Contributed articles on semantics philosophy of vedic literature and poetics presented earlier at a seminar honoring Kapil Kapoor, Indian Indologist.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an abrupt change in routines and livelihoods all around the world. This public health crisis amplified a number of systemic inequalities that led to populations needing to grapple with universally difficult truths. Yet some individuals, firms, and countries displayed resilient and creative responses in coping with pressing demands on healthcare and basic sanity. Past work has suggested that engaging in creative acts can be an adaptive response to a changing environment. Therefore, the purpose of this (...) paper is to describe how entities at the personal, community, and national levels cultivated and expressed creativity in an effort to make meaning during COVID-19. By overlaying the Four C model of creativity on such responses, we aim to (a) to connect mini, little, Pro, and Big creative behaviors with our attempts to make meaning of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and (b) to suggest how engaging in creative expression can be used to guard against the adverse consequences of this outbreak. Acknowledging that this time has been and continues to be distressing and filled with uncertainty, we propose some ways of making sense of current events by applying original thinking across domains. Further, we propose how engaging in creativity can serve to buffer against the negative effects of living through the pandemic. (shrink)

Illustrations: 1 B/w Illustration Description: This is a comprehensive, critical and comparative study of all aspects of the philosophy and religion of Sri Caitanya. In the first three chapters the history of the Vaisnava religion is traced from the earliest Vedic period to pre-Caitanya Vaisnavism in Bengal and some controversies regarding the life of Sri Caitanya and the Sampradaya or the sect to which he belongs are set at rest. In the succeeding chapters the problems of philosophy and religion are (...) discussed in detail. It is shown how Sri Caitanya breathes a new spirit into philosophy and religion by transcending the narrow and mutually conflicting 'isms' and dogmas and reconciling them in a higher synthesis by means of the concept of the absolute as Bhagavan and the doctrine of Acintya-bhedabheda or inconceivable identity-indifference. The importance of Bhakti as the exclusive means of attaining God is His highest and sweetest form is stressed. Prema or divine love is distinguished from eroticism and established as the highest end. The doctrine of Rasa or transcendental relish is explained and Parakiya Rasa is established as the highest Rasa. (shrink)

This article focuses on three recent controversies in which Žižek has been embroiled and for which he has taken positions that rest on the notion of antagonism. His views on Eurocentrism, the European refugee crisis and trans politics have been the subject of notable disapproval, if not denunciation. Critics reproach him for being Eurocentric, racist and transphobic, charges which he has repeatedly countered. The article will examine the differing theoretical and political positions in these debates, underlining what Žižek’s critics miss (...) or misunderstand about his notion of antagonism. While I side firmly with Žižek on the substance of these issues, I nonetheless consider the extent to which at least part of the disagreement here centres on the performative rather than the strictly “theoretical”: Might his critics be reacting to his overexposure? Could such overexposure be interpreted as an attempt at having the last word? And to what extent does the antagonistic form of Žižek’s interventions militate against their theoretical content? (shrink)

Chiefly on Indic aesthetics; includes study on symbolism in art and literature, religion and culture in India.

Recent literature on social movements assigns a central role to the imagination. One way for activists to further their aims is through dramatic, confrontational acts of protest. I argue that transcendent imagining is key to understanding what protest does qua act of speech. A common approach to protest sees it as a speech act of condemning some feature of the socio-political world and appealing for change. While this is a helpful general template for what vocal dissent is, it is insufficient (...) to explain what gives protests their political power. Specifically, it overlooks the fact that effective protests usually create a theatrical spectacle of norm breaking. Displays of defiance lift a constraint on how we imagine our socio-political world, and so allow us to begin reshaping it. (shrink)

