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Speaking of ’the greatest mystery of our humanness’, Sinari raises the following questions: “Why are we present in the world rather than not being there at all? Why are we present to ourselves as world-experiencers and world-explorers rather than being simply there as perhaps animals are” (p.1) In brief reply to his provocative paper, I would like to reflect on the nature of these queries and with …

Introduction During the last decade or so, a new restlessness has begun to disturb the calm facade of the social scientific academia. As yet, it has no name. Better said, it has many names: from ‘reflexive’ to the ‘post-modern’. The ferment is not widespread, but the voices of discontent are coherent and articulate. The critical voices indicate the many kinds of dissatisfaction they have with the …

FRITS STAAL. Rules Without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences. Toronto Studies in Religion, Vol. 4. New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1989 xxii+490. In order to set the tone of this review article, let me begin straightway with a confession: I have been a closet admirer of Frits Staal ever since I discovered his writings in 1987. The reasons that undergird my attitude are several: …

Today, there are multiple images of India current in the West. There is the mystic India, an image that the German Romantics created and the ‘flower children’ of the sixties made popular. There is the third world India with enormous poverty and suffering, which the developmental workers have projected. There is also the India, the centre of IT outsourcing, which the developments in the last decade …

One of the striking things about the British colonial rule is its success in developing certain ways of talking about the Indian culture and society. The British criticised the Indian ‘religions’, the Indian ‘caste system’, the Indian education system, practices like ‘sati’ and ‘untouchability’, and so on and so forth. They redrew the outlines of Indian intellectual history as indigenous responses …

Before addressing this writing to Jeffrey Kripal, I would like to very clearly stipulate some of my basic stances so that the discussion does not get derailed into these issues. (A) Even though the communication will be directed to the person of Jeffrey Kripal, it is not ad hominem but issue-oriented. However, I will eschew making some kinds of qualifications academics are prone to make, so that …