5 July 2014
Getting to know of GJH and interacting with one of its team, has given me a very warm and heartening feeling. Two characteristics of GJH have been most impressive. One, its very title as the strong voice of dissent is forcefully sustained by its contents and second, its search for solutions to India’s problems within our society’s own historical contexts.
5 July 2014
Getting to know of GJH and interacting with one of its team, has given me a very warm and heartening feeling. Two characteristics of GJH have been most impressive. One, its very title as the strong voice of dissent is forcefully sustained by its contents and second, its search for solutions to India’s problems within our society’s own historical contexts.
For over two centuries we – along with the rest of the world – have lived under not merely the political and economic dominance of the West, but even more damagingly, under its intellectual hegemony. The notion of ‘rationality’ that has determined our collective thinking is a legacy of post-Enlightenment Europe; subsequently Positivism and its offshoots have been the overarching influence on us. This has produced a compelling notion of “modernity” which obliged the rest of the world to emulate the West. It has blinded us in India as elsewhere to the contribution made by great and ancient civilsations like India and China to the world we inhabit to day.
But mercifully, the closed doors of knowledge are opening up to sustained questioning around the world. No serious scholar anywhere now believes that the West was the sole depository of reason and rationality and the sole creator of science and culture; the recognition of the universal evolution of these is increasingly the norm.
Clearly this has been possible because some had the courage to question, to voice dissent. It is in that tradition of dissent that GJH stands out and calls us all to stand up and be counted.
My best wishes to the success of this venture. It is the cumulative effect of such ventures that changes society.
Harbans Mukhia