About the Book: India and the Unthinkable: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics
and Politics
The modern understanding of India has been structured around a standard set of
oppositions-tradition versus modernity, faith versus secularism, bhakti versus
jnana, precolonial versus colonial, Sanskritic versus vernacular, to name a few.
This book by the Backwaters Collective probes the disavowal that lurks behind
these familiar pairs, and explores how we might be able to move beyond them into
the realm of the unthinkable.
A closely related concern of the Collective is to safeguard the practices,
ideas, and norms that inform the everyday life and common sense of the culture
so as to foster the