Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias Alternative Sciences: Creativity and Authenticity in Two Indian Scientists The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games An Ambiguous Journey to the City: The Village and Other Odd Ruins of the Self in Indian Imagination Time Warps Romance of the State and the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics
Ashis Nandy (born 13 May 1937) is an Indian political psychologist,social theorist,futurist and critic. A trained clinical psychologist,Nandy has provided theoretical critiques of European colonialism,development,modernity,secularism,Hindutva,science,technology,nuclearism,cosmopolitanism,and utopia. He has conceptualised cosmopolitanism and critical traditionalism. Nandy has written an historical profile of India's commercial cinema as well as critiques of state and violence.
He was Senior Fellow and Former Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for several years. Currently,he is a Senior Honorary Fellow at the CSDS apart from being the Chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures,New Delhi.[2][3][4]
Nandy was born in a BengaliChristian family[8][9] at Bhagalpur,Bihar,in 1937. He is the eldest of three sons of Satish Chandra Nandy and Prafulla Nalini Nandy,and brother of Pritish Nandy. Later,his family moved to Calcutta. Nandy's mother was a teacher at La Martiniere School,Calcutta and subsequently became the school's first Indian vice principal. When he was 10,British India was partitioned into two sovereign countries –India and Pakistan. He witnessed the time of conflicts and atrocities that followed.
Nandy quit medical college after three years before joining Hislop College,Nagpur to study social sciences.[10] Later he took a master's degree in sociology. However,his academic interest tended increasingly towards clinical psychology and he did his PhD in psychology at Dept. of Psychology,Gujarat University,Ahmedabad.
While a professed non-believer,Nandy identifies with the Bengali Christian community.[11]
Academic career
Nandy joined the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS),Delhi,as a young faculty member. While working there,he developed his own methodology by integrating clinical psychology and sociology. Meanwhile,he was invited by a number of universities and research institutions abroad to carry out research and to give them lectures. He served as the Director of CSDS between 1992 and 1997. He also serves on the Editorial Collective of Public Culture,a reviewed journal published by Duke University Press.
Nandy has explored a range of issues across politics,psychology,and society in his academic work. He has written extensively in last two decades. His 1983 book,titled The Intimate Enemy:Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism,talked about the psychological problems posed at a personal level by colonialism,for both coloniser and colonised. Nandy argues that the understanding of self is intertwined with those of race,class,and religion under colonialism,and that the Gandhian movement can be understood in part as an attempt to transcend a strong tendency of educated Indians to articulate political striving for independence in European terms. Nandy's writings reflect his engagement with a wide range of topics,including political disputes,racial conflicts,and non-violence.
Works
Books
Year
Title
Publisher
1978
The New Vaisyas:Entrepreneurial Opportunity and Response in an Indian City
Durham,NC:Carolina Academic
1980
At the Edge of Psychology:Essays in Politics and Culture
Oxford University Press
1980
Alternative Sciences:Creativity and Authenticity in Two Indian Scientists
Oxford University Press
1983
The Intimate Enemy:Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism
Oxford University Press
1983
Science,Hegemony and Violence:A Requiem for Modernity
Oxford University Press
1987
Traditions,Tyranny,and Utopias:Essays in the Politics of Awareness
Oxford University Press
1989
The Tao of Cricket:On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games
Oxford University Press
1993
Barbaric Others:A Manifesto on Western Racism
Pluto Press
1994
The Illegitimacy of Nationalism:Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self
Oxford University Press
1994
The Blinded Eye:Five Hundred Years of Christopher Columbus
Other India Press
1995
The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves
Oxford University Press
1995
Creating a Nationality:the Ramjanmabhumi Movement and Fear of the Self
Oxford University Press
1996
The Multiverse of Democracy:Essays in Honour of Rajni Kothari
Sage Publication
1999
The Secret Politics of Our Desires:Innocence,Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema
--
2002
Time Warps –The Insistent Politics of Silent and Evasive Pasts.
--
2006
Talking India:Ashis Nandy in conversation with Ramin Jahanbegloo
Oxford University Press
2007
TIME TREKS:The Uncertain Future of Old and New Despotisms
Permanent Black
2007
A Very Popular Exile
Oxford University Press
2013
"Dissenting Knowledges,Open Futures":the multiple selves &strange destinations of Ashis Nandy by Vinay Lal,second edition
1982 – The Psychology of Colonialism: Sex, Age, and Ideology in British India. Psychiatry 45 (Aug. 1982): 197–218.
