Abstract
Why is it as important as fascinating to approach Indian modernity in the plurality of its expressions? Maybe because ‘just now’, India is confronted with a certain revival of a past depicted as a glorious yet lost epoch in which social harmony prevailed to the benefit of a powerful State. Perhaps, as well, because today, more than ever before, multiple modernities manifest themselves in many different spheres of the Indian society thus not only contributing to the questioning, but also to the re-definition of the modern against the backdrop of post-colonialism and globalization. The ‘modern’ does not imply a linear understanding of society referring to a future based only on ‘new’ experiences. There is not one imagining, practice, or vision, but the modern is constantly constructed, practiced, and lived in contradictory, changing, and contested spheres. This introduction and the 15 contributors of our volume showcase the multiple ways of being modern in India.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Two more recent edited volumes that explain India’s encounter with modernity, though with specific lens of history and democracy are Saurabh Dube’s Modern Makeovers: An Introduction (2012) and Surinder Jodhka’s Interrogating India’s Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship (2013) respectively. See the selected references on Indian modernity listed at the end of this introduction.
- 2.
For further discussion see Gilman (2007: Chapter 3).
- 3.
In allusion to Joshua Landy and Michael Saler (2009).
- 4.
Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, (1973), 4 SCC 225.
- 5.
See Ambedkar’s introduction of the Draft Constitution in the Constituent Assembly on 4 November 1948, reproduced in Jadhav (2014: 466).
- 6.
In allusion to Max Müller’s seminal Lectures to Indian Civil Service officers of Colonial Britain at the University of Cambridge, which beyond a certain romanticism, indirect accusations against “Mohammedan” invaders and his limited firsthand experience of India, testify of a genuine endeavour to look at other histories to understand History.
References
Ahluwalia, Pal. 2010. Out of Africa, Post-Structuralism’s Colonial Roots, 10. Post-Colonial Politics Series. Routledge.
Beck, Ulrich. 1994. Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, Ulrich, and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. 1995. The Normal Chaos of Love. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. Routledge.
Bhandari, Parul, and Fritzi-Marie Titzmann. 2017. Changing Family Realities in South Asia. South Asian Multidisciplinary Academic Journal.
Carroll, Anthony. 2011. Disenchantment, Rationality and the Modernity of Max Weber. Forum Philosophicum 16 (1): 117–137.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2001. Provincializing Europe, Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Oxford University Press.
Chibber, Vikek. 2013. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. Verso.
Dube, Saurabh. 2009. Enchantments of Modernity: Empire, Nation, Globalization. New Delhi: Routledge.
Dube, Saurabh. 2012. Modern Makeovers: An Introduction. In Handbook of Modernity in South Asia, ed. Saurabh Dube, 1–25. New Delhi: Sage.
Eisenstadt, Shumel. 2000. Multiple Modernities. Daedalus 1 (1): 1–29.
Gilman, Nils. 2007. Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Guha, Ranajit. 1983. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Guha, Ranajit. 1997. A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986–1995. University of Minnesota Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. Winter 1981. Modernity—An Incomplete Project. Lecture delivered in 1980 and later published under the title ‘Modernity versus Post-Modernity’, New German Critique (22).
Honneth, Axel, and David Roberts. 1986. Foucault and Adorno: Two Forms of the Critique of Modernity. Thesis Eleven 15 (1): 48–59.
Jodhka, Surinder. 2013. Interrogating India’s Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Landy, Joshua, and Saler Michael. 2009. The Re-enchantment of the World, Secular Magic in a Rational Age. Stanford University Press.
Muller, Max. 2002. India, What can it Teach us. Rupa.
Parsons, Talcott, and Edward A. Shils. 1951. Towards a General Theory of Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sitapati, Vinay. 2018. The Man Who Remade India: A Biography of P.V. Narasimha Rao. New York: Oxford University Press.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1998. In Other Worlds. Routledge.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2004. World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. London: Duke University Press.
Weber, Max. 1946. Science as a Vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H.H. Gerth, and Wright C. Mills, 129–156. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cases
Kesavnanda Bharathi v. State of Kerala. 1973. 4 S.C.C. 225.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Choukroune, L., Bhandari, P. (2018). Understanding the Modern in India. In: Choukroune, L., Bhandari, P. (eds) Exploring Indian Modernities. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7557-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7557-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-7556-8
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-7557-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)