The Pseudoscience Of Indology: An Interview With Joydeep Bagchee

Transcultural Studies, 2014

The article shows that the concept of ‘Indian Philosophy’ is the joint product of two philosophical cultures. One culture is Western philosophy that feels the need for wisdom. Therefore Indian philosophy is conceived of as ‘mystical’ or ‘spiritual’ philosophy. The other is the Indian nineteenth century culture of reform thinking. Together with Western philologist the Indians highlight the ‘mystical’ or ‘spiritual’ school of Vedanta philosophy as ‘the’ Indian philosophy. Vedanta philosophy as spiritual philosophy distinguished India from the West. It was a political project that functioned within India’s quest for independency. Modern Indian philosophers have been in the process of reconsidering this concept, especially after the appropriation of Western scientific culture.

Long-gone are the parochial pockets of partition within our ever-shrinking global village – those isolated, insular enclaves of xenophobia we’ve come to crave. Our contemporary, turbulent period in history is not the first time that Europe has faced an influx of new immigrants (and the accompanying new ideas which are, inevitably, introduced simultaneously). May we not shrink from this notion of true internationalism as the march of time quickens afoot. As a champion for Indian independence, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was indeed a staunch advocate of both the neo-Advaita renaissance and the newfound political landscape of secularism. Within this context, it is noted that inter-cultural contact between previously separate and even isolated communities and civilizations is now an everyday experience. Scientifically, globalization had enabled the intentional development of a worldwide commonwealth of spirituality and the formation of a free fellowship of world religions. In today’s globalized environment, bona fide spiritual solidarity must become a living reality – otherwise, all prospects for our own spiritual progress will remain stunted and stagnant. Whether it be inter-continental air travel, the internet, an increasingly-entangled economic infrastructure or today’s pluralistic educational and work environment, it seems we are increasingly being forced to get to know one another. Culture is such in nature that it seeks to naturally spread and expand, much as we have discovered examining closely the etymology behind the root for Brahman, which likewise implies exponential growth and expansion. So, when confronted with an influx of new individuals and new ideas, what should be our response? It quickly becomes apparent that new and challenging ideas present opportunities to grow and expand – Growing Through the Myriad Approaches to Oneness. Dr. James Herndon - a visiting Canadian-American scholar in-residence in INDIA pursuing philosophical research and teaching - has just recently been awarded full-declaration for his PhD thesis on Radhakrishnan’s comparative philosophy. Dr. Herndon truly loves India, as is evidenced by his fresh and imaginative insights into the Eternal Truths. Gmail --------PLEASE EMAIL: [email protected] LinkedIN --- PLEASE CONNECT: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/james-herndon-ph-d-5a3252120 Mobile -------PLEASE PHONE: +91-7760258800

Synkrētic (An Australian Journal of Indo-Pacific Philosophy), 2023

2017

The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a series of exceptional individual acts of philosophical virtuosity. It brings together forty leading international scholars to record the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute philosophy in the geographical region of the Indian subcontinent, a region sometimes nowadays designated South Asia. The volume aims to be ecumenical, drawing from different locales, languages, and literary cultures, inclusive of dissenters, heretics and sceptics, of philosophical ideas in thinkers not themselves primarily philosophers, and reflecting India's north-western borders with the Persianate and Arabic worlds, its north-eastern boundaries with Tibet, Nepal, Ladakh and China, as well as the southern and eastern shores that afford maritime links with the lands of Theravda Buddhism. Indian Philosophy has been written in many languages, including Pali, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Persian, Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi, Tibetan, Arabic and Assamese. From the time of the British colonial occupation, it has also been written in English. It spans philosophy of law, logic, politics, environment and society, but is most strongly associated with wide-ranging discussions in the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysics (how we know and what is there to be known), ethics, metaethics and aesthetics, and metaphilosophy. The reach of Indian ideas has been vast, both historically and geographically, and it has been and continues to be a major influence in world philosophy. In the breadth as well as the depth of its philosophical investigation, in the sheer bulk of surviving texts and in the diffusion of its ideas, the philosophical heritage of India easily stands comparison with that of China, Greece, the Latin west, or the Islamic world.

The main thrust of this project will be an attempt to develop a working model of education, rationality and intellectual work along interdisciplinary and intercultural lines. Doing so with regard to the traditions of Indian as well as (Tibetan) Buddhist thinking is hoped to create a more balanced basis from which to do thinking in cultural studies and the humanities from a global-historical perspective. In order to develop a thorougly intercultural basis for the discursive and epistemological frameworks that contemporary cultural studies and the humanities at large are operating in, the critical effort will have to start out with a self-reflexive investigation of conceptual tools developed in the context of Western Enlightenment humanism. This will not only allow for a broader understanding of global and local histories, including alternative accounts of modernity, but of approaches towards scholarship and science more generally. Accordingly, the aim is to take up at both a theoretical and a methodological level such strands of classical Indian learning as were at best disqualified or appropriated to the benefit of Western “experts” and were at worst put to an end through the epistemic rupture caused by British colonial rule (cf. Kaviraj 2005 "The sudden death of Sanskrit knowledge").

History of Indian Philosophy, 2017

If the history of philosophy could be told without gaps, where and how would Indian philosophy fi t in? And, when all is said and done, what are some of the arguments and positions that could be recruited to advance contemporary debates in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, logic, philosophy of language, ethics, metaethics, moral psychology, political philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of religion? Introductions to Indian philosophy seldom engage these questions. Instead, they proceed to offer prospective readers an appreciation of the richness and real depth of the Indian philosophical tradition in its own terms, and of the intellectual rewards that stand to be gained by delving into it. In this sense, introductions to Indian philosophy differ from introductions to Western philosophy in one signifi cant way: the latter typically lack such incentives, given the widespread assumption (some might say, prejudice) that Western philosophers have shaped not only the way people in the West think about the world today but, in the wake of colonialism, people across the planet. If the study of Indian philosophy, then, is to have scope beyond the confi nes of intellectual history, questions about its own claims and aspirations to truth cannot be ignored. Indeed, such questions concern the ongoing relevance of its rich repertoire of methods, views, and arguments, and not simply their preservation value. The chapters of this volume make their own case for how particular fi gures and texts articulate and seek to answer fundamental questions about the nature of reality and the self, the sources and methods of knowledge, and the norms of moral, social, political, religious, and aesthetic conduct relative to specifi c goals. They map

IndiaFacts, 2018