This reading list attempts to explore the new politics of belonging in India and intends to reflect on the present socio-political fractures that consequently arise, and explore alternative ways of looking at belonging.
Of late Karnataka has been in the news for unhealthy reasons. Controversies relating to the wearing of hijab by students have left a scar on the social landscape. This was followed by protests against the revision of school textbooks. The government did not handle either with skill. The opposition (read the Congress) also has failed to present to the public a vision for the state’s development.
This article aims to re-evaluate the infl uence the Greeks and especially Aristotle have had on Jürgen Habermas’s thought via Hannah Arendt. The purpose of such a reassessment is to argue that Habermas’s reconstruction of the public sphere is conceptually yet indirectly embedded in the Aristotelian historical and intellectual trajectory, which is often neglected.
Nature, despite being at the centre of all production, does not carry any intrinsic “value.” Value in a capitalist world is created through the mediation of labour, where all production is appropriation of nature (Marx 1973). It is labour which endows the appropriated nature with value.
Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age by Shruti Kapila, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2021; pp 328, $35 (Hardcover).
