe social environment. More work has to be done for continuous empowerment of women in rural areas.

INDIAN FINANCIAL SECTOR
Finance is the science of money management. A system involves institutions, agents and practices, liabilities and markets. The Indian banking and financial infrastructure was always more conservative when compared to the US. It has a highly modern NSE, ATM banking, cell phone banking and other infrastructure. Unlike US banks it is not generous with its loans. Most Indians who returned from the US complained about the tight-fisted policies of the Indian Reserve Bank of India. It has deposits of over half trillion US dollars and accounts for three quarters of the country’s financial assets. It has grown annually at a rate of 18%. For example if you wanted a loan of 4 million yen you would have to show collateral in terms of property or a job which would ensure your ability to pay back. Only then you would get a loan around 70% of the original demand that is 3 million yen. It was not possible to get a 100 % loan even after surety. But if India faced an economic crisis like the US would India survive? Our banking needs to be regulated.

Globalization and liberalization has increased financial opportunities for India. This helped business to survive and banks to remain healthy. But there are problems .Since capital is not easy to get Indian banks offer reasonable interest rates on investments to encourage financial savings. The government takes most revenue from savings at low rates and leaves Indian business weak. About 80% of the banking system is in the public sector while only 20% in the private sector. About 3% of the total deposits are in the private sector. We need to strengthen our slow legal system, remove corruption, make financial working more transparent, implement rigorous norms and give appropriate incentives.
With the rise of corporate culture and liberalization the bureaucratic problems called the license raj are slowly becoming less. The authoritarian rule imposed by the government is slowly receding. Business is freer and functions with less constraints and government support. India is now trying to attract foreign business and create a one-window access for business.

LEGAL SYSTEM
Though our legal system is cumbersome and slow it works quite impartially at the High Court and Supreme Court levels. Even if justice is mislaid in lower courts in the case of Jessica Lall and Priyadarshini Mutto cases, the High Court usually rectifies them. However the justice system needs many reforms such as increasing the number of functionaries, speeding the judicial process, protecting witness and removing police corruption.

THE INDIAN MEDIA
The Indian media operates with a relative degree of freedom in India unlike China or other countries such as Singapore and is quite critical of various institutions including the government and other agencies. A free press is quite important for the smooth functioning of democracy. There is a fair degree of transparency in hiring judges and other legal functionaries. Job vacancies in universities are also advertised in the press and are followed by a fair process.

INDIA-JAPAN PARTNERSHIP
India is a new republic though it has an ancient culture. It is possible for India and Japan to expand the present areas of cooperation especially in the areas of pharmaceuticals, raw materials and human resource. Japan can invest more in Indian infrastructure, financial sector and nuclear technology. It has already invested in the areas of automobile technology, urban railroad development, fabricating business corridor and IIT education.

CONCLUSION
India is growing rapidly and has a great business and intellectual potential which Japan can exploit profitably. In the last decade the cooperation between the two nations has been growing. Japan's total loans to India were $4,239.0 million in 2004, grant aid $ 399.2 million, while technical cooperation totaled $ 179.5 million. Major Japanese companies are making profit in India and wish to expand their business in future. Though there are differences in culture, business practices and environment, the Indian market is potentially big. There are possibilities for Japanese business to invest in Indian transport, power and telecommunications. Japan ranks seventh in terms of cumulative foreign direct investment (FDI) in India, accounting for US$ 3.61 billion in the period from April 2000 to December 2009, of which US$ 1.08 billion came in the period April-December 2009. The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor with Japanese cooperation is about to complete. The success of this enterprise will further encourage Japan to invest in India and make profit. Other areas for future exploitation are medicine, higher education and information technology.

