I am going to talk about care and my thesis to conceptualize the other.

So I will be dealing with the question why care for the other.

I will begin by positing that the other is an articulate that is of sociality.

Sociality is a condition peculiar to us,

human beings.

It refers to our interdependent characteristic.

It is the constraint that tethers us to each other.

The other is the consequence of this interdependency.

Though inevitable,

it nevertheless is a social constitution

and a position that precedes an individual's existence.

It is a historical a priori that establishes domains of knowledge.

One is then interpellated into the category of the other and encoded in ways.

Often the other is a body over there,

the immediate one that serves as a means to my gratification

or sometimes as my source of gratification.

At times the other is an entity that stokes fear.

It is a threat that is capable of unknown horrors.

It demands my immediate attention and informs me to meditate.

There is also another type of other which does not even figure in public memory.

It dwells in the realm of obscurity.

It is that which when effaced does not leave a trace.

But it does so happen if not often but at times

that I am affected by this other.

I am caught off guard by its suffering.

I don't consciously build this affect on myself

but it so happens that I am in those moments trapped in the other's allure.

Something about the truth of the other and its relationship to my being

is revealed in such instances by anxiety.

It is a testimony to the fact that the category of the other is ratified in norm

and then stabilized by power.

Norms constitute subjects and through its reiteration subjects gain recognition.

In Hegelian terms,

recognition is the mechanism through which our existence as social beings is

generated.

And hence one's successful integration as a subject is contingent upon appropriate

forms of recognition.

Norms operate in such a way that it recognizes certain subjects and leave others.

Norms allocate recognition differentially.

But there are often specters,

lives that are unrecognized by the norms of recognition which come to haunt it.

Life in general exceeds the normative conditions of recognizability

because each construction of life is temporarily bound

and norms need time to inform subjects of its intent.

Though norm is sustained in practice as iterability is its fundamental feature,

it nevertheless cannot escape time.

 Norm has to be repeated incessantly in order for it to survive and therein lies its
limit.

The debris that betrays the norms of recognition filed to question its primacy.

The veracity of the other is put to test when affective responses confirm the
location of bodies.

One only acts when one is moved to act

and one is moved by something that affects one's sensibilities from the outside,

from the lives of the others.

Receptivity is not only a precondition for action but a constituent feature of an

ethical obligation.

This reception of obligation forms one's responsibility,

that is,

often one's not home choosing.

Hence responsibility is implicated in the domain of non-consensual.

Ethical obligations go beyond the realm of consensual.

These are not contracts that one deliberately enters into

and this action or obligation or demand becomes the central animating force in
social movements.

Movements that are not only territory specific,

where the event and the effect of the event are both local,

and straight they go beyond the notions of territory.

What exactly happens when one part of the globe rises in moral outrage

against actions and events that happen in another part of the world?

Mechanics are at work in such an event.

A kind of moral outrage that is not dependent on a shared language

or a compact grounded in physical proximity.

Such instances blabber one's notions of body and notions of proximity and
distance.

Such a response of moral outrage is a situation in which a being is moved

and is acting in response precisely by the virtue of being acted upon.

The locality of this being is at once here,

where the event takes place and over there,

where the effect of that event is felt.

In such a case,

one is witnessing the enactment of the concept of solidarity

that are beyond space and time.

Something impinges without being able to prepare for it in advance.

One is affronted by something that is beyond one's will.

Can I oversee the times I am moved by sights of pain,

disturbed to the extent where I forget its location?

One can dismiss this dislocation as being overly sentimental,

but what this repudiation does is foreshadow moments when humanity is defining
itself.

Sensibility is the evidence of our relationality

and to be bound up with the other is a fundamental condition of being human.

One chooses to move in the direction of pain,

till not that one is overcome by a sadonistic desire to attain the person in me,
or even a narcissistic drive to extract pleasure from alleviating others' pain.

One is not only reminded of one's own pain,

but rather is literally pained by the other's plight.

So this pain does not scar one's body,

but its reality is nevertheless felt by the observer.

The pain felt makes one question the certainty of the self's location.

It prompts one to deal with the question of the self,

and makes one reconsider what bodies are.

It does not necessarily mean that it concludes or establishes

that the sense of self is to be found in a dislocation,

but what it does is distort the notion of bodies as discrete.

Bodies escape discourse.

Discourse has its utility,

namely it helps to realize objectives,

but it also imposes a framework on body which it vehemently opposes.

Bodies from the start given over to the world of others,

where simply bodies are formed in the crucible of social life.

Bodies imply mortality,

vulnerability and agency.

Skin exposes us to the gaze of the other,

and also serves as the medium for touch.

And what can be touched can also be broken.

 But vulnerability is not just a bodily condition of being potentially harmed by the
other,

but is also a form of relativeness.

One is not only at the other's dispense,

waiting to be annihilated,

but is also enthralled by the other.

Body is born from interconnection.

Body is a seed for bodies,

for nourishment,

but also it deploys the language of the other to define itself.

Its very definition is the borrowing from a system that precedes itself.

Body is a set of relations.

Melvin Klein's essay Love,

Hate and Reparation argues

that one should not violate the object of love,

because without the object of love,

the ego loses faith in its survival.

According to Klein,

one seeks to protect the other against one's own violence

to avoid the crisis of losing oneself.

This raises ontological questions such as,

who am I when certain losses threaten me with my own survival?

Am I bound to others in ways that might make my own survival possible?

What Klein describes is the set of relations without which there is no self.

In doing so,

she prompts one to believe and imagine

the self as not a bounded entity,

but as a thing that is bound to others.

One ought to care precisely because a living being may die without care.

Only under the conditions that the loss would matter,

does the value of life appear.

If that life affects me in ways that are beyond my will,

it follows that the other,

that I am,

but also of heart,

matters to me.

No matter how hard I try to prove its recognition,

in this context of relationality,

there is no way to escape care.

One can willfully not care,

but it wouldn't disavow one's obligation to the other.

In such a context,

to violate is a war effort,

an effort by power to sustain the normative.

Such an effort is prejudiced,

unconscious,
and it is strictly abused by children.

It demands immediate re-examination of the knowledge systems

that produce the popular image of the other

as an entity that stokes fear and needs to be eliminated,

but an entity that is obscure and needs no care.

Violation is a hasty response,

one that is predetermined and is prejudiced.

To violate is to believe in the primacy of an item,

and to also possess the instruments that facilitate that willing.

To subjugate is to deny the other's share of truth.

Nonviolence,

then,

is not only a commitment to suppress the urge to violate,

but is also a methodology of knowing the other.

Such knowing is an act of unselfishness,

a strange realization

that something other than the self is also equal.

Thank you.

May I invite you to the next segment,

please?

Thank you.

I'm already speaking more out of my personal experience.

And,
I don't want to sound like an expert.

You could say,

like,

you know,

Samvasa dosha,

which is,

you know,

a translation.

It's like,

I think they use it in Marathi.

So it's more like,

you know,

an attribute to the company that I am keeping.

No,

actually,

I want to say this on a very serious note.

I think things like these,

when you speak out,

you suddenly become a representative of all people with disabilities,

which I am not.

I am speaking from my own personal experience.

And I would kind of take this up.

Say that,
you know,

I am among the first persons.

This is the entire thing about staying together.

So joint family means many mothers,

many had a lot of hopes.

About,

you know,

how they would have used to say that,

you know,

she has been down with,

as you say,

cancer.

So that is how she kind of looked at it.

Take your clamp back.

Yeah.

Anyway,

so,

I mean,

you know,

when you kind of have this care thing going on,

teachers say,

take care of him 24 hours a day.

I mean,
somehow you internalize it.

Till actually I met another disabled person later in life.

Later on,

I mean,

you know,

they went through it.

But they made faces.

They were kind of not,

I mean,

you know,

themselves.

But they recovered.

Suddenly I realized,

actually,

secondhand.

Basically it came from there.

Initially when ADAPT started,

it was more like a club

where we kind of come,

watch clips and things like that.

I think we had a fight and face on the...

It really triggered the whole thing about law.

The CRPD negotiations started.

I think it was that time,

right?

I was part of it.

I really started understanding the entire thing of...

My grandfather also...

I went to a regular college.

The next day the same thing happened.

And suddenly,

I mean,

you know,

he came and helped me.

And it happened in another way.

Helping me was his responsibility.

So when you talk about care,

if you start caring for something,

it becomes your burden.

You help it or not,

others don't want to look at it.

So that was something I learned from there.

I was trying to tell...

So he had this thing.

Yes,

I had a lot of problems in college.

Serial experience to really say that,

you know,

what disability is about.

I mean,

there are a lot of examples and...

Yeah.

Vivek.

Vivek Mukherjee.

Vivek Mukherjee runs the Animal Law Center in the university.

And he teaches second-hand at the law school.

Hi,

so yeah,

I run the Animal Law Center and I come in peace.

I usually give this disclaimer wherever I go because...

People often come to me and say that...

Are you arguing for animal rights at the cost of human rights?

It's not a trade-off.

I would actually like to start with...

The legendary 5th century BC Roman general Coriolis...

Who turned against his native city for banishing him.

Who is painted by Shakespeare in one of his last tragedies...

As the Paragon Stoic warrior.

Physically strong and detached,

at home in the battlefield.

He is the military man par excellence.

This may be a very gendered and patriarchal description of Coriolis by

Shakespeare.

But Shakespeare also shows us his vulnerable side.

To live is to suffer.

You suffer because you are vulnerable.

Coriolis is fearless and thus he sheds few tears.

I think the turning point in Shakespeare's play...

Comes when Coriolis remembers how to weep.

He admits that it is no small thing to make mine eyes sweat compassion.

I borrowed these lines from the works of Ron Peterson...

Who is a Health and Disability Commissioner in New Zealand.

I would also like to start by thanking Professor Khadda...

For not just making this unbelievable gathering of people possible...

But also to weave in the concern for animals into each aspect and pillar of this
colloquium.

There is a speaker representing our movement for care,

contentment as well as cooperation.

I have been given the task of speaking on care...

And I will try to do that by connecting it with compassion.

Since I am a law person and as you know the Indian Constitution in Article 51
AG...
 Says that there is a fundamental duty of citizens to have compassion for living
creatures.

The question that I raise is...

Can compassion be mandated?

And can it be mandated through fundamental duties?

Are fundamental duties enough to protect the most vulnerable?

Or do they need rights?

Should we move on from an overtly liberal idea like personhood...

As gatekeeper deciding who will and who will not be protected from the
Constitution...

To something like vulnerability...

That does not rely on similarity of an entity with humans...

And certain attributes that humans have to speak,

to think and whatever...

And to rationalize.

Animals may not speak our language but they weep...

They moan,

they grieve and enter into melancholy...

When they are treated cruelly.

They are vulnerable.

I know it because I am them.

Recently at Maths Hall there was a concerted effort to...

By some to relocate dogs and as you know relocation of dog...

Is a death sentence to them as they are terrible.

I fought and pushed back and in the process I believe I have started to
metamorphose into them.

My students and well-wishers tell me that I often go astray in my lectures...

Just like my dear stray dogs.

So let me not narrate my story of becoming and come to the point.

In order to understand if compassion may be mandated and to know if it is even

desirable...

I try to contextually place the Indian Constitution.

The philosophy of the Indian Constitution cannot be described in one word.

It is liberal,

democratic,

egalitarian,

secular,

federal,

committed to freedom,

equality,

social justice...

Open to community values,

sensitive to the needs of religious and linguistic minorities...

As well as historically disadvantaged groups.

Indian Constitution therefore has a strong liberal character.

Liberalism has been treated by scholars like K.M.

Panicker to be the foundation of reformation in India.

Non-recognition of communities or vulnerable groups like animals as entities was

not an option under Indian Liberalism.

The inclusion of group rights does not make the Indian Constitution illiberal.

The question that arises is,

can animals then be categorized as either individuals,

which is the basic unit of liberalism...

Or as groups?

The answer is,

neither.

Animals are not individuals because they are just the opposite.

They are property.