Nirbhaya, Asifa, Manisha Valmiki, and the list of victims, (be it women, children or men) in India goes on. There is myriad of legislations enacted in the past to curb the offences, but the crimes in the society seem to be unstoppable. During the COVID time, in the lockdown too, the crimes continued to take place. There were several instances of domestic violence and rapes heard in news. Many instances of suicides were reported. It is really difficult to understand what (...) place in the country is safe for the existence and peaceful survival of any person? The question that arises is whether a victim who comes before the court is provided with the adequate relief? Has the Judiciary or the Parliament done something with this regard? Does the concept of compensatory jurisprudence exist in India? What more is required to be done to enhance the position of victims and rehabilitate them? The research article shall look into the concept of compensatory jurisprudence with respect to India and other nation states as well. There are prevailing enormous laws which discuss about the punishment to be given to the accused person guilty to have committed crime, but unfortunately, there is no specific law regarding the steps to be taken to rehabilitate a victim who has been the subject matter of any crime. The research paper shall deal with various aspects and try to analyse laws or rules, if any, existing with regard to the protection of victims in India or around the globe. It shall also try to look into the role that the States play in rehabilitating and compensating the sufferers and victims of various crimes. The article shall conclude with suggestions as to how the research gaps related to victim reparation be filled. (shrink)

Contributed papers presented at a seminar organized by Department of Philosophy, Budge Budge College.

Integrates the seemingly diverse studies of Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics, astrophysics, and molecular biology to explain the timeless philosophies of the ages." Includes biographical profiles of several scientists or philosophers who contributed to human understanding of these realities.

This book claims that there is a negativity at the core of all social articulations that provides the basis for a universal politics. Drawing principally on the work of Slavoj Žižek, the book suggests that the social is punctured by an impossibility-an incompletion-which rather than serving as a barrier to politics, lays a foundation for shared struggle. The book thus argues for a negative universality, rooted not in a positive element (e.g., identity-based politics) but a discordant one, so that under (...) our current global capitalist system, solidarity is to be forged on the basis of social antagonism (i.e., shared experiences of exploitation and marginalization). Such a conception of shared struggle avoids the trap of both a neocolonial universalism (e.g., the rights of white men parading as universal rights) and the narrow particularism of identity-based politics. Most importantly, it foregrounds the struggles of the systematically dispossessed and excluded (the permanently unemployed, migrants, refugees, sweatshop laborers, etc.), who stand as symptom of our global capitalist order. The book compares "negative universality" with four competing contemporary versions of universalism-conservative, liberal, postcolonial, and Marxist. It also brings "negative universality" into dialogue with present-day critics of universalism-postmodernists, post-Marxists, queer theorists, decolonial pluriversalists, and new materialists. Finally, it examines what a universal politics might look like today in the context of such key global sites of struggle as climate change, the refugee crisis, the Palestinian question, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Political Islam, workers' struggles, the Bolivian state under Morales, the European Union, and COVID-19. (shrink)

Phonemes have variant pronunciations depending on context. For instance, in American English, the [t] in pat [pæt] and the [d] in pad [pæd] are both realized with a tap [ɾ] when the –ing suffix is attached, [pæɾɪŋ]. We show that despite greater distributional and acoustic support for the [t]-tap alternation, 12-month-olds successfully relate taps to stems with a perceptually-similar final [d], not the dissimilar final-[t]. Thus, distributional learning of phonological alternations is constrained by infants' preference for the alternation of perceptually-similar (...) segments. Further, the ability to relate variant surface forms emerges between 8- and 12-months. Our findings of biased learning provide further empirical support for a role for perceptual similarity in the acquisition of linguistically-relevant categories. We discuss the implications of our findings for phonological theory, language acquisition and models of the mental lexicon. (shrink)

Students display resistance, including academic dishonesty, at all educational levels. In the present study, we qualitatively examined the extent and incidence of academic misbehaviors by 101 US college students. Using a combination of self-reported closed- and open-ended questions, we developed a multi-faceted understanding of how students perceived their own classroom misbehaviors to avoid work as being original, clever, deceptive, and unethical. Questions pertaining to possible prevention, impact on grade, and repetition of the misbehavior were also included. Further, environmental contributors of (...) such behavior were explored, inclusive of the teacher, curriculum, larger school/institutional reasons, peers, and out-of-school issues. Thematic analyses identified distinct themes related to each factor, with poor time management emerging as a salient antecedent across factors. The present study also reviews and provides strategies to improve time management among students to mitigate future instances of academic misbehavior. (shrink)

Health systems are integrating medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) into clinical care and increasingly center “complex care” patients. These patients have intersecting medical and social needs and often face systemic inequities that exacerbate their chronic health conditions. This paper describes a role for MLPs in hospital quality initiatives; examines the ethics of MLPs assisting with guardianship and institutionalization of hospital patients including marginalized groups; and advocates for MLP interventions designed to address intersectional and ethical concerns.

