Classical advaitic definitions of 'substance' and the unreality of the world

A central theme that structured Vedāntic–Buddhist dialectics was the definition of ‘substance’. We shall argue that while certain forms of Vedānta and Madhyamaka Buddhism are shaped by the same set of presuppositions regarding ‘substance’, they derive opposed conclusions from this point of departure as they elaborate their conceptual universes. Further, while both Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta seek to defend against their Buddhist rivals the thesis that the phenomenal world is a ‘dependent substance’, in the sense that it derives its empirical being from the foundational Ground of Brahman, they disagree over this crucial question: ‘precisely how real is this dependent substance?’ Consequently, some of the central disputes between Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita can be traced to a basic divergence in their conceptualisations of ‘substance’, which informs their responses to questions such as whether the postulation of a plurality of metaphysically real substances can be logically defended, whether the concept of a ‘dependent substance’ is coherent, whether real relations between the ultimate substance and dependent substances can be explicated without inconsistency, and so on.This is the author accepted manuscript. It first appeared at http://jhs.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/03/22/jhs.hiv010

Interreligious dialogue, comparative theology and the alterity of hindu thought

A key question at the heart of contemporary debates over interreligious dialogue is whether the Christian partner in such conversations should view her interlocutors through the lens of Christian descriptions or whether any such imaging amounts to a form of Christian imperialism. We look at the responses to this question from certain contemporary forms of ‘particularism’ which regard religious universes as densely knit, and sometimes incommensurable, systems of meanings, so that they usually deny the significance, or even the possibility, of modes of bible preaching such as apologetics. While these concerns over the alterity of other religious traditions are often viewed as specifically postmodern, two Scotsmen in British India, J. N. Farquhar (1861–1929) and A. G. Hogg (1875–1954), struggled exactly a hundred years ago with a version of this question vis-à-vis the religious universe of Vedāntic Hinduism and responded to it in a manner that has striking resemblances to ‘particularism’. We shall argue that Hogg can be seen as an early practitioner of a form of ‘comparative theology’ which emerges in his case, on the one hand, through a textual engagement with specific problems thrown up in interreligious spaces but, on the other hand, also seeks to present a reasoned defence of Christian doctrinal statements. We shall note a crucial difference between his comparative theological encounters and contemporary practitioners of the same – while the latter are usually wary of speaking of any ‘common ground’ in interreligious encounters, Hogg regarded the presuppositions of the Christian faith as the basis of such encounters. The writings of both groups of theologians are structured by certain ‘dilemmas of difference’ that we explore. This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/swc.2014.0093

Revisiting the rationality of reincarnation talk

A survey of the key arguments that have been developed for and against the rationality of belief in reincarnation shows that often the central dispute is not over what the ‘data’ are but how to assess the ‘data’ from specific metaphysical-hermeneutical horizons. By examining some of these arguments formulated by Hindu thinkers as well as their critiques – from the perspectives of metaphysical naturalism and Christian theology – we argue that one of the reasons why these debates remain intractable is that the ‘theory’ is underdetermined by the ‘data’, so that more than one set of the latter can be regarded as adequate explanations of the former.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2015.107283

The God of the oppressed and the politics of resistance: Black and Dalit theologies of liberation

Theologians from the Black communities in the USA, South Africa and other places, and Dalit groups in India have struggled with a dialectic between the retrieval of subjectivity within political spaces inflected by ‘race’ and ‘caste’ and the opposition to these essentialist categorisations. On the one hand, their politics of resistance has been predicated on their specific Black or Dalit identities, while, on the other hand, the postulation of such identities has often been criticised for being essentialist and homogenising. It would seem, therefore, that such patterns of ‘theologies of liberation’ have to steer clear of the Scylla of a postmodern-style dissolution of subjectivities in which the Black or Dalit identities are effaced in a ‘raceless’ or ‘casteless’ amorphousness, and the Charybdis of ‘ontologizing’ the experiences of Blackness or Dalitness in a manner that may re-entrench these binaries that arguably cannot be fitted into the Christian eschatological vision of the reconciliation of humanity. In our analysis of some Black and Dalit theologies, we shall seek to illuminate the distinctive ways in which they assert hitherto repressed subjectivities, while seeking at the same time to avoid ontological dualisms between sections of humanity, now fractured along the lines of race and caste.This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Culture and Religion on 31 Jan 2014, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14755610.2014.882852

