POLITICS: Essays in Tribute to Randhir Singh

Description

Randhir Singh (1922-2016) was a great teacher in the classical tradition who theorised and struggled all through his working and academic life to create an egalitarian world. Totality in approach was his sine qua non for comprehending the interconnectivities among disparate elements and the mediations in the pursuit of establishing such equations. Along with the explanation of totality or by way of totality, politics becomes crucial to bring about the desired changes not only though the repudiation of politics per se by being merely a superstructural referential standpoint, but also by enabling the agency involved to ‘act’. To ‘act’ is to unsettle and thereby correct the imperfectness of socio-economic inequalities and alienation. This unsettling also takes place by way of politics. This book is a tribute to Randhir Singh who not only expanded the Marxist weltanschauung but also redefined the crucial role of a teacher and the critical importance of classroom-teaching. The introduction attempts to encapsulate his distinct contributions to the study, methodology and understanding of history, politics and political science, social sciences, academic freedom, the essence of the concept of the USSR, canons of morality, environmentalism, the life as a communist and of course the paramount role of classroom teaching. This book in eighteen chapters contains four themes which are interwoven: ‘Initiating the Debate’, ‘Remembrance’, ‘Expanding the Horizon’, and ‘Highlighting the Concern’. This edited book is an outcome of the collective endeavour of all contributors.

Dhananjay Rai teaches at the Centre for Gandhian Thought and Peace Studies, School of Social Sciences, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar. Some of his publications are Democracy on the Move? Reflections on Moments, Promises and Contradictions (co-editor, 2013), Contemporary Indian Political Theory: A Critical Analysis (2013), and Nehru aur Aadhunikta (editor, 2016). His research articles and reviews have been published in the Economic and Political Weekly, the Social Change, the Social Scientist, the Think India Quarterly, and The Book Review.