Domo arigato gozaimata.
(My special thanks to Professor Manoj Shrestha, Konan University, and to the law, business and economics major students of Ryukoku University)

TAKING A POSITION

THE TEXT: MEANINGS, IMPLICATIONS, AND DISTORTIONS

Mukesh Williams


Anything we confess or profess implies taking a position. A position would imply apart from other things an act of laying down of a proposition or a thesis. Even opening up a debate, seeking genealogies or simply deconstructing are all acts that take up a position even when they deny doing so. Nothing is neutral. Every act intervenes. The signature in a text points at an intention, to some hidden agenda. Hegel had once pointed out that inversions and displacements are created through what is said and what is meant. Though academic deconstruction has claimed to be apolitical Derrida has always insisted of the political nature of the exercise. Perhaps Edward Said was right when he suggested that American deconstruction was overtly neoconservative. The message of a text may be misconstrued or used for ideological advantage and may have nothing to do with the original meaning or implication of the text. But then is the author responsible for the distortion of the text? Derrida points out that the “effects or structure of a text are not reducible to its ‘truth,’ to the intended meaning of its presumed author, or even its supposedly unique and identifiable signatory” (Derrida, The Ear of the Other, 1985 29). Does it mean that the author relinquishes all responsibility of the ideas he proffers?

ETHICAL ASSUMPTIONS AND THE PARADOX OF GIFT, HOSPITALITY, FORGIVENESS AND MOURNING

by
© Mukesh Williams

My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do.

Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” The Foucault Reader, 343

The self is through and through a hostage, older than the ego, prior to principles. What is at stake for the self, in its being, is not to be. Beyond egoism and altruism it is the religiosity of the self.

Levinas, Otherwise Than Being Or Beyond Essence, 117

The methods to draw ethical assumptions and the way to investigate them have always dominated western philosophical inquiry right from Plato to the present. The seriousness of this pursuit in moral philosophy can be measured by the fact that seminal European philosophers such as Kant and Hegel were deeply involved in the ethical project. The western ethical inquiry was also deeply connected to the investigations about spirituality, consciousness, the construction of being and the act of knowing. Levinas states, “For the philosophical tradition of the West, all spirituality lies in consciousness, thematic expression of being, knowing” (Otherwise Than Being Or Beyond Essence, 99).

In recent times both ethics and ethical behavior are seen more as puzzles that may not be fully realized but unsurely grasped in their assumed contradiction. Foucault was suspicious of the ethical alternative offered by the Greeks. He was skeptical of their ethical assumptions and worked on the genealogy of ethics rather than on seeking a solution or an alternative. He cautioned us of its dangers and warned us to be always busy to do “something” (Foucault, “On The Genealogy of Ethics” 343). By ‘something’ he meant the interrogation of ethical issues that instead of liberating us often imprison us. Derrida goes beyond the totalizing narratives of ethics and reveals the aporia or paradox that lies buried deep in social practices connected to gift giving, hospitality, forgiveness and mourning.

APPROACHES TO ETHICS
There are three fundamental approaches to the understanding of ethics—theoretical, utilitarian and practical which includes Kant, Rorty and John Rawls. Winston Churchill’s famous statement in a 1941speech to the British Parliament during a debate on how to rebuild the House of Commons destroyed in the aerial bombing by the Luftwaffe: “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” This must be read with Heidegger’s concept that technology surrounds us. Architecture possesses a presence, a mood and a texture that subtly and patiently shapes our sensibility and guides us into observations of ourselves and the world we live in. A virtual architecture gives rise to a reflexive architecture or a virtual environment imagined and fantasized by a linguistic architecture.

HUME, MILL AND UTILITARIANISM
Early philosophers attempted to define human nature and built their ethical standards in terms of either self-love or benevolence. David Hume saw benevolence as an essential human component of nature, something that ultimately gave rise to morality. Hume argued against Hobbes’s theory that private interest was the prime motive in human action. Hume suggested that it was not ego but benevolence that was the fundamental aspect of human nature. He felt that ego was connected to fear and ambition while benevolence to more altruistic emotions. Benevolence implied virtues based on goodwill, generosity and love. These emotions became a part of virtues operated in friendship, charity and compassion. Hume did not reject the ego but saw it as a mixture of the dove-wolf-serpent metaphor. He saw both benevolence and justice as social virtues but felt that benevolence was primary human nature while justice was a normative human convention.

The proponents of utilitarianism especially John Stuart Mill argued that the ‘greatest happiness’ principle or utility defined moral standards and laid the foundations of all ethical behavior. An action was right if it promoted human happiness, and wrong if it did not. Duty, obligation and right were all subordinate to this utility principle. The utilitarian philosophy argued that utility was the supreme ethical standard.