The reality and the verifiability of reincarnation

© 2017 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. We investigate the topic of reincarnation by revisiting a recent debate from the pages of the journal Philosophy East and West between Whitley Kaufman, who presents five moral objections to karma and reincarnation as an explanation for human suffering, and Monima Chadha and Nick Trakakis, who seek to respond to Kaufman’s critiques. Our discussion of four of the problems analysed in their exchange will suggest that while the rejoinders of Chadha and Trakakis to Kaufman consist of plausible logical possibilities which successfully rebut some of his criticisms, the scenarios that they sketch are grounded in specific metaphysical theses about the nature of the human person and the structure of reality. The cogency of the responses that Chadha and Trakakis formulate is integrally related to the acceptance of these metaphysical presuppositions which need to be highlighted more clearly as we seek to understand what is at stake in the dispute

The Devotional Metaphysics of Śaṅkaradeva (1449–1568): The Advaitic Brahman as the Beloved Friend

Various forms of Advaita Vedānta as well as devotional Vedānta developed during the medieval centuries diverse hermeneutic strategies of positioning and repositioning jñāna and bhakti in their own conceptual-soteriological systems. These Vedāntic systems do not place jñāna and bhakti in hermetically sealed compartments but interweave them from within their distinctive metaphysical structures. Our discussion of the Assamese poet-saint Śaṅkaradeva (1449–1568) will highlight these broader themes in the reception histories of the Vedāntic materials. Śaṅkaradeva developed a distinctive pattern of devotional metaphysics rooted primarily in the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, where the ultimate reality, which is indicated with highly characteristic Advaitic analogies, is also repeatedly described as the beloved friend who lovingly protects the devotees and who even becomes subservient to them

The Hindu Cosmopolitanism of Sister Nivedita (Margaret Elizabeth Noble): An Irish Self in Imperial Currents

AbstractSister Nivedita (Margaret Elizabeth Noble), a prominent disciple of the Hindu guru Swami Vivekananda, creatively reconfigured some traditional Vedantic vocabularies to present the “cosmo-national” individual as one who is not antithetical to but is deeply immersed in the densities of national locations. As we situate Nivedita’s “vernacular cosmopolitanism” in post-Saidian academic cultures, one of the most striking features of her reiteration of the theme that Indians should seek the universal in and through the particularities of their national histories, cultural norms, and religious systems is that it is grounded in an East-West binary, where specific values, sensibilities, and themes are attributed to each pole—primarily material to the Western and spiritual to the Eastern. The locations of her life and thought within this binary generate a complex combination of certain highly perceptive readings of Eastern styles of living; spiritual idealizations and ahistorical romanticizations of some traditional Hindu beliefs, traditions, and customs; global visions of internationalist exchanges across humanity; and pointed critiques of the operations of empire—while, occasionally, she can herself challenge the binary as an inexact classification.</jats:p

Returning home to the advaitic self: Svāmī Rāma Tīrtha and his American audiences

© 2016 by the author; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. A recurring theme in the Advaita Vedanta traditions is the necessity of empirical purification through means such as the cultivation of virtues, the study of the Vedas, and so on, even though the transcendental self has never been subject to any form of bondage. The traditions seek to mitigate this paradox by employing the vocabulary of a shift across the ‘levels’ of truth-while the worldly self is, empirically speaking, moving towards the goal of realization, from the transcendental perspective, the self never loses its eternal nature. We will explore how SvamI Rama Tirtha (1873-1906) addressed this theme of the recovery of one’s essential self in his lectures to some American audiences between 1902 and 1904. Drawing on some of the vocabularies of Swami Vivekananda, who had presented a ‘Practical Vedanta’ to Western audiences in the late 1890s, Rama Tlrtha developed an Advaitic form of self-realization that is practically engaged with the world and, according to him, is the spiritual quest of humanity across all boundaries

Revisiting the Gandhi–Ambedkar Debates over ‘Caste’: The Multiple Resonances of Varņa

While Gandhi and Ambedkar hold similar standpoints on the relation between religious orderings of the world and shapes of social existence, they sharply diverge, on certain occasions, regarding the question of what the crucial terms ‘caste’ and varņa refer to, so that they often seem to be talking past each other. Gandhi sought to cut through various traditional forms of Hindu socio-religious practices and develop a Hinduism which is grounded in the values of universal peace, love and benevolence. Ambedkar too rejected aspects of familiar historical varieties of Buddhism and configured a new vehicle whose goals were to be more specifically material than spiritual. However, while both Gandhi and Ambedkar thus sought to uncover the revitalizing impulses of religious ideals, they operated with different imaginations of the type of polity that would emerge from this social reconstruction. For Gandhi, the reinvigorated socio-religious whole would be structured by an ideal notion of varņa in which there would be no enmity among the interdependent units. For Ambedkar, in contrast, the vocabulary of varņa was irredeemably corrupted through its enmeshment in millennia-old structures of hierarchy, so that its employment would not generate sufficient momentum to break through entrenched systems of oppression.</jats:p