The Search for a Good Life

How might a good life be pursued in conditions of adversity? While India’s economic development seems to be soaring on paper, the on-ground realities for most are further hardships and worsening conditions. This talk, based on the book Souls in the Kalyug: The Politics and Cosmologies of Migrant Workers in Contemporary India, brings together questions of labour, politics, community and cosmology to consider how a good life might be pursued, even in conditions of adversity. Drawing on the lives of migrant workers in a metal factory in Delhi, the anchoring site of a long-term ethnography, as well as their relationships and religious worldviews across city and village, the book explores the different ways in which they resist oppression and imagine a life beyond the constraints of their circumstances. The talk traces this in three parts. In the factory, workers engage in resistance and collective struggles against perceived oppression and injustice. In city and village alike, they weave integrative filaments of empathetic closeness and fellowship with one another. In the cosmological domain, they attempt to resist soul-distorting processes in present, decivilizing times. Through these activities, they strive towards, and at times realize, diverse elements of a good life. How do people respond to injustice, forge bonds of friendship and solidarity, and seek to preserve their sense of self in these morally and spiritually troubled times?