Abstract
Purpose
The intent of this study is to make a vigilant reading of Kotta Satchidananda Murty with special reference to his The Indian Spirit that has much relevance in today’s philosophical discourse in India. This study also aims at showing how the works of contemporary Indian thinkers excite one to search for new philosophical avenues by basing oneself on the tradition, yet creating ideas anew.
Methodology
The first part of the paper is an epigrammatic unearthing of the central ideas in K. Satchidananda Murty’s The Indian Spirit, while the second part is my analysis of the strengths and limitations of Murty, the heterodox insider of The Indian Spirit. In the third part, by taking cue from Murty’s The Indian Spirit, I conclude with submission that Indian philosophical tradition is like a ‘salad bowl’ with its unique diversity and plurality.
Result and Conclusion
A thorough reading of Murty would make one consider him as a ‘heterodox insider’ in Indian philosophy in general, and Hindu tradition in particular. One of the major points that he brings home is a counteractive to the uninformed generalization about Indian thought that the philosophical tradition of India was one of an unbroken idealism or spiritualism. According to Murty, Philosophy in India has been like a ‘salad bowl’ where different convictions and ideologies find their place and significance without getting merged into a ‘melting pot’ of uniformity. A vigilant reading of Murty makes it clear that he had a critical, not a conventional-conformist, view with regard to Indian philosophy, and this stands out to be the philosophical ingenuity in him. However, the ‘heterodox insider’ one finds in Murty is context-sensitive and sounds like an apologetic occasionally.
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Notes
S. Radhakrishnan writes that philosophy in India is “essentially spiritual. It is the intense spirituality of India, and not any great political structure or social organization that it has developed, that has enabled it to resist the ravage of time and accidents in history… The spiritual motive dominates life in India” (Radhakrishnan 1997: 24–25). The same is the opinion of Azad too: “The characteristic of Indian thought is that it has paid greater attention to the inner world of man than to the outer world” (Azad and Abdul 1952: 21).
The term “heterodox insider” has been coined by this author. The term “heterodox” is taken in the sense of someone who does not agree with the established beliefs and standards. It does not have anything to do with astika and nastika divisions one finds in the traditional Indian philosophy where the acceptance or rejection of Vedic authority becomes the criterion for such a division. The term only means ‘holding unorthodox’ opinions and views. The adjective “heterodox” is used to convey an opinion, theory, or person that has different take from the accepted ones. It simply means “dissident.” A “heterodox insider,” thus, would imply a person whose beliefs, ideas, and activities are different to and opposing generally accepted views. For a detailed account on “heterodox” and the import it has, see Sen 2005: xi–xii. In this sense, the term “heterodox” would be clearer in the light of Murty’s The Realm Between (Murty 1973), Evolution of Indian Philosophy (Murty 2007), and The Indian Spirit (Murty 1965). Further, in this paper, I intend to review critically Murty’s deviance from the received view that Indian Philosophy is spiritual and idealistic. To the extent Murty deviates from the received view he is “heterodox” and to the extent he is in conformity with at least some aspects of the received view he is “insider.” Thus, Murty is a “heterodox thinker” and “critical traditionalist.”
I have recourse to the papers in the volume The Philosophy of K. Satchidananda Murty (Bhattacharyya and Ashok 1995), particularly the papers S. S.Barlingay and A. Ramamurthy on The Indian Spirit.
The reference here is to the theory and metaphor of “salad bowl” used in cotemporary discourses on multiculturalism.
It contains eight chapters running into more than 300 pages (xiii + 296). This is a collection of presentations (talks) given in Western and Asian countries. The first chapter is “the Indian spirit: past and present,” while other chapters successively are “India: ‘history and atavism’ with an annexe ‘USA and India,’ ‘the Hindu ethos,’ ‘the Greek image of Indian philosophy,’ ‘the philosophical thought in India,’ ‘experience,’ ‘reason,’ and ‘transcendental materialism in Indian philosophy,’ ‘leaps in Vedanta and Buddhism,’ ‘religion and ethical practices: the Hindu view,’ and ‘ethics and politics in Hindu culture’.”
It is interesting to note the term “secularization of indology” used by Sarkar (Sarkar 1985: 160–161) in which he argues that the Buddhist Pali texts, as opposed to the Vedic, was a-religious without any injunctions on rites, rituals, and sacrifices. Sarkar writes: “There is of course one important difference between the two. Vedic literature introduces us to the atmosphere of sacrifice and ritual, of gods and hymns. In the Buddhist literature this atmosphere is virtually absent except by way of criticism, folklore, sarcasm, etc. If sacrifices, rituals, gods, and hymns constitute religion, Buddhist literature, especially as embodied in the Pali texts, i.e., the pre-Mahayanic strands, is a-religious. … Thus considered, Buddhist literature furnishes by all means the most appropriate data for secularized indology. Buddhist texts are nothing but documents par excellence of positivism” (Sarkar 1985: 160–161).
