[If I recall it correctly, he was there as a speaker at the opening plenary of the CNDP (Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament) in December 2000 in Delhi. With his thick glasses and slightly stooping posture, he was looking a bit frail. And the quite premature passing away of Smitu must also have had taken its toll. The death of a child, I'd imagine, is perhaps the greatest tragedy that can happen to a parent.
He'll of course be remembered as a brilliant intellectual, with original thoughts, actively engaged with the unfolding social realities of India.] I/V. http://netindian.in/news/2015/01/19/00032268/eminent-political-scientist-rajni-kothari-passes-away Eminent political scientist Rajni Kothari passes away NetIndian News Network New Delhi, January 19, 2015 Renowned political scientist Rajni Kothari, one of India's most respected public intellectuals, passed away at his residence here today, sources said. He was in his 80s. He is survived by two sons. His wife and one of his sons had passed away some time ago. Prof Kothari, who is credited with radically changing the contours of the discipline of political science in India, was the founder of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and Lokayan (Dialogue of the People). Though he remained intellectually active till the end, Prof Kothari had withdrawn from the day-to-day affairs of CSDS in recent years due to advancing age and poor health, though he used to regularly attend various events there. He remained associated with it as a fellow. Prof Kothari was known in India and abroad as a scholar and an activist for his continuing search on intellectual, political and ethical dimensions of contemporary reality. His colleagues pointed out that he always spoke up on the isues of the day, especially on human and civil rights, and was one of the great political thinkers of the 20th century. He also had a lasting infuence on the discipline of political science in India with his many books such as Caste in Indian Politics (1973), Footsteps into the Future: Diagnosis of the Present World and a Design for an Alternative (1975), Politics in India (1982), Rethinking Development: In Search of Humane Alternatives (1989), State against Democracy: In Search of Humane Governance (1989), Transformation and Survival: In Search of Humane World Order (1989), Poverty: Human Consciousness and the Amnesia of Development (1995), Communalism in Indian Politics (1998), Memoirs: Uneasy is the Life of the Mind (2002), Rethinking Democracy (2008) and Writings of Rajni Kothari (2009). ADVERTISEMENT He was also involved with institutions such as the People's Union of Civil Liberties, the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the International Foundation for Development Alternatives. Born in the 1930s, Prof Kothari began his career as a lecturer at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, where he attracted attention in 1961 with a series of essays in the Economic and Political Weekly on "Form and Substance in Indian Politics". He also used to write for Seminar, the journal published Romesh Thapar. He went on to work as the Assistant Director of the National Institute of Community Development, Mussoorie. In 1963, he moved to Delhi, where using a personal grant of Rs. 70,000 given by Professor Richard L. Park, head of Asia Foundation's India chapter, he started CSDS. In 1970, he published Politics in India, which first theorized the Indian National Congress as a system rather than a political party. Prof Kothari served as a Member of the Planning Commission from December 1989 to November 1990 during the tenure of then Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh. The CSDS established the Rajni Kothari Chair with grants from the Ford Foundation in 2002 and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust in 2003. Its objectives are to facilitate research in the area of comparative democracy by a scholar of eminence, leading to significant publications and to enable her/him to interact with scholars, political activists, and civil society groups in India with a view to strengthening the ideas and institutions of democracy. Prof Peter Ronald deSouza, one of Prof Kothari's colleagues at CSDS, said he was also a great institution builder who also played an active role in nurturing the civil society movement in India and generated debates on the key issues of the day. "He had tremendous faith in the people of India and its democracy," he said. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Yogendra Yadav, an eminent political scientist in his own right, describbed Prof Kothari as the first theorist of Indian democracy and the most outstanding political scientist the country has produced. "They rightly say everything written on our country's politics is no more than footnotes to Kothari's magnum opus 'Politics in India'," he said on micro-blogging site Twitter. NNN II/V. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/eminent-political-scientist-rajni-kothari-dies/article1-1308527.aspx Rajni Kothari, doyen of Indian political science, dies Prashant Jha, Hindustan Times, New Delhi | Updated: Jan 19, 2015 11:19 IST Political scientist and former Planning Commission member Rajni Kothari died the age of 85. (Jeetendra Sharma/HT File Photo) Rajni Kothari - considered the doyen of Indian political science, founder of the reputed research institute Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, author of multiple books, and a leading civil liberties activist - passed away on Monday. He was 85. Kothari, who started out at the Baroda University, published seminal essays in the Economic and Political Weekly on the form and substance of Indian politics in the early 60s. He was to later use an Asia Foundation grant to set up the CSDS where he brought together some of the finest scholars in India to produce pioneering social science research. Kothari's own initial contribution lay in seminal books like Politics in India, where he formulated the notion of a 'Congress system' - with the party as a grand umbrella coalition of interests - and politicization of caste. Aditya Nigam, CSDS professor, told HT that he saw