AAKASH SINGH RATHORE
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Reviews of Hegel’s India
A Reinterpretation, with Texts


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‘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. Beneath Hegel’s India, we can discern the traces of what would have been India’s Hegel. [This book] provides a model of how a dialogue between different cultures should be practiced, beyond the confines of Eurocentrism and historicist relativism.’

— Slavoj Žižek,
 International Director,
the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, United Kingdom
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'From the very beginning the depth of Hegel’s engagement with India and with Indian philosophy has been consistently underestimated. This volume makes a compelling case for a reassessment and it does so at a time when Western philosophy faces renewed challenges for its Eurocentrism. Hegel’s India belongs front and center within that debate for the new perspective it offers.'
​

— Robert Bernasconi, 
Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of  Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, USA
‘That [a] long-neglected essay [Herbert Herring’s translation of Hegel’s 1827 review of Humboldt’s work on the Bhagavad Gita] . . . now appears in a good English translation is a boon to
​Hegel studies.’

— Eric v.d. Luft, 
The Owl of Minerva
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‘Shed[s] new light on Indological and Hegelian studies . . . including translations of [Hegel’s] lesser-known essays on the Bhagavad Gita and Oriental Spirit.’

— The Hindu

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​​‘It is wonderful to have access to these writings in one volume. The introduction gives a tour d’horizon of the sources Hegel consulted and the interpretive controversies surrounding his work on India . . . Reading Hegel is always challenging. If the difficulties are great, so are the stakes. Even in his most prejudiced criticism, he could shine
a light ​on unusual questions.’

— Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 'The Land of Desire', ​
The Indian Express​
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​‘A book that speaks of and to the times . . . Hegel’s India makes Hegel both accessible and pertinent to the Indian reader who may be looking to constructively find distinctions between Indian philosophy, religious doctrine and hegemony.’

— Navtej Johar, 
IIC Quarterly



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‘The great German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel’s lengthy and intriguing analysis of the Gita has recently received renewed attention in the wake of the publication of Aakash Singh Rathore and Rimina Mohapatra’s Hegel’s India: A Reinterpretation, with Texts 
. . . [it] 
helps go beyond the orientalist and power/knowledge frameworks, and think of philosophy in a new way.’

— Ranabir Samaddar, 
Journal of Indian Council
​of Philosophical Research
 



​‘Promises to be the most thorough and incisive treatment of the topic since Tibebu’s Hegel and the Third World.’

— Makarand R. Paranjape



‘Intriguing and original’

— Dilip M. Menon



‘Hegel’s India is an attempt to deal with one of the most complex and systematic of philosophers that many have chosen to ignore on the basis of mere indirect references to his work . . . This is one of the most striking things about the book—the ease with which the authors attempt to bridge the gap between worlds hitherto thought of as unbridgeable.’

— Sunil Kumar, Biblio 

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​‘This is an important book at a significant time. It makes some incisive points on how the Anglophone world has refused to, and continues to ignore, the contributions of “far-reaching philosophical systems” that arose outside the so-called western traditions.’

— Ajay Gudavarthy, 

The Book Review ​
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‘Not only have Rathore and Mohapatra carefully collated Hegel’s writings on India, including translations of hitherto unfamiliar texts, in their brilliant reinterpretation of these writings, provide a justification, which is both sympathetic and critical, of Hegel’s engagement with India . . . Intellectuals and activists challenging entrenched casteism and the upsurge of Hindu fundamentalism in India will be eternally grateful for Hegel’s India.’

— Karthick Ram Manoharan, 
Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
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'There seems to be a fusion of horizons between the Hegelian absolute and
​Indian Brahman.'

​— Prasenjit Biswas, Jadavpur Journal of Philosophy ​
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'India figures in Hegel’s classic writings on the philosophy of history and the modern state. He also wrote on the caste system, the Bhagavad Gita, Indian art and other topics. Scholars of postcolonialism have often dismissed these works as Orientalist and essentialist. This new book includes of all of Hegel’s essays on India, as well as explanatory essays about his writings, to reassess the significance of India in the philosopher’s larger body of work.'

