Social Sciences

(a) Paolo Friere, a Brazilian educationalist, has spoken about such a phenomenon at length in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He calls it as an ‘internalisation of the oppressor by the oppressed’. Whether we use Paolo Friere’s terminology or the much later one of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, the problem is the same: both name the phenomenon without explaining it. In and of itself, not such a big problem …

There is, on the one hand, the intellectual tradition of expressing opinions and points of view. Here, as it suits thoughtful minds, one tries to express ideas carefully and in a nuanced fashion. Recent peer-opinions are taken into account; generalizations are avoided; the attention is on the specific and the concrete; and, where possible, one’s ideas are either founded upon or embroidered by some …

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 …

I do understand the anger that people feel when they read Jeffrey Kripal’s and other people’s assessment of Indian traditions. If someone were to come up with a similar distortion of my own cultural heritage, I would probably feel the same. However, I do feel troubled when people end up calling Kripal a “cheat’’, a “spiritual bandit” or begin to speculate about hidden ‘agendas’. My problem is not …

Though the book was published nearly two decades ago, Said’s Orientalism continues to be topical. Many have rejected the message of this work; others have attempted to develop its arguments yet further. This article will not be one more interpretation of Said’s book; after all, there are many such interpretations, including Said’s own. Instead, it probes the phenomenon of ‘post-Orientalism’. Even …

Let us begin in a very intuitive way and ask ourselves this question: where do we encounter ‘cultural differences’? In human contacts, of course. What kind of human contacts? In inter-individual contacts. That is, we see (or sense, or intuit or whatever) cultural differences in our contacts with individual human beings. You do not meet ’the western culture’ but individual Americans, Germans, …

I do not believe that any cultural practice (i.e. a practice that has survived and been transmitted through successive generations) should be explained by attributing beliefs to its practitioners in such a way that the beliefs make the practitioners come out stupid. Why do I say this? There are primarily two reasons: our ignorance and the principle of ‘charity’. Let me explain. (a) Our ignorance. …

The general pattern that has come to the fore is that Wendy and her children (including Jeffrey Kripal) systematically portray the Indian traditions in an unfavorable light, even when compared to how religions like Christianity, Islam and Judaism are portrayed. This claim is made in several articles, independent of whether these religions and the Indian traditions are true or false, whether they …

To begin with, there is the feeling that scientific explanations, with their emphasis on rationality and objectivity, are reductive in nature. Wherein lies the root of this feeling? Let us say that some physical theory describes the motion of a snow flake gently floating down to earth or a rose petal lazily spinning in the air. Or that some branch of human genetics computes the probability of a …

I want to raise three issues: (a) how to analyze what Rajiv portrays about Wendy and her children in the field of religious studies; (b) depending on that, what an adequate response consists of. Before we do either (this is one of the things I have discovered through my own research during the last two decades), we need to be clear about (c) how we should not analyze this situation. Given that all …