1983 – Towards an Alternative Politics of Psychology. International Social Science Journal 35.2 (1983): 323–38.
1989 – The Fate of the Ideology of the State in India. The Challenge in South Asia: Development, Democracy and Regional Cooperation. Eds. Poona Wignaraja and Akmal Hussain. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1989.
1989 – The Political Culture of the Indian State. Daedalus 118.4 (Fall 1989): 1–26.
1994 – Tagore and the Tiger of Nationalism. Times of India 4 September 1994.
1995 – History's Forgotten Doubles. History & Theory 34.2 (1995): 44–66.
1996 – Bearing Witness to the Future. Futures 28.6–7 (Aug. 1996): 636–39.
1999 – Indian Popular Cinema as a Slum's Eye View of Politics. The Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema. Zed: 1999. 1–18. (also editor)
During the Jaipur Literature Festival held in January 2013, Nandy participated in a panel where he was quoted to have made controversial statements on corruption among "lower" castes in India. It was reported that he said:
It is a fact that most of the corrupt come from OBCs and Scheduled Castes and now increasingly the Scheduled Tribes. I will give an example. One of the states with the least amount of corruption is state of West Bengal when the CPI(M) was there. And I must draw attention to the fact that in the last 100years, nobody from OBC, SC and ST has come anywhere near to power. It is an absolutely clean state.[12]
Rajasthan Police lodged an FIR under the SC/ST Act against Ashis Nandy for his statement regarding corruption among the SC/ST and OBCs.[13] After Nandy's lawyer moved the Supreme Court to quash all the allegations against him, the Court issued a stay order on his arrest on 1 February 2013.[14] The subaltern scholar Dr. P. Satyanarayana of Vaagdevi College of Engineering in Warangal has challenged Nandy's remarks and expressed shock at the vociferous support he received for this from the Indian media and academia, asking rhetorically, "Is Prof.Nandy a holy cow?".[15][neutrality is disputed]
Some scholars interpreted Nandy's controversial remarks as satirical, while others strongly criticized them as offensive and casteist. Nandy's use of sarcasm has been noted in academic contexts, though opinions about his statement were divided. In fact, he found support from academic quarters. In 2016–17, Nandy received the KK Daomdaran Award from the Sree Narayana Mandira Samiti for his academic contributions, including work related to marginalised communities and castes.
"During the dispute over Babri Masjid, Ashis Nandy began a series of interviews with R.S.S. members. A trained psychologist, he wanted to study the mentality of the rising Hindu nationalists. One of those he met was Narendra Modi, who was then a little-known BJP functionary. Nandy interviewed Modi for several hours, and came away shaken. His subject, Nandy told [the reporter], exhibited all the traits of an authoritarian personality: puritanical rigidity, a constricted emotional life, fear of his own passions, and an enormous ego that protected a gnawing insecurity. During the interview, Modi elaborated a fantastical theory of how India was the target of a global conspiracy, in which every Muslim in the country was likely complicit. 'Modi was a fascist in every sense,' Nandy said. 'I don't mean this as a term of abuse. It's a diagnostic category.'"
Interviews
Ashis Nandy in conversation with Gurcharan Das[17][18][19]
↑ "But as a Christian, do you identify with your community? Yes, I do, even though I am not a believer. I have been a nonbeliever from my teens, much to the sorrow of my parents, who were devout Christians. But I am a product of the Bengali Christian family and culture. I identify with it. I don't disown it, particularly because it is such a small community. I do not belong to the majority community, which is 82% of the country's population but some of them still feel and behave like a minority. [Laughs]" "Ashis Nandy on being an Indian Christian, Julio Ribeiro's pain and why he opposes conversion". Scroll.in. 4 April 2015. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
Bonnett, Alastair (2012). "The Critical Traditionalism of Ashis Nandy: Occidentalism and the Dilemmas of Innocence". Theory, Culture & Society. 29 (1): 138–157. doi:10.1177/0263276411417462. S2CID145684363.
Mehta, Nalin (2010). "Ashis Nandy vs. the state of Gujarat: Authoritarian developmentalism, democracy and the politics of Narendra Modi". South Asian History and Culture. 1 (4): 577–596. doi:10.1080/19472498.2010.507028. S2CID144986464.
Miller, Don (1998). "Nandy: Intimate enemy number one". Postcolonial Studies. 1 (3): 299–303. doi:10.1080/13688799889978.
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