Since they are property,

they cannot be conceptualized as groups having rights.

But are rights unimaginable for rights in our Constitution?

I am sure you are aware of the Jallikattu 1 and Jallikattu 2 judgments...

And the range of other judgments where rights have been discussed by judges.

The fundamental rights chapter gives our Constitution a transformative character

bringing equality and freedom for everyone.

Professor David Bilchitz,

who has recently been appointed as a judge in the Constitutional Court of South
Africa...

Says that transformative constitutions should not discriminate on the basis of

species if suffering of animals is well established.
 The inclusion of fundamental rights in our written Constitution has become a
formidable tool for vulnerable communities in India to fight oppression.

Animals are yet to enter that constitutional community of persons.

Majority of animal laws in India and even worldwide is duty oriented and
categorize animals as property.

Does fundamental duties live up to the liberal promise of equality?

The answer is no.

Mainly because of two reasons.

A.

These provisions are not binding and does not grant rights directly.

And B.

The provisions are not all pervasive and devoid of foundation and rights.

Thus they do not account for much importance independently in a liberal

constitution.

Now my problem with the Indian Constitution and the place that it gives to
animals is that it is a very duty oriented...

It has a very duty oriented approach when it comes to animals.

The reason DPSPs or fundamental duties are not binding is that liberal constitution
privileges rights over duties or DPSPs.

And our constitution is a liberal constitution.

DPSP and fundamental duties are typically an egalitarian and socialist trait
borrowed from other countries.

But Justice S.H.

Kapadia had proposed a reframing of egalitarian welfare rights by emphasizing on

deprivation rather than discrimination.
And deprivation is important.

I believe that stray dogs are like...

you can look at it from the poverty and happiness.

There is of course some kind of a neglect that we see of the state towards these
animals who we categorize as stray dogs.

So without prejudice towards the function that duties play in society in general
and in furthering the animal liberation movement in specific...

The function and context of fundamental rights in the Indian constitution is one
function.

Gautam Bhatia writes,

at the time of framing the Indian constitution and its chapter of fundamental rights,

there were two important concerns animating the constituent assembly.

Dehumanization and hierarchy.

Dehumanization and hierarchy are as relevant and evil to animals as it is to

humans.

Although duties are not unimportant,

in the present context the problem arises when duties and rights are conflated.

Bhatia refers to Samuel Boyne's article in Boston Review where it is stated that
the rhetoric of duties has often been deployed euphemistically by those whose true
purpose is to return to tradition one by limiting the rights of others.

Those who exploit others.

Animals should be explicitly recognized in the party of the constitution but I want
to end by asking this question.

Is India ready for rights for animals?

Probably not.
 Until India is ready for constitutional amendment to include animals as
constitutional subjects,

courts intervention to recognize rights of animals is appreciated.

Soli Swaraj ji has hailed the supreme court for expansion and protection of
fundamental rights.

And of course you also have the restrainmentist approach drawing upon the
doctrine of constitutional avoidance.

The Indian courts have often at the same time applied doctrines like doctrine of
parents' bacteria to take care of animals.

Those of us who care about animals in India have high hopes from the judiciary.

We are disappointed by the 2023 Janakattu judgement.

Supreme court's recognition of fundamental rights of animals should not have

come as a surprise to any individual who is aware of the activist role played by
court to protect vulnerable populations in India.

Supreme court has shown utmost seriousness and has gone beyond its call of duty
to protect the vulnerable communities and also probably animals in India.

The court has never hesitated in using fundamental rights as a tool to bring
positive social change.

I would like to end by quoting Nicholas Rosenkranz who argues that every
constitutional inquiry should begin with a basic question that has been almost
universally overlooked.

The fundamental question from which all questions follow is the who question.

Who has violated the constitution?

I am asking an even fundamental question.

Whose constitutional right has been violated?

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this important conversation on care.

 I am just going to be wheeling out for the sake of time because I have a very good
habit of running away as well in the conversations as others have confessed as
well.

I am joining this conversation to bring to the table recent work in disability studies
which centres care as a political concept.

That's moving away from notions of care that foreground it as an individual

relationship and a practice guided by benevolence or altruism.

Research in the last decade has focused on recognising the contentious nature of
care in relation to disabled people's lives.

I think those questions have come up in a few conversations.

Some of the concerns that continue to animate the field of disability studies and
here I am talking about this contentious nature of care are the following.

One is this need to reflect on care critically by drawing on the narratives of

disabled people whose agency has been restricted because of coercive mechanisms
that often operationalise familial and institutional forms of care.

I want to suggest here that identifying care in justice is also care.

Secondly,

that state enabled care has been limited and limiting,

prompting disabled individuals and communities to devise care practices through

collective mobilisations.

This was evident during the pandemic years when in different parts of the world
disabled people were pushed down the list of those requiring support in terms of
essential supplies and essential medical care.

However,

one of the generative aspects of activism and research related to this idea is that
care work is inherently collective.

Thus debunking the notion that care work is individuated.

Akilme Nishida,

the author of Just Care,

recognises care as inherently invoking the idea of a collective.

She also speaks of care justice as a way of critically reflecting not just on the
provision of systemic forms of care for disabled people,

but also provision of care that does not harm minoritised populations that are
usually involved in care work.

So her book looks at both these sides of caregiving and care receiving.

Social protests also constitute acts of care.

The Black Lives Matter movement is one such instance that Nishida takes up,

but I think that we can add to that the anti-CAA protests as well as the farmers'
movement.

In all of these protest contexts,

what one notices is that there is a recognition of barriers or an identifying of

barriers in an intersectional manner.

This identifying of barriers is an idea that is very central to disability activism and
research because it draws on the social model of disability.

I'll come to barriers later again.

Thirdly,

the recognition that care work,

apart from being feminised labour,

has also remained in large part the go-to profession for people belonging to
marginalised communities in different countries.

This has resulted in precarious work conditions and the inability to organise for
better wages because of the informality of the class of labour.
 I think that it is fairly evident even within large institutions such as hospitals that
there is a certain level of work that is being done which is assigned to people who
are identified as belonging to occupational communities that might be more ready
to do certain kind of work.

I'm definitely talking about caste here because if you think of the care work
profession within the Indian context,

be it the kind of care that one can afford by accessing it through these large
agencies or the one that you might get if you reached out to somebody who is
probably at a slightly higher level than the domestic worker,

there is going to be a kind of caste hierarchy also that's operating but it's not
something that's very visible.

Another extreme of this and I think we had mentioned of it in the previous panel is
that you only get care if you can afford it,

that it's monetised,

it's commodified and a part of the neoliberal capitalist market offering.

Fourthly,

the non-recognition of care work undertaken by disabled people towards their

family members,

friends,

community members and themselves has also come up for sharp scrutiny in recent
times.

This is an extension of the long-standing stereotype that people with disabilities

can only be care recipients.

A significant feature of this thread of research is that thinking of care only as a set
of actions that do certain physical actions results in conceptualising care as a
potential or capacity of able-bodied actors alone,

thus rendering another form of ableism.

Earlier when Jerry Pinto was speaking,

he said that his book has been kind of appropriated as a mental health book but I
want to say that it gives us a very significant metaphor and the metaphor that
comes from there is identical paper dolls.

The metaphor is used in the novel to talk about the non-disabled other,

the able-bodied who are looking on but the identical paper doll metaphor is used
by characters living with psychosocial disabilities so it's a kind of a throwback,

a very powerful one.

So when we arrive at a certain set of actions that are to be considered as caring

actions then you are also stereotyping a certain type of ableism.

Interdependence emerged as a significant phenomenon worthy of academic and

activist exploration as being disabled does not disqualify one from being a
caregiver.

Mia Mingus explains interdependence as an approach that moves us away from

the myth of independence and towards relationships where we are all valued and
have things to offer.

It moves us away from knowing disability only through dependence which paints
disabled bodies as being a burden to others at the mercy of able-bodied people's
benevolence.

However,

I want to suggest that collectively recognizing and resisting these forms of care
injustices is care.

I'm just reiterating that point.

I think the idea that comes out of the disability movement as well as disability
studies scholarship is that enabling access is an act of care.

Enabling access requires collective action.

This usually entails the coming together of judicial activism,

 social and political activism and whatever other cultural forms of protest
expression there may be.

It's only through this that access justice can happen.

In the case of a disabled prisoner who has been denied personal care assistance
within the prison,

the barrier is complexly positive.

I want to argue that the barrier needs to be recognized in all its complexity first
before we move towards enabling access.

In the case of this prisoner,

it is perhaps not only driven by the idea that the point of imprisonment includes
being isolated and being away from the comfort of one's life at home,

but the denial of a caregiver seems to be realizing the purpose of retributive

justice.

The barrier here is intertwined with the point of punishment.

Similarly,

yet differently,

access for disabled students in educational institutions is probably only going to be

possible through a recognition that the denial of reasonable accommodation is
unmistakably prompted by the fact that merit has come to be inexplicably
intertwined with ideas of individual accomplishment

that has to be achieved by the demonstration of independence that is able-bodied.

On this note,

I would like to acknowledge that one of the most interesting prompts in the
concept note of this colloquium was,

do we need games which change the definition of winning,

where being first is no big deal at all?

Thank you.

I will not venture into re-reading or summarizing all the treatises,

though I will be touching on some of the points that have been raised.

One very interesting question that we have raised is whether individuals have
rules.

Another important question is whether the constitution thinks that animals have
property.

You will realize,

Vivek,

when I speak further,

that animals are not alone.

So,

caring for all.

Are we going to understand the ethics of care and how it depends on

understanding of justice,

whether they are mutually related or mutually exclusive?

For the past three decades,

there has been a discussion about the ethics of care.

In the beginning,

there was a debate that care belongs to the domain of healthcare,

charity,

and even Lohia accuses Gandhi of being very sentimental,

though being a very critical thinker of Gandhi.

 But there was a lot of debate as to why care should be exclusive to the private
domain and justice belong to the public domain and whether both of them come
together or not.

The care seems to be,

at one point of time,

has nothing to do with the principle of justice,

which is based on rational,

autonomous,

perhaps Lockean or even option individual in the era of neoliberalism.

It is a personal interest,

but not a need.

But a personal interest,

not asking as a right.

So,

theoretically,

these mutually exclusive positions have been contested by all the theories of care.

And they also confronted why care ethics cannot inform the impersonal and
universal principles of justice.

That is one question that most of the feminists have asked around the 80s.

And one does not need to labor much to expose the false dichotomy.

If you ask the question that whether public funding of education,

healthcare,

is it a question of charity or is it a question of social justice?

It is very simple.
One does not need to know,

struggle more on that.

But we are very hardwired to understand that autonomous individual's interest is

central to liberal idea of justice.

The idea of justice begins with separation of individual from the social and also
collective.

But ethics of care demands social self as the beginning.

It postulates interdependence more than independence,

mutuality more than separation,

needs instead of interest,

responsibility rather than non-interference,

responsiveness to the consequences rather than indifference,

particularly rather than the connectedness and concreteness rather than the
abstractness as the central observation of care.

It is a relation and connectedness that protects and enriches even the meaning of
autonomy and privilege.

But we do not seem to realize that is where we have a discussion on the principles
of justice.

The ethics of care demands us to presume some commonality of weakness or

strengths between us and the other.

It demands horizontal space,

time and also attention with the other.

It demands slowness but not speed in human relations.

 It beckons us to be open to understand the particular needs of other instead of
assuming that individual's groups pursue their self-interest and they are nothing
more than rational creatures.

The autonomous individual as the bearer of interest and thus rights has converted
the other as first as the competitor and then the adversary in our times the enemy.

These various shades of autonomous individuality have created sense of fear and
insecurity.

Any attachment with community,

social relations,

you are born in a village,

studied there,

you have attachment with your community,

you are not a fully-bred,

you don't have any attachment.

This is what we have been taught by the things.

We have already much told.

And it is also considered as a question as autonomous individuals how many

things that we are separated from or elevated ourselves from is some question that
you know Ganga asked several times.

