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Hospitality as Openness to the Other

Levinas, Derrida and the Indian Hospitality Ethos

Siby K. George is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai – 400 076, India. E-mail: kgsiby{at}iitb.ac.in

In contemporary discourses on cosmo-political hospitality, contributions of Derrida, and especially of Levinas, have special significance on account of the vision, scale and relevance of their discussions on the theme, in the context of an increasingly globalizing international scene, and the consequent global encounter with diversity. The article strives to read the Indian hospitality tradition and ethos, articulated in several of India's culturally significant texts, and available in some way as a cultural practice even to this day (propped up by a heritage of tolerance and acceptance of difference, which, however, has not necessarily translated into egalitarian social structures), through the lenses of cosmo-political hospitality, found in the writings of Levinas and Derrida, as openness to the other, irrespective of social labels imposed on her/him. Although homely, ritualistic and hierarchical, Indian hospitality was always universalistic in intent. The article argues that an attempt to recapture the core of the Indian ethos of hospitality, should take into account this universalistic intent, revisited as genuine openness to the other person, in the light of contemporary concerns raised by Levinas and Derrida, and fully awake to India's and the world's transformed context.

Journal of Human Values, Vol. 15, No. 1, 29-47 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/097168580901500103


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