As part of commemoration of 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi (from October 2, 2018 to October 2, 2020), IIT Bombay is organising an Institute Lecture on Friday, October 2, 2020.
The details of the lecture are given below:
Title : "Moving Beyond liberal Tolerance: Gandhi on Religion and Religions"
Speaker : Prof. Bindu Puri, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
Date : Friday, October 2, 2020 | Time : 11.30 am
Webex link : https://kaksha.webex.com/kaksha/onstage/g.php?MTID=e72e7d97528f544dd3925385157339fbb
Abstract:
In the last few decades it has become increasingly apparent that though liberal tolerance has seemed to be the best alternative in a world characterized by a plurality of religious beliefs it has not worked very well with religious believers. This lecture makes an attempt to philosophically re examine the meaning of religion and possibilities of inter religious dialogue in the life and work of Gandhi. In this context the lecture will consider the ideas of absolute equality and absolute difference that are part of Gandhi’s vision on the plurality of religions.
It will fall into three sections. The first section is entitled “Thinking samadarshana through samabhava-Religiosity and religious ‘others’”. This section will seek to bring out the central ideas in Gandhi’s thoughts on the plurality of religions. In this context I will briefly examine the difference between Gandhi’s arguments for absolute equality and the liberal position on religious toleration. The second section will elaborate Gandhi’s reasons for thinking the absolute equality of all religions and will be entitled “The religion that stays in all religions-Truth and God”. The third section will be entitled “The truth-untruths of religious others and the duty of resistance: Difficulties with a relativist reading of Gandhi”. It will recapitulate the different strands of the argument in the lecture and bring out the implications of ahimsa as love as it transforms resistance to what one thinks of as the truth-untruths of religious ‘others ‘in a plural context. It will also take issue with an important contemporary reading of Gandhi that of Professor Akeel Bilgrami that reads Gandhi’s position along the lines of a “thorough going relativism about Truth”.
In the course of the lecture it is hoped to unpack the absolute equality in absolute difference that constituted Gandhi’s vision on the plurality of religions.
Keywords: samadarshana/ equimindedness, samabhava/ attitude of equality to things as they are, samata/equality, toleration, respect, honor, dayadharma/ the religion of compassion, abhaydaan/ the gift of fearlessness to all, relativism, exemplarity, faith, scepticism.
About the Speaker: Prof. Bindu Puri is a Professor of contemporary Indian Philosophy at the Centre for Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, and Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is also currently the Chairperson of the Centre. Her main interests in philosophy are in the areas of contemporary Indian philosophy and moral and political philosophy. Professor Puri has been consistently engaged in a set of inter-related problems in contemporary Indian Philosophy. She is a leading scholar on the thought and practice of Mahatma Gandhi and has worked on the philosophical issues involved in Gandhi’s debates with Savarkar Ambedkar and Tagore.
Professor Puri’s philosophical pursuit has involved dialogue with other scholars of contemporary Indian Philosophy. In this context her paper “Gandhi’s Truth: Debating Bilgrami” has been reported in the Routledge history of Indian Philosophy (2018). She has taken issue with Nussbaum’s interpretation of Tagore in her “For Love of country: Debating Martha Nussbaum on cosmopolitanism in Tagore”. Her paper, “Gandhi and Tagore on the idea of the Surplus Creativity and Freedom: In conversation with Richard Sorabji” Sophia (Springer) reports her exchanges with Oxford philosopher Richard Sorabji. Puri has over 44 papers in edited anthologies and philosophical and interdisciplinary journals including Sophia, Philosophia and the Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research. She has authored two monographs: Gandhi and the Moral Life (2004) and The Tagore-Gandhi Debate: On Matters of Truth and Untruth (Springer Publications in the series: Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, January 2015). She has seven edited volumes including Mahatma Gandhi and his Contemporaries (IIAS Shimla 2001).
She has co-edited (with Heiko Sievers) Reason Morality and Beauty; Essays on the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (Oxford University Press New Delhi 2007) Terror, Peace and Universalism. Essays on the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (Oxford University Press New Delhi 2007) and Living with Religious Diversity (Routledge India 2016) with Sonia Sikka and Lori Beaman. Her most recent volume is (Editors), Bindu Puri and Abhishek Kumar Rethinking Religious Pluralism: Moving Beyond Liberal Tolerance, Springer, New Delhi, 2020 (ISBN 978-981-15-9539-4).
She has presented over 80 papers/lectures at national and International seminars. Professor Puri has also lectured extensively at Universities in India and abroad and has delivered the prestigious annual ‘M K Gandhi lecture on Peace and the Humanities 2017’ for the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Council Of Ottawa, Canada and the Johnson and Hastings lectures at the University of Mount Allison, Sackville, Canada for the same year.
Professor Puri has held a number of administrative positions, which include the following assignments. She was the Chairperson of the Governing body of Aditi Mahavidyalaya College Delhi University (2015-2017), member of the governing Body of Gandhi Bhavan at Delhi University (2006-2010), E.C.Nominee on the Managing Committee of University Hostel for women, Delhi University (2015-2017) and member of the Academic Committee of the Army Cadet College Indian Military Academy Dehradun (2017-2019). Professor Puri was a jury member for the ‘Gandhian Philosophy and Public Service Broadcasting Awards’(2005-2007).She was also a member of the jury constituted by the National Human Rights Commission to award the Mahatma Gandhi Biennial Hindi writing awards for the year 2016-17.