Students display resistance in the classroom in numerous ways, often in the form of academic misconduct. Some argue that resistance can reflect cleverness and creativity, rather than apathy. This investigation aimed to develop a psychometric tool to examine classroom resistance as well as identify individual and situational determinants of the same. Data from 853 participants was collected on measures of resistance behaviors in educational contexts and their environmental contributors, creativity, personality, and deception. Further, participants indicated their frequency of resistance across (...) two time periods: kindergarten through middle school, and high school through college. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified a robust three-factor structure for the Classroom Resistance Scale, comprising Test-Oriented Cheating, Blatant Academic Dishonesty, and Unethical Shortcuts. The person-situation analysis indicated that students who engaged in resistance shared some consistent characteristics: they were more likely to be closed to new experiences, unimaginative, more extraverted, and highly influenced by their peers. Moreover, the frequency of classroom resistance increased in higher grades as compared to lower ones. Implications of spillover effects of academic dishonesty into the workplace are discussed, in addition to suggestions for future research. (shrink)

After China, India has the most skewed sex ratio at birth. These two Asian countries account for about 90 to 95% of the estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million missing female births annually, worldwide, due to gender-biased sex selection. To understand this extreme discrimination against girls, this article examines the gendered biopolitics embedded in population policies, new sex selection technologies, and in the social reproduction of patriarchal society. The ethical consequences of advanced reproductive technologies, which remove the moral turpitude around gender-based (...) sex selection by reformulating it into a “modern”, “scientific” endeavour, facilitating the rise of “missing girls”, make this an issue of gender justice, as noted by the World Population Report 2020. This article argues that unpacking gendered biopolitics within the household is crucial to understanding the reproduction of son preference and daughter aversion since it is here that reproduction and parenthood are subjected to biopolitical governance. We discuss how “biosocial” strategies of the household aimed at producing the “desired” and “right” family of more sons at the cost of daughters are operationalized through women’s bodies with a view to family mobility. While women and girls continue to bear the burden and costs of social reproduction that lie at the heart of the patriarchal capitalist system of accumulation, a perusal of more recent studies suggests the beginning of an equalizing trend of parental investments, especially in the health and education of daughters who are “allowed” to be born. We suggest that familial enhancement of girls’ human capital can help as a means of developing girls’ capabilities and agency, enhancing their power in the biopolitics of the family and increasing their “bio-value” in parents’ eyes. (shrink)

This article claims that, despite their critical-political stances, three current and influential theoretical frameworks – intersectionality, decoloniality, and ‘Indigenous localism’ – unconsciously accept global capitalism. The article focuses on the work of Crenshaw, Mignolo, Coulthard, and Tuck and Yang, respectively, to argue that, by ascribing to identity politics (intersectionality), a pluriversal politics of authenticity (decoloniality), and a decentralized ‘incommensurability’ (Indigenous localism), each engages in the culturalization and/or localization of politics – one that disavows the dimension of political economy, and because (...) of that, one that conforms well with, and poses no threat to, capitalist liberal globalization. The article concludes by reflecting on what such disavowal says about our late capitalist times, as well as the potentialities and perils of a contemporary subaltern anti-capitalist politics. (shrink)

This book critically analyzes important current issues in international development-growth, poverty, inequality, participation, consumption, corruption, gender, race, LGBT politics, revolution, universalism-by deploying key psychoanalytic concepts-enjoyment, fantasy, antagonism, fetishism, envy, drive, perversion, hysteria. It draws on the work of Lacan and Žižek, and on psychoanalytic postcolonial and feminist scholarship.

Creativity and Morality summarizes and integrates research on creativity used to achieve bad or immoral ends. The book includes the use of deception, novel ideas to commit wrongdoings across contexts, including in organizations, the classroom and terrorism. Morality is discussed from an individual perspective and relative to broader sociocultural norms that allow people to believe actions are justified. Chapters explore this research from an interdisciplinary perspective, including from psychology, philosophy, media studies, aesthetics and ethics. Summarizes research on creativity used for (...) immoral purposes Identifies individual and sociocultural perspectives on morality Explores creativity in business, education, design and criminal behavior Includes research from psychology, philosophy, ethics, and more. (shrink)

