Balagangadhara

While reading this contribution and all the others ([1] , [3] ) I hope to write, we need to keep the context in mind. The context is this: many intellectuals, both in India and among the NRIs elsewhere, appear bent on transforming our multiple traditions into a single ‘religion’ called ‘Hinduism’. The problem does not lie in the transformation of variety and diversity into a unity. Rather, it lies …

Let me begin this contribution, the third piece about our culture and traditions([1] , [2] ), by sharing something you are familiar with. Very often, I have heard the NRI parents in the USA making the following remark: When I came to the US so many decades ago, I knew very little about Hinduism. My ignorance was driven home when I had children and they began to ask what Hinduism was. Because I had …

When we go-about with our fellow human beings, we need to possess some or another idea about the nature of ourselves and our fellow human beings. (Call it, for the sake of convenience, an ‘intuitive theory’ about human beings.) It is an implicit understanding because each one of us does not have to be a professional philosopher or psychologist to get along with ourselves and fellow human beings. …

Balagangadhara points out an inconsistent reasoning of the western and westernized Scholars, as well as the last 400 years of humanities scholarship. “Let me summarise the dilemma. Some properties are necessary for some traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) to be religions. If one accepts this, the threat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all. For some reason or another (I …

Colonialism has been one of the most significant phenomena in the history of humankind in the last three hundred years or so. Its importance can hardly be overstated. Yet, as many have said before, it has not been adequately theorized. There is of course a great deal of material on the histories, the effects, and the political resistances to colonialism. Reading them, however, merely increases the …

As Indians, if we have to access the Indian traditions we need two things: (a) it must be possible for us to access them; (b) we must know how to access them. That is to say, growing up in the Indian traditions not merely means that we have the possibility of accessing them if we want to but we have also learnt how to access them when we want to. Only for the sake of convenience, let me put it …

“How do we understand the idea that an enlightened person has no wants?” Before we understand what the idea says, it would be good to find out what it does not say. Understanding this would also allow us to appreciate the depth and extent of colonial consciousness. If you look at the way the Buddha was portrayed in the middle-class text books you studied (that is also how he was more or less …

One of the most common characteristics of the African culture is supposed to be its tribal nature. You could begin a study of ‘how’ European intellectuals came to this characterization. It will have something to do with the way the Jews are differentiated internally, the novelty of what they confronted in Africa, and the inability to conceptualize what ’tribes’ really are. Such a research, which …

There is ethics in India, but it is not normative ethics. It is a non-normative ethics. To get you going, consider acts like ‘generosity’, ‘kindness’, ‘bravery’, ‘friendliness’ and such like. Often called ‘virtues’, these actions do not come under the scope of normative ethics. You cannot say: “one ought to be generous”, because generosity implies doing ‘more than’ what is expected in the act of …

How the Indians learn whatever they learn will be in accordance with their ways of going-about in the world. That is to say, the configuration of learning determines how they learn whatever it is they learn. What do they learn from the West? That theoretical knowledge is the foundation of all human going-about. That is, that their activities have to be theoretically founded. However, in the …

The first question: could we have EIA of units smaller than the Cosmos? An explanatorily intelligible account of any object, whatever that object is, is one where causal (say) and intentional explanations fall together. The causal account provides, let us say, an explanation that makes it clear what the causal antecedents of some object (or event, or phenomenon) are. (For the sake of this …

The problem about translating ‘sruti’ is not as easy as it has been made out to be. Is it possible to translate it as ‘revelation’ or even as ‘divine revelation’? Because it has so far been translated in this manner, we can only conclude that it is indeed possible to do so. Next issue: how accurate is this translation? The answer to this question depends upon what ‘revelation’ or ‘divine …

Of course, the concept of explanatorily intelligible account is not easy to grasp: if it were, the ‘heathens’ would not be blind to the existence of religion. However, that does not mean we cannot grasp it either. I am glad you are beginning to see why the story about ‘Jesus as a Yogi’ (Sankrant’s famous interpretation) is wrong; and why discussions on Sulekha drive me sometimes to despair and the …

(I) In a Greek story, Persephone spends part of the year in the underworld and part of the year on earth, and winter is caused by her mother Demeter’s sorrow at parting, and spring by her mother’s joy at reuniting. When taken at face value, this story makes the change of seasons be because of someone’s emotions, and hence intelligible. Two points with respect to this. (a) I do not think that the …

I Let me begin by clarifying what the notion of intelligibility says. The first thing to keep in mind is that Religion makes (i.e. transforms, renders, or any such synonym) the Cosmos (used interchangeably with ’the world’, ’the Universe’, etc) into an entity that is intelligible. In the process, and by virtue of it, the explanatory account makes itself intelligible as well. That is, Religion is …

I have also come across expressions of similar thoughts and feelings both in India and in Europe and the United States. However, I think there are multiple grounds that generate such questions. Here are some I have been able to identify. When people hear me say that the western intellectuals of the last three hundred years or more are completely wrong, invariably people skeptically wonder whether …

I have come to accept that the most interesting facts that a theory explains are those of the theory itself. Furthermore, a ’theory’, which collects all kinds of facts first and tries to ’explain’ them subsequently, is worse than having no theory. Such a theory is completely ad hoc and is cognitively uninteresting. It is pernicious too because it generates the belief that one understands such …

Irrespective of what Hindu kids are told we have, they will discover later that that all the beliefs they have heard and been taught about, everything about the Ten Commandments and the manifestations of the ‘brahman’, and so on are based on stories. They will discover too that these gods of their, these ‘manifestations’ of Brahman, display immoral and disgusting behaviors: like incest, adultery, …

Many are concerned that English translations of some words from native languages distort their meaning. If we restrict ourselves to terms like ‘Deva’, ‘Dharma’ and such like, the worry is not just that their translations distort the meaning of these words (as we use them in our native languages) but that they suggest something (by way of reference and meaning) that does not even exist in these …

I do not have a theory of meaning. I do not know which of the many fragmentary theories of meaning I should choose from and why. Even though I acknowledge the importance of the topic, I do not feel called upon to do research on it. So far, I have been able to steer clear of the topic in an interesting way: I am able to show that what appears as translation problem or a meaning problem (how should …