From our own experience we can say that beginning with our own colleagues,

neighbours,

community,

nature,

living knowledge systems,

I don't know how many colleagues that we get back everyday and we have.
This is what the government says.

This has made us very lonely and unloved in Singapore and straight away the only
solution for all of it.

Gandhi was the one who coherently and consistently had taken a public stance on
the ethics of care as central to justice for individuals,

groups and also nations.

Not just his personal at all.

Gandhi's life shows that the question of justice and care are compatible with each
other and goals of justice can be best achieved through ethics of care rather than
managed in a particularly wrong rationality.

There is a lot of debate about rationality in the world.

Gandhi demonstrates the only morally acceptable way of changing the unjust law
is non-violence because violence undermines not only our capacity but also the
capacity of the oppressor for care and fairness.

I mean legalism of justice does not care for the victim of crime.

It cares for punishing the transgressor.

Gandhi had opportunity to see that most of the indentured labourer,

Bal Sundar in South Africa was punished for being violent but he refused to do
that.

He said releasing the indentured labourer from such bondage and also bondage of
violent relationship was more important than punishing the aggressor.

Therefore we think that ethics of care demands to be openness to communicate

with the aggressor.

Some people also say that it is possible to have a communication with Hitler.

What Gandhi did here is to go for restoration,

a process of healing but not punishing.

 So Gandhi's ethics of care suggests reconciliation through communication and
understanding the aggressor rather than coercive action.

This is possible when you consider the adversary not as a rational actor alone
pursuing personal interest but one with whom we all share our weaknesses and
strengths.

Ethics of law and order did not demand general dire to have a gun before firing.

Whether every nation,

every action,

every predator establishes a caring relationship with the other or not is the only
criteria for this concept of justice.

Gandhi felt Chawla Chowdhury incident dismantled a caring relationship between

him and people,

between Indians and English.

So therefore caring relationship is central for this understanding of justice but we

did not imbibe those values into our justice system.

Does a separate electorate establish caring relationship between upper case and the
second case in the long run?

That was one of the important questions he asked.

Does establishment of Pakistan for Muslims create a relationship for mutual

understanding between communities?

For him,

the chief complaint against the modernity,

these leaders,

economists,

individuals as a rights bearer is that it fails to establish caring relationship with the
world as it alleviates individuals from community,
it alleviates us from nature,

it alleviates us from living relationships.

I will stop here,

I will take only one minute,

especially on the question of the expertise.

It was a very transformative moment for me,

seven,

eight years back when Sundar Sarkar told in a conference that the blacksmith in
India who has been producing high quality iron for seven centuries,

was supplying his iron to Syrian Damascus churches.

In 17th century a European comes and asks him,

please explain to me how do you do this?

He says,

there is nothing to explain,

come and work with me.

He sits with the blacksmith and writes down the entire process and at the end of it
he tells him that he does not know what he is doing.

He tells that the blacksmith does not know what he is doing.

This is the logo synthesis.

Even Gandhi was not against knowledge,

but it is the means of creating a knowledge.

That is the problem.

And our dependency with experts does not come out of charts,
but it is built that we will be forever dependent.

That is where the problem is as far as knowledge and expertise.

And we need to seriously think about it.

There is more to talk about.

But I stop here and I invite questions.

Good afternoon everyone.

My name is Khushi.

I want to ask this question to Mr.

Vivek Mukherjee.

So as you mentioned Jallikattu judgment,

so there was a clash between two fundamental rights.

The right to religion and at the same time the animal rights.

So as we all know that law is not about being on the black side or the white side.

It is all about the grey area.

So what could have been the grey area if there exists a clash between right to
religion or protecting the animal rights according to you?

Thank you.

This is also for Vivek.

I have very little knowledge of animal law and wildlife law.

But what I have heard from friends who work in wildlife and forest is this constant
revulsion to the street dog protection movement.

Which is that the movie protects street dogs which comes from this place of what
in Kannada they say is ayo papa which is oh so sad.
 And every time you try to protect a street dog with an impulse you are driving
street dogs out.

And there is an article about this in Outlook earlier this year.

Driving street dogs out into peri-urban areas and closer to forested areas and then
they become a threat to endangered species.

So the wildlife community in Kannada seems so anti the way the urban population
seems protected of street dogs and backdogs.

And what has got me really confused about this animal law debate is that the
ecosystem needs protection.

I mean when it is animal versus human it is very clear we need to be good to

animals.

But when it is animals versus animals or animals versus forest dwelling

communities the ecosystem itself needs a whole look.

So when you say fundamental rights should be according to animals I wonder how
you would operationalize that because it comes back to the old personhood model.

And I don't know that it takes care of the vulnerability of the ecosystem because
the ecosystem may actually need some animals to die in the process of other
animals being conserved especially endangered species given what we are already
doing to protected areas in India.

So I just wanted to invite your reflection on how to think of the larger ecosystem
together.

Thank you.

This is Aya Devi.

Thank you so much Shilpa for bringing out the political economy of care.

I think that was very important.

Otherwise I was starting to think that we have a very glorified view about care.

So thanks for bringing out those elements.

 One of the points that I want to make is that the context of our work with respect
to the mental health system and mental health laws we have found that usually for
persons with psychosocial disabilities providing care has meant withdrawing
liberty which is a core component of justice.

So how do you reconcile that because that's also care and under these kinds of
legislations where liberty and yesterday Rahul gave an amazing presentation what
is the status of the vagrancy act where again the state is supposed to be protecting
the living care but by withdrawing liberty.

So I think we would like to reconcile because it leads to a lot of coercive actions

and also converts caregivers into custodians to a level that,

thanks Nilesh for sharing your personal story,

but it converts caregivers into custodians to a very high level of normative state
sanctioned custodians who can take recourse to law

if people protest their denial of liberty.

So that's something that I just wanted to highlight.

It's part of the political economy of care that you talked about.

It's just a comment.

We are living in the most uncooperative,

the most discontent and the most uncaring society and government at the moment
and we are living with a white elephant in the room.

The only answer for this is the politics which will go against this uncaring animal.

I said there is a white elephant in the room called politics and we need to address
our uncooperative,

discontent and uncaring,

unjust society with a political answer.

So what is the role of politics of care and animal rights in India?

For example,

if you see,

it's kind of Hindu values versus Muslim values.

If you see news channels in India,

for example,

the chief minister of UP is presented as someone who is an animal caretaker.

It's not just something that has other dimensions also.

For example,

it's presented as something in opposition to the other,

to the other who is demonised because that other is a meat-eater.

So where do we situate it?

What do we do about this?

We are doing good about animal rights,

about care.

It's great.

But at the same time,

it's leading to this whole crisis,

lynchings and it comes from that.

So I just wanted to know about this.

I just wanted to add to what you were saying.

I don't know how we have these conversations about animal rights without saying
caste.
 We live in a country where there is literally associations of purity and pollution
based on what you eat.

I know that we are now making a case for veganism as such.

But I feel like this conversation about animal rights can't be talked about,

I mean can't have it without discussing purity,

without discussing caste,

without discussing disgust.

And the fact that in this country you can be earning in crores and not find housing
because of what you eat and what your name is.

And so,

I just wanted to,

as you were speaking,

I felt like I wanted to add.

My question is to Dr.

Murli.

Two observations.

One is that you say in passing that rationality is overrated.

One does not know whether this is true about human beings or not,

but it is definitely true about institutions,

rationality.

The rationality of institutions is overrated and because there is no consciousness

within the institution which is that entity which will rationalize.

There is a missing element within public institutions or private institutions that

there is no consciousness out there.
So who is the entity which does rationalize?

In the public institution.

One.

The second is a very important observation you made in passing about neighbors
without relations.

Neighbors without relationships.

So in semantics and linguistics we learn that names are not things.

So if there is no relation,

there is no neighbor.

Because there is a precondition.

Somebody being a neighbor,

that precondition is relationship.

So those names are not things.

So I just wanted to make that point.

This is working?

I just wanted to say thank you all for fascinating presentations.

And I have a question that really goes across Uwe,

Kessink,

Shilpa and Ilesh,

all of you really.

So Shilpa,

one of the interesting things that you did in your presentation or my understanding
of it was saying that we should be looking at care as in to what extent do we care
about an issue but also care as a practice.
 So as a sort of psychological or cognitive way of engaging with the world but also
enact something that we do.

So my rather,

perhaps this is a bit provocative this question,

but I'm going to ask it because there's a reason.

The public in India,

which issue do they care most about?

The rights of animals or the rights of persons with disabilities?

And if there's a time after I'll tell you why I ask because I can literally answer that
question in the UK.

And I wondered whether you know the answer and what it tells us.

Let's start with the first question.

I have a question on the conflict or some kind of trade-off between right to

religion or culture and human rights.

Of course,

the first thing I want to mention is that we rely too much on rights in India when it
comes to social movements and social justice.

We expect too much out of it and we get disappointed.

Jallikattu was a good example and equal love case for marriages in the LGBT
community was another.

It was a statement from the judiciary saying that if we can give you rights,

we can take it away from you.

So I started my session by saying that there is no trade-off.

The Indian Constitution in part three of course acknowledges that there will be
conflicts between rights in this scene.
And there are constitutional methods and constitutional theories to deal with that.

But I'm just saying that it's not like a hierarchy of rights that this right is more
important than the other.

Even if there is a hierarchy,

I think the criteria should be by asking this question of who is more vulnerable.

And in my opinion,

if you ask me personally,

and this is not a competition,

I know that it is not a competition,

but if you ask me personally,

animals are not at the margins of our society.

They are outside of it.

And that changes everything.

If animals are outside of the margins,

it changes everything.

All the theories that we discussed in this colloquium falls apart as soon as we say
that they are outside of it.

The second question that Malvika asked was so sad.

My personal experience fighting for street dogs on campus as well as where I live
has been that when you're talking about extremely vulnerable communities or
extremely vulnerable groups like animals,

there is always this tendency to take them for granted and push them away,

push the problem away whenever we can,

instead of engaging with it because it's easy,

it's the lowest hanging fruit.

And that creates more problems,

whether it is street dogs,

whether it is monkeys.

What happens with monkeys is that if you pick them up and only the forest
department can do it,

because it's a scheduled wildlife protected animal.

If you just pick them up from a place where humans stay and put them in the wild,

they are bound to walk back to where you picked them up from.

And they did at Nalsaad,

not twice,

but thrice.

And when they come back,

by that time,

monkeys around that particular place are going to occupy.

And then there's going to be an inter-se conflict between that might lead to a very
dangerous situation for humans who are inhabiting that place.

So yes,

inter-se kind of conflict is something that we engage with,

but there is a new area of study,

which is wildlife welfare.

Not many organizations are doing it actually.

Wildlife is mostly the domain of the forest department.

And all of us know that the forest department is quite colonial in its approach
when it comes to either conservation or anything else.

So there are newer ways of looking at wildlife.

And that is where we ask this question of,

do we need to care about wildlife or should we just leave them be?

And these people are saying that no,

we need to care about wildlife as well.

So the expanse of care is kind of reaching out to those animals that were not in the
example at this point in time.

Also to answer your question,

I think we should try and practice empathy rather than sympathy when it comes to
animals.

It is difficult because of the great wall that separates humans and animals.

To empathize would be to be them and to feel like them.

To sympathize would just be to say,

oh so sad.

To know that they are suffering,

but just to sympathize with them.

So empathy is extremely important,

which is why I mentioned the whole process of becoming animals.

And we being animals,

we can do that.

There is nothing stopping us from empathizing with animals.

When it comes to urbanism,

one of the things that I recently read about is this idea of animals in urban spaces.

So there is this scholar by the name of Yamini Narayanan,

teaching in the Deakin University,

who has written about subaltern urbanism.

And this is a very interesting concept that might be helpful in understanding how
we construct our urban spaces and how animals or even the poor do not fit into that
whole structure.

There was also this question about CM Yogi Adityanath.

So I believe that seva is a concept that has been written about in animals related
literature.

But it has been glorified and it has been romanticized a lot.