KANT, RORTY AND RAWLS
Though Kant rejects the centrality of the utilitarian principle he located it in duty and beneficence. The virtue of benevolent actions must spring from duty and not from friendly inclination. It is only duty which is performed without personal gain. Benevolence based on friendly inclination has no limits but duty does as it is both clear and precise. However Kant does not define the limits of beneficence or duty. Bernard Gert believes that the concept of beneficence has no moral rules but only moral ideals that prevent people from causing harm. Gert believes that the goal of morality is to lessen evil but not to promote good. Rationality may help to lessen evil but cannot promote eternal good.

Rorty takes his cue from the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham by presuming that all discussions on morality are firmly rooted in the individual ego. Values are therefore personal possessions. Marxism sees human nature as a “totality of social relations” and not as “idiosyncratic fantasy” (Marx 1963; Rorty, 1989 42). Rorty camouflages ideas in vague language such as the following when he explains the purpose of social organization: “the point of social organization is to let everybody have a chance at self-creation to the best of his or her abilities, and that the goal requires besides peace and wealth, the standard ‘bourgeois freedoms’” (Rorty, 1989 84). There is too much personal choice in the phrase “to the best of his or her abilities.” The statement does not acknowledge the constraints placed by society on individual effort. Charles Taylor believes that most of Enlightenment utilitarianism takes up an unacknowledged moral position because it is primarily interested to debunk moral statements which it sees as arising from religious authority (Rorty, Sources of the Self 339-40).

Rawls’ principles of justice enunciated in A Theory of Justice are libertarian and egalitarian. His principles include equal liberty and greatest social and economic benefits to the least advantaged. He introduces the concept of ‘difference principle’ which advocates giving more power to the underprivileged in terms of income and status. He discusses the socialist idea of distributive justice where responsibilities in society are distributed according to ability and benefits. Martha C. Nussbaum develops Rawls theory further by incorporating Amatya Sen’s idea of substantial freedom and argues that opportunities have to be real supported by governmentality which direct political institutions to allow everyone to participate in political discussion and shape their own lives (Nussbaum, Women and Human Development). She adds that both citizens and governments must be made to commit to create a threshold of real opportunities.

DERRIDA’S PUZZLES
Towards the end of his life Derrida was relatively preoccupied with philosophical impasses, social paradoxes and irresolvable puzzles, what today we term as “possible aporias-impossible aporias.” Aporias or puzzles have affected our important social rituals such as hospitality, forgiving and mourning where the conditions that make them possible are the very conditions that negate their possibility. Derrida interrogates these rituals to see if they possess ideal authenticity.

Derrida not only problematizes the simple social and personal acts of giving gifts, forgiveness mourning and hospitality. He reveals that these acts are never completely genuine. It is only in their denial that they achieve authenticity. There is an aporia, a paradox, in them that deny their authenticity. Perhaps Derrida’s interrogation is born out of his own sense of discrimination and loss. He questions the totalizing vocabularies of the Enlightenment and the moral and humanistic tradition of our times. His attempt is not to debunk these important practices but to open them up to see their paradoxical positions. Such knowledge would allow us to act responsibly.

Responsibility is the key component in his interrogation. It is rather naive to assume that debunking is the only post-modern condition of philosophy. Derrida wants to show that our certitudes are not stable, that there are paradoxes embedded in our beliefs and assumptions. Aporias therefore leave us with a discourse that is at once informative and puzzling.

THE GIFT
In Given Time Derrida argues that a authentic gift must escape the oppositional logic of giving and receiving and must transcend self interest or rational calculation. A gift cannot just appear by itself as it will soon be cancelled out by a recompense or equivalence. Even the mere knowledge of a gift will destroy it being termed as a gift. A simple ‘thank you’ cancels a gift by acknowledging its presence and suggesting equivalence. ‘Thank you’ suggests the erasure of indebtedness to the giver and the conclusion of the act. Else a cycle of receiving and giving begins to operate following the logic of one good deed deserves another. A gift often functions as a command to respond; the receiver is expected to acknowledge the giver. A gift can be manipulated for personal advantage and then cancels its original purpose altogether. It may be rather difficult to give without gaining some psychological satisfaction but Derrida is not analyzing the psychological issues connected with the ego. He is merely questioning the process of giving and receiving an authentic gift.

