Abstract
Hindu philosophy and its associated meditative traditions have historically been characterized as renunciatory and world-negating, producing an ethic of political passivity, quietism, and indifference. In contrast, I demonstrate here that both the orthodox systems of Hindu philosophy and the heterodox Tantric tradition have been enlisted in service of a variety of socio-political commitments and projects, within and outside India. The more important question is whether these traditions inspire the ossification of conventional hierarchies or the emergence of radical, emancipatory, or liberatory commitments. I argue here that Tantra, a dissident tradition of thought and practice, contains a progressive potential for critiquing and subverting the hierarchical, masculinist politics of gender, sexuality, and caste in contemporary India.
