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Ashis Nandy is a political psychologist and sociologist of science who has worked on cultures of knowledge, visions, and dialogue of civilizations. At present he is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies and Chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures, both located in Delhi.
Nandy has coauthored a number of human rights reports and is active in movements for peace, alternative sciences and technologies, and cultural survival. He is a member of the Executive Councils of the World Future Studies Federation, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the International Network for Cultural Alternatives to Development, and the People's Union for Civil Liberties. Nandy has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., a Charles Wallace Fellow at the University of Hull, and a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, University of Edinburgh. He held the first UNESCO Chair at the Center for European Studies, University of Trier, in 1994.
Creating a Nationality: the Ramjanmabhumi Movement and Fear of the Self. Eds. Ashis Nandy, Shikha Trivedy, and Achyut Yagnick. Delhi; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. New York: Oxford UP, 1996.
The Savage
Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves. Delhi; London:
Oxford UP, 1995. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1995.
The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self. Delhi; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.
Barbaric Others: A Manifesto on Western Racism. Merryl Wyn Davies, Ashis Nandy, and Ziauddin Sardar. London; Boulder, CO: Pluto Press, 1993.
The Blinded Eye: Five Hundred Years of Christopher Columbus. Claude Alvares, Ziauddin Sardar, and Ashis Nandy. New York: Apex, 1994.
The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games. New Delhi; New York: Viking, 1989. New Delhi; New York: Penguin, 1989.
Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity. Ed. Ashis Nandy. Tokyo, Japan: United Nations University, 1988. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1990.
Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness. Delhi; New York: Oxford UP, 1987. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.
The
Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism. Delhi:
Oxford UP, 1983. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. "The discussion here is of the
psychological problems posed at a personal level by colonialism, for both
colonizer and colonized. . . . The bulk of this book concerns British colonialism
in India. . . . Nandy argues that gender issues became intertwined with
those of race, class, and religion under colonialism, and that the Gandhian
movement can be understood in part as an attempt to transcend a strong
tendency of educated Indians to articulate political striving for independence
in European terms." [Choice]
Alternative Sciences: Creativity and Authenticity in Two Indian Scientists. New Delhi: Allied, 1980. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1995.
At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1980. Delhi; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.
The New Vaisyas: Entrepreneurial Opportunity and Response in an Indian City. Raymond Lee Owens and Ashis Nandy. Bombay: Allied, 1977. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic P, 1978.
"Bearing Witness to the Future." Futures 28.6-7 (Aug. 1996): 636-39. "Nandy argues that futures studies should not only contest Western, linear, technocratic knowledge frames, but also offer alternatives to official forms of dissent." [Periodical Abstracts]
"History's Forgotten Doubles." History & Theory 34.2 (1995): 44-66. "The historical mode has been the dominant mode of constructing the past in most parts of the world. This dominance is derived from the links the idea of history has established with the modern nation-state, the secular worldview, the Baconian concept of scientific rationality, 19th-century theories of progress and development." [Periodical Abstracts]
"Tagore and the Tiger of Nationalism." Times of India 4 Sept. 1994.
"Futures Studies: Pluralizing Human Destiny." Futures 25.4 (May 1993): 464-65. "A comment is presented on an article written by Ziauddin Sardar concerning the colonization of futures studies. Sardar should join those people in futures studies who continue to believe that futures are a way of pluralizing human destiny and providing a critique of contemporaneity that cannot be provided from within the totalizing embrace of the present." [Periodical Abstracts]
"Satyajit Ray's Secret Guide." East-West Film Journal 4.2 (June 1990): 14-37.
"The Political Culture of the Indian State." Daedalus 118.4 (Fall 1989): 1-26. "The polity of India as it was conceived forty years ago has been redefined: the state has come to dominate, not serve, civil society. The focus of national politics has shifted from Parliament to the media. Democracy, a victim of this new political culture, remains the ideal of the masses, yet the elite fear it threatens to disrupt the management of the future." [Periodical Abstracts]
"The Fate of the Ideology of the State in India." The Challenge in South Asia: Development, Democracy and Regional Cooperation. Eds. Poona Wignaraja and Akmal Hussain. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1989.
"Towards an Alternative Politics of Psychology." International Social Science Journal 35.2 (1983): 323-38.
"The Psychology of Colonialism: Sex, Age, and Ideology in British India." Psychiatry 45 (Aug. 1982): 197-218.
on Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias: Hewitt, Vernon. Asian Affairs (London, England) 25 (Feb. 1994): 70-2.
on The Tao of Cricket: Taylor, Michael. Far Eastern Economic Review 145 (10 Aug. 1989): 40-1.
on The Intimate Enemy:
2) Davis, D.A. Choice 22 (Oct. 1984): 314. "Nandy, an Indian psychologist at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, has written several other works concerned with the psychological correlates of political and gender issues. . . . The writing style is sometimes overly metaphorical. . . . A great variety of sources, both Indian and Western, are cited, and the book should be valuable for students of the Indian subcontinent under and since colonialism. Since many theoretical sources are only superficially used and there is no bibliography, this work should probably be used in conjunction with other more systematic treatments. (200 words.)" [Book Review Digest]
3) Hutchins, Francis G. The American Historical Review 90 (Apr. 1985): 475. "By drawing on a wide range of disciplines this subtle and provocative book goes a step beyond what has been attempted before. In 1980 Nandy published Alternative Sciences: Creativity and Authenticity in Two Indian Scientists, which explored the difficulties of being both culturally Indian and a modern scientist. . . . Nandy's (present) book exemplifies the synthesis he proposes, being a sophisticated blending of insights drawn from Western psychology as well as from India's literary classics and recent historical experience. The Intimate Enemy is compressed and allusive. But, for the reader who is not lost along the way, Nandy's work is exhilarating, foreshadowing an India that will be a dynamic blend of the best in East and West. (500 words.)" [Book Review Digest]
Author: Michele Crescenzo
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