There is emerging evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of music based interventions for improving social functioning in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). While this evidence lends some support in favour of using song over spoken directives in facilitating engagement and receptive intervention in ASD, there has been little research that has investigated the efficacy of such stimuli on socio-communicative responsiveness measures. Here, we present preliminary results from a pilot study which tested whether sung instruction, as compared to spoken directives, (...) could elicit greater number of socio-communicative behaviours in young children with ASD. Using an adapted single-subject design, three children between the ages of 3 and 4 years, participated in a programme consisting of 18 sessions, of which 9 were delivered with spoken directives and 9 with sung. Sessions were counterbalanced and randomized for three play activities - block matching, picture matching and clay play. All sessions were video-recorded for post-hoc observational coding of three behavioural metrics which included performance, frequency of social gesture and eye contact. Analysis of the videos by two independent raters indicated increased socio-communicative responsiveness in terms of frequency of social gesture as well as eye contact during sung compared to spoken conditions across all participants. Our findings suggest that sung directives may play a useful role in engaging children with ASD and also serve as an effective interventional medium to enhance socio-communicative responsiveness. (shrink)

Reasoning about concurrent programs involves representing the information that concurrent processes manipulate disjoint portions of memory. In sophisticated applications, the division of memory between processes is not static. Through operations, processes can exchange the implied ownership of memory cells. In addition, processes can also share ownership of cells in a controlled fashion as long as they perform operations that do not interfere, e.g., they can concurrently read shared cells. Thus the traditional paradigm of distributed computing based on locations is replaced (...) by a paradigm of concurrent computing which is more tightly based on program structure. Concurrent Separation Logic with Permissions, developed by O’Hearn, Bornat et al., is able to represent sophisticated transfer of ownership and permissions between processes. We demonstrate how these ideas can be used to reason about fine-grained concurrent programs which do not employ explicit synchronization operations to control interference but cooperatively manipulate memory cells so that interference is avoided. Reasoning about such programs is challenging and appropriate logical tools are necessary to carry out the reasoning in a reliable fashion. We argue that Concurrent Separation Logic with Permissions provides such tools. We illustrate the logical techniques by presenting the proof of a concurrent garbage collector originally studied by Dijkstra et al., and extended by Lamport to handle multiple user processes. (shrink)

In a bid to curb the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, several countries implemented lockdown procedures to varying degrees. This article sought to examine the extent to which country-level strictness, as measured by the Government Response Stringency Index, moderated the relationship between certain cultural dimensions and estimates of national innovation. Data on 84 countries were collated for Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, and from the Global Innovation Index. Owing to the robust relationships between innovation and the dimensions of uncertainty avoidance, power distance, (...) and individualism, these were used in moderation analyses. In general, power distance was inversely related to innovation, whereas individualism was directly related to it. Results indicated that collectivist and high power distance countries showed lower innovation, irrespective of levels of government stringency as a response to COVID-19. On the other hand, among individualistic and low power distance countries, lower innovation was associated with increased stringency. Higher innovation was observed when such countries had a less severe government response. The dimension of uncertainty avoidance was not significantly associated with innovation at the country level. The implications of lockdowns on general innovation, its inputs, and outputs are discussed in the context of cultural dimensions and country-level policies. (shrink)

This review essay provides a critical analysis of the book ‘The Great Tech Game,’ authored by Anirudh Suri. For the analysis, other literature published in a similar area is considered and pitched the arguments against the ones made in the book. During the year this book was released, there were numerous debates on accountability and trust in frontier digital technologies like AI. These debates have reached a systemic level where the entire global community is divided into two camps headed by (...) the US and China in drafting rules and regulations for the internet and allied technologies. A critical comment on a well-circulated book would add clarity to the debates on the impacts of frontier digital technologies. This review contributes to the critical voices of the emerging scholarship on the confluence of digital technology and global politics. This review essay is intended to serve as an academic comment on the published work. (shrink)

