Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 24.2July-Dec 2020 Humanising Social Life: Editorial

Humanising Social Life

Ambivalent change – political, social and technological – has been the outstanding feature of the 20th century affecting Indian societies and peoples like it has affected throughout the globe. Whereas the first half of the century witnessed  elaborate campaigns of political and economic unification and assimilation culminating in totalitarian systems of suppression, in India it has paved the way for the political independence of this country from the British Empire. The latter half of this century has been emerging, not without its own contradictions, as a movement toward human freedom buttressed by a newly found sense of the dignity of the human person that has found expression in movements like the implementation of Mandal commission report and the political movements of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes demanding greater respect and greater role in the social life of Indian societies. Within this context, the present seminar raises the question of how the humanization of social life is to be understood. One can possibly think that there are two principal dynamics in the idea of humanization of social life: these two dynamics are based on (a) the idea of what a person is and (b) the idea of how a society is. We are often told that a society is the setting in which the person exists and acts, so that person and society seem closely interrelated and hence not very problematic.