Category: Political Obligation, Resistance And Revolution

Unlike the Christian tradition (the church-state controversy), in Islamic tradition, the temporal and the spiritual are not dichotomized. The state and political obligation are not outside the Quranic vision. As Karen Armstrong, who has written several books on religions, in her Islam: A Short History, says, ‘A Muslim had to redeem history, and that meant that…

Added to this duality of political and religious obligations, feudal Europe witnessed diffusion and dilution of even political obligation. Feudalism is characterized by diffusion of power, fixed social hierarchies and a rigid pattern of obligations and services. This means that unlike sovereignty of the nation-state, the feudal society had no centrally located power, no concept…

With the emergence of Christianity and decline of the Roman period, the issue of political obligation came to be debated from political as well as religious angles; what obligation a Christian bears to a king. The dictum that was put before the people appeared to be what Jesus had said and St. Paul had dutifully…

Greek political theory celebrated the polis but did not differentiate society from the State. Polis was all-encompassing and lack of distinction between the State and society meant lack of any distinction between the rights of individuals and authority of the polis. The two were merged and political obligation was as much a matter of civic…

Political Obligation during the Greek Period From Pericles to Aristotle, democracy was cradled in Athens, one of the most celebrated Greek poleis, city-states. The polis was a celebration of public life. Such was the importance they attached to political life and participation of individuals in the public life of the polis that those who were uninterested in the affairs…

Political obligation may imply obligation towards the State and the Constitution as well as resistance against them depending upon particular circumstances. For example, before independence it became the political obligation of the Indians to resist the colonial state but after we attained independence and had a Constitution of our own, the scope of political obligation…

Why should the state be respected and its laws obeyed? Answer to this question can vary if one looks from different perspectives. For some, it is because the authority of the state is divinely ordained (Divine rights) but for some others, it is because there is transcendental purpose in the journey of the state (teleos…

Let us begin by discussing dimensions of obligation to differentiate political obligation from other dimensions and also to see what linkages they bear with each other: Obligation could be: (i) moral obligation, (ii) coercive obligation, (iii) legal obligation and (iv) political obligation. Moral obligation: Moral obligation, as the term suggests, arises out of a sense of right or wrong and moral…

Obligation means a condition to perform a duty or fulfil a requirement. Such a condition may arise mainly due to moral or legal compulsions, e.g. obligation to speak the truth or to fulfil a legal contract. Political obligation means obligation of citizens towards the constitution and the state, its orders, commands, rules and authority. At…