​​— The Caravan

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​‘A philosophical critique of Hegel will have to squarely confront this question, howsoever critical it may
well be—and justifiably so--
​of Hegel’s specific historical, sociological, and politico-theoretical forays. After all, at stake in the latter is both the conceptualisation and expression of the modern condition in the shape of the free citizen (modern politics) having a human history as much as a “collective perfectibility.”’

​— Rahul Govind,
 
​
Economic & Political Weekly
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‘What the authors manage to reveal . . . is the earnestness with which Hegel had in fact engaged with India . . . Hegel’s India surely manages to excite, provoke and ignite a spark.’

— P. G. Jung, 
Journal of Contemporary Thought 
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​Hegel, passione indiana

— Sebastiano Maffettone, 
Review in Italian press, Il Sole 24 Ore
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Hegel's Gita
~ 
Arabic translation, Hekmah
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​‘Hegel, as the authors in an excellent comprehensive introduction in the book show, wrote a great deal about India . . . While [they] offer a reinterpretation of Hegel’s writings on India, what is most compelling about this volume is reading
​an influential 19th-century thinker’s creation of the oriental outlook that was to dominate western scholarship and even fashion sustaining the
self-image which many orientals imbibed under colonial rule.’

— Vijay Tankha, 
The Tribune 
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​‘This unique volume brings together Hegel’s reflections and argues that Indian thought haunted him, representing a nemesis to his own philosophy.’​

​— The Sunday Guardian
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​'It is little known that the great teacher of Karl Marx, German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, wrote extensively on the Gita. Hegel’s long two-part essay entitled, “On the Episode of the Mahabharata Known by the Name Bhagavad-Gita by Wilhelm von Humboldt” is a detailed critique of not only the Indological work of Humboldt, but also of the philosophical foundations and teachings of the
​Gita itself.'

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​— The Wire, 'Hegel's Gita: A Philosopher Haunted by Indian Spirit'. An excerpt from Hegel's India:
​A Reinterpretation
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'Highly recommended book' 
​— J. M. Fritzman, 
The Indian Economic & Social History Review
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​Hegel ka Bharat — Nand Kishore Acharya, Pratiman, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies


'A ground-breaking book'
​— Nardina Kaur,

​Sikh Formations

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​Hegel’s India carries an assortment of Hegel’s original writings on Indian art, religion and philosophy, along with a critical yet constructive reassessment of Hegel’s India in a more sensitive and contextual manner . . . The book rekindles what is, by and large, taken as “obviously settled debate”. 

​
-- Aejaz Ahmad Wani, Society & Culture in
​South Asia

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Nominated for Tata Literature Live 

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Book of the Year 2017 
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Book Discussion: Hegel's India
India International Centre, Delhi, September 2017

Goodreads reviews for Hegel's India

Reviews from Goodreads.com
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  • Home
  • Ambedkar’s Preamble
  • Vision for a Nation
  • A Philosophy of Autobiography: Body & Text
  • Dalit Feminist Theory
  • B.R. Ambedkar: The Quest for Justice
  • Plato’s Labyrinth
  • Hegel's India
  • Hegel's India - Reviews
  • Indian Political Theory
  • Rethinking Indian Jurisprudence
  • Ironman Experiments
  • Media Articles & Appearances
  • Publications
  • Short Courses
  • Talks, Lectures​, Conferences, Workshops
  • Indian Political Thought
  • The Future of Political Theology
  • From Political Theory to Political Theology
  • Wronging Rights?
  • Global Justice
  • B. R. Ambedkar: The Buddha and His Dhamma
  • Discoursing the Post-Secular
  • Reading Hegel
  • The Complete Indian Wine Guide
  • Buddhism and the Contemporary World
  • India Wins Freedom
  • Eros Turannos
  • Book Series
  • Videos & Podcasts
  • Mind & Muscle - Quora Spaces
  • Contact