The problem with the advaita tradition today is its lack of intelligibility. ‘Maya’, for instance, does a tremendous lot of explanatory work, but it is hardly clear what it is; multiple concepts like ‘manas’, ‘buddhi’ and ‘chitta’ occur and we do not know how these concepts relate to each other, whether they refer, whether they are a part of psychological theorizing or merely an exercise in …

I would have liked to make the following points on the IER forum but either of the two moderators are (obviously) willing to be courteous enough to post my letter on their forum, despite my explicit request. Let me react to their letters on this forum, and I shall leave it there for the time being. Neither Michael Witzel nor Steve Farmer answers my request for clarifications but simply take off on …

Steve Farmer is not an expert on secularism only in the sense that he has followed it from the ‘outside’ (meaning, probably, he has not written anything about the issue himself). Apparently, the reason why he has not contributed to the debate has to do with the fact that (a) no legitimate researcher can take the debate seriously; and (b) Farmer is one such. Witness how he describes it: “I’ve …

As I have often said, the most intriguing aspect of the Indian culture is the kind of knowledge it produced and encouraged people to produce: experiential knowledge which emerges by systematically reflecting on our (human) experiences in the world. As human beings, our experiences are many: no one set, no one kind of experience exhausts what we go through. From the purely personal experiences of …

With some justifiable distortion, one can claim that the Indian Adhyatmic traditions revolve partially around some ‘philosophical’ questions: what is real and what is existence? Is there a distinction between the two and, if yes, how to draw that line? This is a distortion because the debate never took this form; it is justifiable nonetheless to present it this way because it gives us a handle to …

One of the questions that has come up in this discussion is the following: are we logically forced to assume the ’existence’ of, say, Rama or Krishna, when we ‘believe’ in them? This question has partly been responsible for the discussion about the ‘historicity’ of Ramayana. Here is my answer as I see the situation today. In some sense, we all work with some notions (however vague they might be) …

One of the debates in the Indian traditions is about the kind of creatures that exist in the world and about the reality of what exists. The Jains, for instance, disagreed that the “deva’s” of other traditions (with the properties they were supposed to possess) existed in this world or were real. (Their so-called ‘atheism’ is a result of this debate.) Consequently, when they call Valmiki Ramayana …

Are there Jati’s in India? Yes, there are. What kind of units or entities are they? I do not know; neither does anybody for that matter. It is a matter of fact that (a) they are not occupational groups; (b) they are not social classes (that is, there is no correlation between Jati’s and the ‘means of production’); (c) appear hereditary (though one could obtain certificates that ‘change’ one’s …

You say: “If ‘caste’ or ‘jati’ has the same status as alumni associations and similar social groups, with their varying practices, it seems we are prepared to say that ‘jati’ has no special place in the Indian society in the same way that my alumni association has no special status in Indian society.” This sentence is the problematic one. First of all, it does not follow (either empirically or …

I would like to pick up the thread on ‘the caste system’ and begin at the beginning. Let us find out what we are discussing about and disagreeing with. Assuming for this entire post, ‘caste’ is an English word for ‘Jati’, the first question is: 1. Are there Jati’s in India? Yes, of course, there are. No one is denying this obvious fact. 2. Is there a system of Jati in India? This question is …

Today, both in India and abroad, we see the emergence of a new intellectual trend: based on painstaking research, to write an accurate history of India. What is new about this approach? In one sense, as I shall explain in this article, this attempt is not novel; in another sense, which too shall be explained, there is something very new in it. I shall talk about both in the course of answering the …

Before deciding about whether or not Vivekananda was ethnocentric, jingoistic or even plain intolerant, one has to understand what Vivekananda was saying. In doing so, the interpretative “principle of charity” requires us to render him maximally consistent. Consider the title of this thread: “All religions are true”. Spelling-out Vivekananda’s stance regarding this theme presupposes the ability …

When a religion claims that it is the word of God and that the word is unconditionally true; and that, further, the word is about the Cosmos: everything that was, is and shall be. So, when I say that religion is such an entity, namely, it claims that it is the word of God and that it claims to be unconditionally true and that it is about the Cosmos, I am accepting the self description of religion. …

When we consider Paul Hacker’s story on ‘inclusivism as a typically Indian thought form’, all we can conclude is that he has used a typically Christian thought form to understand an aspect of the Indian cultural traditions, which he is unable to understand because it is completely different from what he knows. Hacker’s inclusivism is merely an attempt to strip the following Christian account from …

Opening a dictionary to find out the meaning of an English word might indeed be an elementary student’s choice, but, if used as a methodology for settling scientific and philosophical discussions, I am afraid, it is a rather poor choice. Imagine a physicist living around the turn of the last century doing something similar when Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity. “Oh! I say,” we …

If we want to grasp the nature of the discussions in the Indian traditions, there is much we need to do beforehand: (a) identify the entity they were talking about; (b) identify the specific questions they were answering; (c) identify the generic questions that defined both the outlines of the acceptable answers and the formulation of the specific questions; etc. (The ‘cetera’ indicates that I do …

Consider the question: “why superstition?” Our problem lies in circumscribing this notion itself: is it something we should use to characterize beliefs, or attitudes, or theories or actions or all of them? Our linguistic usage allows it mostly of ‘beliefs’ and to the act of believing: to believe that walking under the ladder brings bad; to believe that vampires exist and walk as ordinary humans in …

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 …