Author: K N Panikkar
Editor(s): K N Panikkar
Publisher: Sahmat
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 182
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8186219447
Description
The pacifist and global campaigner for nuclear disarmament, Jonathan Schell, recently proposed that the 20th century was yet unfinished, since the seminal questions it raised-of societies equipping themselves to wage wars on an industrial scale, of the prospect of extinguishing life on earth-were yet to be resolved.
By that criterion, the decade that began in 1990, when the first assault on the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya took place, is yet to conclude. The hapless mediaeval structure-a symbol of a rich intermingling of architectural traditions-itself did not last long. With the passage of exactly a calendar decade since the effacement of the monument, the questions that were raised then and later perhaps submerged in uneasy evasion, have been rudely brought to the surface again.
Human societies are by convention, geared to looking for logical and temporal closure in cycles of time like a year or a decade. But the decade of Ayodhya and Gujarat is one of multiple unanswered questions, of a quest for answers that has often strayed into infertile ground, and of events continually challenging the conventional concepts of social understanding.
Contents
Introduction
A Lament for a Decade
A Dangerous Decade
Somnath to Gandhinagar: A Night of Long Knives
Progressive Nationalism Confronts Fascist Chauvinism
The BJP and the Route to Social Reaction
The Changing Political Orientations of the