Western intellectuals are not idiots
1. He says: “Doniger translates “dharma” as “religion”. Apparently, Indians should not criticize that because we know neither what the English word “religion” means nor do we know what “dharma”…
Read moreNarratives vs Theories
The question requires deeper handling so you will forgive me for the brevity of my response but you will get some idea of where I stand. Regarding the first question…
Read moreA priori assumptions
I am going to ask for a clarification on a question which I find very troubling. Let me first read how you have formulated the problem from the text: Sanskrit…
Read moreNarrowing the search space, Ill-formed questions
Assume that you get a Ph.D student who wants to do medical research. He comes to you and tells you that he wants to find out an answer to the…
Read moreNaming a phenomenon
(a) Paolo Friere, a Brazilian educationalist, has spoken about such a phenomenon at length in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He calls it as an ‘internalisation of the oppressor by…
Read moreHeuristics: traps to avoid
1. Perhaps, one of the ways to test whether your search is taking you in the right direction is by seeing whether it solves a well-known paradox, or explicates it…
Read moreErudition
I keep teaching my students the need to unlearn: unlearn the desire to ‘show off’ their erudition; unlearn shallowness and so on. I am more than convinced that whatever we…
Read moreLaw of Excluded Middle: Christian Beliefs
I was expecting you to show me where the reasoning I formulated goes wrong, but you do not do so. The analogy you draw, I am afraid, does not quite…
Read moreCentral features of studies on Caste
This article on Sulekha says: [B]ut there can be no doubt that for the past thousand years at least the caste system has been a great nightmare for the majority of our…
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