I believe that this idea of seva is quite exclusive and not inclusive.

And I believe that there is always a scope for improvement,

even if it is just one species of animal that you are talking about or trying to
protect,

which is cows.

There is nothing wrong in that,

but it cannot be at the exclusion of other vulnerable populations.

So that Aurev asked something about othering and I forget.

But I think this addresses your question because Anandita and Aurev had a similar
kind of question.

Anandita also mentioned caste.

The reason why I did not mention caste by also mentioning caste in a way,

in an indirect way,
is that in a gathering like this,

if you become,

if you try and in our movement,

if you try and

be intersectional,

it might attract a lot of hatred sometimes.

So collating animals with or comparing animals with any other vulnerable group
might lead to some kind of problems.

And I believe that there should be some level of consent when you do that.

You need to ask people before you can make that comparison.

There is this concept of intersectional disgust that has been recently written about,

which I believe is the starting point of what I am saying here.

And the last question that I was asked is,

who do you care about most,

animals or disease?

So that is,

Professor Beckett asked that question.

I believe the idea of intersectional disgust also addresses that question.

Of course,

there is bound to be some kind of a prioritization when it comes to policy.

But when we are on the moral question of caring,

there should be no hierarchy,

at least in the world.

If it is policy that we are talking about,

of course there would be prioritization.

And policy people need to kind of ask moral questions before they make policy.

So that's all the questions that was addressed to me.

I am not sure if there is a particular question,

but I thought I would like to hear from you.

Maybe we should speak a little bit more about it.

When you use metaphors,

there is a certain kind of hierarchy that is created.

So if disabled people are being referred to as animals of different kinds,

then there is already that inherent hierarchy that is being created there.

So there is a very complex thing going on there.

I am not sure how to unpack it,

but very often,

speechlessness is an idea that is used very commonly to talk about animals and
people with disabilities.

So,

I mean,

being like an animal is an idea that is invoked and so on.

But then I think the answer to your question is quite clear.

There is very little interest in disability rights,

basically.

And it has been a very significant struggle.

The struggles don't get enough coverage.

The ones that made it to the fore,

I suppose,

are the ones about access to flying and to airplanes and things like that.

But from the work of other scholars like Anilin Ghosh and others in India,

it is quite evident that the struggle for disability rights is very varied.

I am not sure if that answers your question.

In response to Bhargavi,

I just want to say that I completely agree.

And that is the point that I started out on.

It is very contentious.

It is not possible to talk about care in the context of disability rights activism and
disability studies without thinking about that.

That is the fact that we know this past.

I hope it is the past.

It is not clear from various researches that care will end up being the cause in
many situations.

Am I wrong?

Am I wrong?

Actually,

I don't know how to answer that question.

I can give you anecdotes.

During Mumbai,
during the colonial era of the British,

there were always dogs and dogs.

So,

that was the kind of things I thought.

Yesterday,

I did mention about service animals.

That is something that we need to work on.

I think the two sets of rights are vital.

I was being intentionally provocative.

In the UK,

for example,

if we look at charities,

and by the way,

I believe what St.

Augustine said that charities may substitute for justice with hell.

That is a great quote.

But if we just look at charity donations,

the number one type of charity receiving the most funding in the UK,

which is where it should come,

is deep prioritised.

It doesn't seem to be a big issue for the population.

So,

it is a really amendment,
 which is that also disabled people's animality or that they are treated almost as if
they are a lesser species is another set of problems.

I think the truth is that rights for disabled people,

people care less about that than they care about animals.

And I think they should care about both.

Can I maybe just respond in a minute?

I believe that there is a distinction when it comes to how animals are constructed
in public discourses in the West and how they are constructed in the global South.

As far as funding is concerned,

of course,

we are just warming up to different kinds of funding,

mostly from the global North.

Indian philanthropists are not,

it seems,

interested that much in animal-related issues as much as they are in the global
North.

However,

I also feel that on a theoretical level,

in Nilesh's presentation,

one of the things that was very striking to me that he started by saying that I do not
represent the disability of people.

This is my personal experience.

However,

when it comes to animals,

you cannot do that because they do not speak the language that we speak.

So,

there has to be some kind of a representation.

And that representation sometimes is missing,

which is why people are not too vocal about that.

And even if they are vocal,

they are really scared of raising their voices in India because it leads to all kinds of
hatred that you receive when you raise your voices.

But about public discourses and public consciousness,

one of the things that I wanted to mention is that we all know about,

and there is no comparison,

as I said,

it is not a competition to reach the most number of people possible.

But we all know about ableism and we all know about misogyny.

But the question I want to ask is how many of you know about misogyny,

which is contempt for animals just because they are animals.

And that is something that needs to penetrate public consciousness and we are not
doing enough by us to do that.

I think what I faced recently,

I can start with,

I have four dogs of my own.

And this boy,

this little boy with a disability has two dogs of his own.
One of them is a restless dog,

they don't like that.

And this boy was chased 15 times.

15 times he was chased from the campus.

He cannot even stand without a stick.

He walks in a different manner.

And he was beaten,

actually beaten seven times.

He had any number of rabies and everything.

And then when we wanted to remove the dogs from there,

there was this section of animal lovers who objected.

He was at the point of anxiety attacks.

Doctor said he can have a heart attack at any point of time.

And still there was resistance from some students of ours who said no,

we cannot do all that.

We went to the High Court.

High Court gave us the exception.

You cannot be just blind to the problem.

And he was not responsible for anything the dogs were doing.

Other people were beating him,

so they had become such that they would attack anyone without a stick.

So that was nothing of his creation.

But now we are facing the situation of a life and the dogs on the campus.
We had to go to the High Court.

High Court gave us.

We were in state justice,

we set a contact report and all that.

Because they could not do anything to the High Court.

They took their fury on the student.

How do I say this is an animal lover?

If they cannot love anybody,

if they cannot love everybody,

they cannot just love some animals.

And it is not only the animals.

These are not dogs which were not fed.

Nobody objected to when they were not attacking anybody.

But if they started attacking and then to say you don't love animals,

I think it is kind of taking things a little too far.

And this is still happening in my campus.

I am still dealing with it.

I don't know how to tell people that the fact that I am saying this dog does not
mean I do not love this dog.

But I have to take care of these other people as well.

How to do that balancing?

Can I respond to that question?

Okay,
 so I do believe that there is a way forward because I am aware of this case and I
am working with people for animals who has also kind of shown some interest in
analyzing this case and also challenging it.

So I do feel that there is a way forward and there is a way to engage with this in a
meaningful way.

At NALSA,

we drafted a policy two years ago.

It is still not being approved by the administration.

But most of the things that we proposed in that policy have been accepted.

One of the things that we did was to say that you cannot leave the dogs unattended
like the state does.

Because this is a 50 acre campus,

this is a smaller place where you might have things under control.

Although this is not a good excuse for the state to not do enough.

But I felt that a 50 acre campus is manageable.

And one of the things that we said,

that we demanded from the administration was that we need institutional freedom.

And this is something that has been observed in many cases by the high courts in
India.

That the reason why some of these dogs are aggressive is either because they are
puppies,

they are small and they get zoomies and they bite around people just because they
are teething.

Or they are extremely hungry.

And when that happens,

they tend to bite people.

But there are exceptions as well.

And this also resonates with what you were observing,

sir.

Whether animals are individuals or groups.

I do argue and I do believe that they are a group.

But within that group,

there are different categories.

There are different species.

And within those species,

there are individuals.

Each individual animal has a different personality.

And they behave differently based on their,

just like humans,

based on their past.

Some are really,

really traumatized by their past and they will bite around incessantly.

I mean,

they just can't stop.

They would see anybody,

any human and just bite.

Because they have some past trauma.

I believe relocation of such dogs will be temporarily and engaging with them,
with that particular dog.

And there is the Animal Welfare Control Rules of 2023,

which has that procedure in it,

is the way forward.

Instead of just saying that,

look,

all dogs are the same.

They can bite,

they are ferocious,

they are animals and unpredictable and therefore we don't want all of them in one
particular space.

And they cannot just prohibit with humans.

One of the things that happened at Nalsa with monkeys is not just that they came
back and there was conflict,

inter-slave between monkeys,

but also the fact that we need dogs to check monkeys.

Most of the attacks that happen,

monkey attacks that happen,

dogs are on the ground and then they would chase away all the monkeys on top of
the trees.

So if you don't have dogs,

you are more vulnerable as humans because you will be bitten to death maybe by
a monkey.

I don't know if your university has a monkey problem.

We have cats.

So the students were very unhappy with the cats which were peeing and pooing on
their clothes and on their shoes and everything.

So now cats are everywhere.

Now because the dogs are gone.

But I don't think that still addresses the question.

So this particular dog which was the first attacker,

he was outside of India.

We will have dogs.

They answer to your question.

I also work with governments and governmental institutions.

If you go to any office and ask who exactly makes the decision about Indian
policy,

the way they look at you is you both or you will never understand.

It's like experts saying that there are so many...

They don't want to agree.

The other thing is not just our neighbors.

We are part of so many relations which we have not chosen.

So how do we handle it?

There is a lot of debate.

Religion has created a lot of tolerance and behavior among human beings but it is
the politics and the market which destroyed them.

So how do we handle it?

Of course,
caste is a major question here.

How do we deal with people from other social groups?

How apartments are being organized,

who lives there,

who are excluded,

who are we are...

This is much bigger than what kind of relations we have.

I think even Hyderabad is witnessing that apartments are being constructed by

such groups without saying that especially they are being excluded.

That has happened a long time ago.

I have friends who really deal with this.

We have two more people.

So there is.

Any more questions?

I think in one of the earlier panels I am acknowledging that there is a problem and
maybe we don't have all the solutions figured out.

But my question is mostly to Vivek but to anybody else who wants to talk about...

address it because everybody has mentioned intersectionality at some point.

What do you think about where a certain group is being vilified?

Instead of looking at...

There is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Maybe we don't have a solution but then maybe the solution is not vilifying
certain groups.

So how do you navigate around it?

Maybe there are other groups.

I think somebody spoke about how one group,

conflict of rights or conflict of two,

disadvantages one of the groups.

Where maybe you clarify policy making but then you are steering away from
vilifying the other groups.

I don't know.

I don't know if that makes sense.

In San Srinivasa when Madhavika spoke about LA judges issues versus straight
ups for people with disabilities facing serious concerns because of straight ups.

And maybe not...

Yeah,

yeah.

That's my question.

Why work with the animals?

We are in conflict with so many other things.

No,

financially we are in conflict.

The environment we are in,

I have prepared the...

Is it the list of caring that we have with animals,

with nature,

with other human beings,

with environment?

Yeah.

So that question that we have to address.

If we are saying that caring for all,

who are we allowing or excluding?

That is a question that we have to carefully think.

I just thought of a response.

I think that enabling access...

Enable is also the title of the...

That's at the heart of the matter in this entire issue of the dogs and the person with
disability on that campus.

But that is the thing.

Access is the responsibility of everyone.

It's not just the individual with disability.

Because for a very long time,

the barrier has been located only within the individual.

So I think that question needs to move out and one has to think about it
structurally.

And it will have to be evolved collectively.

It's not an either or.

And who can do it can.

I just believe that care is not a limited resource.

It's a renewable resource.

So when you are prioritizing,

I think we should keep that in mind.

Thank you.

Thank all the speakers.

Thank you.

I thank Amitabh and the team for this generous invitation.

Let me just make one or two preliminary remarks.

One is that pre-modern society is not liberating for a lot of people.

Modern society at least claims to be just,

working for just.

But the implications of modern assumptions to nature are not in my opinion

sustainable.

That's my first statement.

The second statement is,

I read the concept of diversity

and I found that there are two formulas that underlie it.

One is the species that you have seen.

And the opposite of species also,

they conflate,

you know,

things like that.

So I like to obey Amitabh.

But he doesn't like people,

he is the one who always says,

you are too different.

So I obey all the three C's,

but I will invert the order.

Which is,

she begins with three C's which are positive.