Kothari's contribution at two levels. "One was of course as an intellectual and political scientist. When he started out, he was interested in themes like nation building and Congress party. Then he worked on the changing nature of caste and how it became a part of democratic politics." Nigam feels Kothari was one of the first scholars to sense this role of caste. "There was then a break with Congress during the emergency, when he and CSDS took a strong oppositional stance. He got involved with civil liberties and people's movements and in the 80s, this engagement with non party political processes deepened." In this phase, Kothari's academic writings became more political. At the second level, Kothari was an institution builder. "Very few institutions have lasted well beyond the first generation - and CSDS has not only lasted but flourished and there has been a remarkably smooth transition from the old to new," says Nigam. Kothari was open to the centre's expansion into newer research areas. It works both on theory as well as strong empirical programmes like Lokniti, which has done the most comprehensive work on Indian elections. Yogendra Yadav, a CSDS scholar who is currently a leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, tweeted that Kothari was the 'first theorist of Indian democracy' and the 'most outstanding political scientist' India has yet produced. "They rightly say everything on our country's politics is no more than footnotes to Kothari's magnum opus Politics in India." III/V. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Eminent-political-scientist-theorist-Rajni-Kothari-passes-away/articleshow/45941885.cms Eminent political scientist, theorist Rajni Kothari passes away ANI | Jan 19, 2015, 05.48 PM IST Kothari was an only son of his father, a Jain trader. His mother died early in his life. NEW DELHI: Eminent political scientist and theorist Rajni Kothari passed away on Monday. He was in his mid-80s. Kothari was the founder of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 1963, a social sciences and humanities research institute, based in Delhi and Lokayan (Dialogue of the People), started in 1980 as a forum for interaction between activists and intellectuals. He was also associated with Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), International Foundation for Development Alternatives and People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). One of the great political thinkers of the 20th-century, his well known works included Politics in India (1970), Caste in Indian Politics (1973) and Rethinking Democracy (2005). In 1985, Lokayan was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, also known as "Alternative Nobel".[3] Kothari was an only son of his father, a Jain trader. His mother died early in his life. He started his career as a lecturer at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (Baroda University), while working here he first received recognition in 1961, when his essays series, "Form and Substance in Indian Politics" were published in Economic and Political Weekly (then Economic Weekly) over six issues. He had also started writing for Seminar, the journal published by Romesh Thapar. Thereafter he was invited by Professor Shyama Charan Dubey to become the Assistant Director of the National Institute of Community Development, Mussoorie. In 1963, he moved to Delhi, where using a personal grant of Rs. 70,000 given by Professor Richard L. Park, head of Asia Foundation's India chapter, he started Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), in the premises of the Indian Adult Education Association at Indraprastha Estate, Delhi, before moving to its present location in Civil Lines, Delhi. Here working along with Ashis Nandy, D.L. Sheth, Ramashray Roy, Bashiruddin Ahmed and others, Kothari pioneered works in social sciences, which were published over the next two decades. In 1970 he published Politics in India, which first theorized the Indian National Congress as a system rather than a party. Thereafter he published noted works like Caste in Indian Politics (1973) and Footsteps into the Future (1975). In the early 1970s, he was said to be very close to Congressleader Indira Gandhi, but distanced himself with the entry of Sanjay Gandhi, and became associated with Jaya Prakash Narayan and the Janata Party. After the Emergency of 1975, he moved away from political parties, and started a career as an activist. This phase culminated with the foundation of Lokayan - Dialogue of the People in 1980, a forum for interaction between activists, thinkers and intellectuals to talked about positive changes in the fields of religion, agriculture, health, politics, and education. Besides scholarly articles he also wrote newspaper columns, and in 2002 published his memoirs titled, Memoirs: Uneasy is the Life of the Mind. He was married between 1947 and 1999. IV/V. http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/political-scientist-of-india/99/ Rajni Kothari, the political scientist of India 1 CommentEmailPrint Rajni Kothari. (Source: Illustrated by C R Sasikumar) Rajni Kothari. (Source: Illustrated by C R Sasikumar) Written by Yogendra Yadav | Posted: January 20, 2015 12:00 am | Updated: January 20, 2015 4:39 am Where did he teach you? I mean in school or college, or where?" The question came from my son, curious about this old gentleman we would meet at the gate of our housing complex. I had told him that I touched his feet because he was my teacher. His question was a natural follow-up. My mind wandered to my undergraduate days. I had found an untouched Hindi translation of Rajni Kothari's book, Politics in India, in the library of my college, Khalsa College, Sri Ganganagar. Despite its tough prose, made worse by a heavy Sanskritic translation, the book was a breath of fresh air. I didn't quite understand the complex argument. But somehow, the book taught me to think about politics in a radically new way. It also made me decide to study politics. Kothari was not a favourite author for my Marxist teachers at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. But they encouraged us to study him so as to critique his "liberal bourgeois" reading of Indian politics. So I reread his book, this time the English original. I appreciated him better now and was convinced that his reading of Indian politics was far more illuminating than the crude Marxist reading that we learnt in classrooms. I never got to meet him or communicate with him at that stage of my life. But I read everything he wrote and fancied myself as an Eklavya who learnt from his guru in his absence. As I look back at all that I have learnt from his books, what stands out for me is his intellectual and cultural self-confidence. He resisted two tendencies prevalent among students of Indian democracy prior to him. He refused to treat Indian politics as a re-enactment of the script written by Western democracies. At the same time, he debunked the idea that the democratic experiment in India was culturally unique. He made it possible to think of India as yet another "normal" democracy, distinctly modern and specifically Indian at the same time. I have learnt that it is easier to acknowledge this agenda than practise it. Theorising Indian democracy in these terms is still an unfinished intellectual agenda for our times. Unlike most academics, Kothari evolved with the times and had the courage to change his formulation, and even position. Politics in India was an instant classic when it was published in 1970, when he was barely 40 years old. Kothari then expanded his horizons to think about the globe and joined a group of thinkers in reimagining the future of the world order. This led to the journal Alternatives. Then came the Emergency, which shook the democrat in Kothari. He had the courage to revisit his formulations and chart out fresh directions for his intellectual pursuits. His writings thereafter, especially State Against Democracy, were a critique of the Indian state. His search for alternatives now took him towards the people's movements that operated outside mainstream politics. He brought together many leading Indian intellectuals to formulate an agenda for India. He was more sympathetic now to the critique of the very idea of development. By the mid-1980s, Kothari had anticipated most of the key ideas that continue to dominate our democratic imagination today. In this phase, Kothari was a public intellectual, not just an academic. He never made a sharp distinction between academic and popular writing. Many of his well-known articles appeared in Seminar. He wrote regularly for newspapers as well. His emphasis on a new brand of non-party politics led him to a unique research-cum-action project, Lokayan. Along with Dhirubhai Sheth and Vijay Pratap, he discovered and taught to my generation a new vocabulary to make sense of this new form of politics. His intellectual engagement with movements often led him to direct activism. He had helped organise resistance to the Emergency outside India. It is well known that he was among the writers of the manifesto for the Janata Party in 1977. He was among the founders of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and went on to become its president. In the aftermath of the anti-Sikh massacre in 1984, he was among the authors of the path-breaking report, "Who are the guilty?", which dared to name some of the guilty Congressmen. Kothari was a friend, philosopher and guide to all people's movements. I was involved with many of these -- Samata Sangathan, Samajwadi Jan Parishad and National Alliance for People's Movements. My colleagues there were not very fond of Kothari or Lokayan, but I found his frame to be very helpful in making sense of this new and exciting political practice. Above all, I learnt from him that the boundary between academic and popular writing, between intellectual and political work, is not watertight. My limited direct learning from Kothari began after I joined the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 1993. This institution was founded by Kothari in 1963 -- when he was just 33 years old -- and was known as "Kothari's Centre". After joining the CSDS, I came to appreciate Kothari's approach to institution-building. He gathered a group of exceptionally talented social scientists and turned the place into a school of thought. Legend has it that he recruited a faculty member who demanded a higher salary than Kothari himself. Unlike most Indian institution builders, he stepped aside from the leadership of his own institution when he turned 50. That is one of the key reasons why the CSDS made a generational transition and is still a leading intellectual centre after completing its golden jubilee. My mind went through all this as I turned to my son and said: "He was the teacher who never taught me." Somehow, he understood. The writer is senior fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, currently on leave, and chief spokesperson of the Aam Aadmi Party V. http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/political-scientist-of-india-2/99/ Political scientist of India Rajni Kothari. (Source: Illustrated by C R Sasikumar) Rajni Kothari. (Source: Illustrated by C R Sasikumar) Written by Suhas Palshikar | Posted: January 20, 2015 12:00 am | Updated: January 20, 2015 12:05 am It is not often that an academician has potentially something to offer for well over half a century. In the realm of political analysis, longevity is even rarer. It will therefore be a fitting tribute to Rajni Kothari if we note how his rather forgotten but oft-quoted political analysis resonates with our contemporary political moment -- and how, by taking it forward, the enterprise called Indian politics could be better grasped. Since last May, not a week goes by without reports about the resolve or lethargy of the Congress party to rise from the debris of its defeat. Analyses of the 2014 election were also marked by jubilation over the demise of caste -- making way for "development-oriented" politics. Ever since the BJP rose to prominence in that election, the discipline of political science has been struggling to make sense of the development. Is Kothari's political science helpful in resolving these puzzles? Not that he explicitly answers all these puzzles. Some emerged only after Kothari