This book examines the interface between Buddhism and the caste system in India. It discusses how Buddhism in different stages, from its early period to contemporary forms—Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Tantrayāna and Navayāna—dealt with the question of caste. It also traces the intersections between the problem of caste with those of class and gender. The volume reflects on the interaction between Hinduism and Buddhism: it looks at critiques of caste in the classical Buddhist tradition while simultaneously drawing attention to the radical challenge posed by Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s Navayāna Buddhism or neo-Buddhism. The essays in the book further compare approaches to varṇa and caste developed by modern thinkers such as M. K. Gandhi and S. Radhakrishnan with Ambedkar’s criticisms and his departures from mainstream appraisals. With its interdisciplinary methodology, combining insights from literature, philosophy, political science and sociology, the volume explores contemporary critiques of caste from the perspective of Buddhism and its historical context. By analyzing religion through the lens of caste and gender, it also forays into the complex relationship between religion and politics, while offering a rigorous study of the textual tradition of Buddhism in India. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of Indian philosophy, Buddhist studies, Indology, literature (especially Sanskrit and Pāli), exclusion and discrimination studies, history, political studies, women studies, sociology, and South Asian studies.

The authors stress the close similarity between Buddhist thought and the findings of modern science, i.e., the oneness of the human species.

This book offers a reading of Bhimrao Ambedkar’s engagement with the idea and practice of socialism in India by linking it to his lifelong political and philosophical concerns: the annihilation of the caste system, untouchability and the moral and philosophical systems that justify either. Rather than view his ideas through a socialist lens, the author suggests that it is important to measure the validity of socialist thought and practice in the Indian context, through his critique of the social totality. The book argues its case by presenting a broad and connected overview of his thought world and the global and local influences that shaped it. The themes that are taken up for discussion include: his understanding of the colonial rule and the colonial state; history and progress; nationalism and the questions he posed the socialists; his radical critique of the caste system and Brahmancal philosophies, and his unusual interpretation of Buddhism.

Bangalore is looked at in depth in Supriya Baily's exploration of one of India’s most dynamic cities. Booklist praises the book, saying, "This deeply researched book is especially timely in light of recent gender-based violence in India.” Through the stories of a group of school girls in what used to be India’s most progressive city, Bangalore Girls reveals how the freedom women once enjoyed in the “Silicon Valley of India” has been eroded by the rising tide of right-wing nationalism, misogyny, and religious fundamentalism. Author Supriya Baily explores one of India’s most dynamic cities through the eyes of a group of women who grew up and went to school together in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As they enjoyed the trappings of a burgeoning middle class, these classmates also watched their country move to the right politically and socially, spurred on by the Ayodhya riots that tore down the Babri Masjid Mosque in 1992 and the sectarian violence that followed—a Hindu nationalist tide that continues to rise today. The book offers us a window into these women’s lives and shows us how they are responding to the breakdown of progressivism across multiple domains. They discuss not only their own safety and the educational opportunities and challenges confronting their families; they also talk about such society-wide issues as anti-Muslim sentiment, the backlash against science, and the dangers of independent thinking. Baily gives voice to their worries about political cults of personality and government policies that seek to marginalize and ostracize anyone who speaks out against the authorities, but especially women. As Indian prime minister Narendra Modi now consecrates the new Ram Temple in Ayodhya, it has never been more important to understand the wave of nationalism that began in 1992. The stories of these women told by Supriya Baily are a must-read tale of extremism’s threat to women’s rights and human rights.

This book reconstructs the philosophical issues informing the debate between the makers of modern India: Ambedkar and Gandhi. At one level, this debate was about a set of different but interconnected issues: caste and social hierarchies, untouchability, Hinduism, conversion, temple entry, and political separatism. The introduction to this book provides a brief overview of the engagements and conflicts in Gandhi and Ambedkar's central arguments. However, at another level, this book argues that the debate can be philosophically re-interpreted as raising their differences on the following issues: The nature of the self, The relationship between the individual self and the community, The appropriate relationship between the constitutive encumbrances of the self and a conception of justice, The relationship between memory, tradition, and self-identity. Ambedkar and Gandhi’s contrary conceptions of the self, history,itihaas, community and justice unpack incommensurable world views. These can be properly articulated only as very different answers to questions about the relationship between the present and the past. This book raises these questions and also establishes the link between the Ambedkar--Gandhi debate in the early 20th century and its re-interpretation as it resonates in the imagination and writing of marginalized social groups in the present times.