And their opposites are tucked inside somewhere.

And I wanted to begin with that.

So that is the beginning with which I want to make this presentation.

There are three notions of self in these three concepts,

in this colloquium.

And each concept presupposes a different notion of self.

They underline different notions of the self which runs like a track

on which most of the discussion takes place.

I humbly request you to allow me to be a bit arrogant about my subject called

philosophy.

I am making this on behalf of philosophy.

The track is philosophical track.

And that track has these elements called self and other.

If you look at the,

to begin with,

cooperation involves at least two individuals ordered on equality.

Contentment requires one and care requires at least two.

Where one cares for the other.

So there are three different notions of individuals.

Self and other.

And all these form a human activity.

Let me unravel the playing field,

the notions of self.

Let me begin with those who enable care thesis and those who obstruct thesis.

Phase one,

frame one.

It is Aristotle in his politics who says that,

he says that whole is prior to part.

But in the same book,

right,

at the beginning,

he says for analytical purposes,

the whole can be disaggregated.

All can be disaggregated into villages,

villages into communities,

communities into families,

families into pair.

Four pairs he talks about.

One pair is man and woman.

And then he says,

you cannot disaggregate that pair.

The reason,

or twofold,

one,

for one to come into existence,

two people should come into existence.

It is a biological argument.

So you cannot have individual if you follow Aristotle and his reasons are like a
foot.

It is just not possible for him.

It is not a theological reason like Plato,

but it is a biological reason in Aristotle.

Second,

the second one is that,

so with that you have no possibility of self as an autonomous being in pre-modern

times.

Now,

Descartes comes and finds this irritation and he says in his Discourse on Authority
that philosophy is not bothered about how people are born.

You know,

two people have to come in sexual union to make one adult.

That is not the path.

The philosophy begins with when do individuals become adult and rational.

So we begin,
so that means it is defined by indication childhood is capitalistic.

Philosophy is not bothered about the childhood.

It also,

it begins with rationality and that rationality comes when you are a self.

So that is my second point,

second bullet.

The third bullet is Rousseau in his own contract,

in a social contract comes in a second glimpse of cricket and then he says that
family is the largest institution and families will,

children stay with the father,

father as long as they become adult.

Once they become adult,

they cease to be having any kind of relation with the father.

Not mother,

mother doesn't figure at all in that passage.

Famous passage in page two of social contract.

The problem is if father spends time for children to come up,

okay,

and it is a contract,

children should come,

you know,

spend some time,

you know,
things for father,

at least for father.

He says no.

You know why?

If children spend time on father when he is old,

then they are not available for production.

You understand the foundations for Foucault on the technology of self is based in
this passage.

This is the foundational passage for Foucault to build his entire thesis of
knowledge of power and technology of self.

And then the reason why,

if you look at the text of text,

you can ask,

if father spent money and resources,

time and resources on children,

then how does he get it back?

You know how he gets back?

He is not being indebted.

He is only clearing his debt that he owes to his father.

So that is the narrative.

Please remember,

this self-indulgence,

small things that you can use like,

you know,

there is a larger,

you know,

serious algorithm that is at work.

That is why I call it like a,

you know,

track.

It is a track.

And then comes,

this is done by a person called Susan Waller-Boken.

She comes up with a brilliant paper published in Ethics called Reason,

Emotion,

and Thinking about Justice.

And then she says that classical morality is based on God.

Modern morality is not based on God.

It is based on reason.

And reason excludes emotions.

Reason excludes emotion.

If reason excludes emotion,

there is no problem.

But then she shows wonderful issues.

It is just like watching a thriller.

I mean the best thriller I have ever watched in my life is with this article.
She says that he equates male with reason and woman with emotion.

So Kant bases morality on reason,

excludes emotion,

fine.

But then he says that woman is identified with emotion and male is identified with
this.

So let me just read this particular point that he talks.

He says in observation from feeling of beautiful and sublime that woman's

philosophy is not the reason.

This is a quotation from Kant,

not Aristotle.

Don't mistake it for Aristotle.

Woman's philosophy is not to reason but to senses.

And he has already excluded senses from the domain of morality.

He says of a married woman that she is necessarily subjected to her husband and a
legal minor.

And Kant says,

again I quote,

to make oneself behave like a minor,

degrading as it may be,

is nevertheless very comfortable.

This is the self that is at the back of modernity.

Now then there is Kant who talks about how love in me,

whether I am capable of loving or not is myself.

So that is the tip top.

Now let me just quickly point out to you that there is justice possible in modernity.

But sustainability of nature is not that easy because the earlier,

another formula is that in the earlier time,

knowledge is identified with liberation.

Bacon comes and says knowledge is related to power.

And that is the thing.

So you have a notion of self,

you have a notion of relation between knowledge and power,

which is what is making modernity possible for us.

Modernity,

I wanted to,

let's say it is not debunking modernity.

It is here that I wanted to come in under 10 minutes time.

I find that it is not to discard modernity.

I think that is not the one which I am.

I am a very serious student of modernity.

I will look at the corner of modernity more than anything else.

But I also know its limitation.

One of the biggest virtues of modernity,

especially in India,

is there is nothing that highlighted social evils in the world like modernity did.

That I am very,
very clear on that.

But I told you the implications of that.

So I respect modernity because it is the modernity.

Please remember in the context of India,

all the social evils of India are highlighted,

told to us by the British.

Make no mistake about it.

No Indian social reformer leader is an author of that they wanted to reform.

The reform,

the question paper is set by the colonial British.

Now here I wanted to just look how to identify this today.

So I have three formulas in front of me.

Self,

self alone.

And two,

self and the other.

Three,

other and then the self.

I wanted to explore the third one.

And the philosophical insight for this comes from Nyaya.

In Nyaya,

and Sundar helped me a lot in getting this idea across.

In Nyaya,
meaning does not consist of knowing what it is but what it is not.

And what it is not is infinite.

What it is not is infinite.

That means my knowledge does not start in knowing what I am but what you are.

So now you know what is happening is,

in terms of epistemology,

we are moving from perception to inference.

That your knowledge about you is not perceptional for me.

It is inferential.

It is not like I eat food but I see you not eating food.

And that is my knowledge.

That is my starting point of enquiry.

Now I want to end by giving you two examples.

How other can play a very important role in this order,

in this sequential order.

That order is important to me as a student of philosophy.

That it is not,

so it is other and then self.

Other and then self if you are,

if you are,

start repeating this again and again.

Because that is the important thing.

Other to self.
Now I will give you an example.

Swami Vivekananda,

before he was Swami,

was studying in the college.

And then the teacher who was teaching him Wordsworth did not find him and
following what they were teaching.

So he goes to reverend HSD and complains saying that these local Bengalis do not
understand Wordsworth.

They are not worth teaching.

Reverend HSD comes to class and says I came to know that your teacher is cut
with you.

Perhaps he did not know how to teach.

This is the,

this is the documentary.

And then he says,

go to Dakshineshwar.

Where you have Ramakrishna Paramahamsa who often gets into the notion of
trance.

Gets to experience trance.

So the teacher was teaching them trance in Wordsworth.

You will know what it is.

Vivekananda goes and you know what is it.

Rest in history.

Now you know here,

the other is not Indian.

He is a Christian.

Father from outside tells about the local people about their own person.

You know he is telling Bengalis about effect on him.

I think it is just for how other can be enabled and funded.

Two,

Gandhi comes to know about Bhagavad Gita.

He was told about Bhagavad Gita by theosophical people.

Two theosophists in England.

England outside.

The two Europeans outside.

And they give him,

when he says that I have not read it carefully.

He was being a sheikh.

Then they give him Arnab's translation.

And he reads it in translation.

And you see that how Arnab has enabled the self.

So this is the other instance that I thought.

So let me just finish.

Two minutes.

So cooperation is between other and self.

It is not based either on mere equality or mere hierarchy.

But on shifting equality or hierarchy.

Moving from self as the knowledge depository.

One way,

top to bottom.

We have to be visible at each moment of our activity.

Both sequentially and simultaneously.

Cooperation also demands knowing what the other does not have.

It is not that I cooperate with you.

It is,

it demands a lot of,

you know,

it makes a lot of demands.

That before I cooperate,

strengthen her,

whatever her weaknesses.

Okay,

supplement to the weaknesses,

use the strength.

And what is the active of use?

It is not equality.

You both are equal.

It is what I call as shifting inequality.

Shifting hierarchy.

When I teach her,

she is,

you know,

I am hierarchy.

When she teaches me,

I am,

she is hierarchy.

So knowledge requires this inclination.

It does not work like this.

Okay,

that is one thing.

Contentment.

Supposedly it is about the self.

But it is about setting how much one needs to be contented.

The distinction between need and greed may be Mahatma Gandhi is often used.

But closest to greed,

I find turning towards other and more importantly,

beginning with others who live without those that I have,

can also become important parameter to arrive at a reasonable idea of

contentment.

Frankly,

I mean,

yeah,

K.
I should know whom I am K.

Because there is a distinction that I make between altruism and philosophy.

Philanthropist is the one who gives what he or she has.

And altruist is the one who finds out what the other needs it and gives it.

If he has,

if she doesn't have,

he will borrow it and give.

Thank you so much.

Okay,

can you hear me?

Yeah,

okay,

good.

So I did prepare a DVD.

Hopefully it will be nice,

I will track and then after two days of all our discussions and things,

I thought,

no,

I am not,

so things will be there,

it will be there.

But I really want to tell you stories.

I teach literature and therefore for me,

narrative is a multi-layered means of communication.

Right at the outset,

as a response to what was discussed in this morning's panel,

I want to talk about pain.

Before I became a polynomial,

I was working in an epic hospital.

And while I was there,

I think I realized the true gift that pain can be.

I mean,

we talk about pain being a blessing,

as well as something that is wonderful and one should welcome it.

And I am not a masochist,

so I don't welcome pain in that sense.

But in the legacy hospital,

I began to realize

that really pain is the body's way of screaming for attention.

You know,

my hand is hurting.

It's sending a message out there.

And the brain is telling me immediately,

drop that stuff,

hot thing that you are holding.

Because that messaging is premised on the fact that the brain cares,
that we are still one body.

And I think that is the core of this thing of pain as a blessing.

It's a means of communication.

It's telling us something is amiss,

something needs attention now.

But it's premised on the fact that the person who is listening,

or the state that is listening,

or the organization that is listening,

cares,

recognizes that and it's our body.

Without that,

I mean,

I'm screaming in pain,

oh how?

This is wonderful.

Yes,

yes,

yes.

It can be.

So that basic premise is what we were talking about all morning today.

That it doesn't make sense only at the rational level.

It doesn't make sense unless somebody at the gut level,

we feel connected.
We feel we are part of that one body.

So at the moment we have this world that is like,

there are so many horrible things that are happening in the world.

We've heard about them all morning and for the last few days.

We have utopias that are also presented,

literary and otherwise.

And this idea that spiritual evolution of the self is really what's most important.

Some way of trying to correct this imbalance.

But we're looking at different religious traditions.

And of course,

right at the outset,

I do want to say something else.

Stories all the time.

This is another story.

We had this huge,

in the early 90s,

there was this huge meeting at the bar in Bombay.

And it was a meeting of feminist speakers and such.

There was this panel of feminist luminaries.

And one of them said that feminism needs to,

feminist thought needs to infiltrate into everything.

That is,

the economy,
religion,

education,

society,

all our traditions and so forth.

And somebody in the audience got up and said,

no,

no,

no.

I agree with everything else.

I think it's a very profound statement.

But I don't think that religion should be included in that.

In fact,

we should throw religion out.

Because religion,

because it's so important in the lives of so many women in India,

has been the instrument of perpetuating injustice,

perpetuating oppression,

perpetuating exploitation.

So,

get rid of religion.

It's a very young movement.

Yes,

but I got to say,

I'm a Roman Catholic.

So,

as I said,

I'm young.

But the point is,

precisely because religion is so important in the lives of so many people,

how dare anybody else co-opt it?

Why do we allow people to take it over,

interpret it?