An authentic gift must be anonymous without the slightest hint of getting something in return. The person who gives should not realize that he has given a gift—let not your left hand know what your right hand has given. He should not be in a position to congratulate himself of his goodness. A genuine gift involves the separation of the self from the other and that makes the giving of an authentic gift almost impossible. For Derrida the existential problem of gift giving is this: it is impossible to realize unconditional philanthropy. The incommensurable nature of authentic giving and receiving escapes the dialectic of amalgamation. In brief, though we look for genuine giving, the act always eludes us.

HOSPITALITY
It is impossible to practice authentic hospitality before strangers. Absolute hospitality involves the giving of everything we possess to others and the difficulty of doing so. Within this tension the concept of hospitality is afloat. In order to give you must possess something to give—house, country, nation—and that involves control or mastery. Hospitality is a function of power which requires ownership of property, some sort of dominant identity, some sort of power over the hosted. If the hosted uses force to occupy the host’s house then the ritual of hospitality ends and the logic of forced occupancy punishable by law comes into existence. In wider terms this involves closing of borders and excluding certain ethnic groups. Hospitality selects some to be included in the hospitality ritual but simultaneously excludes others classifying them as ‘aliens’ or ‘refuges.’ The placing of limit or invoking trespass makes hospitality inhospitable. Hospitality without conditions implies welcoming everyone and relinquishing property claims. This seems as impossible hospitality. But if you allow this condition to occur then the notion of hospitality gets erased as the host does not exist.

FORGIVENESS
It is impossible to really forgive the unforgivable—a mortal sin for example (Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness 32). If we can forgive something then it is actually forgivable. This forgiving is based on our reason. In effect we do not genuinely forgive. Forgiving involves a kind of madness, an unconscious act that functions outside the framework of political or legal rationality. Forgiveness may involve an unconditional clemency without seeking apology from the guilty person, though a tension between conditional forgiveness and apology may exist. This process is evident in amnesty and reconciliation and does not therefore constitute genuine forgiveness. Derrida reveals an inherent paradox, an eternal rupture, in the entire process of forgiveness that cannot be resolved as it depends upon the separation of self from the other. Derrida argues that, “genuine forgiveness must engage two singularities: the guilty and the victim. As soon as a third party intervenes, one can again speak of amnesty, reconciliation, reparation, etc., but certainly not of forgiveness in the strict sense” (Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness 42).

Derrida points out that it is not possible to imagine a face-to-face encounter without the mediation of a third party—even when the third party is language itself—then the empirical paradox acquires the condition of aporia. Absolute forgiveness requires a direct involvement of the self with the other, while mediation breaches this category. If we know of the motive of the other person through language or a third party than genuine forgiveness is not possible. Though this impasse may not be overcome evaluating both sides is the only responsible action.

MOURNING
Derrida’s interrogation of mourning is born out of the pain of losing a friend in Paul de Man and the latter’s Nazi affiliation. A successful mourning is never possible as the other is interiorized and becomes a part of us. Since the other loses his indisputable alterity a complete mourning does not take place. The refusal to mourn successfully prolongs the alterity of the other—“an aborted interiorisation is at the same time a respect for the other as other” (Derrida, Mourning DeMann 6). In a sense a successful morning is the condition when we are unable to mourn—“success fails, failure succeeds.”

In “Fors” Derrida expands upon his concept of mourning with some help from post-Freudian theories. He distinguishes between introjections which implies the “love for the other in me” and incorporation which means retaining the other as within one’s own body. Derrida agrees with Freud, Abraham and Toruk successful morning involves introjections of the other but he does not valorize this process—the more the self “keeps the foreign element inside itself the more it excludes it” (Derrida, Fors xvii). Incorporation invariably turns pathological but retains the alterity of the other. Derrida’s loss is the loss of exchange and the opportunity of transformation de Mann presented. In the process of mourning the “otherness of the other” opposes both introjection and incorporation. We must therefore emphasize both respect for and resistance to the other (Derrida, Mémoires: for Paul de Man 160, 238).

We reject the ethical paradigm and reorganize another structure not against incommensurable but the deficiency of its internal logic. In Structures of Scientific Revolutions published in 1962 Thomas Kuhn suggests that a paradigm is rejected not from the outside but for reasons that arise from within it. Kant warned us in his The Critique of Pure Reason that everything would come under the ambit of criticism and reason: “Our age is, in especial degree, the age of criticism, and to criticism everything must submit.” What is important for the interrogation of both ethics and the self is to go beyond egoism, altruism and the “religiosity of the self” (Levinas, Otherwise Than Being Or Beyond Essence 117). We can take a leaf from Levinas when he says that the self can be free in its being when it decides “not to be.”

