Tradition And Modernity: India And Japan Towards The Twenty-First Century

To talk of modernization is a daunting task, much more when it comes to a comparison of countries like India and Japan. Being a collection of nineteen papers, ten Indian and nine Japanese, presented at the two Indo-Japanese seminars in 1990 and 1992 and revised, this book aims exactly at doing it. This is, to quote from the late Professor Sukhmoy Chakravarty, who was the moving spirit on the Indian side of those seminars, "the first of a series of dialogues" between the scholars of the two countries in social sciences and humanities. The papers cover the philosophical and religious expressions of modernization and its economic, technological, social, political, and international substance. They also cover the self images of India and Japan and the images of each other. Each subject is treated not isolated but in wider perspective. Together they represent the so far unprecedented attempt to introduce Japan to the Indian readership. Some water has flowed into the Indian and the Pacific oceans since those seminars were held. But this book will provide a solid ground upon which further and more sustainable dialogues can be held, and are actually being planned. This book is being published in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of India’s freedom.