---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tapas Ray [MAKAIAS] <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 2:23 PM Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Conference on Visions of Indian modernity and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad To: [email protected]
Admin: Please ignore the previous message and post this one. Thank you. Update and a friendly reminder -- *Confirmed speaker: Professor Shiv Visvanathan (keynote address).* ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tapas Ray [Gmail] <[email protected]> Date: 17 September 2014 15:16 Subject: Conference on Visions of Indian modernity and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad To: [email protected] *Papers solicited. Registration is free, local hospitality will be provided. Some funds are available for travel expenses.* *Please send abstract by September 30. * VISIONS OF INDIAN MODERNITY AND MAULANA ABUL KALAM AZAD International conference, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata, November 10 & 11, 2014 In the absence of popular sovereignty before independence, the people of India were subjects of British colonial rule enjoying its protection and owing allegiance to its sovereign power, not citizens possessing rights in the political system. As independence meant the acquisition of political citizenship, efforts of the national elite, which had played a leading role in the freedom movement, were focused largely on the struggle for political power against the colonial regime. But the struggle for power was not the sole focus. The elite also considered it necessary to mould the multitudes, both psychologically and physiologically, in ways they felt was necessary for taking on the British and for subsequently building a new nation-state. In other words, they wished to mould the Indian people's subjectivity in certain ways, to shape their ways of being on both individual and social levels, in order to give a definite shape to the nation. Considering that this elite was a product of modernity developed organically in the West, superimposed on an older cultural order that had developed through the cross-fertilization of South, Central and West Asian traditions, its outlook could be expected to contain fractures. This was indeed the case. The visions of figures like Gandhi, Tagore, Savarkar, Golwalkar and Nehru, which may be taken as being paradigmatic of different currents within the broader nationalist stream, have been discussed by many writers and work on them continues as much remains to be adequately explored in their voluminous corpuses. But a number of other national leaders, who made significant contributions in the freedom struggle and/or building the nation, have received significantly less attention in this respect. One of them is Maulana Abul Kalam Azad - among Nehru's contemporaries in the freedom movement, one of the tallest in stature, a staunch opponent of the partition and independent India's first Minister for Education. A man of great erudition, the Maulana hailed from a background and had an upbringing that were very different from those of others. Azad has written that his father, an influential Islamic scholar, was implacably opposed to (Western) modernity. Yet, the Maulana came to play a key role in bringing modernity to India. The following are two examples of the ways in which he contributed to India's modernity. One was through religion: as an Islamic scholar, his commentary on the Quran can be viewed as a modernist project, as it rejected received wisdom and adopted a sophisticated, rational interpretive approach or ijtihad. Azad even wrote in the Tarjuman-al- Qur'an, Vol. I - reflecting a sensibility that might have been termed postmodern in a later era - that the division of branches of knowledge between ancient and modern had no meaning for him. Further, "The trammels forged by authority never hindered me, and my insatiable passion for knowledge has never forsaken me ... My heart entertains no certitude which has not been pierced by all the thorns of doubt. My spirit clings to no belief which has not gone through all the ordeals of disbelief ...." The second area of his contribution to modernity was education. It has been noted by scholars that he was entrusted with the Education Ministry because of his passionate committment to education, culture and scientific and technical progress. His thinking was not exclusively "Islamic" or even "oriental"; in spite of his immense scholarship in Islam, he was also deeply influenced by Western thinkers like Rousseau and was firmly committed to what was scientific in the Western system. The contours of a distinct vision of modernity begin to emerge when we view Azad through these optics. The aim of this seminar is to bring this vision into sharper focus, delineate its contours more clearly, flesh it out with facts and analyses along other relevant dimensions, and place it within the context of the diverse visions of modernity represented by other leaders of stature. Papers adopting any theoretical and disciplinary approach, on any aspect of this problematique - either relating to Maulana Azad himself or to the broader context discussed above, are welcome. MAKAIAS wishes to publish a collection of these papers as a book with ISBN number, through a publisher of repute. Papers should be formated in the APA style and should not normally exceed 6,000 words including list of references, but longer ones also will be considered. They should be emailed as MS Word or OpenDocument files to the three conference coordinators simultaneously by October 15, at the following addresses. Acceptance will be notified through email by October 25. Abstracts not exceeding 400 words need to be emailed by September 30. Local hospitality will be available. Support for travel expenses will be considered for authors of selected papers. Please direct questions to: Dr Tapas Ray at <[email protected]> Abstracts and completed papers should be emailed as attachments, simultaneously to the three addresses given below: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> ------------------------- Tapas Ray, PhD Fellow Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (Ministry of Culture, Government of India) IB-166, Salt Lake, Sector-3 Kolkata - 700106, India Web site: http://makaias.gov.in/ _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to [email protected] with subscribe in the subject header. To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> -- You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole. -AMBEDKAR http://venukm.blogspot.in http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