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FRAMING SOME QUESTIONS

© Mukesh Williams

1. Who has the right to ask a question and why?

In an age which is increasingly questioning privilege and authority, how can we find a common yardstick to define the right to ask a question? Do individuals, nations, communities or philosophies possess this right? If so why? Is asking a question a discursive strategy or a more fundamental issue of authority and rights? If we decenter or ‘liquidate’ the subject as Lacan said, then can we ask the question? Heidegger felt that there was subjectivity in questioning. But if subjectivity goes away from philosophy would philosophy come to an end and with it all questioning?

2. Is it possible for human beings to share worldviews, values, sensibilities and global futures?

Today globalization and its accompanied discourses of immigration and change have brought together economies, nations and communities closer and yet values, sensibilities, worldviews and global futures have acquired a deeper schism. There are more contentious debates between the rich north and the poor south about controlling the resources of the world. There are debates about clash of civilization theories and return to an ideal past.

3. Can local communities coexist with global societies?

As the world becomes increasingly complex, both local and global forces shape our lives and identity in often incompatible ways. Can we retain our old tribal and communal loyalties and yet act globally? Can we inherit the benefits of modernity and still function effectively within our traditional ethos?

4. Can we overcome the dichotomy of body and mind?

Symbiotic philosophies like Buddhism suggest that oneness of body and mind is possible, while neuroscience is discovering that it is difficult to resolve this dichotomy.

5. Is the concept of human freedom compatible with scientific discoveries of the mind?

If we are free agents we are responsible for our actions but if we are not then can we be responsible for our actions?

6. Is the universe organized only in bits and parts or there is a comprehensive scheme that is hidden from us?

This is an age-old problem expounded by T. E. Hulme and others who believe that the universe has no pattern but we place a pattern on it. We organize the world in parts, the rest is burning cinders. However the Kantians and the foundationalists disagree.

7. On what should we depend to answer the questions: Who am I? Or who are we?

The 1960s was a momentous decade. Lacan began to attack the concept of the embedded self and posited the notion of a de-centered self. The dominant theory thesis and hegemonic ideas connected with it began to give way to micro politics. By 1970s it became rather difficult to say, both on the individual and group level, “Who am I? or Who are we?” As we go into the 1980s again new groups are formed such as Yuppies and DINKS. Identity was no longer what we learn or experience but something to be consumed and used. The consumer culture acquired greater intensity during this decade. Today it is difficult to assert an ‘authentic identity’ as postmodernism undercuts modern history, psychology and philosophy. Cloning, genetic tinkering and transforming memory has further destabilized our conception of who are we.

8. How to find the right information in an age of information glut?

Information has spread rapidly like a web of knowledge breaking the hierarchical modernist framework of top down flow. We now float in a world of information but have a problem to find reliable knowledge. We need new skills and techniques to find what is reliable and accurate. Can we do it?

9. Can we retain hundred percent intellectual property rights in an age of plagiarism, intermixing and amalgamation of knowledge?

Today when information and ideas spread quickly, we still talk about retaining hundred percent IPR. Can we share 40 percent free and charge on the rest?

10. Can we discover ideal ground to make collective decisions and arrive at rational consensus?

Since World War II we have promoted the idea of collective decision making and rational consensus through the UN and Bretton Woods institutions but failed? Are there global standards of rationality and collective decision-making beyond partisan politics and self-interest? Can postmodern philosophy show the way?

11. Can we arrive at a consensus at defining universal justice?

This is distinctively a hegemonic idea, a function of a unipolar politics of the 21st century. However everyone would like to know if the answer would come from philosophy, religion or sheer brute strength of nations? We live in an unequal world and if so can we find a universal definition of justice? Thomas Hobbes believed that justice cannot be achieved outside the nation state. John Rawls would like us to believe that justice involves a notion of equality amongst people living in a nation state. It does not apply to the choices individuals make. An ideal world must have ideal institutions and ideal nation states to realize ideal universal justice.