For more details & Registration Form, click here... - Mahatma Gandhi

Prof. Siby K George:Dr. Siby K George is Associate Professor of Philosophy inthe Department of Humanities and Social Sciences,Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. His areas ofinterests are in development philosophy and ethics, andhe has a curious interest in contemporary Indian moral,social and political debates. He has published his works invarious international journals and has authoredExistential Authenticity and is the co-editor of Tribe,Culture, Art.Participation Guidelines:The seminar is being organized for the distinguishedfaculty members of all colleges located at the Smt CHMcampus. As one of the key objectives of the programme isto provide invaluable international exposure to theacademic fraternity of the college, it is also being keptopen to the research and PG students for participationwith prior registration. Participants are required to sendtheir applications in the enclosed format to Dr. DeepaMishra, Chairperson, International ProgrammeCommittee, Smt CHM College or Prof. Hitasha Rohra(Coordinator), Assistant Professor, Dept of BC Accountsand Finance, Smt. CHM College.The last date for registration is 16th August 2012.For any other query please contact :Dr Deepa Mishra, Chairperson, InternationalProgramme Committee: mshrdp@yahoo.co.inDr. Kavita Harisinghani, Director, Gandhian StudiesCentre: bajajkp@rediffmail.comOrganising Committee:Dr. (Mrs) Bhavna MotwaniPrincipalProf. Ashwini GokhaleVice Principal &Over-all In-Charge, IPCMobile: 9869078901Dr. Deepa Mishra (Convener)Chairperson, IPCAssociate Professor, Dept. of EnglishMobile: 9820998090Dr. Kavita Harisinghani (Co-convener)Director, Gandhian Studies Centre,Associate Professor, Dept. of Physics,Mobile: 9320615314Prof Urmila PillayDirector, Gandhian Studies CentreAssociate Professor, Dept. of MathematicsMobile: 9819957835Dr. Samuel WesleyAssistant Professor, Dept. of History.Mobile: 9820865164Prof. Hitasha Rohra (Coordinator)Assistant Prof, Dept. of BC Account&Finance.Mobile: 9371020820Dr Dipesh KarmarkarAssistant Prof, Dept. of GeographyMobile: 9324357636To: Head of the DepartmentPlease circulate this flyer among the teachers, researchscholars and students of your department. Thanks foryour cooperation.Smt Chandibai Himathmal Mansukhani College,UlhasnagarOne-day SeminaronReformulating Mahatma Gandhi's Philosophy:Non- Violence, Modernity and PostcolonialityOrganized byInternational Programme Committeein collaboration withThe Gandhian Studies Centreon25 August 2012Time : 10:00 am to 4:00 pmVenue : Conference Hall-1Principal: Dr. (Mrs.) Bhavna MotwaniSmt. Chandibai Himathmal Mansukhani CollegeOpp. Railway Station, Ulhasnagar-421 003Email: ipcchm@gmail.comTel: 0251-2731869Website: www.chm.edu