ceased to be intellectually active due to age and illness; some failed to attract him since he chose to move away from analysing politics to critiquing it. And yet, if there was one Indian political scientist with some insight to offer on the contemporary political predicament, it was Kothari. In a discipline short on theorisation and bold conceptualisation, this must be regarded as a Herculean contribution. And if India's political science is still famished for analytical frameworks, it only shows the weakness of receptivity and creativity in the discipline. Kothari is associated with the coinage of the term "Congress system". Sure, he was talking of the Congress of the 1960s, but that analysis still throws light on the "un-Congress"-like politics that the Congress party steadfastly conducted for more than four decades thereafter. In one sense, that analysis implicitly posited that there is a model and a deviation, or an idea and the practice. (Kothari was critical enough of the practice to invite the wrath of the government, but he remain ed convinced about much of what constituted the idea called "Congress".) In the more than half-century since the formulation of the "Congress system" came into being, it is waiting to be decoded at the disaggregated level. We do not have accounts of how the Congress system evolved and dissolved in different states. For instance, what was the Congress system like in, say, West Bengal, and how that was different from Uttar Pradesh. If we had such accounts, we would have been in a better position to understand the demise of the party. Soon after Kothari's Politics in India (1970) appeared, he moved on to become a critic of the new Congress that had emerged, and also a critic of the prevailing democratic theory. As important as this role was, the analysis of Indian politics lost a political scientist who had the capacity and inclination to engage with real-world political processes. With Kothari departing for a different zone of intellectual pursuit, political science in India conveniently forgot his analysis by iconising rather than expanding it. The same thing happened in the case of Kothari's analysis of the interaction between caste and politics. Here, Kothari refused to be cowed by the then dominant modernist tendency of looking upon caste, religion and the like as "pre-modern" factors, hindering modern, secular, democratic politics. Instead, he draws attention to the dynamic interaction between caste and politics, whereby caste becomes a political resource and, in the process, loses its traditional nature. The caste that we encounter in politics is thus different from caste as a hierarchy-based social formation that divides. It becomes a formation capable of uniting as much as dividing; and as post-Mandal developments have shown, of redefining itself. Thus understood, caste does not become a hurdle in the process of democratisation. Instead, it becomes a factor -- like many others -- shaping the nature of democracy and political competition. In the process, caste also does not remain a permanent and assured explanatory factor of politics. Those who were surprised by the rise of caste-based politics in the 1990s and, again, those surprised by the decline in the salience of caste since 2009, have a lot to learn from the way castes entrench themselves through electoral competition and the political economy of the region in which they operate. In his formulation of the Congress system, Kothari does not go to the state level; he confines himself to the grand narrative of the "all-India". But in dealing with caste, he and his collaborators focus on the states. That focus helps explain region-specific expressions of entrenchment and possible frictions, as they existed in the late-1960s. The 1970 study of "Caste in Indian politics" thus frames the agenda for further study and it has been waiting to be revisited for over four decades now. Since the BJP rode to power in 2014, we have been preoccupied with the question of whether this was a one-time stroke of luck coinciding with the rise of a new plebiscitary leader. In his famous formulation of the Congress system, Kothari presciently says: "..the question remains whether the new party... provides us with another consensus or is an expression of accumulated protest... which is likely to wither away after a short time in office." This summary observation encompasses the possibility of analysis of the post-Congress polity since 1989. As Kothari suggests, that phase went through short-term eruptions of public disappointments. Have we finally reached a "new consensus"? That would be the single-most important intellectual agenda for political scientists for the coming decade in understanding the final collapse of the Congress. But above all, Kothari's analysis of Indian politics will be remembered for its deep engagement with democracy. This is evident in both his pre-1975 scholarship and his post-1980 introspections. What is common to both is a firm belief not only in something fuzzy called democracy, but also in our capacity as a society to chart a democratic path, as well as his confidence that India (or any other "new democracy") does not have to adopt the received models of democracy because, just as American -- or any other Western -- democracy, with all its idiosyncrasies, is an instance of democracy, India's democracy can also have its own trajectory, with all its deficits and faults. It was with this confidence that Kothari dealt with the Congress system, not as an aberration but just another way of doing politics -- and hence, "an interesting addition to the present typology of party systems". This confidence was not about his formulation, but about India's democratic politics being another normal way of conducting politics, rather than a queer animal in the zoo. Apart from the creativity of his conceptual formulations, this understated assertion about different expressions of democratic politics sets Kothari apart as India's political scientist par excellence. The writer teaches political science at the Savitribai Phule Pune University -- Peace Is Doable -- 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.
