The Indian Parliament and Democratic Transformation

 

Launch of the book edited by Ajay K. Mehra (New Delhi: Routledge India, 2018)

 

 

 

Chief Guest: Dr. Karan Singh, MP, Rajya Sabha

 

Guest of Honour: Mr. Peter Rimmele, Resident Representative, KAS

 

 

 

Chair: Air Marshal (retd.) Naresh Verma, Director IIC

 

 

 

Followed by a panel discussion

 

Panelists: Prof. D.R. Tripathi, MP, Rajya Sabha; Prof. E. Sridharan, UPIASI; Prof. Amit Prakash, JNU; and Prof. Satyajit Singh, University of Delhi

 

 

 

The book traces the trajectory of the Indian Parliament from its formation to present day. The essays explore parliamentary democracy through the formative years and highlight the Parliament’s function as a representative and accountable institute, its procedures and responsibility, its connection with the other arms of the state, its relationship with grassroots democracy and the press, and its critical role in framing foreign policy and national security

 

 

 

 

Speaker: Professor Arvind Sharma, McGill University

 

 

 

Chair: Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, Chairperson, IIC – International Research Division

 

 

 

Respondent: Prof Madhu Khanna, an Indian people historian of religion and noted Tantric scholar based in Delhi. At present, she is Distinguished Fellow (2013–2014) in Asian and Comparative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

 

 

 

Modern Indian thought employs many concepts of Western origin such as secularism, democracy, egalitarianism and so on because of its close association with the West over the past three centuries and the prevalence of English in intellectual discourse in India. The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate that by doing so Indians may be modifying the Indian reality to suit these concepts without realising that this is happening and that the changes thus being brought about are not necessarily in India’s best interest. This raises the question: how wise it is to allow the Indian reality to be modified to suit the semantic conventions of European languages