A talk by political theorist and intellectual historian of South Asia, empire, and the Global South, Professor Aishwary Kumar.
Abstract
Gandhis politics of satyagraha passive resistance was distinctively at odds with his times. In a world beset by fear and inequality, his critique of violence and humiliation remains compelling. Yet, Gandhi also privileged obedience, office, and sacrifice as routes to moral selfhood, and even to political freedom. In this lecture, we examine Gandhi's troubled relationship with human freedom and dignity, retracing his encounter with figures in revolutionary political thought Marx, Arendt, and Ambedkar as a lens to understand the degeneration of democracy in our time. Does Gandhi today give us, we ask, an insight into the ressentiment of the people against the very idea democracy that was once conceived to let them rule themselves?
Speaker Bio
Aishwary Kumar is an intellectual historian and political theorist with interests in South Asian, European, and American political thought. His work spans a wide spectrum of issues in moral and political philosophy, political justice and constitutional theory, war and ethics, empire and liberalism, and the history of democratic thought and rights.
Kumars first book, Radical Equality: Ambedkar, Gandhi, and the Risk of Democracy (Stanford University Press, 2015), was listed by The Indian Express as one of the fifteen most important works on politics, morality, and law to be published anywhere that year. His essays have appeared in Modern Intellectual History, Contemporary South Asia, Social History, and Public Culture, among other places. He has also been featured on the radio shows Entitled Opinions and Philosophy Talk.
Kumar is currently working on two books. The first, The Sovereign Void: Ambedkars Critique of Violence, examines the genealogies of political freedom and war in Southern and Atlantic political thought and their relation to notions of force across epistemological, theological, and secular traditions. The second, The Gravity of Truth: Disenchantment, Disappointment, and Democracy, takes the Obama Presidency as its starting point to explore the place of moral agency and political judgment in the global constitutional imagination.
Kumar is a senior fellow in Human Rights, Constitutional Politics, and Religious Diversity at the Lichtenberg KollegGöttingen Institute of Advanced Study, Germany, and a visiting fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Austria. He has previously held fellowships in Europe and the United Kingdom. He earned his doctorate in History at Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 2007.
Read more about Prof. Kumar HERE
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Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies
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PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.
The event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
