Indian Civilizations introduces students to the various influences that have fashioned the civilizations that are integral to the history of India, with an emphasis on the multiplicity of strands in Indian culture and tradition from pre-history to the present. The rich and varied ideas and thoughts from the ancient times to the modern age and their expression through art and artefacts, through literature and philosophical writings, will form the basis for discussions for an understanding of the plurality of Indian civilizations.
Faculty
Semester: Monsoon 2024
In this course we explore the idea of Indian civilization, with civilization defined as varying expressions of collective vitality, and the emergence of creative rather than destructive forms of contestation and cohabitation within structures of hierarchy. Rather than a sharp break between tradition and modernity, we seek to understand the ways in which old and new theological and civilizational questions and forms endure and are transfigured across three domains: politics, aesthetics and ethics. In each of these domains we examine the birth of ideas, moving across religious and secular formations, such as, in politics, Gandhi’s idea of how brute force may (or may not) be transformed into soul force, as well as Ambedkar’s embrace of Buddhism; in aesthetics, we examine Hindu-Urdu cinema as a lyric tradition, situated alongside older lyric traditions, which have had a critical task of teaching a society defined primarily by caste (in marriage and social structures of interaction), how to express love and forms of friendship and intimacy with others; in ethics we examine the ways in which potentially hostile neighboring groups have found ways of living together, amidst older and newer contestations of ideas of high and low, or self and other. Through these and other examples of the birth of ideas within politics, aesthetics and ethics, moving across disciplines, theologies, texts, films, and images, this course aims to teach students to think creatively about key concepts in Indian collective and intimate life such as caste, tribe, religion, sexuality, and gender, and about civilization as forms of collective vitality that may also wane, or be replenished.
Semester : Monsoon 2024 and Spring 2025
This course takes an intellectual history approach to the study of Indian civilizations. It considers civilization as an actor category. It explores how different conceptualizations of civilization have shaped India, and how India has shaped the concept of civilization. We will focus mainly but not exclusively on British/Western colonialists and thinkers on one hand and South Asian intellectuals on the other to embark on a journey that will begin from the middle of the eighteenth century and go right up to the present. The course will give students a fresh perspective on and a critical re-introduction to Indian history, how historical knowledge (including the kind of history that is taught in schools) is produced, and the many consequences of such knowledge in the making of our past, present, and future.
bhrigupati.singh@ashoka.edu.in