Rajiv Malhotra

What is the logic of my argument ? Am I proposing a ‘westology’? Let me briefly explicate my stances, beginning with the last question. If we are not to simply sell slogans and our claims should carry bite, we need to say what this ‘westology’ is or could be. My stance: such a ‘westology’ cannot even be properly conceptualized, let alone carried out. 1.1. What does it mean (however intuitively …

Two substantial questions have been raised in response to what I wrote : (a) why do we need to study and understand the Western culture in order to access our own traditions? (b) Is it my claim that Buddha and Shankara (for example) are irrelevant to us? One other sort of ‘objection’ too has surfaced, albeit disguised as a characterization of what I have said: (c) is not my position itself …

Can history-centrism cause some religion or the other to be belief-based? The notion of “history-centrism” is too vague to allow a serious answer. In so far as this refers to a “Grand narrative”, and this narrative is either an oral or a written account, it is a candidate for the status of ‘belief’. Consequently, your question takes the following form: Does “believing in” the truth of some or …

1.1. The inherent logic of such an enterprise forces one, as it were, to build alternate theories to the existing, ‘western’ theories. Instead of explaining this statement in the abstract, let me take a concrete example to illustrate what I mean. 1.2. In the University of Chicago, there is a certain Richard Shweder. He practices ‘Cultural Psychology’, and is (was?) professor of ‘Human …