Aakash Singh Rathore
is a philosopher of international repute,
author of eight books (including
Ambedkar's Preamble: A Secret History of the Constitution of India (Vintage/Penguin, 2020), regular contributor to Deccan Herald (where he writes the column Poorva Paksha), The Indian Express and Outlook magazine with bylines in The Times of India, Firstpost, Huffington Post, The Quint, The Print, and Scroll.in.
He is also India’s number 3 Ironman triathlete, and has finished five gruelling Ironman Triathlons, known as the world’s most difficult one-day sporting event. He has featured on
Asia News Network, News18,
The Caravan, Pragati podcast, Deccan Herald, The Sunday Times, The Hindu,
The National, and NDTV 24X7.
Rathore has taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Universities of Delhi, Rutgers, Pennsylvania, Toronto, Humboldt Berlin, LUISS-Rome, and O.P. Jindal Global University. He is International Fellow of ETHOS, Rome, and Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.
He is the Series Editor of Rethinking India (14 vols, Penguin/Vintage, 2019-20) and editor of its first volume, Vision for a Nation: Paths and Perspectives (with Ashis Nandy, 2019). His 20 authored and edited books range from political philosophy, law, and religion to literature, sports, and wine. He is also the Series Editor of Ethics, Human Rights and Global Political Thought (Routledge) and Religion and Democracy: Reconceptualizing Religion, Culture, and Politics in Global Context (Oxford University Press). Among his forthcoming solo works is a radical study on Mind and Muscle. He is also Chief Editor, B. R. Ambedkar: The Quest for Justice (5 vols, Oxford University Press, 2020), and the author of B. R. Ambedkar: A Biography (forthcoming).
Rathore has spoken at The Times of India Delhi LitFest and other literature festivals in India and abroad, and appeared as a panelist on NDTV’s Conversations of the Constitution over two days of live sessions. He serves as advisor to several policymakers, thinktanks, educational and political bodies. He has delivered numerous talks, lectures, conferences, workshops and courses throughout India and abroad and has published over 50 journal papers. Rathore’s books have been reviewed and featured in Scroll.in, The Wire, Outlook, Caravan, The Quint, The Print, Livemint, The Week, EPW, The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Tribune, Deccan Herald, and other popular print and online media. His Hegel’s India (Oxford University Press, 2017/2018) was nominated for the TATA LITERATURE LIVE! AWARDS 2017 Book of the Year (non-fiction) and widely reviewed.
A social media influencer with over 140,200 Quora followers (of a blog on intersections between philosophy and physical culture: Mind & Muscle), 8,000 Instagram followers, 12,000 Twitter followers, and a YouTube channel with over 2,00,000 views, he engages with civil society, centres, universities, institutes at large as well as with academics, students, researchers, political workers and grassroots activists alike. He tweets at @ASR_Metta
is a philosopher of international repute,
author of eight books (including
Ambedkar's Preamble: A Secret History of the Constitution of India (Vintage/Penguin, 2020), regular contributor to Deccan Herald (where he writes the column Poorva Paksha), The Indian Express and Outlook magazine with bylines in The Times of India, Firstpost, Huffington Post, The Quint, The Print, and Scroll.in.
He is also India’s number 3 Ironman triathlete, and has finished five gruelling Ironman Triathlons, known as the world’s most difficult one-day sporting event. He has featured on
Asia News Network, News18,
The Caravan, Pragati podcast, Deccan Herald, The Sunday Times, The Hindu,
The National, and NDTV 24X7.
Rathore has taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Universities of Delhi, Rutgers, Pennsylvania, Toronto, Humboldt Berlin, LUISS-Rome, and O.P. Jindal Global University. He is International Fellow of ETHOS, Rome, and Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.
He is the Series Editor of Rethinking India (14 vols, Penguin/Vintage, 2019-20) and editor of its first volume, Vision for a Nation: Paths and Perspectives (with Ashis Nandy, 2019). His 20 authored and edited books range from political philosophy, law, and religion to literature, sports, and wine. He is also the Series Editor of Ethics, Human Rights and Global Political Thought (Routledge) and Religion and Democracy: Reconceptualizing Religion, Culture, and Politics in Global Context (Oxford University Press). Among his forthcoming solo works is a radical study on Mind and Muscle. He is also Chief Editor, B. R. Ambedkar: The Quest for Justice (5 vols, Oxford University Press, 2020), and the author of B. R. Ambedkar: A Biography (forthcoming).
Rathore has spoken at The Times of India Delhi LitFest and other literature festivals in India and abroad, and appeared as a panelist on NDTV’s Conversations of the Constitution over two days of live sessions. He serves as advisor to several policymakers, thinktanks, educational and political bodies. He has delivered numerous talks, lectures, conferences, workshops and courses throughout India and abroad and has published over 50 journal papers. Rathore’s books have been reviewed and featured in Scroll.in, The Wire, Outlook, Caravan, The Quint, The Print, Livemint, The Week, EPW, The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Tribune, Deccan Herald, and other popular print and online media. His Hegel’s India (Oxford University Press, 2017/2018) was nominated for the TATA LITERATURE LIVE! AWARDS 2017 Book of the Year (non-fiction) and widely reviewed.
