Articles by Ajay Skaria

While the threat posed by Sections 153A and 295A of the Indian Penal Code is evident following the pulping of The Hindus, there is a need to understand the relation of these sections with republican democracy. This article explores three themes. First, it argues that these sections are themselves part of the government of free speech put in place so that "ordinary citizens" would not be hurt. Second, focusing on the writings of S N Balagangadhara, it explores how a narrative of Hindu hurt emerges. Third, it explores how Wendy Doniger's understanding of Hinduism is organised quite differently - around disciplinary history's concept of context. But contextualisation too, it suggests, is marked by a constitutive blindness to the thinking of religion as a pure gift.

In the first Indian edition of his book, Hind Swaraj, Gandhi confessed that there was only one word that he would wish to alter: "prostitute", an English translation of the word, 'veshya'. In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi etched out his ideas for an India freed of British control and also makes a critique of modern civilisation with his emphasis on the "proper". The book juxtaposes the connotations evoked by the prefix, 'swa', against that evoked by the image of the veshya, who is always at someone's control and whose agency is perforce without. The use of these words served Gandhi well in seeking to enunciate his own beliefs regarding violence and domination. He breaks from the modern tradition that sees domination as the taking away of power and agency, and reconceptualises resistance as the recovery of resistance. It also questions domination by insisting on a subaltern responsibility for subordination; not as a loss of power, but the loss of swa.