Dr. Ashmita Khasnabish Guest Lecture “Indian Imagination in a Postcolonial Context”

The talk “Indian Imagination in a Postcolonial Context” is based on Dr. Ashmita Khasnabish’s recent monograph Negotiating Capability and Diaspora: a Philosophical Politics which analyses how Indian philosophical imagination could bring transcendence and immanence or pragmatism together. It starts with the Amartya Sen’s theory of “capability” which arose as a critique of the American philosopher John Rawls’s theory of Justice. Sen focuses on the notion of personal will- power which expresses the humanitarian aspect of his theory of capability. What is so fascinating about Sen’s theory of freedom? As a daughter of the East, she admits that there is great potential in Sen’s theory of freedom because it is the freedom of the East that he advocates. She also examines Sri Aurobindo’s theory of the “religion of humanity,” who fought against the British and was forced to leave India. Finally, in the light of this philosophical background, the talk addresses the Indian novelist Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel the Namesake as a product of Indian postcolonial imagination.