Although liberty has been valued in various ways in many times and places, only in Europe did it become a central preoccupation before the nineteenth century, and a subject of widespread public reflection. Appeals to liberty and concerns about it found expression in two idioms: a singular one that harked back to Rome and Greece, and regarded liberty as universal or innate; and a plural one associated with the overlapping jurisdictions of ‘feudal’ society that saw liberty as an assemblage of separate rights or privileges (often taken as synonyms), attributed sometimes to custom and sometimes to higher authorities that granted them. Although distinct, the two languages were seldom seen as in tension before the eighteenth century. The chapter examines their relations in different contexts and concludes by noting that the very pervasiveness of claims to enjoy, embody, or represent liberty led to a recognition of how easily invocations of it could become rhetorical tools to justify control over others, leading to Machiavelli’s incisive reflections on the dialectical relations between liberty and domination.

In our contribution to the debate on African ethics and education, this chapter provides the reader with some insights into the interplay between African ethics and education through the fundamental principles of Ubuntu. Despite some of the criticism raised against Ubuntu as moral philosophy, this chapter shows how the principles of Ubuntu influence character formation in education in Southern Africa. It is through education that morally appropriate behavior is transmitted from one generation to the other. To avoid generalization on a culturally diverse continent like Africa, the chapter makes specific reference to the sub-Saharan countries of Zimbabwe and, to a lesser extent, Botswana and Zambia. The chapter claims that Ubuntu, as a conduit for moral development, has not been given adequate attention in the field of education. Ubuntu is important in creating the kind of citizens Africa needs, individuals who are critical thinkers, whose allegiance is to humanity rather than to personalities and localities. Transmitted through education, Ubuntu helps citizens to embrace democracy and diversity. Ubuntu principles of communalism, justice, love, humility, tolerance, and honesty can be used to address challenges besetting education in Africa and society in general and to promote national and human development.

In this chapter, I focus on the Bengali-language Arshinagar (2015) directed by Aparna Sen, and the Hindi-language Dhadak (2018) written and directed by Shashank Khaitan. Both films are adaptations of Romeo and Juliet that place the play within the context of current socio-political issues of communalism and honour killings in India.

Despite many flaws, including variable quality and a lack of universal standards, peer review – the formal process of critically assessing knowledge claims prior to publication – remains a bedrock norm of science. It therefore also underlies the scientific authority of the IPCC. Most literature used in IPCC assessments has already been peer reviewed by scientific journals. IPCC assessments are themselves reviewed at multiple stages of composition, first by Lead Authors, then by scientific experts and non-governmental organisations outside the IPCC, and finally by government representatives. Over time, assessment review has become increasingly inclusive and transparent: anyone who claims expertise may participate in review, and all comments and responses are published after the assessment cycle concludes. IPCC authors are required to respond to all comments. The IPCC review process is the most extensive, open, and inclusive in the history of science. Challenges include how to manage a huge and ever-increasing number of review comments, and how to deal responsibly with review comments that dispute the fundamental framing of major issues.

This chapter shows how Templer recognised that the MCP’s October 1951 Resolutions had shifted the strategic initiative to government, but also that it had increased the importance of winning hearts and minds. It shows how he increased both punishment an

This chapter shows how Hindu nationalist ideology blurs the distinction between religion and state politics. Religious sentiments are subsumed into the national and cultural discourse to the extent that for many contemporary Hindus, nationalism has overtaken the function of faith as a perspective through which to understand the world. The chapter traces the current hospitable space in India for religious nationalism to the cultural nationalism in the late nineteenth century among both Hindus and Muslims that emerged in defense of self and identity against colonial cultural values. However, nationalism and faith have never bifurcated completely, and exclusivity became a defining feature of Hindu nationalism. Further, the chapter traces anti-Muslim violence to “the primary ingredients of the Hindutva ideological apparatus” and describes how the apparatus is used to incite communal violence. The chapter presents a penetrating analysis of how the Hindutva uses religion in intra-Hindu politics and how Hindutva’s accommodation of Hinduism’s diversity insidiously maintains primacy of particular rituals and myths employed to promote the concept of a monolithic nation with a “national soul” and in the service of uniting all Hindus in the name of the “Nation-God,” while leaving the internal inequalities intact.

The final chapter evaluates the state of the region before the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and illustrates how colonial practices produced a disputed postcolonial borderland in independent India. It reexamines local perspectives and the political rearticulation of Ladakh as a crucial frontier of India against threats from China and Pakistan. Finally, it highlights the enduring legacy of imperial border making: the inherited complex of practices and ideas about territory, borders, and security, magnified by the significance of a nation-state for which its citizens were willing to die.