There is a growing need to identify what really can converge classroom learning to the real-life practising of ethical principles. We examine if the effectiveness of ethics education can be improved through meditation-based mindfulness intervention. Our baseline experiment is a procedurally modified version of the anagram exercise (Ruedy and Schweitzer 2010) for measuring unethical behaviour. We introduce a brief meditation intervention to induce instant mindfulness. Our findings indicate substantive evidence confirming the positive effect of the state of mindfulness on ethical (...) behaviour. Subjects in the meditation group engage in more low-level cheating compared to the control group who cheated more severely. Gender and academic grade do not influence ethical behaviour. Mindfulness fosters composure, mental poise, and a conducive environment for upholding ethical values, as indicated by a lower incidence of cheating in our study. We propose to promote a learning environment with mindfulness intervention in educational programmes. (shrink)

SummaryAggarwal Baniyas were found to have a high prevalence of high blood pressure. Genetic and environmental influences may be implicated for this risk factor of cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential for common genetic and environmental influences on blood pressure measures ). The population-based sample was comprised of 309 Aggarwal Baniya families, including 1214 individuals from New Delhi, India. The prevalence of obesity in this community was found to be high. Correlation and heritability were (...) estimated. Most sibling–sibling correlations were larger than the parent–offspring correlations, and all parent–offspring and sibling–sibling correlations were larger than the corresponding spouse correlation. The maximum heritability was estimated as 44.6% for SBP and 62.8% for DBP. The lack of a significant spouse correlation is consistent with little or no influence of the common familial environment. However, the high heritability estimate for both SBP and DBPs reinforces the importance of the non-shared environmental effect. (shrink)

Seed development in this paper has been classified into the three landmark stages of cell division, organ initiation and maturation, based on morphological changes, and the available literature. The entire process proceeds at the behest of an interplay of various specific and general transcription factors (TFs). Monocots and dicots utilize overlapping, as well as distinct, TF networks during the process of seed development. The known TFs in rice and Arabidopsis have been chronologically categorized into the three stages. The main regulators (...) of seed development contain B3 or HAP3 domains. These interact with bZIP and AP2 TFs. Other TFs that play an indispensable role during the process contain homeobox‐, NAC‐, MYB‐, or ARF‐domains. This paper is a comprehensive analysis of the TFs essential for seed development and their interactions. An understanding of this interplay will not only help unravel an integrated developmental process, but will also pave the way for biotechnological applications. (shrink)

The possible differential effects of ABO blood group materno-paternal (fetal) incompatibility on completed reproductive performance were investigated on a sample of 100 couples (100 fathers and 100 mothers) from three villages in the Jind district of Haryana state, India. The average number of live births per mating couple was slightly higher for the incompatible matings (5·32) than the compatible ones (5·05). This advantage was offset by higher postnatal mortality in the former. Consequently, the average number of living children in the (...) compatible matings (4·64) was higher than in the incompatible ones (4·18). With reference to individual ABO matings, the index of relative fertility (Irf) was the highest in A×AB followed by B×A type of incompatible matings. No decrease in live births in O×A and O×B incompatible matings was observed compared with their reciprocal compatible ones, i.e. A×O and B×O matings, as has been hypothesized in previous studies. The total pregnancy wastage was substantially higher in ABO-incompatible matings (24·59%) than compatible matings (8·45%). About 71% of the postnatal deaths took place within one year of the birth in the case of incompatible matings compared with 50% in the case of compatible matings. The study supports the hypothesis that selection is operative at the ABO locus as revealed by the measures of selection intensity. The loss of fitness in the present sample was associated with differential mortality. There were no differences in the proportions of average number of male live births in the compatible (0·55) and incompatible matings (0·58). However, in the individual mating types, there was some evidence of higher or lower proportions of male live births. (shrink)

Visitor satisfaction at theatre festivals refers to the positive experience and enjoyment that attendees derive from well-organized events. This study evaluates the impact of various organizational factors on visitor satisfaction at theatre festivals, utilizing comprehensive data collected from 250 visitors and 250 event organizers. The research design incorporated detailed questionnaires and demographic data to assess key aspects such as programming and scheduling, venue management, ticketing processes, customer service, facilities, safety, and transportation. SPSS software had been used to implement factor and (...) regression analyses were employed to determine the relative importance of these factors. The findings reveal that programming and scheduling significantly influence festival success, while venue management and ticketing also play important roles. In contrast, transportation, amenities, and facilities had minimal impact. The cumulative variance analysis confirmed the comprehensive influence of all factors combined. These insights suggest that future improvements should focus on optimizing programming and scheduling while addressing the broader range of variables affecting festival performance and attendee satisfaction. (shrink)