Political theory : an Introduction

This pioneering political theory textbook is a step towards making students do and evolve an Indian political theory, that is, theory born out of reflection on and engagement with Indian social and political practices. It innovatively embeds Indian cases and contexts in the theoretical discussions and involves students in applying theories to current issues. Without oversimplifying concepts, this textbook uses the conversational, context-specific style of a good teacher and recreates the flavour of the classroom inside its covers. Some of its special features are: An outline for each chapter highlighting its main elements, an introductory section discussing the concept, and rationale of chapter organization, cross-referencing of important terms, points for discussion and a detailed reading list.

This introductory book is meant primarily to help Indian students learn to do and evolve an Indian political theory. This is a bold and somewhat controversial objective and requires elaboration.

Indian universities tend generally to be lukewarm to social and political philosophy, partly because of a lack of interest in normative issues but also because of certain features of mainstream, academic political philosophy. Notwithstanding the occasional universal content, the form of mainstream political philosophy (MPP) is largely parochial. MPP takes little inspiration from non-Western societies, makes hardly any references to their problems and takes scant notice of how cross-cultural issues acquire a distinct inflection in different cultures. Most of the examples discussed in MPP have no immediate relation to these societies. Besides, there are few non Western philosophers who could be role models for an Indian student. These difficulties are compounded by the unavailability of good political theory journals. No wonder that Indian academics evince disinterest in political philosophy and Indian students, though enthused by political philosophy, do not display self-confidence or competence at it.

How do we transform this condition? Do we need and can we evolve an Indian political theory? Allow me to clarify straightaway that by Indian political theory I do not mean a theory born out of and reflecting the genius' of Indians, or something uniquely Indian. Neither the editors nor any of the contributors to this volume believe in this kind of political theory. We do believe, however, that if we are engaged in our social and political practices and are pro perly concerned about issues that grow out of them, if we reflect on them and if creatively use the multiple traditions of theorizing regardless of where they are born, then something like an Indian political theory, a political theory with a distinctive contextual flavour, is bound to emerge. The difference between this political theory and political theory in other parts of the world, particularly in Europe and in the United States, may be tiny. But since the devil is in the small detail, these little differences are bound to make a big difference to how our own political theory is shaped.