Reading Sri Aurobindo

Bindu Puri is a professor of contemporary Indian Philosophy at the Centre for Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her main interests are in the areas of contemporary Indian philosophy and moral and political philosophy. Puri has over 50 papers in edited anthologies and philosophical and interdisciplinary journals; including Sophia, Philosophia and the Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research. She has authored three monographs; Gandhi and the Moral Life (2004) The Tagore-Gandhi Debate: On Matters of Truth and Untruth (Sophia: Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, Vol. 9, Springer 2015);and The Ambedkar-Gandhi Debate: On Identity, Community and Justice (Singapore:Springer Nature, 2022). She has seven edited volumes, the most recent being Rethinking Religious Pluralism: Moving Beyond Liberal Tolerance (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2020). She has presented over 160 papers and lectures at national and international forums. Professor Puri delivered the prestigious annual ‘M K Gandhi lecture on Peace and the Humanities’ 2017 for the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Council of Ottawa, Canada as well as the Johnson and Hastings lectures at the University of Mount Allison Canada for the same year.

Foreword - Professor Mrinal Miri.- Introduction: Reading Sri Aurobindo: Towards a Swaraj in ideas Bindu Puri.- Part I: Sri Aurobindo and the idea of evolution.- Chapter 2: Sri Aurobindo’s Hindu philosophy: Spiritual evolution of human consciousness Hari Shankar Prasad.- Chapter 3: Man: Towards its Self-Transcendence: In the light of Sri Aurobindo Raghunath Ghosh.- Chapter 4: Boons of Nachiketas and Savitri V Ananda Reddy.- Part II: Sri Aurobindo: On Integral Yoga.- Chapter 5: Evolution with Harmony: Integral Yoga and its transformational potential in the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo Nishant Kumar.-  Chapter 6: Sri Aurobindo as Archetypal Guru:Toward a theology of liberation through Integral Yoga Sebastian Velassery.- Part III: Situating Sri Aurobindo: Modernity and post-modernity.- Chapter 7: Postmodernism and Sri Aurobindo Debashish Banerji.- Chapter 8: Harmonies of Light: Walking with Rohith Vemula and Sri Aurobindo Monica Gupta.- Part IV: Sri Aurobindo: On the nation, the state and the ideal of human unity.- Chapter 9: Understanding Aurobindo’s concept of nationalism: An integral philosophy or a religious faith? Reetu Jaiswal.- Chapter 10: Sri Aurobindo and the idea of human unity Ramin Jahanbegloo.-Chapter 11: Nation-soul, State and unity: Sri Aurobindo and Tagore on the Religion of Humanity Bindu Puri.- Part V: Sri Aurobindo: Philosophy and Practice.- Chapter 12: Teaching Sri Aurobindo: The descent of Consciousness Christopher Key Chapple.-  Chapter 13: Rethinking and transforming language, knowledge, self, society and state and the calling of Alternative planetary futures: Walking and meditating with Sri Aurobindo Ananta Kumar Giri.- Part VI: Sri Aurobindo: On emotions.-  Chapter 14: Sri Aurobindo on the transformation of emotions: Reflections on divine love and absolute devotion Dipika Bhatia.- Part VII: Sri Aurobindo: Towards an ethics of the environment.-  Chapter 15: Environmental Consciousness and Aurobindo: Learnings for the present Dr. Sujata Roy Abhijat.-  Chapter 16: Spiritualistic Ecologism in the evolutionary ideologies of Sri Aurobindo Saji Varghese.-Part VIII Sri Aurobindo: On philosophical Agnosticism.- Chapter 17: Sri Aurobindo, Agnosticism, and the Unknowable Peter Heehs.