Politics and Beyond

The essence of modernity lies in a paradox: while it represents an unceasing search for virtue, the elements that constitute the fundamental attributes of modernity make this search utterly futile. This paradox is, needless to say, at the root of modern problematique. Efforts to overcome it flounder the hard rock of yet another paradox: these efforts are inspired by, grounded in, and informed by different components that, in their interaction, have conspired to engender this paradox in the first place. It, therefore, becomes necessary to go beyond the framework of the world-view that is the unquestioned source of this paradox. Politics and Beyond underlines this necessity and offers three different but organically linked paradigms—Gandhian thought, Swadhyaya, and, the source of these two, the Vedic perspective—which promise to overcome the ills mankind is contemporaneously suffering today as a result of his cupidity. Central to all these perspectives is their insistence on the need to establish a conscious and living relationship between the finite existence of man and the absolute that constitutes the primal source of meaning and order. It is this relationship that is the theme of Politics and Beyond. It is, again, this relationship that installs order in man’s interior and the external world, particularly socio-political universe.