Rethinking Religion in India: developing indigenous frameworks

[Guest guest]

Rethinking Religion in India: In search of new idioms

The Hindu

Dec. 9, 2007

by Sudha Anantharaman

 

" We need to develop indigenous frameworks to study the

various religions of India, " says Prof. S.N. Balagangadhara,

who will be heading the first international conference on the

religions of India in January 2008. There is a long-standing

complaint that the academic study of religion and culture

has never really taken off in India. Rather than lamenting

this, he would like to change this state of affairs.

 

---------------

 

Professor S.N. Balagangadhara was a student of National

College in Bangalore and came to Belgium in 1977 to study

philosophy at Ghent University, where he obtained his

doctorate. Presently, he is professor at Gent University and

heads the research centre Vergelijkende Cutuurwetenschap

(Comparative Science of Culture). He has been researching

the nature of religion and his central area of enquiry has

been the study of Western culture against the background of

Indian culture. He will head the first of the five-year

international conference clusters " Rethinking Religion in

India " which will be held in New Delhi between January 21

and 24, 2008. Excerpts from an interview...

 

Q: Why this conference on Rethinking Religion in India?

 

There is a long-standing complaint that the academic study

of religion and culture has never really taken off in India.

Rather than lamenting this, we would like to change this

state of affairs.

 

The current theoretical framework is firmly embedded

within Western cultural history and proves inadequate when

it comes to studying non-Western traditions. The framework

therefore needs rethinking.

 

Q: When you talk about " rethinking " religion in India, will

the emphasis be on Hinduism?

 

No, there will be an emphasis on what the term " religion "

actually means, as there is no satisfactory understanding of

the concept, as well as an examination of the nature of

Indian traditions and not just Hindu traditions.

 

We will also look into the nature of the caste system

because it has always been associated with Hinduism and

then question the premise of whether Hinduism, Buddhism

and Jainism are religions at all.

 

Q: What is the framework you would use to define

Hinduism in this conference?

 

The definition will only come later. We would first need

some kind of description. We will look at traditions first. Is

it possible to demarcate traditions? Can we, for example,

say that Buddhist traditions are completely different from

Advaitin traditions? Do they overlap? Where do you draw

the line? Should you draw the line? Why draw the line?

These are the kinds of questions that will be asked.

 

The plurality of Indian traditions has led to them being

described as " deficient " religions. An attempt of this

conference is to start developing new ways of thinking

about these traditions, finding out what their strengths are

and how it might be possible for us to recover their essence

and explain them in 21st century language. It makes no

sense to speak of chittasuddhi, manasuddhi, atman, etc.

because many of us don't even know to what these terms

refer. We would have to explain the concepts in a simple

language - English in this case, because it is the language

of the present time.

 

Q: Do you think part of the problem in understanding Hindu

concepts like atman is that we don't speak Sanskrit any

more? And most of our philosophical texts are in Sanskrit.

 

No, because Sanskrit, in the first place, was never a spoken

language. It was a language of the literati who wrote the

texts. It is not simply the absence of Sanskrit that creates a

problem. The problem lies in transmitting words, but not

their underlying meanings and theories. One could, of

course, read up Patanjali's Yogasutra, but it is very difficult

to agree with his theories of the gross body, the subtle body

etc. These kinds of explanations are both inadequate and

unscientific.

 

Q: But is there no understanding beyond scientific

understanding?

 

No, but what I'm going to say is something more

interesting. Indian insights in themselves are scientific in

nature. What we need to do is understand and develop these

extraordinary insights into the nature and structure of human

psychology that no sociology, psychology or political

science has ever come even remotely close to doing. And

we have to re-formulate in 21st century language what was

formulated 3,000 years ago in languages and idioms of that

time.

 

Q: Understanding Indian philosophical concepts is not easy.

Do you believe there was a simplification of these concepts

to make them appeal to the average person?

 

I don't think there was any simplification at all. A

multiplicity of ways and means for people to be happy, and

by this I mean not just sukha and dukha but ananda, was

developed. We need now to understand what its structure

was, and focus on developing it.

 

So far Indian philosophers like Dr. S. Radhakrishnan have

only been reproducing what Western philosophers have

been saying about us.

 

Q: Would you equate philosophy with religion?

 

First of all, we have no religion in India and even

philosophy, as the West knows it, is absent. But what we

have is something different. We have experience. We have

reflection on experience. We ask a different set of questions

to what the Western philosopher asks.

 

Experience, in occidental philosophy, is confused with

sensations, or emotions, or feelings, or thoughts. But

experience is actually all of this. It is not identical to any of

these. It is what we call anubhava, which roughly translates

as " having an appropriate way of being in the world " . This

knowledge that Indians have developed over the last 3,000

years belongs to all human kind and it is this knowledge that

we seek to share in this conference.

 

Q: Going back to your earlier comment on whether

Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism can be regarded as

religions at all. Why this comment?

 

The religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam share a set

of characteristics that are absent in the Indian traditions: the

belief in one god, a system of beliefs, holy scriptures taken

to be the word of god, and so on. Since these characteristics

are essential for these religions to be recognisable as

religions at all, the absence of these characteristics in the

Indian traditions constitutes a serious problem with religious

studies in India. The very nature of Hinduism, Buddhism

and Jainism is extremely complex and diversified. They

have so many doctrines and nobody knows them all; there

are hundreds of contradictory stories behind the beliefs,

rituals and practices. It is therefore impossible to find a

common core of doctrines that is believed in by all

adherents of the religion. Scholars speak instead about the

" evolution from Vedism to Brahmanism to Hinduism " .

What was earlier characterised as a " false " religion with its

proliferation of gods and rituals, practices and doctrines, is

now explained as a mixture of influences from both

indigenous people and Aryan migrants. [....]

 

Q: Is having this conference now, at this point in time, of

any particular significance?

 

It is significant because in contrast to the last 500 years,

India is now an economic power with a new confidence.

" How does the West or the rest of the world appear to us

Indians? " is a question that will grip an entire class of

intellectuals.

 

" What is it that makes us Indian? " is another question that

needs answering. We've always accepted what the West has

said about us, but is it true? Do we live the way books say

we do? What about our own experiences? We have to ask

ourselves all these questions. And along the way if we find

injustices or prejudices we have to endeavour to change

them.

 

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2007/12/09/stories/2007120950090400.htm

 

Additional information on the conference:

http://www.cultuurwetenschap.be

[Guest guest]

Very interesting, and a most worthy goal, actually very necessary.

 

Still, i'm dismayed by the complete disregard of indigenous religions

in the sense of aboriginal peoples, the Adivasi in Indian terms.

 

That would really make things interesting.

 

Max

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Max Dashu

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