Father India: Westerners Under the Spell of
an ... - Amazon.com
- Jeffery
Paine (Author) Amazingly insightful October
20, 2005 By Sanjay
Agarwal
Paine
traces the careers and Indian adventure of eight well-known persons who were
either Westerners or were Indians influenced by the West to begin with, but
later became deeply influenced by India . Yet in the process, they
also influenced India
itself. The list includes Lord Curzon, Mahatma Gandhi, E. M. Forster, Sri
Aurobindo, Mira Behn (Madeleine Slade), Mother (Mirra Richard), Carl Jung, V.
S. Naipaul and Annie Besant, all well-known figures in India and outside. In
the process he weaves a magical yet sophisticated tapestry showing why India exercised
a near-fatal charm for these people and how it changed them…
However,
he becomes less sure of himself as he comes closer to the present, possibly
because the processes are still going on, and the advantage of hindsight is not
available. As a result, his handling of the chapter on Sri Aurobindo and his
spiritual companion, the Mother, is less deft. He also fumbles with the
conclusion, possibly because India
is an incredibly complex phenomenon
Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought,
Fin-de-Siècle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship (Politics, History,
and Culture) by Leela
Gandhi (Jan 11, 2006)
Leela
Gandhi argues in Affective Communities, to the hitherto neglected
history of western anti-imperialism. Focusing on individuals and groups who
renounced the privileges of imperialism to elect affinity with victims of their
own expansionist cultures, she uncovers the utopian-socialist critiques of
empire that emerged in Europe, specifically in Britain , at the end of the
nineteenth century… Gandhi weaves together the stories of a number of South
Asian and European friendships that flourished between 1878 and 1914, tracing
the complex historical networks connecting figures like the English socialist
and homosexual reformer Edward Carpenter and the young Indian barrister M. K.
Gandhi, or the Jewish French mystic Mirra Alfassa and the Cambridge-educated
Indian yogi and extremist Sri Aurobindo. In a global milieu
where the battle lines of empire are reemerging in newer and more pernicious
configurations, Affective Communities challenges homogeneous
portrayals of “the West” and its role in relation to anticolonial struggles.
Drawing on Derrida’s theory of friendship, Gandhi puts forth a powerful new
model of the political: one that finds in friendship a crucial resource for
anti-imperialism and transnational collaboration…
“A
very original and thought-provoking book, Affective Communities offers
an outstanding contribution to postcolonial and queer studies. Leela Gandhi
provides detailed, brilliant discussions of particular figures such as Edward
Carpenter, Henry Salt, and M. K. Gandhi and the ways in which they interwove
their various radical counter-cultural interests into larger political
strategies of anticapitalist utopianism.”—Robert J. C. Young, author of Postcolonialism
The American Soul Rush: Esalen and
the Rise of Spiritual Privilege - Page 28 - Marion
S. Goldman - 2011 - Preview - Around
that time, Michael privately vowed to dedicate himself to Aurobindo's vision: “I was sitting by
a statue on the Stanford campus meditating, and suddenly the vows just rose up
within me” (Schwartz 1995:82–83). Despite his father's ...
The
Lives of Sri Aurobindo -
Page 404 - Peter
Heehs - 2008 - Preview - Sorokin
said that “from the scientific and philosophical standpoint, the works of Sri Aurobindo are a sound antidote to
the pseudoscientific psychology, psychiatry and educational art of the
West.”160 He and other American academics
were ...
Tradition
and the Rhetoric of Right: Popular Political Argument in ... - Page 299 - David
J. Lorenzo - 1999 - Preview
Radical Aurovilians used the texts of the Aurobindian movement to pursue the
politics of separation: cosmological writings, reminiscences of Aurobindo and the Mother, and
historical writings of the movement. In the same way, American ...
Dante
in the Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity, and ... Aida
Audeh, Nick Havely - 2012 - Preview - This
collection of essays provides an account of Dante's reception in a range of
media-visual art, literature, theatre, cinema, and music-from the late
eighteenth century through to the early twentieth and explores various
appropriations ...
Karnad’s
criticism of Naipaul stems from a historical narrative that is an apologist
version of Indian history. A version, which trivializes the real impact of
Islamic invasion on Hindu society and tries to weave a story of denial,
ascribing positive aspects of the Islamic invasion of India like the
Indo-Islamic cultural syncretism while sweeping away the mass destruction and
holocaust that ensued as a mere generalization, isolated incidents, figment of
Hindu imagination or plainly inevitable. People like Girish Karnad, William
Dalrymple, Romila Thappar, Irfan Habib and few others have taken up the burden
of projecting a benign image of Muslim rule in India , while the atrocities are
ignored as isolated incidents…
In the field of secular arts like, dance, drama,
music, painting and literature
In
the near 1000-year presence of Islam in India starting with 713 AD to the
occupation by the British in 1857 I am hard pressed to find contribution of
Islam towards the advancement of fine arts. Islam did not introduce anything
unique that already did not exist in India or took any art form forward.
Dance and music was banned except in royal palaces or in brothels. Drama, dance
and music was not encouraged and continued under the patronage of Hindu kings,
village and town folks, Mughal paintings were poor one-dimensional renderings
which had not evolved since the 10th century while Europe was
mastering and perfecting painting in the meantime; the art of ‘shilpkaari’ or
sculpting was banned so was temple building. No major literary works were
written except panegyrics of emperors and nawabs and court chronicles. Urdu, the
language of the army camps, a mixture of Khadi boli of North Indian plains,
Persian and Turkish has no doubt enriched language and poetry but India with it’s
own rich tradition of literature and language, the absence of Urdu wouldn’t
have really mattered.
Indian
Philosophy in English: From Renaissance to Independence - Page 451 - Nalini
Bhushan, Jay
L. Garfield - 2011 - Preview - In
the work of Aurobindo, we see an avoidance of the distinctly philosophical risk
associated with līlā. How does the doctrine of The Life Divine avoid this risk?
Precisely by proposing not the life of a divinity, but a divine life for us. Aurobindo ...
Foundations
of Indian Psychology Volume 1: Theories and Concepts - Page 122 - Cornelissen
R. M. Matthijs - 2011 - Preview
In the contemporary 'Runaway World' of increasingly complex cultural blending,
we find a condition foreseen by Sri Aurobindo in 1914: 'The world today presents the aspect of a
huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, ... This book rejects discussions in
psychology based only on American or European thought by presenting
fascinating insights on ... R. M. Matthijs Cornelissen teaches
integral psychology at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of
Education in ... Page
520
The
essays explore how Hindu female gurus embody grace in both senses--as a
feminine ideal and an attribute of the divine-and argue that their status as
leaders is grounded in their negotiation of these two types of grace. This book
provides biographical profiles of the following female gurus plus sensitive
scholarly analysis of their spiritual paths: Ammachi, Anandamayi Ma, Gauri Ma,
Gurumayi, Jayashri Ma, Karunamayi Ma, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, Mother Meera,
Shree Maa and Sita Devi.
A
festival of music and dance to celebrate the lives and poetic compositions of
women bhaktas and sufis (6th to 18th Century AD) 6, 7, 8, 9 November
2012. Daily 6 p.m to 9 pm ICCR audotorium, Azad Bhavan IP Estate, Behind ITO,
New Delhi Program 8th Nov
2012:
9.
Meeta Pandit (North Indian classical music)
10. Bombay Jayashri (Carnatic music)
11. Kiran Segal (Odissi)
12. Sanddhya Pureccha (Bharatnatyam) 10. Bombay Jayashri (Carnatic music)
11. Kiran Segal (Odissi)
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