At a conventional disciplinary level we look at human being as an economic person or a political person or something of similar sort. The identity of a person so defined reduces him/her to a number of independent entities. However, there is another practice of looking at an individual identity. Accordingly, a human being has an individual and above it s/he has a clan or caste or class or religious or national identity, ever ascending but never overriding. This expanded identity of a person or for that matter of a community does not create confusion and conflict while negotiating with multiple identities. But in the former case, the individual as economic person may confront his/ her other identity while need comes to transact between two identities. Such a confrontation, however, does not arise in course of engagement with all the identities ordinarily in expanded sense. Every community can grow and expand to a global dimension with its own potentiality.
The two practices of attributing identity are two processes of globalisation. One takes on the former line which is fragmented and is popular as imperial globalisation. The other, yet to be tried, is the theory of oceanic circles of Gandhi, which like the expansion of individual identity, holds the key to universalisation of globalisation. The second line of thinking forms the basis of argument of this volume, which, if put to practice, will work towards universalisation of the process of globalisation. The volume with the thematic support of thirteen papers strongly argues for action in Gandhian line. The volume will provide a preliminary insight of enquiry to those who are working towards an alternative to transform imperial globalisation to a universal one. |
