The Primacy of ‘Inclusion’ in Indian Thought: Learnings for Contemporary World

With the advent of the Bhakti movement in the 12th century, Indian poets of devotion like Kabir, Raidas, Meera, Chokhamela, Nanak, and Tukaram etc., articulated the values of an inclusive life, rejecting rigid binaries and intermediaries between humans and the divine. This movement laid the foundation for a broader discourse on ‘inclusion’ in Indian thought. Later, Swami Vivekananda, in his Chicago speech of 1893, described the ‘Vedas’ as the ‘accumulated treasury of spiritual laws’ rooted in the principle of inclusion, embracing everyone and excluding none.
Modern Indian leaders/thinkers such as Ahilyabai Holkar, Jyotirao Phule, Sri Aurobindo, Vinayak Savarkar, B.R. Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, and Bal Gangadhar Tilak further emphasized these inclusive values through concepts like Bandhutva (fraternity), Samrasata (harmony), Swatantrata (liberty), Swaraj (self-rule), and Shakti (power) etc. These ideas reflect a commitment to inclusivity, in contrast to Western academic discourse that often focuses on exclusion and individualism.
Thus, the Bhakti movement aimed at social regeneration and celebrations of human life, set the tone for a tradition of inclusion in the social and spiritual domains, while the modern Indian thinkers demonstrated the resurgence of the centrality of inclusion in social, economic, political, religious and spiritual domains. These thinkers addressed the deeper questions of marginality in social, philosophical, and constitutional realms and worked towards building an inclusive society and the world in practice.
In this context, the proposed panel aims to bring together scholarly works that explore the vision and centrality of inclusivity in the writings and actions of modern Indian thinkers such as Ahilyabai, Phule, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Tilak, Savarkar, Ambedkar, and Gandhi. The panel will examine how their ideas contributed to shaping a more inclusive vision for Indian society and provide potential learnings for the world.