Vice President Inaugurates Project on ‘Parekh Institute of Indian Thought’ by CSDS
New Delhi, July 15: The Vice Presaident of India M. Hamid Ansari has said that at each stage in our long history, a doctrine of governance can be discerned. The colonial hegemony and its rationale for social engineering to create a perception of self by the ‘natives’ certainly complicated matters. The challenge now is to go into the interstices of earlier thought patterns to ascertain the nature of contents and their underlying values.
Addressing at the inauguration of the Project on ‘Parekh Institute of Indian Thought’ by CSDS here today, he said that more recently and in the pre-independence period, many of our thinkers sought to bring about a renaissance but often faltered on what Tagore called the “social inadequacy” of our creed of nationalism. Three questions do need to be raised about earlier ages. Was there a concept of justice? Did it have partial or universal validity? Was it notional or practical?
He said that writing about political concepts of ancient India in 1927, Narayan Chandra Bandyopadhyaya of Calcutta University referred to the difficulty of terminological equivalence and the ideas connoted by them. He cautioned against reading “Western ideas into our history”. In regard to ideas themselves, there is enough textual evidence available to shed light on the practice of governance and the principles underlying them. Apart from Manusmriti and Arthashastra, we have Asoka’s Edicts and accounts of travellers to give us a fair idea of political structures and values that may initially have been republican but eventually became monarchic. The same holds for the medieval period of Indian history. The 14th century historian Ziauddin Barani analysed the working of the institutions of Delhi Sultanate and enunciated a theory of monarchy emanating from them.
The Vice President said that Lord Bhiku Parekh is a political thinker of great eminence and this initiative of setting up an Institute of Indian Thought is certainly timely. In years to come, inquisitive minds would thank him and the CSDS for closing this gap in our institutional framework for intellectual pursuits.
Addressing at the inauguration of the Project on ‘Parekh Institute of Indian Thought’ by CSDS here today, he said that more recently and in the pre-independence period, many of our thinkers sought to bring about a renaissance but often faltered on what Tagore called the “social inadequacy” of our creed of nationalism. Three questions do need to be raised about earlier ages. Was there a concept of justice? Did it have partial or universal validity? Was it notional or practical?
He said that writing about political concepts of ancient India in 1927, Narayan Chandra Bandyopadhyaya of Calcutta University referred to the difficulty of terminological equivalence and the ideas connoted by them. He cautioned against reading “Western ideas into our history”. In regard to ideas themselves, there is enough textual evidence available to shed light on the practice of governance and the principles underlying them. Apart from Manusmriti and Arthashastra, we have Asoka’s Edicts and accounts of travellers to give us a fair idea of political structures and values that may initially have been republican but eventually became monarchic. The same holds for the medieval period of Indian history. The 14th century historian Ziauddin Barani analysed the working of the institutions of Delhi Sultanate and enunciated a theory of monarchy emanating from them.
The Vice President said that Lord Bhiku Parekh is a political thinker of great eminence and this initiative of setting up an Institute of Indian Thought is certainly timely. In years to come, inquisitive minds would thank him and the CSDS for closing this gap in our institutional framework for intellectual pursuits.
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