Lower income Hindu women's attitude towards abortion: a case study in urban India

After a brief discussion of Hindu views on abortion as reflected in classical Hindu philosophical and religious texts, this article examines, from an interdisciplinary perspective, current social attitudes towards abortion among lower-income Hindu women in Calcutta and attempts to identify the reasons for the striking disparity between traditional and modern Hindu views. Does Hindu dharma have the regulatory power it wielded in the past? What accounts for the changing face of mores in urban centers like Calcutta? These and related issues are the focus of this essay.     

The Relationship Between Group Identification and Satisfaction with Life in a Cross-Cultural Community Sample

A variety of studies have shown that group identification (a sense of belonging to one’s social group, coupled with a sense of commonality with the group’s members) is linked to high levels of satisfaction with life (SWL). The aim of the present study was to support and extend this literature by: (1) investigating the link between group identification and SWL with a large cross-cultural community sample; (2) examining whether the relationship is moderated by nationality; and (3) considering whether SWL is enhanced by possessing multiple group identifications simultaneously. Utilizing data from Wave 1 of the Health in Groups project, 3829 participants from both Scotland and Italy completed a questionnaire assessing their identification with their family, their local community, and a group of their choice, as well as their level of SWL. Higher identification with each group predicted higher SWL. Nationality was a marginal moderator of the relationship between family identification and SWL, with the relationship being stronger for Italian participants than for Scottish participants. There was also an additive effect of group identification, with a positive relationship between the number of groups with which participants identified and their SWL. These effects were obtained even after controlling for gender, age, employment status, nationality, and extent of contact with each group. The implications for healthcare professionals and their patients are discussed.     

The Self and the Other: Liberalism and Gandhi

This paper makes an attempt to philosophically re-construct what I have termed as a fundamental paradox at the heart of deontological liberalism. It is argued that liberalism attempts to create the possibilities of rational consensus and of bringing people together socially and politically by developing methodologies which overcome the divisive nature of essentially parochial substantive conceptions of the good. Such methodologies relying on the supposed universally valid dictates of reason and notions of procedural rationality proceed by disengaging men from the divisive particularities of their plural value contexts. That disengagement is sought to be achieved by conceptualizing the individual as self sufficient in her moral and epistemic being thereby conceptually isolating individual man from the other. The liberal effort to create rational consensus which can bring people together then gets off the ground by isolating the individual from the other. This I have termed as the paradox of the self and the other or alternatively the paradox of social atomism and universalism. As a possible philosophical alternative this paper makes an attempt to re-construct Gandhi’s conceptualization of the relationship between swaraj as self rule and Satyagraha as non-violent resistance. This Gandhian connection, it is argued, has the potential to transform the moral psychology of our response to the other, thereby posing a challenge to the modern, predominantly liberal, conceptualization of such a response.     

Depression: Psychological Referrals in Nursing Homes

Studies in nursing homes have consistently shown the presence of mental health disorders. We assessed 300 nursing home residents (referred for psychological testing) to provide preliminary data on referral patterns, assess the cognitive and affective patterns of residents with different diagnoses, and present psychometric data on depression measures, including the Beck Depression Scale (BDI) (as a bivariate index) and the Mood Scale (a shortened version of the Geriatric Depression Scale). Results show that the referrals involved a compromised group of residents, both cognitively and affectively. Despite obvious mean differences, a MANOVA revealed that Major Depressive Disorder did not differ significantly from the Adjustment Disorder and Dementia groups on the bivariate BDI and Mood Scale; the dementia group was lower than the depression and adjustment groups on the MMSE. Patterns on depression inventories also identified a correct classification score of 4 on the BDI (89%) and 3 on the Mood Scale (79%). Discussion endorsed use of the bivariate BDI and addressed depression in these facilities.     

Mental Health Issues of Breast Cancer Patients: The Kerala Context

The present study was a qualitative enquiry into the mental health issues of breast cancer patients in Kerala. The sample consisted of thirty mastectomy inpatients in the age range 20–60 years, undergoing chemotherapy/radiation therapy for the past 6 months to 1 year. The interview data were thematically analysed, and the major emergent themes elicited were psychopharmacological and socio-economic in nature. Treatment-related issues included dizziness and fatigue, whereas fear of death, fear of recurrence, discrimination, inability to take care of their children, and the escalating cost of treatment were the main psychological concerns.     

Freedom and the Dynamics of the Self and the ‘Other’; Re-constructing the Debate Between Tagore and Gandhi

Tagore and Gandhi shared a relationship across 26 years. They argued about many things including the means for the attainment of swaraj/freedom. In terms of this central concern with the nature of freedom they came fairly close to an issue that has perhaps dominated the (European) Enlightenment. For the Enlightenment has sought to clarify what is meant by individual freedom and attempted to secure such freedom to the individual. This article argues that the Tagore-Gandhi debate can perhaps be reconstructed around the issue of freedom and the collective. Gandhi was able to employ the idea of collective action with conceptual and practical ease. He seemed to have felt no tension between individual freedom and the notion of the collective of which an individual becomes a part in his/her attempt to deal with the contending ‘other’ and secure his /her freedom/swaraj. To understand Tagore’s opposition to the Gandhian idea of swaraj this article draws a philosophical parallel between Tagore and Kant on individual freedom as primarily the freedom to reason. Tagore’s argument seemed to have centered on the insight that the location of the individual in a collective hypostatized self in order to protect his or her freedom from ‘others’ reaffirms the self other divide. The insider-outsider exclusionary dynamics that are generated not only consolidate such distinctions as external to (and outside of) the collective self, but they also initiate internal dynamics that create the ‘silenced insider.’