Reason and tradition in Indian thought

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Charles P. Hanson

In Necessary Virtue Charles P. Hanson explores the disruptive effects of the American Revolution on the religious culture of New England Protestantism. In this book, Hanson raises questions about difference, tolerance, and the role of religious belief in politics and government that help us see the American Revolution in a new light. Necessary Virtue is timely in pointing to the historical contingency and, perhaps, the fragility of the church-state separation that is very much a political and legal issue today.

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Alan James

"In 1598, France emerged exhausted from nearly forty years of damaging civil and religious warfare. By 1661 this same country was the leading power in Europe and set to embark on one of the most celebrated periods of its history. The system of government founded during this period became known to historians as royal 'absolutism'. It was closely associated with both Cardinal Richelieu and his successor Cardinal Mazarin who, in turn, were seen as instrumental in brokering the changes that took place within both government and society at this time." "Alan James argues that there was no conscious plan to modernise France or to create a new, more centralised and bureaucratic form of government. Instead the ministries of Richelieu and Mazarin were based on the traditional values of religion, war, and privilege. Organised thematically, the book examines the key priorities of government in turn to come to an assessment of the success of French absolutism, defined in its own terms." --Book Jacket.

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Shabnum Tejani

"Many of the central issues in modern Indian politics have long been understood in terms of an opposition between ideologies of secularism and communalism. Observers have argued that recent Hindu nationalism is the symptom of a crisis of Indian secularism and have blamed this on a resurgence of religion or communalism. Shabnum Tejani unpacks prevailing assumptions about the meaning of secularism in contemporary politics, focusing on India but with many points of comparison elsewhere in the world. She questions the simple dichotomy between secularism and communalism that has been used in scholarly study and political discourse. Tracing the social, political, and intellectual genealogies of the concepts of secularism and communalism from the late nineteenth century until the ratification of the Indian constitution in 1950, she shows how secularism came to be bound up with ideas about nationalism and national identity."--Pub. desc.

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Sutapas Bhattacharya

Most of the book is viewable on Google Books. Quotes from distinguished authors about it are posted on the Scribd.com website under the free draft intro chapters from my forthcoming book "The Brainstem Brainwaves of Atman-Brahman". O/OM was originally intended as a 'cosmology' written in verse describing the Individual's relation to his greater 'wholes' right up to the level of the cosmos. Whilst writing explanatory essays for the poetry, I identified the physical correlate of the Divine Light of Pure Consciousness (a.k.a. Atman, Cit, Godhead, Buddha Nature, Christ, Light of Cosmic Wisdom (Sophia) Nous, Al Haqq etc.) with a brain process known to all Medics - the brainwaves from the brainstem Reticular Formation known as the Reticular Activating System. I then went on to show how the whole of Western Physicalist Science is a set of limited abstractions describing regular spatiotemporal phenomena. The Bigger, Deeper Transcendentalist core picture of Indian Yogic Mysticism based on the Primacy of Consciousness swallows up the Western picture and can also account for Consciousness, Creativity, Inspiration, and the paranormal psychic phenomena and unexplained paradoxes of Quantum Physics which transcend the limitations of Physicalist Ontology.