The Christian Quaker: George Keith and the Keithian Controversy

How did the early Quakers understand the relationship between Quakerism and Christianity? Did they think faith in Jesus was necessary? What did they mean by the ‘Light within’? These were the central issues in the Keithian controversy: an explosive schism which broke out among Philadelphian Quakers in the 1690s when George Keith – arguably the most influential Quaker theologian of the seventeenth century – was accused of focusing too heavily on the Incarnate Jesus in his preaching. Keith left the movement under a cloud, and the Keithian controversy has often been explained away in terms of personality and politics. However, this volume presents a theological reading of the dispute. Through a study of Keith’s personal theological development, Madeleine Ward presents his departure from the movement as a significant case – study in the contested relationship between Quakerism and Christianity – and, ultimately, as a battle for the spiritual heart of the Religious Society of Friends.

The Mikado and the Shogun (P.V. Narasimha Rao and Arjun Singh)

This chapter describes the personality and politics of Arjun Singh who was Minister of MHRD for about nine years in two spells (1991–95 and 2004–9), and left a deep imprint on Indian education policies. It also describes the developments during 1991–6, a watershed in Indian economic and political history which among others marked the end of Nehruvian era and the unquestioned sway of hegemony of the liberal-left ideas about nationalism, identity, and secularism which were regnant from Independence. It outlines how Arjun Singh built his political career around a fiery commitment to secularism, leftist economic ideology, and social justice, and how that commitment served him well in his battles with political rivals including the Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. It also outlines Arjun Singh’s strategic use of MHRD to cultivate ‘progressive’ intellectuals, and further his political agenda. It elaborates the conceptual underpinnings of the perennial controversy about school history books, and offers a blow by blow account of the controversy during period 1967–1996 which includes the reign of Indira Gandhi, Janata Party, and P.V. Narasimha Rao.

The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away (Judicial Policymaking)

This chapter describes the personality and politics of Murli Manohar Joshi who was the Minister of Human Resource Development (MHRD) during the NDA Government (1998–2004), first truly non-Congress Party Government at the Centre with an idea of India which was starkly at variance with that of Nehru. It also describes the achievements of Joshi such as enacting the Constitutional Amendment to make Right to Elementary Education as Fundamental Right, and launch of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) as well as the controversies which enveloped the NCERT School History textbooks, the National Curricular Framework (NCF), 2000. It briefly outlines the competing schools of pedagogy, critiques NCF, 2000, and its proposal to incorporate education about religions in school curriculum. It also describes the growth of private universities as a result of the liberalization of regulations for deemed universities as well as permissive State Laws, the issue of UGC regulations on private university, and the landmark Supreme Court judgment in Yash Pal case which spawned a powerful New UGC that was a species different from that created by the UGC Act, 1956.

Selling ourselves short? How abbreviated measures of personality change the way we think about personality and politics

Political scientists who study the interplay between personality and politics overwhelmingly rely on short personality scales. We explore whether the length of theemployed personality scales affects the criterion validity of the scales. We show that Need for Cognition (NfC) increases reliance on party cues, but only when a longermeasure is employed. Additionally, while NfC increases reliance on policy information, the effect is more than twice as large when a longer measure is used. Finally, Big Five personality traits that have been dismissed as irrelevant to political ideology yield stronger and more consistent associations when larger batteries are employed. We also show that using high Cronbach’s alpha and factor loadings as indicators of scale qualitydoes not improve the criterion validity of brief measures. Hence, the measurement of personality conditions the conclusions we draw about the role of personality in politics