Regimes of Narcissism, Regimes of Despair

The writings of polymath and activist-scholar Ashis Nandy have enriched our ideas of political intervention and desirable societies for over four decades. Unafraid to walk diffi cult and unexplored terrains, he has gradually become one of the most infl uential public intellectuals of our time.

 

This book is about a new India, where the fate of the country, Nandy argues, is being increasingly decided by its political culture, which in turn has become the domain of two predominant psychological states: narcissism and despair. Through personalities such as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Vinayak Savarkar, and Madanlal Pahwa, Nandy explores a series of crucial issues that African, Asian, and South American societies have to negotiate. They include forms of nationalism and its critiques; ideas of terror, counter-terror, humiliation, and the sense of loss of self in modern times; and attempts to re-imagine contemporary statecraft and its demands on the contents of religion and tradition in our times. Nandy is willing to play with ideas that are simultaneously radical, controversial, and open-ended.