Indian Political Thought: Themes and Thinkers | Third Edition | By Pearson

7

Political Ideas of Kabir

—Himanshu Roy

Introduction

This paper focusses on the political ideas of Kabir which form a discourse of an alternative society of his time. Kabir’s critique of state, particularly of judicial and revenue administration, his utopia of Begumpura, of an ideal village polity without any private property, taxation and injustice, his secularism premised on monotheism and syncretism with the absence of critique of patriarchy or his idea of gender equality needs to be explained. His praxis in private and public domain which were fused, not separate, also requires to be analysed in the backdrop of his ideas. Both, the ideas and the praxis, revolutionary in nature thus, represented the avant-garde of subalternity of his time. ...