Articles by Sharad Patil

My hearty congratulations to Meera Nanda for her ‘Case for Indian Enlightenment’ (EPW, July 7, 2001). Though she is correct in criticising Marxists in India and outside for their total neglect even of class enlightenment, her criticism of Marx on the same point is not justified. He had given relatively the most advanced philosophical and methodological tool to Marxists and communists world over to develop and innovate, in order to make it capable of revolutionising their respective societies.

Sharad Patil Critique of Hinduism and Other Religions by Tarkteerth Laxmanshastri Joshi; Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, 1996; pp 202 + xi, Rs 150.
The notion that materialism is immoral and mysterious spiritualism is moral is utterly false. In fact mysterious spiritualism contains in it a vulgar and base materialism, while scientific materialism is full of ideal spiritualism... (p 134).

Castes were the building blocks of Hindu social structure in precolonial India. But with the introduction and development of the new capitalist forces of production these blocks have undergone a fundamental change. From being a hereditary unity of caste and occupations they nave become a unity ofthisvld contradiction plus the new contradiction of caste and class. This basic contradiction in Indian society can be resolved neither by subjectively subtracting the old contradiction from the new one nor by excluding either class or caste from the new set of opposites.