It's as it was.

Can we not reclaim it?

And this is something of what I want to try and do as we are looking at this whole
issue of religion,

which has been so divisive,

has been so oppressive,

has been so extravagant.

Can we at least remit it,

etc.,

as well?

So,

yeah.

I think we'll stick...

Oh,
I'm so sorry.

We'll see if I can give you more kinds of bad things.

Yeah,

this was very good.

This was very good.

And next one.

We're talking about reduction in needs.

And of course,

we have the idea of reduction of needs as being central to most religious

traditions,

not as a rastra,

but most of the others.

That as we progress in this religious path,

we reduce our needs.

Why?

Well,

today,

certainly it's very,

very relevant,

given the way we have denuded and ravaged our earth

in this quest for increasing wealth and more resources.

But it's also one manifestation of progress on this whole to enlightenment.

And so there's this man.

And he...

Again,

the dream,

somebody comes to him,

an angel comes to him and says,

tomorrow you will go into the forest,

and in the forest you will meet a holy man.

And that holy man will give you the biggest diamond in the world.

And he wakes up,

and he leaps out of bed,

and he runs into the forest,

and he sees this holy man there,

and he goes running up to him and says,

give it to me,

give it to me,

give it to me.

And the holy man says,

what?

What do you want?

And he says,

I had a dream and they said that you were going to give me the biggest diamond in
the world.

He says,
oh,

this one?

Yeah.

And the man is very happy,

and he goes back home,

he's delighted,

and then he doesn't sleep all night.

And the next day he goes back to the holy man and says,

please,

you can have your diamond back.

I want that which made it possible for you to give away the diamond so easily.

And that's the scope of the reduction of personal needs and contentment.

Okay,

there's a selection of those two there.

So wealth then is held as something,

is believed to be something,

and trust for which one is accountable.

You can't,

if you think that wealth has come from Lakshmi or Ganpati or Allah or whoever
has a blessing,

then you can't use it for what is not moral,

if you think.

But somehow we seem to be capable of this kind of split vision,

this kind of schizophrenic holding of devout belief and complete injustice.

I don't know how,

but we can.

You look at the Marcos regime in the Philippines,

they were devout church goers,

and yet the regime could not have been more oppressive.

So we're looking at also this idea of sharing or giving as being incumbent to

anyone.

Read about Kalanna,

he never gave like this,

he gave like this.

You read about Kalanna again,

he's not only giving what he has in excess,

but he gives part of himself,

he wears off the coverage and kundal,

which he was born with,

and gives those away.

So giving as something beyond.

Then you have ideas of sin,

restitution,

recognition that all this is passing and horrific.

And then you have the contradictory ideas of passion and aggression,

where it's like,

okay,

we had the Delhi rape case,

I teach and I taught in an undergraduate college,

not a law college.

So,

with the Philippines college,

when the Delhi rape case happened,

and then two,

three months later,

we had the Shakti Mills case in Mumbai,

our students were shattered.

They came,

they said they wanted to have a conversation among themselves,

could they please have a meeting just by themselves.

So about 400-500 people got together,

they had a meeting without any of us around,

the mic went around,

they talked about what they felt,

they expressed their anger,

their fear,

their helplessness,

their frustration,

all of that.
But they didn't stop there,

they thought how do we change this,

can we change this,

what do we do as a response.

And as a response what they did was,

they formed a movement that they called

Breaking the Culture of Silence,

and they actually divided themselves into groups,

some groups went out to other colleges,

had meetings with their student bodies,

discussions,

talking about gender issues,

etc.

But they also said it's not enough to talk about to people of our age,

by now our attitudes are set,

we need to go to the children of classes 5,

4,

3,

that age group.

And if you go to the big schools,

the fancy schools,

those have people,

they have enough resources,

it's the municipal schools which don't have those resources.

So they created their own lobby for gender sensitization for that age group.

And all the neighboring municipal schools,

we have about 4 in our area,

we went to all those schools and conducted these sessions after having discussed
it.

For me that is what compassion and care is about.

Okay you see injustice,

you see something that is paining you as well,

but you reach out to do something to change the world.

At the same time when we talk about religion,

there are contradictions and challenges at all levels.

We are talking about interpretation,

the way in which perhaps our primary texts have been interpreted or reinterpreted.

These have been in the imagination,

or sometimes nothing in the imagination because they are imported so early.

There is a story of Hirbal Baldubar,

I hope I pronounced it right,

and his wife,

who is dying,

and as she is dying,

she is obviously very confident,

as she is dying she is weeping,

and he wipes away the tears very gently,

he sits beside her and he says,

beloved what is it,

what is still weighing on your heart?

And she says,

you know when we got married,

your mother told me,

you always put beside your plate one shell with some water and a needle.

And all these years,

ever since we were married,

every meal I have eaten,

and then one second he said,

what is wrong with my sepa,

why did you reject it?

And she is weeping at this point because it is still weighing on her,

that sense of rejection.

And he keeps it for himself,

beloved that is weighing on you.

When we were married,

you were a little girl,

and as a little girl,

you would have spilt,

but you were also my wife,

so you had to serve me,

but we were so poor that we could not afford to use one grain of rice.

So if by serving me you spilt the rice,

I could use the needle to pick up the grains of rice from the floor,

wash it in this shell,

and eat it,

so that nothing is wasted.

Why am I telling you this story?

Interpretation.

The same act is interpreted in two totally different ways.

One oppressive,

one embodying rejection,

the other saying,

you did your job so well,

I didn't need it.

So this is what is happening with religion,

because often something that could perhaps be interpreted in a very liberative

manner,

becomes an oppressive injunction.

Because when we talk about how we should be humble,

we should be content with our own,

who is being told to be humble and maybe be content with their own?

Although often the superstructure of religion,

if you use Marxist terminology,

seeks to perpetuate the institutions of power and the hierarchies through which
religion is being mediated.

And therefore we tend to want to dismiss the whole of it.

It problematizes the way in which one can access religion totally.

Because ultimately what are we talking about?

It's such an oppressive,

it can be so divisive.

Look at the way we are fighting,

Hindus,

Muslims,

Jews and Muslims in Israel,

whoever is fighting in Ukraine,

the forces in Manipur,

wherever you look,

religion is a new recurrent and it's being used to foster the hatred.

Can we then say,

how can we then reclaim it?

And that is the challenge that is worth doing,

I think.

So finally,

it is like,

the call is to act justly,

to love gently,

to walk humbly.

And really we need to,

if we are talking about this,

I think at every undercurrent of all traditions,

is that we need to listen to each other,

hear what the other is saying,

to see the other as part of ourselves.

And self-reliance and recognition that pain,

suffering are inevitable.

Baba,

me and uncle are your best friends.

But we hurt each other at times.

Of course we do.

We do it for weeks.

But the point is one can move beyond that.

And for that I want to tell you the story of Amir Bink.

I know I am running late.

Amir Bink was also a leprosy patient.

Amir Bink was an engineer who because of the stigma attached to leprosy,

had to abandon his life,

abandon his job,

abandon whatever comfort he had in life,

and come and live in this hospital.

And his worldly goods at that point were one transistor radio,

one change of clothes and 600 rupees.

That was it.

And one day another patient arrived the previous night,

and by next morning had decamped with Amir Bink's transistor radio and 600
rupees.

From that moment.

And the next morning when I got to work,

I was a social worker,

when I got to work,

the medical superintendent was jumping up and down in rage and saying,

this is not,

we were not ready for it.

Look at this man,

he is so terrible.

That jackstone is his stuff.

And he won't even go and complain to the police.

I don't understand these people.

They all.

And I went to the doctor and told him,

why don't you inform the police?

And his face was so small and broken.

He said,

brother,

we will inform the police,

we will catch him and beat him.

For me,

that is also my own.

For me,

that is also my own.

Somebody has taken everything that you want.

That you can sit at.

And it happened 40 years ago and I still got goosebumps when I tell this story.

That is also my own,

means he too is one of us.

So,

I want to end with this.

This is a form of Japanese art.

Which looks at fragmented form and puts it together in gold.

Our tendency is to just stick things together and make sure,

we are not a thievery.

We stick it together,

we cover over the joints.

But here you are celebrating the joints.

You are doing it in gold.

You are saying,

this thing is so valuable,

I will invest gold in holding it together.

That is our world.

That is our society.

That is the relationships between each other.

It is so valuable.

We need to invest in that.

And that is what,

that recognition is also what underlies every single,

every single illustration.

When we talk about Mr.

Walker,

who is president of the Ford Foundation,

has this open letter,

just the other day it came out.

And in that he says,

he is responding to the Israel-Palestine situation.

And he says,

as ever we are listening and learning with empathy and compassion.

We are supporting those closest,

most proximate to the people and communities

that greatest need.

We are giving in collaboration,

in true partnership,

with the public and private sectors,

etc.

But ultimately,

we all must hold fast to the promise of a future

in which everyone can live with equality,

with human dignity and human rights,

with freedoms and responsibilities of firmest democracy.

History teaches this will not come easy,

nor on its own.

But together we can and must help to build a just and lasting peace,

worthy of our shared humanity.

It's an entire 41 minutes.

So,

thank you for taking the time.

I'd like to open the floor straight away for discussion.

And if there is some time,

I'll say it out loud.

So,

yes,

one opinion.

The way we are interpreting our Constitution,

or the way we are interpreting our laws.

And I want the answers from the experts,

and not the silo of common people.

You as experts.

What do we need now?

We need to repair or reconstruct our interpretation of all these big things,

this Constitution.

Excellent question.

Yes.

But my comment to you is this.

I'm not going to say much.

Which is that,

I'm sorry for being late to your presentation,

but I heard you say something,

namely,

that classical Indian thought,

the thought in terms of dying,

self-immolation.

And if that were so,

my comment of anxiety is

what about the agony of dying?

So,

self,
another,

and a third.

A third can be monstrous third,

or can be benevolent third.

Depends on what the third is.

Like Emmanuel Levin has talked about the third as the monstrous third.

After Saint-Germain,

Saint-Germain,

he talked of terrorism.

So if we go to triadism,

what happens to the other of the other?

And how does compassion,

care,

courage,

and all that stuff relate to that?

To Professor Pereswal,

the question is simple,

but perhaps a little bit naughty.

Infiltration of the utopian into the real is the middle space.

There is utopian world and there is real world.

And we are trying to infiltrate the utopian into real,

which I mentioned.

So it's important,
honest,

pragmatic level,

that this discussion may take place.

In which case,

anxiety is about two things.

One is,

do we do this infiltration by stealth?

Theology by stealth,

spirituality by stealth.

And choose the institution of spiritual values slowly and gradually,

and perhaps vaguely.

Or do we do it up front?

And secondly,

is religion to you,

from perception,

there is so much difference between religion and applied spirituality.

So what is your alternative here?

Is it X or Y?

Or bit of both?

If I may say so.

I'm making my points more clear.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

That was such a big learning for me that I

really tried to ask this question.

My question is both to Professor Ravana Raju and Mrs.

Dhananda.

Broadly,

I wanted to ask how you both see epistemology,

which is I think Sir's perspective,

and sort of this metaphysical consciousness-based perspective,

meeting.

Because at one point in your talk you said,

when you started Nyaya and you saw that meaning is what it is not,

then you moved from perception to inferential.

And that should be the starting point of inquiry.

But it seems to me that so much of moving from perception to inference

has a lot to do with how much self-awareness you have,

what is your own work with your consciousness.

It's very easy to make an inference that is actually perception-like almost.

So maybe if you could share a little more on what that means in epistemology,

moving from perception to inference,

and how much that speaks to sort of the consciousness side of things

that Mrs.

Dhananda was bringing in her presentation.

And to you,
again,

in your conclusions,

you said it takes self-awareness.

But I think self-awareness is a sort of moving,

it feels like a very moving goalpost for a lifetime of inner work.

You would still not have attained self-awareness.

And so much of how we create ways of knowing in fields that serve as

epistemology

would turn on our self-awareness,

right?

