Indian Modernity

Avijit Pathak is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Preface to the New Edition

Preface

Introduction—Critical Engagement with Modernity

I. Sociology and Modernity

II. Advent of Postmodernity

III. Modernity and Indian Social Reality

1. Intellectual Traditions in Modern India

I. Intellectuals and Their Ideals: A Conceptual Clarification

II. Birth of Modern Intellectuals: Colonialism and the Vision of New India

III. Intellectuals and the Project of Modernity in Post-Independence India

IV. Need for Self-Introspection

2. Limits to Secular Modernity: Religiosity and its Possibilities

I. Soft Secularism and its Gains

II. Beginning of a Militant Agenda: Secularism an Modernity

III. Religion and its Altered Modes of Functioning

IV. Discontents of Secular Thinking and Necessity of Spiritual Religion

V. Religion, Secularism and Contemporary India

3. Assertion of Femininity: Modernity and its Ambiguities

I. Cultural Ideals of Indian Womanhood

II. Imagining a New Woman

III. Feminist Challenge

IV. Feminist Journey to Emancipation: Overcoming Communalism

V. Consumerism: Yet Another Obstacle

VI. Towards an Alternate Agenda

4. Culture as an Arena of Struggle: Debates on Tradition, Modernity and Revival

I. Understanding Culture

II. Great Cultural Ideals

III. Onslaught of Modernity

IV. Globalization, Consumerism and Mass Culture

V. Colonization of Religion

VI. Limits to Cultural Relativism

5. Conflict of Worldviews: Imagining an Emancipatory Vision

I. Mythologization of Development

II. Cultural Narcissism

III. Dalit Assertion

IV. Emerging Conflicts

V. Alternative Worldview

Conclusion—Spiritualizing Modernity

Index