Articles by K N Panikkar

Post independence, India's leaders, particularly Abul Kalam Azad, advocated an education policy that would be liberal and humanitarian, and set the nation on the path of progress and prosperity. This path was neither a full continuation of the colonial modern nor a restoration of the feudal-traditional. Drawing on progressive ideas from India's "renaissance" and freedom struggle within the Indian "renaissance" and nationalism, this education policy was meant to unleash the potential of India's civilisation by a process of intellectual decolonisation. Unfortunately, in the past few decades, this unfi nished agenda has been dumped by successive governments. It has been replaced by an educational policy which prioritises private profi t over public good and will encourage cultural and intellectual imperialism.

The judgment delivered by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute on 30 September has raised serious concerns because of the way history, reason and secular values have been treated in it.

K N Panikkar Lineages of the Present: Political Essays by Aijaz Ahmad; Tulika, New Delhi,
THIS collection of essays by the author of the widely acclaimed earlier work, In Theory, makes compelling reading on the political and ideological present. These essays, written over a period of 15 years, cover a very wide spectrum from democracy and dictatorship in Pakistan to a critique of Derrida's Spectres of Marx, Each of them, the author states, is an effort "to make the opacity of the present intelligible" by reflecting on the making of the present, and on "the historical sedimentation, even contradiction, that went into that making". Although they do not "observe the protocols that are proper to history as an academic discipline'', they are embeded in a view of history, firmly rooted in Marxism and critical of post-structuralist, post-modernist, sub- alternist paradigms of interrogating social reality. This theoretical engagement makes these essays a significant intervention in contemporary academic and ideological debates.

Culture and Globalisation A Non-Issue at World Summit on Social Development K N Panikkar In the absence of an adequate recognition of the cultural dimension, the agenda of the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen next month is incomplete and ineffective as far as developing countries are concerned. The National Report of India is no better. It does not go beyond listing the achievements of the state and as such is a misleading document for any meaningful discussion. For any rethinking on social development, the implications of cultural subjection have to be taken into account.

Contradictions in Intellectual Transformation of Colonial Society in India K N Panikkar The colonial conquest underlined the weaknesses of the traditional order and the need for reform and regeneration of its institutions. Colonial hegemonisation tended to destroy the tradition itself A cultural-ideological struggle ensued on two planes simultaneously: against the ideological basis of the traditional order as well as against the colonial hegemonisation.