School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemDisenchantment of Secularism: The West and India(Springer, 2014)This Chapter is an exercise in comparative secularism. In this chapter I will be concerned basically with a critique of Western conceptions of secularism, beginning with Hegel’s invention of a particular reading of secularism that, through imperialist literature, gave a preeminent direction to the ideology of the less-religiously orientated Indian nationalists during their drawn-out independence struggle. My main concern will be to contrast the Western debates on ‘the secular’, particularly in its recent permutations or attempted revisions as a response to the crisis of modernity, with the current Indian debates —where ‘ the secular; has all but been hijacked by the Hindu Right —and to show—reversing Hegel’s trajectory—what impact the latter could have on the former. There is some evidence of this already occurring, particularly in Charles Taylor’s work and travels wherein he does make some gestures towards looking at non-Western experiences of secularism (which is taken more or less to be synonymous with secularization). There are severe limitations to this overture however, and the chapter hopes to sound a word of caution on the kind of excitement over which Taylor seems to have become something of a celebrity in the academe. Even more disappointingly, one does not find a similar emphatic approach or opening to non-Western experiences and rethinking of the secular in the works of other modernists; and I point to Habermas and Žižek as my examples, who I touch on, albeit very briefly. This lack or lacuna makes both the discourse of modernity and the supplementary critique of secularism much the poorer for it.
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ItemDharma in the Hindu Epics(NYU Press, 2015-11-06)Bringing together ideas, issues, and debates salient to modern Indian studies, this volume charts the social, cultural, political, and economic processes at work in the Indian subcontinent.
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ItemNegation (abhava), non-existents, and a distinctive pramana in the Nyaya-mimamsa(Springer International Publishing, 2015)The chapter examines the three types of negation described in the Mimamsa school in their treatment of the kinds of permissible, prohibited, and excluded (vipratipratisedha, nisedha, pratisedha) sacrifices that are otherwise enjoined as injunctions (vidhis) in the Vedic passages. The paribhasa ('metalanguage') rules becomes instructive with the development of grammar for its application to more secular speech. To give one prominent example, the injunction, 'he shall eat' is denoted by N[F(x)], where F(x) denotes 'he eats' (and modally, 'it is necessary that he eats'). Now a prohibition (nisedha) or negation of this injunctive sentence, if it is as injunction, is symbolized by N[¬F(x)], not by (¬N)([F(x)]) or (¬N[F(x)]). Hence it is signified by the sentence 'she shall not-eat'. N[¬F(x)] belongs to the paryudasa or exclusionary negation, where a noun (as distinct from a verb-form) is negated; its other form being N[F(¬x)]. The second part explains the distinct pramana or mode of knowing absence as abhava (and its variation, anupalabdhi), i.e. non-perception or the cognition of absence. The uniquely Mimamsa position - as distinct from the Nyaya's - is that every thing is counternegatively marked by its own prior and future non-existence, and so when something, x, that was there, is cognized as being 'absent', this really is a perception of its 'non-existent' other, and 'non-existence' is arguably a real universal. This view makes way for a Meinongian knowing of non-existent objects.
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ItemToward an Indian Theodicy(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2013)Indian theistic solution to the problem of evil – universal injustice - is an off-shoot of the logical theism of Nyāya and philosophical theologies of Vedānta thought. Their respective teleo-cosmologies underscore an ontology of divine creation, sustention and periodic dissolution of our world. An N-factor is introduced governing the moral sphere, namely, the principle of karma. The presence of karma (moderated by optional choices) potentiates individuals’ actions, good and bad; this mitigates the need to seek justification for God allowing horrendous amounts of suffering to occur. God cannot be held morally responsible for the evil in the world because he depends on the laws of karma toward maintaining just order. The role assumed by karma theory is a unique feature of Indian theodicy (theistic and non-theistic). Hence, it is consistent within Hindu philosophy to hold both that there is evil qua karma in our world and there exists an omnipotent God.
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ItemEmotions in Indian Thought-Systems An Introduction(Routledge India, 2015-02-18)A stimulating account of the wide range of approaches towards conceptualising emotions in classical Indian philosophical–religious traditions, such as those of the Upanishads, Vaishnava Tantrism, Bhakti movement, Jainism, Buddhism, Yoga, ...
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ItemA Critique of Economic Reason: Between Tradition and Postcoloniality(University of Hawaii Press, 2015-01-01)Papers from the 10th East-West Philosophers Conference, held in Honolulu, May 16-24, 2011.
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ItemDies of Culture and Religion: India and Australia, Settlement to Post/modern times(Serial Publications, 2015)
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ItemPreface and Introduction to 2nd edition of Empathy & the Late Renuka Sharma(DKPrintworld, 2014)Folk people often confuse empathy with sympathy. These two psychological or affective 'feelings' are very different, and they been so since Aristotle and the Buddha. The book traces the philosophical origins of the discourse and its appropriation in aesthetics, psychology and lately in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, as well as its re-emergence in feminist practical ethics. The theoretical part is complemented with clinical studies. The editor and authors of the new Preface-cum-Introduction tell us something about the author (and her premature demise), and provide the context for this discursive engagement with empathy demonstrated in the subsequent chapters. This early book of the author went out of print, and this second edition is revised and updated with a new Introduction by a feminist philosopher, Ðr Karin Brown of California. How do we enable the light of empathy – or as the Buddhist would rather say 'compassion' – to shine from each one of us on to the other, the neighbour, the distant sufferers and to all sentient beings? The book addresses this question in a philosophical tone interspersed with insights and tropes from psychotherapy.
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ItemPreface; 'Postcolonial Critique of Reason Spivak between Kant and Matilal(Oxford University Press, 2014)The paper ponders the location of Gayatri Spivak in the discursive space between Kant and Bimal K. Matilal (but she is also dislocated by her own enactments, disavowals). So it wonders what a postcolonial critique of reason would look like. In the chapter on philosophy, Spivak (1999) develops a sustained critique of just this kind by decoding the works of the ‘Three Wise Men of Continental Europe’ (Kant, Hegel, Marx), pointing, via the European impact on the Third World, to the ultimate ‘foreclosure: [in the fashion of] the native informant’. But the paper detects another triangular imaginary of reason—this time without an apex, and with limited strategies, each deconstructing and challenging the other. Kant is thus important in spite of his own cosmopolitheia, Matilal for his rational realism of ‘moral love’. What both fell short of was a genuine critique of the rational, and therefore also of one of its unfortunate beneficiaries,