How should we live, how should we treat others, and how should we govern our society. Normative questions like those keep philosophers busy. To that extent we are all philosophers. Our society is a reflection of our collective philosophizing on those concerns. So therefore for society to change, our answer to the question — “What’s the right thing to do?” — has to change.
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Month: April 2011
Anna Hazare Goes to New Delhi
Anna Hazare’s indefinite fast for getting the “Jan Lokpal Bill” passed has met with almost universal approval. The media frenzy has caught the Indian public’s attention to an extent that they generally reserve for more important matters such as a cricket match. One could argue that both the public obsession with cricket and the current spectacle of a public fast share a common origin, the deep-seated desire of the people to participate in what they believe are events of great significance. Mob hysteria is awesome to behold but rarely if ever leads to beneficial outcomes.
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Big Ideas for India Contest at Rajesh Jain’s Blog
My colleague Rajesh Jain has a “Big Ideas Contest” going on at his blog. Here are the details:
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An Era of Darkness Under Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi
‘Italian by birth and Catholic by baptism‘ is the title of a very brief item by John Maclithon in DNA. It can be best characterized as a confession. He was the only foreign journalist to be awarded the Padma Shri, and that too by the Congress party, which he says was surprising since he has “always been a vocal critic of the Nehru dynasty.” Indira Gandhi, he claims, wanted to throw him in jail during the Emergency. He goes on to confess that he was wrong about India — and how.
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Ban on the Gandhi biography in Gujarat
The chief minister of Gujarat, Shri Narendra Modi, is a hero of mine. That does not mean that I approve of every position he holds. In the case of the banning of Joseph Lelyveld’s book, “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India,” I most certainly do not agree with Narendrabhai. What is more, I will not hesitate to tell him so. I am a free speech fundamentalist. Banning expression is the start of a journey the destination of which is something akin to an Islamic state which orders the murder of novelists and cartoonists.
Listen: Joseph Lelyveld talking about his book on KQED Forum.
Banning a Book on Gandhi — Part 2
The freedom of speech and expression is not only a good in itself but it is also instrumental in human civilizational progress. It is therefore puzzling that quite a significant segment of humanity is ever ready to ban expression whenever there’s something said or written that goes against their cherished beliefs. What makes it worse is that another segment which does not fully comprehend what freedom of expression actually means. Usually they go, “I am for freedom of speech but . . . ”
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April Fool’s Open Thread
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 