1. It is very disappointing to see how these evolutionary theorists of religion lack knowledge of religions other than garden variety Judeo-Christianity (where they seem to have at least some…
Read moreIndian heathens’ misunderstanding of meaning(purpose) of life
I 1. The Sanskrit word (that I know) that comes closest to the Greek ‘telos’ is ‘Sankalpa’. It means ‘to mentally determine’, ‘formulation of an end’ ‘desirous of (an end)’,…
Read moreIntelligibility of Advaita
The problem with the advaita tradition today is its lack of intelligibility. ‘Maya’, for instance, does a tremendous lot of explanatory work, but it is hardly clear what it is;…
Read moreIntellectual prowess of Michael Witzel
I would have liked to make the following points on the IER forum but either of the two moderators are (obviously) willing to be courteous enough to post my letter…
Read moreWhat makes one an intellectual?
Steve Farmer is not an expert on secularism only in the sense that he has followed it from the ‘outside’ (meaning, probably, he has not written anything about the issue…
Read moreHow to access Indian traditions?
1. As I have often said, the most intriguing aspect of the Indian culture is the kind of knowledge it produced and encouraged people to produce: experiential knowledge which emerges…
Read moreReal vs. Existence
[For the latest on real vs existence, why such distinction needs to be made, check this paper, What do Indians need: a history or the past ] With some justifiable distortion,…
Read moreHistoricity of Rama, Krishna, Anjaneya
One of the questions that has come up in this discussion is the following: are we logically forced to assume the ‘existence’ of, say, Rama or Krishna, when we ‘believe’…
Read moreLogical Acumen of Romila Thapar
One of the debates in the Indian traditions is about the kind of creatures that exist in the world and about the reality of what exists. The Jains, for instance,…
Read moreJati, Varna and Caste
1. Are there Jati’s in India? Yes, there are. What kind of units or entities are they? I do not know; neither does anybody for that matter. It is a…
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