About Smt. CHM CollegeEstablished in 1965 under the aegis of Hyderabad (Sind)National Collegiate Board , Smt CHM College is one of theoldest institutions of higher education in University ofMumbai. The college, which is based in thedemographically important suburb of Ulhasnagar, has anenrollment over 11 thousand students, spread acrossundergraduate, postgraduate, Ph.D and professionalcourses. The college is devoted to excellence in teachingand research. Our objective is to encourage students toexplore ideas, challenge boundaries, investigate freshways of thinking, and stimulate their minds intellectuallyand creatively. Through the creation of 08 distinctdepartments for professional education, a usefuldifferentiation has been made between 'Professional' and'Conventional' courses, bringing about some granularfocus into the college curricula. At the same time, theresearch ambience in the college has gone throughsignificant enrichment by the opening of o6 ResearchCentres in the domain of traditional education, takingacademic engagement to both national and internationallevels. The scholars enrolled for Ph.D. in these centres notonly get the invaluable opportunity for meaningful faceto-faceinteraction with eminent academic personalities,the learning for both the faculty and the students at largegets continuously enhanced as a result. The formation ofan 'International Programme Committee' in the college inaccordance with the vision of our Principal Dr.(Mrs)Bhavna Motwani, is a significant step to furtherconsolidate our efforts.A Brief Outline of the Seminar:Mahatma Gandhi, one of the most valued and celebratedthinkers and political activists of the twentieth century,continues to remain a subject of intense debate amongstscholars and critics. The appropriateness of his philosophyand ideas in the context of the contemporary world orderhas fuelled maximum amount of academic turbulence.Critics, in the name of pragmatic assessment, often viewthe Gandhian approach as utopian, naïve, negative andeven irrelevant in today’s context. A contemporaryGandhian with complete loyalty to Gandhian values and abelief that Gandhi’s philosophy is ever-relevant often findshimself isolated. Even most of the admirers of Gandhi,who strongly believe that he brought about a paradigmshift in the human value system in the late nineteenth andthe first half of the twentieth centuries, are gripped with apeculiar dilemma in appreciating the challenges posed byGandhi for today.This seminar is an effort to appraise the relevance ofGandhi in a fresh way. The mistake that we often do is totypecast Gandhian values in one static, essential,ahistorical and non-contextualized framework, whereasthe honest reality is that there is no absolutely true view ofGandhian philosophy. Gandhian ideas continue torediscover their relevance with the passage of time. Wemust be cognizant of the dynamic relation that holdsbetween Gandhi’s texts, contexts and the open project ofinterpreting the meaning and significance of Gandhi’s lifeand his philosophy. There is an inherent flexibility in theGandhian values which allow them to be interpreteddifferently in each generation, depending upon thecontext in which such interpretations take place.Gandhi’s conception of non-violence as a way of life isrelevant to all times as it is grounded in a deeply feltcritique of ideas and ideologies of the Europeanenlightenment. The seminar will look closely at thisconception. It also aims at locating Gandhi in the contextof the present and to add new instances to his critique ofmodernity. Unless we understand the nature of thischange, we can never put Gandhi’s critique in a clearperspective. As pointed out by some contemporary critics,Gandhi, the most revolutionary participant in the anticolonialiststruggle, has not often been cited inpostcolonial theories. His notion of self-rule (swaraj) andnonviolent resistance, his critique of capitalist modernityand campaign against caste are crucial modes thatradically altered the politics of India’s anticolonialstruggle. An interesting perspective emerges here bybringing out a parallel between Gandhi and Fanon, both ofwhom dedicated their lives to social and politicalmovements against colonialism, and by extension, formsof globalization. Though there are some glaringdifferences between the two personalities, this one dayseminar will help us understand the conceptual linkagebetween Gandhi’s and Fanon’s philosophical theorizationand praxis.Guest Speakers:Prof. Douglas Allen: KeynoteProf. Douglas Allen is Professor of Philosophy and formerChairperson of the Department of Philosophy at theUniversity of Maine in the U.S. A peace and justicescholar and activist, Douglas Allen has been active in theCivil Rights Movement, the Vietnam/Indochina AntiwarMovement, and many other struggles resisting violence,war, class exploitation, imperialism, racial and genderoppression, and environmental destruction. He has beenthe recipient of the “Hands of Peace Award” in Maine andthe “Scroll of Peace International Award for PeaceResearch” in India. During 2009-2010, he was in India ona Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to doresearch on “Mahatma Gandhi and Violence, Terrorism,and the Contemporary World.” He is often recognized asone of the world's leading scholars in thephenomenology of religion and the philosophy ofMahatma Gandhi. His recent books include Myth andReligion in Mircea Eliade and his edited ComparativePhilosophy and Religion in Times of Terror and ThePhilosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-FirstCentury. Allen's most recent books are Mahatma Gandhi(2011) and Mitsi Religie la MirceaEliade (2011).Prof. Prafulla C. Kar:A distinguished international scholar and critic ofAmerican Literature, Prof. Prafulla C. Kar has had aglorious academic career spreading a little over fivedecades in both India and abroad. Connected with manyforeign institutions in various capacities, Prof Kar retiredas the Professor of English at Maharaja SayajiraoUniversity of Baroda. He is currently the Director ofCentre for Contemporary Theory, and Balvant ParekhCentre for General Semantics and Other HumanSciences, Baroda. Prof Kar has won the highly prestigious2012 Caribbean Philosophical Association’s NicolasGuillén Award for Philosophical Literature. The award’scommittee voted for Professor Kar in appreciation of his“extraordinary contribution to the study of thehumanities in India and the impact of his work across theglobe.” The committee also noted his “role in the growingcultivation of dialogue across the Global South throughthe institutions he has developed such as the Centre forContemporary Theory, the Journal of ContemporaryThought, and the annual conferences that have in recenttimes brought in the voices of the Caribbean.”

Registration FormSmt Chandibai Himathmal Mansukhani College, UlhasnagarOne-day SeminaronReformulating Mahatma Gandhi's Philosophy: Non- Violence,Modernity and Postcoloniality”organized byInternational Programme Committeein collaboration withThe Gandhian Studies CentreDate : 25 August 2012Time : 10:00 am to 4:00 pmVenue : Conference Hall-1, Smt. CHM College, Ulhasnagar Name :DepartmentName of the CollegeE-mail IDCell Phone No.SignatureDate::::::For any other query please contact Dr Deepa Mishra, Chairperson, International Programme Committee:mshrdp@yahoo.co.in