And we could be completely unselfaware and still think we are doing good
academic work.

So if you could just speak to each other in that way.

Thank you so much.

Professor,

can I add a question?

Yeah.

So I teach constitutional law here.

So I just wanted to seek a clarification from Professor Raghuram Raju

when he spoke about his ideas of how we explore and determine the self

necessarily in relation to others.

So obviously one dimension of that came through very clearly in your comments,

that very often it is the encounter with the other,

be it a foreign culture,

be it a different way of thinking,

or another person.

And through that interaction,

you tend to eliminate options.

You tend to think oppositionally,

that I don't want to be that sort of person

or I don't want to pursue that sort of cultural practice.

But what seemed to be more interesting,

and perhaps that's something we could flesh out a little bit more,

is that the encounter with the other can also be a deeply introspective moment,

provided we draw on the resources that are also existing in our own history.

And sometimes we face a serious tension between these two ideas.

I'm saying this because when we try to introduce,

let's say,

legal theory to law students,

one of the foundational sort of categories is the insider-outsider distinction.

So of course there we use it in a more formalist way

to think about people who are habituated to obedience,

those who may be looking at it externally.

But for me personally also it becomes very difficult to convey the distinction

between what that relational thinking should mean for law.

I mean since you brought up that idea of nayaya in your discussion,

that's why it occurred to me that very often we are largely thinking about

the encounter with the other in oppositional terms.

So even the example which came through in your remarks about Swami
Vivekananda

being given an idea by one of his college teachers,

to me it sounded like a presentation of that idea.

That because I encounter something new,

something uncomfortable,

something different,

as opposed to my own conditioning or experience,

I get to learn something new.

But isn't there a different dimension as well?

That perhaps there is something in the inner memory or in our culture

or something embedded in our own lives,

which we have to sometimes explore.

And that could also be perhaps part of this idea of the other and the self,

which we need to talk about.

Because increasingly,

what are the intellectual resources we can mine

when we think about this distinction between native and foreign,

self and the other,

and to explain it at a popular forum.

 So that's why I was really struggling to understand how you were going to make
that argument.

My observation is for the presentation made by Guruji,

the Nyaya position which you articulated,

reminded me of the position of,

Buddhist position,

of Apu-Avva,

which actually says that the word meaning is not in the word,

but for instance,

the cow word excludes all non-cow possibilities.

That is the only function which the word does.

So,

and I was also wondering why when you are engaging with the notion of self,

you excluded all other five,

all the other eight,

nine,

ten schools of philosophy.

The Vedantic notion of self,

or also Sankhya notion of self.

So if you are excluding these and then making a presentation on self,

I think,

I'm saying it purely from the philosophy,

that it becomes grossly dualistic.

Despite the fact that you do mention Swami Vivekananda,

and the Buddhist interpretation does not fit that figure.

So I wanted your reflection on it,

is that actually it does injustice to the way of doing.

If one confines it to Nyaya,

then other three or four ways of doing are excluded,

like unblocking or other things.

Thank you.

So,

big question to both friends.

Gaganamji,

you know,

this business about the other,

I feel very preoccupied about how do we stop othering the other.

It is not the existence of the other that is the problem,

but the othering of it.

And what I really want to say is that we live in a world

where the chances that your neighbour will not look like you,

will not worship like you,

will not speak your language,

will not laugh like you,

will not do many things like you,

will eat like you,

dress like you,

is higher and higher.

So I think one of the two or three biggest civilizational crises

is the question of how do we...

I'll just speak to you.

Sorry.

So,

I think,

you know,

we have to learn,

societally across the world,

how do we deal with somebody who is the other?

Are we friendly,

curious,

welcoming,

or are we fearful,

resentful,

hateful?

And more and more people around the world

are choosing leaders who are encouraging us to take the second path,

to other the other.

And I think the existence of the other is not the problem.

It is what enriches our world.

It is how we respond to difference that I think is central.

And I want to ask the opposite response.

And to you,

just,

you know,

I think that the left,

I would say me on the left,

I think intolerant of religious faith.

Intolerant of religious faith.

And that is a problem.

And I think it's also misinterpretation of what Marx said.

Because he didn't say it,

not just that it was the religion,

he said religion is the bone of the oppressed nature,

the heart of a heartless world,

the sense of senseless conditions.

It is the only purpose of our existence.

And I think in that sense,

I'm troubled in the times that we live in,

in our own country parts,

where religion is used for hatred.

And therefore there is the worry about

how do we express religious faith in a way.

So I'm often sad,

you know,

to say with Muslim students,

and they say how much we love our country,

we will always be.

And my response to them is I don't think you're a minority.

Because if the battle was between Hindus and Muslims,

two religious faiths,

then surely you're a minority.

But I think the battle in our country has always been

between those who misuse religion for hatred,

and those who respect their own faith

and respect every other.

And I think that articulation.

And if I can link to that,

is maybe can we move into discussions

that are from religious faith to ethical beliefs.

So I guess the story of Rabia,

one of my favorite stories,

where she's running up and down the streets of Basta

with a bucket of water in one hand

and a flaming torch in the other.

They ask her,

why do you have this bucket of water?

And she says,

I want to douse out the fire in your hand.

They say,

why do you have a flaming torch?

I want to set fire to heaven.

Basically saying that we should lead a good life

neither for the fear of punishment in the afterlife

or for the desire for reward.

We should lead a good life for its own sake.

So if we go out of religious belief altogether

and enter instead a discourse on a good life,

maybe that will help fight Basta.

Thank you.

Can we take questions from the next round?

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Let me just begin with this.

I think my simple answer is

neither it is necessary to turn away.

It is neither it is necessary to turn away.

Because I find that only less than 10% of Indian life

is inordinated through legal framework.

There is a 90% which we don't look at at all.

10% makes 1000% noise

and this 90% makes no noise.

And I think you are correct in this thing.

If there is a time,

I will give an example from Triple Eight.

It is celebrated at 8.

We asked students of Triple Eight.

We gave them,

we said that suppose if I give you 1 lakh rupees,

what will you do in one day time?

You should not buy real estate as under-reliance.

Under-reliance is not worth.

They had no list for more than 25 years.

Then we told the mess worker,

we will give you 10,000

rupees.

What will you do?

He said I will take my father to ophthalmologist.

My mother,

I get something to his mother.

I get this thing for my daughter.

My son,
mine.

And never figured,

he never figured in this 10,000

rupees.

I think you know that was a big eye-opener to me.

To look away from law,

except for these limitations from Amitabh.

So I am sorry to have frightened you.

I will change.

So from self,

the second question about self and the other.

See,

I have an arithmetic for it.

Self is one and it is also very transitory one.

Transitory one in the making.

Pansitic on the other.

But the other cannot be numerically identified.

The other is never one.

It is multiple.

It is multiple working with multiplicity.

And this is how the rural India works.

Rural India does not work with one and the other as one.

The other is multiple.

So it is an open-ended kind of a thing.

Which wants to a wonderful graphic.

Which is absolutely what amuses me.

I don't watch TV,

Prof.

Bakshesh.

These are the TV serials that I splash without advertisements in my leisure time.

So the dialectic pays out in this decentralized way,

so to say.

And tend to become less oppressive in the process.

From this I am not saying that everything is fine there.

I am saying that first we have to look at,

we have to identify.

And find out what is the nature of this cartography.

Identify the evils in it.

There are a lot of evils in this.

There is banter,

inattachability and all that kind of a thing.

But before we get to those things,

I want you to recognize that

there is a cartography which is very complex,

unwieldy,

but needs our attention.

And that is my quick answer.

About this epistemology and this thing.

Yes,

I am saying that there is a necessary relation between self and epistemology.

A perception.

As long as you are preoccupied with self,

you are stuck with it.

Perception.

And perception becomes,

you get imprisoned by your perception.

I am saying that you have to really get out of that.

Start with inference and then build your perception from inference.

That from other person's hunger,

I perceive my hunger or otherwise.

You know it is not that I do that.

I see that somebody is not,

somebody is short dead,

somebody is paying,

anything like that.

And from that inference of that thing,

I build my perception.

So it is like something like that.

So that is a short answer.

See,

the other internal resources,

absolutely there is no problem.

We should look at it.

I have to work with the notion that the idea of other,

idea of a self,

if it turns inward,

outside a nirvana system,

there is a danger of it becoming spiritual solid system.

It becomes inward.

And then in the process,

there is a danger that it debunks the other who is in society.

So it is in this context,

I want to retain through centrality of the other,

the socialness of this idea from Nyaya and also Buddhism.

Thank you for pointing out to you.

The reason why I did not mention Buddhism,

I will mention it to you and I will respond to you.

So it is in this context I find that other as a facilitator for me,

who not only enriches me,

but also saves me from collapsing into solid system.

Okay,

my liberation.
You know,

my liberation.

I mean,

in a metaphorical sense,

if you go to Shankaracharya's stage,

it is not work.

But people who think that they are all working for their own liberation from
Advaithic thing,

it is for them.

It is for them.

Okay,

that is a brief answer.

So that self-conscious,

that direction into me,

you know,

can become self-conscious.

That inwardness is,

I am a bit doubtful about it.

Because there is no validation possible for inwardness.

Because you are the only validator of your own inwardness.

And suppose something goes wrong,

it damages you.

There is no checks and balances.

And checks and balances are very important at social level.

About this,

one of the reason why I got into Advaitha is this inwardness.

Abhohma is a theory which is both these things.

The only reason why I did not take Buddhism in my presentation is,

the notion of self in Buddhism is very complicated.

Okay,

in the way in which I am using the self,

you know,

that no self theory.

See,

suppose if I have taken Buddhism,

you would have asked the following question.

How dare you ask,

you talked about self,

when Buddhism talks about no self.

So I know somebody from philosophy is in the audience.

So I will extra careful.

If that answers to you.

I think there is this other.

There is this othering.

But you know,

this idea of othering has its use in contract philosophers.

You have Descartes,

who talked about self.

And then they talked about general will,

which is a collection of individuals.

And then Foucault brings this entire notion of the self.

And how,

you know,

power enters,

enters,

enters.

So knowledge does not give you liberation,

but it oppresses you.

So from that,

Edward Street takes a very wonderful use of it,

the self and the other.

And debunk Edward Street.

Because Edward Street is not looking,

Edward Street is totalizing one aspect of the relation between self and other.

He thinks that other's only job is to oppress.

Only job is to oppress.

And you know,

Sartre says,

the other is hell.

I mean,

this is a very interesting,

you know,

in that Paul talks about how other is hell.

I wanted to take instances from India.

Ordinary instances,

where I find that there are enough instances to,

and which are not.

See Vivekananda's influence,

you know,

Ramakrishna Padmanabha's influence and Vivekananda's response influence.

You may disagree with him,

but impact wise,

sociological fact about impact.

The impact of Gita on Gandhi is not to be undermined.

You may disagree with him.

So,

but in both of them,

I find that there is another important aspect of other.

How other is an enabler.

Like it is reverend Haste who enabled Vivekananda to go to Ramakrishna

Padmanabha.

It is these two theosophical people.

Even England,

through an English translation of Arnold's Gita,

you know,

brought Gita to them.

So I find that,

you know,

if I just work with the conventional definition of other as an oppressor,

I mean,

these two things don't regard.

And I don't mind,

I am not just talking about this thing here.

I find them in my village,

you know,

I mean,

in Hampton and things.

But please remember,

this is not the romantic side of the village.

My village has serious problems.

But it also has problems.

Okay.

I think you can hear me.

I would like to carry on with this concept of the other being.

Because when we talk about the other,

it is also a sense of dehumanizing of that other with a capital O.

You know,

not just an other who is not myself,

but is there and relates to me,

etc.

But the other which is not human or subhuman.

And therefore,

it is okay to treat them badly.

That is what you were asking about,

I think.

And that really is something where Shakespeare has something to put it yesterday.

If you cut us,

we will not bleed.

If you poison us,

we will not die.

If you wrong us,

we will be consumed with revenge.

And that sense of recognition that the other is me is not easy.

