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If you are new to this site, start with these posts. Majority of these posts are not written for this website, rather they were lifted from the conversations on the defunct sulekha.com, the defunct yahoo group, and other places. (Check this forum for current connversations.) These posts serve three purposes: (a) to help newbies to understand Balagangadhara’s research program called “Comparative Science of Cultures”; (b) to aid those who have read articles published in various journals and books; (c) to understand the studies of Indian culture and traditions in a different light—a framework different from that of current social sciences which take secularized Christian theological ideas as facts (or granted).

• 1. Translations or travesty of our traditions
  2. To follow our forefathers: the nature of traditions
  3. Why understand the Western culture?
  4. Is tradition same as following a set of moral obligations?
  5. Comparing India and the West
  6. Why social sciences are not producing knowledge?
  7. Negative portrayals of non-Western cultures: secularization of Christianity
  8. Reductive explanations in social sciences
  9. Why Westology a la Indology is doomed to fail?
  10. The dynamic of religion: secularization and proselytization
  11. India and her traditions: a reply to Jeffrey Kripal
  12. On colonial experience and the Indian Renaissance
  13. Secularism, Colonialism and Indian intellectuals
  14. Colonialism: Hindering alternative explanations
  15. Colonial Consciousness: are Indians corrupt?
  16. Fuss about Indic categories I
  17. Fuss about Indic categories II
  18. Why use Indic categories to describe the world?
  19. Indians’ barren criticisms of Western translations
  20. Hinduism, whether a religion or a way of life, does not exist.
  21. Hinduism and Hipkapi: an imaginary entity
  22. Is puja same as worship?
  23. Are rituals meaningless?
  24. The paradox of multiple meanings of puja, thonda(m), etc
  25. Are stories symbols?
  26. Polytheism is contradiction in terms.
  27. Is rain dance superstitious?
  28. Neutrality of the Indian secular state
  29. Why do Indian secularists do not think but talk?
  30. Is the distinction between laukika and adhyatmika, same as that between secular and religious?
  31. How do we understand the concept of communal violence in India?
  32. How to speak for Indian traditions
  33. Have Indian reformers understood the protest reformation?
  34. Bankruptcy of postcolonial scholars and their defense of secularism
  35. The vacuity of secularism: on the Indian debate and its Western origins
  36. Mantras of Anti-Brahmanism: Colonial experience of Indian intellectuals
  37. Are Brahmins priests?
  38. What is experience (anubhava) I
  39. What is experience II
  40. What is experience III
  41. What is experience IV
  42. Is enlightenment learnable?
  43. Is Bhagavadgita a revelation?
  44. Indian heathens’ misunderstanding of Christian questions like “meaning(purpose) of life”
  45. Silly symbolic explanations of Linga
  46. Does Shiv Linga mean a phallus?
  47. Denying experience: do Hindus worship? do they perform puja to phallus?
  48. Theory-ladenness: facts are facts of a theory
  49. Theory-ladenness: Swami Vivekananda and caste discrimiantion
  50. Colonial Experience: Normative ethics 101
  51. The logic of normative ethics: Immorality of Indians
  52. Normative assumptions: corruption
  53. Normative assumptions: discriminations and caste discriminations
  54. castes vs caste-system
  55. What makes Christianity a religion?
  56. Do Indian traditions claim that the universe is an expression of God’s Will (intention)?
  57. Atheism: a secularized theism
  58. Kids of NRI and their Balvihar education
  59. Vacuity of NRIs and their symbolic interpretations
  60. Colonial Consciousness and Victorian Morality
  61. Indian Americans and their identity politics
  62. Adhoc explanations: why do puja to cows?
  63. Superstition and rationality
  64. Is tolerant Christianity a contradiction in terms?
  65. Are Indian Christians not bound by Christian theologies?
  66. Religious intolerance vs civic intolerance
  67. Religious tolerance vs Ecumenism 
  68. Historicity of Rama, Krishna and Anjaneya
  69. What do Indians need: A history or the past
  70. Anti-proselytization legislations: a weakness of Indian culture
  71. What makes one an intellectual?
  72. The absence of super natural entities in Indian traditions
  73. The Wendy Incident: a view from Europe