A social media influencer with over 140,200 Quora followers (of a blog on intersections between philosophy and physical culture: Mind & Muscle), 8,000 Instagram followers, 12,000 Twitter followers, and a YouTube channel with over 2,00,000 views, he engages with civil society, centres, universities, institutes at large as well as with academics, students, researchers, political workers and grassroots activists alike. He tweets at @ASR_Metta
December 2019
Vision for a Nation
Paths and Perspectives
Edited by Aakash Singh Rathore and Ashis Nandy
Books by Aakash Singh Rathore
A Philosophy of Autobiography Body & Text This book offers intimate readings of a diverse range of global autobiographical literature with an emphasis on the (re)presentation of the physical body. The twelve texts presented here include philosophical autobiography (Nietzsche), autobiographies of self-experimentation (Gandhi and Mishima), literary autobiography (Hemingway, Das) as well as other genres of autobiography, including the graphic novel (Spiegelman, Satrapi), as also documentations of tragedy and injustice and subsequent spiritual overcoming (Ambedkar, Pawar, Angelou, Wiesel). A Philosophy of Autobiography delves into how the authors deal with the flesh through their autobiographical writing and in what way they embody the essential relationship between flesh, spirit and word. The book analyses Ecce Homo, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Waiting for a Visa, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, A Moveable Feast, Night, Baluta, My Story, Sun and Steel, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, MAUS and Persepolis. More here |
Plato’s Labyrinth Sophistries, Lies and Conspiracies in Socratic Dialogues This original and stimulating study of Plato's Socratic dialogues rereads and reinterprets Plato's writings in terms of their dialogical or dramatic form. Taking inspiration from the techniques of Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, and Leo Strauss, Aakash Singh Rathore presents the Socratic dialogues as labyrinthine texts replete with sophistries and lies that mask behind them important philosophical and political conspiracies. Plato's Labyrinth argues that these conspiracies and intrigues are of manifold kinds – in some, Plato is masterminding the conspiracy; in others, Socrates, or the Sophists, are the victims of the conspiracies. With supplementary forays ('intermissions') into the world of Xenophon and the Sophists, the complex and evolving series of overlapping arguments that the book lays out unfold within an edgy and dramatic narrative. Presenting innovative readings of major texts – Plato's Parmenides, Republic, Symposium and Meno as also Homer's Odyssey – this work is an ambitious attempt to synthesize philological, political, historical and philosophical research into a classical text-centred study that is at once of urgent contemporary relevance. More here |
Hegel’s India A Reinterpretation, with Texts ‘Hegel’s India takes the challenge of a detailed reading of Hegel’s texts with a surprising result: behind Hegel’s dismissal of India, there lies not only his profound fascination with India but also an uncanny proximity between India’s ancient wisdom and Hegel’s speculative thought.’ — Slavoj Žižek International Director, the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, United Kingdom More here and here |
Book launch of Vision for a Nation
New Delhi, 5 Feb 2020
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Series Editor: Rethinking India
Interview with News18
23 April 2020
Deccan Herald
14 August 2020
"As India gears up to celebrate 74th Independence day, in today's edition of DH Sparks, we focus on a pertinent question - 'Have we lived up to the ideals of the freedom struggle?'"
Plato's Labyrinth‘Just as some mysterious force compels the author of Plato's Labyrinth to train for triathlons in the crowded and dangerous labyrinths of New Delhi, so too does this same force compel him, as one of India’s foremost political theorists, to guide his readers through the labyrinths of Plato’s dialogues. What purpose do these two pursuits share? Aakash Singh Rathore refers to the conspiracy in universities that prevents students from understanding fully the radical and erotic nature of Platonic philosophy. This book charms his readers just as Socrates charmed many Athenians to show that philosophizing is not a useless luxury but the most profound form of liberation available to humanity.’ John von Heyking, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Lethbridge, Canada, and author of The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship. |
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Aakash Singh Rathore speaks on
Indian Political Theory
Indian Political Theory puts forward a
workable contemporary ideal of thin svaraj, i.e., political, and
free of metaphysical commitment.
At present, a nativist turn in Indian political theory
can be observed. There is a general assumption that the
indigenous thought to which researchers are supposed to be
(re)turning may somehow be immediately visible
by ignoring the colonization of the mind and polity.
In such a conception of svaraj (which can be translated as
‘authentic autonomy’),
the tradition to be returned to would be that of the indigenous elites.
In Indian Political Theory, this concept of
svaraj is defined as a thick conception,
which links it with exclusivist notions of
spirituality, profound anti-modernity, exceptionalistic moralism,
essentialistic nationalism and purism.
However, post-independence India has borne witness to an
alternative trajectory: a thin svaraj.
The model proposed is inspired by B.R. Ambedkar's thoughts,
as opposed to the thick conception found in the works of
M.K. Gandhi, K.C. Bhattacharya and Ramachandra Gandhi.
This book argues that political theorists of Indian politics continue to work with
categories and concepts alien to the lived social and political experiences
of India's common man, or everyday people.
Consequently, it emphasises the need to
decolonize Indian political theory,
and rescue it from the grip of western theories,
and fascination with western modes of historical analysis.
The necessity to avoid both universalism and relativism
and more importantly address the political predicaments of ‘the people’ is the key objective of the book,
and a push for a reorientation of Indian political theory.
An interesting new interpretation of a contemporary ideal of svaraj,
this analysis takes into account influences from other cultures
and sources as well as eschews thick conceptions that stifle imaginations and imaginaries.
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