Social Justice & Church Authority: The Public Life of Archbishop Robert E. Lucey.

The Right to Information Act 2005 was passed by the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) Government with a sense of pride. It flaunted the Act as a milestone in India’s democratic journey. It is five years since the RTI was passed; the performance on the implementation frontis far from perfect. Consequently, the impact on the attitude, mindset and behaviour patterns of the public authorities and the people is not as it was expected to be. Most of the people are still not aware of their newly acquired power. Among those who are aware, a major chunk either does not know how to wield it or lacks the guts and gumption to invoke the RTI. A little more stimulation by the Government, NGOs and other enlightened and empowered citizens can augment the benefits of this Act manifold. RTI will help not only in mitigating corruption in public life but also in alleviating poverty- the two monstrous maladies of India.

Download Full-text

The Speaking Silence of Citizens in Shakespeare’s Richard III

10.1093/oso/9780198806899.003.0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas Cartelli

Keyword(s):

Public Life ◽

Richard Iii ◽

The Public

This chapter examines the commentative words and silences of the citizenry in Richard III, noting that although silence was customarily expected from commoners in the presence of the elite, it could also signify, in both Shakespeare’s version of Richard’s reign and Thomas More’s, the inscrutable resistance of a dissident citizenry. In London, citizen debate and discussion, informed and intelligent, comprised an important forum of Elizabethan public life; and in Shakespeare’s play, citizen non-compliance with the manipulative fabrications of Richard and Buckingham disrupts the performance/reception dynamic to undercut the bonding of the theatre’s citizen audience with the hitherto charismatic Richard. Though their speaking silence betokens the proud heritage of citizen resistance to royal and aristocratic presumption and contempt, Richard and Buckingham obtusely misread this as obtuseness, revealing themselves to be held in a kind of self-hypnosis by the public transcript, memorably subverted by Shakespeare.

Download Full-text

‘Everything Belongs to God’

10.1093/oso/9780198813415.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Walter Rech

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Public Good ◽

Economic Inequality ◽

Private Ownership ◽

Social Conflicts ◽

The Public ◽

The Social ◽

Wealth Redistribution ◽

Social Teachings

This chapter examines and contextualizes Sayyid Qutb’s doctrine of property and social justice, which he articulated at a time of deep social conflicts in Egypt. The chapter describes how Qutb, along with other writers concerned with economic inequality in the 1920s–40s such as Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949) and Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri (1895–1971), conceptualised private ownership as a form of power that must be limited by religious obligations and subordinated to the public good. The chapter further shows that Qutb made this notion of restrained property central to a broader theory of social justice and wealth redistribution by combining the social teachings of the Qur’an with the modern ideal of the centralized interventionist state. Arguably this endeavour to revitalise the Quranic roots of Islamic charity and simultaneously appropriate the discourse of modern statehood made Qutb’s position oscillate between legalism and anti-legalism.

Download Full-text