Join us for Ethics Monday as we welcome Rahul Sagar, Global Network Associate Professor of Political Science at NYU Abu Dhabi. In this talk, Sagar will examine Letters to an Indian Raja (1891), the first work of political theory published in modern India.
Available in-person or via zoom. Registration is required. A light lunch will be served.
REGISTER HERE.
About “The Birth of Indian Liberalism”:
Over the past decade, theorists, historians, and philosophers have increasingly turned their attention to comparing “traditions” of political thought and tracing the “circulation, exchange, and co-production” of ideas across the globe. This talk builds on this momentum by examining Letters to an Indian Raja (1891), the first work of political theory published in modern India. This long-lost text reveals that Indian liberalism was a form of liberal perfectionism—the view that political authority should be exercised paternalistically to promote a liberal vision of human flourishing. This vision sought to liberate individuals from various debilitating forces, including unthinking tradition, gross ignorance, and destructive greed. The rediscovery of Letters to an Indian Raja demonstrates that, unlike European liberals, who were concerned with how new developments—mass democracy, industrialization, and bureaucratization—were subjecting the individual to increasingly impersonal forces, Indian liberals focused on freeing the individual from bondage to groups. They viewed groups as uniquely threatening due to the early onset of their influence, which affected individuals from the cradle onward, and the depth to which their norms shaped the individual, influencing everything from tastes to fears. Consequently, the means proposed by Indian liberals to safeguard the individual differed significantly from those advocated by their European counterparts. They did not emphasize individual rights, as they doubted that individuals, corrupted by their upbringing and intimidated by social sanctions, would actually exercise these rights. This is why they were willing to enlist the help of an enlightened monarch who could direct the social transformation necessary to foster individualism. This distinctive framework—in effect an early critique of multiculturalism—makes Letters to an Indian Raja a unique contribution to the global canon.
About Rahul Sagar:
Rahul Sagar is Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor at Princeton University and Global Network Associate Professor of Political Science at NYU Abu Dhabi. His research focuses on political ethics and intellectual history. His books include The Progressive Maharaja (OUP, 2022) and To Raise A Fallen People (Columbia, 2022). He was educated at Oxford and Harvard.
