Articles by Sudhir Chandra

Learning to think without being hindered by fear or temptation will, among other things, help those who want to emulate M K Gandhi deal with the gravest challenge that they face. That challenge is posed by those who, behind their deviously articulated public lip-service to him, are tirelessly engaged in realising that vision of India which is diametrically opposed to Gandhi’s humane vision.

Gandhi died a sorrowful man, following his discovery that the freedom struggle led by him was not non-violent. It was passive resistance, which is always "a preparation for active armed resistance". The violence which had lain repressed had erupted on the eve of Independence. Gandhi's insight seems to have left academic wisdom and popular memory unaffected. This study of two "twin" fasts by Gandhi is part of a larger attempt to use that insight to make sense of his 30-odd years in India and of his undying faith in non-violence. It asks: Can non-violence be more than an impossible possibility?

The members of the committee set up to inquire into the complaint of sexual harassment at the MS University may have been innocent of the realities of women's subordination to men at home and at the workplace, but they could not have possibly misunderstood the Supreme Court's new comprehensive definition of sexual harassment.

Justice Pinhey's verdict rescinding Dadaji Bhikaji's claim to restitution of conjugal rights over his wife, Rukhmabai, snowballed in the late 19th century into a verbal duel between the Anglo-Indian press and the native press. While the Anglo- Indian press was exultant at the proven moral superiority of the British legal system, the native press was alarmed at the threat of socio-cultural subversion of Hindu family and society the judgment posed. Only in the writings ofMalabari and a few other reformers do we find a justification of the verdict based on native discourse of conjugal norms.

Violence Impressions from Post-Riot Surat Sudhir Chandra It is not easy to offer generalisations about the way Hindus behaved during the communal riots and how they will behave in the foreseeable future. The exercise acquires an extra complexity if the speculation sought on the basis of behaviour during these difficult times relates to the future of HIP in the Indian political system, for the exercise necessarily involves projection about the likely electoral behaviour of people.