INDIA: A Living Hegelian Leviathan

Book excerpt: In, India: A Living Hegelian Leviathan, Dr. Prafulla Chaulia invites us to reflect on the relationship between the present condition of India and its fascinating past(s) as revealed through certain thought traditions that remain culturally dominant to this day. “For the dialectic shows latent in common sense the dangerous implication that the form in which the world is given and organized may contradict its true content, that is to say, that the potentialities inherent in men and things may require the dissolution of the given forms. Formal logic accepts the world-form as it is and gives some general rules for theoretical orientation to it. Dialectical logic, on the other hand, rejects any claim of sanctity for the given, and shatters the complacency of those living under its rubric. It holds that ‘external existence’ is never the sole criterion of the truth of a content, but that every form of existence must justify before a higher tribunal whether it is adequate to its content or not.