Because the other with a capital O,

I mean,

Christabel talks about the other being loaded with the abject.

You know,

the whole concept of everything that is disgusting.

And therefore,

repulsive.

And therefore,

outside the boundaries of what we consider society.

Women were other.

And I think if the cloying back to Jews were other in Nazi Germany,

Dalits are other,

have been other for centuries.

Muslims,

Hindus,

other each other,

as it were.

Demonize each other.

Or some.

Whatever.

I think the only way that we can ever change is really to encounter the other as a
person.

At the moment,

recently we had in Bombay a movement where it was called,

Come see where I live.

And you were inviting,

could be your maid,

especially if she was in another community.

She may have come everyday to clean the house,

but come see.

Be my guest that day.

Share a meal with me.

Reverse.

And strangers,

invite a stranger to your home.

We had a college in Mumbai which is the sixth platform,

as it were,

because it's just outside the railway station.

And so sixth platform.

They called it,

laughed and said,

we're platform six.

But that college,

when the Bombay floods came,

the students went out onto the railway station and told everybody who was there,

come,

come,

come,

come to our house.

Come to our college.

They make kichdi,

they organize food,

they put camp beds,

they do all kinds of things.

Whoever was total strangers,

when we can welcome that stranger,

that becomes the other,

stopping being other.

The left being dismissive of religion,

and religion has been used to foster hatred,

has been used to support the teachings of the founders and so on.

And so shouldn't we have ethical principles as well?

Hmm,

yes and no.

Why am I saying yes and no?

Not because ethical principles are less meaningful,

but it depends on the person.

For some people,

ethical principles are not enough.

Moral science class galore we've gone through.

Is it changing who I am?

And the core of a religious experience is that personal encounter with what you
consider as God.

So if your spirit needs that,

for goodness sakes,

go look for it.

If your spirit can move perfectly well without it,

or in fact is repulsed by it,

and repulsed with all the mambo-jambo of ritualistic magic that surrounds it,

formal religion,

and there are people who are repulsed by it,

don't go near it.

But don't lose sight of what those essential teachings are,

because those essential teachings have a call for us.

Not just that they point the way ahead,

but they're inviting us into that.

And I think that for me is,

I mean,

it doesn't matter.

For me,

maybe it's getting ready for the Lord's Mass.

Okay,

good,

I'm glad.

And I find meaning in that,

too.

But is it meaningful enough that it makes me change my life?

Makes me take alternate choices?

Then yes,

then it's meaningful.

Otherwise not.

So about repairing and reconstructing our interpretations,

again,

I am very contextualized,

so I will say it depends on the context.

Some need to be thrown out of the window and need to be reconstructed.

Some need to be,

can be repaired,

can be re-understood,

can be looked at and said,

no,

no,

not quite like this,

but like that.

Then it makes sense,

if I could see it differently.

You have the story of Adi Shankaracharya,

he's going along on one of those jhulas,

I mean,

Lakshman Jhula,
kind of jhulas in Rishikesh,

and it's very narrow.

And Valik is coming from the other side,

and his disciples go,

there's enough place only for one person.

So his disciples go ahead to say,

go away,

go away,

the Master is coming,

move,

move,

move.

So he moved.

But when Adi Shankaracharya crosses,

he says to him,

I moved because your disciples asked me to,

but I don't understand.

I thought you and I are the same person.

And the story goes that Adi Shankaracharya prostrated himself before him and
said,

finally,

somebody who has understood what I am speaking.

 What I'm trying to get at here is that we need to rethink a lot of our own
interpretations as well.

Some need to be discarded,

some need to be repaired.

My first question was about epistemology and the epistemological consciousness

and creating ways of knowing.

I think different religious traditions have indicated paths for that.

Awareness,

growing in self-awareness,

whether through meditation,

whether through the bhakti tradition.

Hinduism has actually listed this path,

this path,

this path in very,

very categorical terms.

Other religious traditions have accepted them as different paths,

but not quite so systematized.

I think that self needs to be identified.

But I also want to underline that somewhere we have all been conditioned by our
internalizing

of the Western,

19th century,

18th century,
independent autonomous concept of self.

And there is also the fact that for us as women,

a lot of who we are,

who we are in our essence

is defined in the way in which we relate to people.

So we exist almost in this network of relationships.

And this becomes particularly interesting when you think that in Japanese,

I think there are about 23 different words for I.

Depending on who I am speaking to,

depending on who I am relating to,

I am a different person.

And it's fascinating to think that.

So which self are we talking about?

No?

And then through those multiple selves,

is there a core self?

Do I arrive at it?

Is that self one with the divine?

If I believe in a divine?

No easy answers.

Sorry.

Okay,

I think that's it.

 So we have 12 more minutes and we had negotiated that there will be 20 minutes
for you and 20 minutes for you and 10 minutes for me.

And I had,

no,

I haven't read everything but I have agreed to this that I will do it in five minutes.

12 minutes for you and 12 minutes for me.

No,

but that's okay.

So now we have 11 minutes,

of which 5 minutes are mine.

6 minutes.

So we have one or two questions.

Bodhi,

I think that is the…

Sorry.

Yeah,

there is one question there and there is one question there and there is a third
question.

And these three questions should be finished in three minutes.

Sorry,

three minutes.

One minute to each of you.

Professor D.P.
Vishwanathan.

So,

I mean,

this culture of silence,

it was kind of implicit in India's liberal constitutional framework.

But it also led to a culture of violence,

I mean,

which is very visible right now.

But,

I mean,

with ease,

you could do things,

you could backtrack on your promises.

For example,

giving something to Kashmir and then taking it back on his own.

So,

promising them something,

which means that for a nation,

you don't just need a constitutional promise.

You needed something else as well.

You did not need just words,

you needed deeds.

So,
then you say reclamation,

something,

I mean,

situation right now,

which is an overlooked situation.

When you talk about reclamation,

what is this reclamation?

I mean,

it may be liberal,

this reclamation of the liberal framework.

But for these people who have already got a taste of it in medicine,

what do you do?

Actually,

I would just leave it.

It's a big question,

so,

and I am not very clear about the topic of the few.

But,

you know,

disturbingly,

you are pointing out,

you know,

how we can see it's modernity in the context of this country.

Something that should be.

But I just want to frame it in a way to try.

For some of us who come from modernity,

it's a very,

very particular thing.

And there's a reason for that.

The reason for that is because when we look at the evolution of western
philosophy,

it's a negro.

And there's a reason.

The woman became a witch.

The black became a negro.

Now,

why I want to say this is because,

there is an argument,

especially from the private studies perspective,

that I think what it actually meant,

I communcitis,

which also then extends to,

I exterminate your knowledge system,

therefore I exist,

the European I is an imperial I,

and it was actually hand-in-hand with colonial freedom.

To see modernity as out of the colonial framework is problematic.

One.

But the truth is,

and I think this is a very important point,

is the fact that if you look at this debate,

the way it has been produced,

as if there is only one conception of modernity.

And if someone pulls from western theory,

right from Plato,

Aristotle,

Dicart,

till Emmanuel Kant,

I love Emmanuel Kant for other reasons,

not for the debate of modernity.

I like his concept of sapari-aut.

Have the courage to think for yourself,

which then resonates with many ideas in the Indian context.

But the point I want to make is this,

that if one was to source the theoretical basis of modernity from western Europe,

we are one big trap.

And the reason for that is,

of course,

that's why I want to comment on the first point,

there are alternative ways of looking at modernity.

And if you come to the Indian context,

I just want to say this,

that for people like us who are outside of the caste system,

actually truthfully,

and not to feel bad,

we see Babasaheb Ambedkar as the only force of modernity,

who has raised the most fundamental issues for the transformation of Indian
reality.

That is not to negate others' contribution to the politics,

or to the process of modernity.

I was not going to mention Babasaheb Ambedkar,

but what did you debate?

I was looking at the debate,

I just thought of this.

My question is to Professor Raghunath Raju.

If many of the speakers in this colloquium have dismissed law,

I don't think it is that unimportant.

Why?

Because even if it is a very bad thing,

like economists who are central bankers,

or private equity managers,

who are actually very constructive,

in fact,

it is a burden.

Just because they are bankers.

And secondly,

law has also been constructed in a positive manner,

from the point of view of how to use law to create a country,

which is also adaptable.

Many great philosophers,

like Jeremy Bentham,

he dismisses law,

but he also did a study,

where he summarily executed many persons.

We talked about it earlier.

So even today,

constitution as Dr.

B.

R.

R.

R.

B.

R.

R.

B.
R.

R.

mentioned,

is a source of many persons' hope.

And on the negative side,

especially economic journals,

UFDA,

these are the legal questions,

which has everyday repercussions on common people.

So even if we are,

we don't ask,

I think that law is important,

maybe it is bad thing,

it is a bad thing,

but that is only a reason to engage with it.

So we have now four minutes.

I'll respond very quickly to your question.

That is just to say,

when I talked about reclamation,

I was talking about reclaiming the essential teachings of the new religion.

The religion,

the element of religion is that.

And the power of it,

from the oppressive interpretations,

the manipulative structures that we have created.

That's all I meant.

I did not say this then,

we should dismiss law.

I mean,

law is very important,

and I'll tell you why it's very important.

More important than,

you know,

I mean,

lawyers think law is important.

The only focus of,

my focus is,

we should not get only preoccupied with law.

And more importantly,

we should not get obsessed with law.

It should not become,

you know,

an addiction.

Okay?

We are getting addicted to law,

in the discourse in which I am referring to.

I'm saying,

outside that,

there is a world which lives,

lives with a lot of problems,

but largely comfortably,

you know,

without that.

That's my,

the point.

I'll tell you why law is very important.

This India is the only country where independence is handed over to lawyers.

Okay?

And it's safe.

Then nowhere else,

you know,

I respect law,

but I also know its limitations.

Imagine that it is handed over to poets,

politicians,

what would have been the fate of this country?

So I think the law is,

India is safe,

it will remain safe,

despite that,

this and other,

because it was handed over,

it was received.

The containers through which,

you know,

like you go and serve food in the plate.

When the plate is strong,

one day the food may be dirty,

you know,

you spill over,

but next day you can wash and get it back.

So that's the promise of this country,

because it is handed over to lawyers.

Now this,

the corollary point.

See,

I'm,

I'm,

I,

I,

I,

I,
I,

I,

I,

in fact I wrote a newspaper article where I distinguished Descartes as a modern

philosopher,

and Ambedkar as a modern philosopher and what are the crucial distinction
between these two people.

I consider that Descartes is a ruthless modernity,

modernist whereas Ambedkar is a modern philosopher with care.

That's why he took 27 years to think about you know where to convert.

He tried all the years and finally parked them in Buddhism.

So you know that is the reason why but you know this 20 minutes is a very
important sacrosanct constitution for me.

So that's the reason why.

See colonialism,

what you said about colonialism I agree.

I only want to ask you that please keep one line empty and in that one line of all
that you said

and internal colonialism preceded external colonialism.

Modernity did not do to India what they have not done to themselves.

So it is a pathological activity and not to be mistaken as a moral activity.

See most of the problem with post colonialism is we think that they oppressed us.

But please remember they did not do anything to us which they did not do to
themselves.
So that's the you know another point that I wanted to make.

The point that about different alternative notions of modernity.

Yes,

there are several notions of modernity.

Since you have so many journals and so many printing presses,

you know even if you don't say that there is only one modernity they will not
allow you.

They will ask you to write a book,

one more book because they have to run their presses.

Okay,

so the question that I wanted to ask you is I am just talking about self,

modernity defined as self.

Modernity accepting self and other.

Tell me one version of modernity in your reading of western philosophy where

you find other than self.

I will come and do a course with you.

And this is what I find in Indian Nyaya system.

But from this don't tell me that I am for Nyaya.

I am only for this particular idea from Nyaya and it is I mean Sundar has helped
me a lot to you know get this thing properly dressed up and all.

But all fines are mine not to be you know.

I mean compliment Sundar for helping me but not for this thing.

Thank you so much.