Balagangadhara

According to your account, Vedanta claims that the world is an illusion and that only the Brahman is real. If the world is an illusion, Vedanta has to deny the reality of the world. To it, in the way you construe Vedanta, the world is the empty set. That is to say, all experiences are on par because they are all illusions. One cannot distinguish between experiences unless one introduces the notion …

A few points about ‘self’ and about what I have said and have not. Comment: “Say, Mr. X made 1 run, 2 runs, 3, 4, n, and a total of 50 runs. Now to say “I made 50 runs” is to assume that, Mr. X who made 1 run, 2 run, etc. is linked to each other, and this organism , in this sense, has a unity. This unity is what Balu calls rubbish”. First, I do not call this ‘unity’ rubbish. Second, this is a …

Paraphrasing Feynman: “the answers proposed like counting angels that can dance on the head of a pin are trivial.” I am not in the least impressed by (in fact, I am disgusted by and contemptuous about) the attitude of the likes of Feynman. Here is one reason why: I too have a criticism of (some) social sciences and (some) aspects of the western philosophy. I too consider that some of these social …

When we provide explanations, we should also look at their contrastive nature: why do puja to cows and not to buffalos? The problem in this case, however, is this: the explanation one gives about a tradition (you will soon see that one of the problems is to identify the explanandum itself) must also incorporate this contrast. Someone like Kanch Ilaiah has answered this question thus: the puja to …

I have discovered that there is a fundamental difference between arguments and theory-building. As a philosopher, I have come to think that one could argue almost any position, within reasonable limits. Mostly, they consist of putting across plausible, or even logically possible considerations in order to show that either some point is plausible or that it could be true. Up to a point, arguments …

What Brig SK Malik says supports my thesis about terrorism, instead of making it redundant, as one suggests. Here is how. In war, killing the enemy is considered a moral and justifiable act, even though ‘killing a fellow human being’ is considered immoral. (This includes many provisos, including that the war is justified.) That is to say, a theory of just war (and warfare) justifies what is …

“What is the relationship between religious intolerance and the acts committed in Mumbai?” This is an empirical question at many levels. If some or another religion is used to defend the attacks in Mumbai, then it depends very much on the kinds of justifications used; the kind of theology in question; the relationship between the belief-states of the perpetrators and their motives; the …

The first thing to notice is that I use the word “ideology” in a technical sense, which is both counter-intuitive and, for the time being, idiosyncratic. It is the first, namely counter-intuitive, because, as I use it, my use of the word does not refer to any theory, or to sets of beliefs, or to what one believes in. Normally, as we use the word in English, ‘ideology’ has multiple meanings: a …

Is bhakti what the bhaktas do, or are people bhaktas because they ‘follow’ (bad choice of words, but there is no other way to put it) the ‘bhakti marga’, or is bhakti neither of the two? I mean: is the bhakta moved because, for example, the child who stole the butter happens to be the Kannan, or because the child, who also happens to be the Lord, stole the butter? If it is the first, it is …

The first thing is that my book is about the western culture and a specific religion, which brought the former forth. It is only indirectly about India because I interrogate the way India was looked at by the western culture. I proffer some hypotheses about India there by consciously remaining within the western framework. You are right in saying that I deny that ‘religions’ called ‘Hinduism’, …

Sasheej Hegde in his EPW article says: “A theory of secularism in the sense of a theory about possessing the concept ‘secular’ is quite distinct from a theory about how the concept secular represents.” It is downright incoherent. He obviously thinks that a theory about secularism (which is a political theory) is about ‘possessing the concept of the secular’ (which is a psychological theory about …

I do not assume that, as you put it, “we are living in complete barrenness of thought but for the light which Balu has thrown.” One would be doing the members of this forum a great disservice by attributing such an assumption to them. They do not believe in this claim anymore than I do. I do not accept this claim at all. From the many reasons I have for not accepting this ridiculous claim, let me …

(1) What is called ‘mysticism’ in the western culture is not the same kind of experience that the different Indian traditions talk about. (2) I do think, as a corollary, that to describe the Indian ’enlightenment’ (let me use this word temporarily, the scare quotes indicate my reservations) as ‘mysticism’ is not to understand either. (3) There are different levels in and different ways to achieve …

Some have expressed the ‘opinion’ that we should all be properly grateful that people express a point of view, even if they do not enter into a debate with the readers, and that the reader should either take this or leave it. Such opinions are based on either a shallow or wrong understanding of what the ‘freedom’ to express one’s opinion is all about. The legal system does not allow one to …

Earlier, I suggested that the psychoanalytical explanations (like the transformation of Linga into a penis as a fertility symbol etc.) not only trivialize and distort but also deny access to our own experience. In this post, I want to highlight one of the consequences of transforming our experiences in this fashion. In at least two different ways, these explanations hinder the emergence of …

As I see it, the issue is not whether Arun Shourie is an intellectual (or whether Prakash Karat and EMS Namboodaripad represent intellectuals). The point I was trying to make is the one between a social movement and intellectuals. Any movement that captures the imagination of a people (or even of a cross-section of a people) has to have some or another kind of narrative. Normally, the crafting of …

The theories (and discussions) about secularism constitute a test case for the claims advanced in ‘The Heathen in his blindness: Asia, the West and the dynamic of religion’ about the universalizing drive of religion. I have suggested that religion spreads by secularizing itself, and that the distinction between the secular and the religious is drawn by and within a religion. If this is the case, …

[Original , published in ASIANetwork Exchange XVI (1): 57–63.] During the last two decades, I have been pursuing an unorthodox way of studying cultural differences, focusing mainly on the Indian and the western cultures. Because I believe that one can answer questions about the circumscription of the words ‘Indian’ and ‘western’ cultures satisfactorily (Balangangadhara, 1994), I will assume their …

Review of Imaging Hinduism: A Postcolonial perspective. By Sharada Sugirtharajah. Routledge, 2003. 164 pages This book is the first of its kind to bring post-colonial perspectivesinto a study of Hinduism. Consequently, there are no conventionalreference points for the author to use to build her narrative. She has to figure out how to use the conceptual apparatus ofthe one to study the other. In …

In one sense, the title of the piece captures the nature of the tasks facing the contemporary generation, whether in India or in the Diaspora. This generation, unlike many from mine, is confident and self-assured; perhaps, it is proud too about the strength of its culture and traditions. Rightly so. However, personal convictions about the value of our traditions and culture do not automatically …