The theory of Aryan Invasion is a debated issue today. According to A. L. Basham, the Aryan presence in India commenced sometime in 1700 BC. The Harappa culture, known as the Indus (valley) civilization, flourished in 2700 BC. And it “seems to have developed on the soil of the (Indian) subcontinent and was not brought to India by the invaders. Its main centres were two large cities, the original names of which are unknown to us. They are now known by the names of the modern villages nearest the sites, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. … A raid by outsiders, who may have been Aryans from the west, resulted in the slaughter of a considerable number of these people, and then the city was deserted almost completely. This probably took place about 1700 B.C.E” (Basham 1997: 1–2). Hence A. L. Basham is of the opinion that the aryans from the west raided Harappa Moenjo-daro sometime c. 1700 BC. However in recent times works like that of Feuerstein et al. (1995), Frawley (1994), Deo and Kamath (1993) and Rajaram (1995) reject the aryan migration to India, but consider the aryans to be indigenous to India. A contrary view could be seen in Bronkhorst and Deshpande (2012). Based on linguistic analysis (evidence) in one of the recent works Hans Henrich Hock upholds the aryans migration thesis by saying “the linguistic evidence still favors the prevailing Indo-Europeanist perspective that the speakers of Indo-Aryan migrated into India” (Hock 2012: 17).
Murty would say that “about 1500 BC came the Aryans from region lying somewhere between the Danube and the Oxus” (Murty 2007: 50).
According to Suniti Kumar Chatterji the oldest people to come to India belonged to the Negrito or Negroid race who came from Africa. After the Negroids, the proto-Australoids came from Palestine. The Mongoloid peoples came next, and after that the Dravidians came from the East Mediterranean region, Asia Minor, and they were mainly the Mediterranean race. After that, the “semi-nomad Vedic Aryans came into the field,” and finally the Indo-Aryans, who were “a section of the great Indo-Iranian or (Aryan) branch of the Indo-European speakers.” For details, see Chatterji (2008: 25–33).
In one of the most recent works on the Cārvāka, Gokhale (2015) takes a pluralist understanding of Cārvāka system. He writes: “The traditional pandits are generally satisfied with a singularist understanding of the Carvaka position as found in SDS (Sarvadarsanasamgraha of Madhva). Among the historians of Lokayata, however, both the singularist and pluralist tendencies are seen. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, through his Lokayata: A Study on Ancient Materialism and many other writings, developed a singularist account of Lokayata-darsana (which different from the traditional singularist account in some important respects). Ramkrishna Bhattacharya follows the same tradition as that of Chattopadhyaya with a shift of emphasis from Lokayata to Carvaka. He finds discontinuity and disintegrated-ness between earlier and later Lokayata, but greater unity and integrity in Carvaka as the materialist philosophy. …. (but Sadashiv Athavale’s book and) his approach on Carvaka was pluralist. He looked at Carvaka mainly a representative of ‘freedom of thought and expression’ and materialism was just one of its offshoots, where the possibility if skepticism as another offshoot was not ruled out” (Gokhale 2015: viii).
It must be said here that the reading of Ninian Smart on Indian materialism is more nuanced and informed that than of Murty’s. In his work on Uddalaka Aruni as the pioneer of science, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya has too seen materialism as the precursor of Indian science. Chattopadhyaya would say that “what is significant about Uddalaka, at any rate, is that he wanted to conceive the basic stuff of the world as consisting of the finest essence, of invisible minute particle, which one comes across while diving a seed of the fig into parts and further subdividing each part, or when one dissolves a lump of salt into water; that is, in our terminology, when its molecules get separated into visible entities” (Chattopadhyaya 2013: 35). B. M. Barua too had the same take when he said “Uddalaka anticipated the atomic theory of Kanada” (Barua 1921:138). The beginning of rational thinking, as Chattopadhyaya had argued, and the fight between materialism and idealism—between Uddalaka and Yajnavalkya (Chattopadhyaya 2013: 49)—in a way, give credence to this position of Ninian Smart. In all probability, in ancient India, Kanada with his inherited legacy of Uddalaka had the genuine scientific temper with his ontology of the atoms. I would like to recall the serious consideration of Professor Biswambhar Pahi of Rajasthan University that there are two traditions in Indian thought, namely the one that is spearheaded by Kanada tradition and the other by Yajnavalkya tradition. The Kanada tradition is more of this worldly, empiricist, logical and scientific in its temper and outlook, whereas the Yajnavalkya tradition is of otherworldly, idealistic and spiritual.
See note 7 in Thapar(2010: 34). .
Ṛgveda X: 90 and Taittirīya Saṁhita VII: 1:1: 4–6.0, and Bhagavad-Gītā IV: 13 (a). In Bhagavad-Gītā IV: 13 (a) we see Lord Krsna saying: Caturvarnyam māyā sṛstam guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśah (the fourfold castes are created by Me, by the differentiation of guṇa and karma). The well-known Puruaaṣūkta of Ṛgveda (X: 90) gives the exposition of divine origin of the four varṇas.
One could discern that the author of The Indian Spirit is not well disposed to Christianity. Wherever possible he compares and contrasts Hinduism with Christianity and shows that there is a lack in Christianity, or there is something more in Hinduism. Further, the tone and tenor in which Christianity is presented is an expression of the authors dislike for the same as wherever possible he brings to match Christian ideal or Christian approach in comparison and contrast with Hinduism.
Yogendra Singh would put it in this way: “The social structure of elites in traditional India was based on the principles of hierarchy, holism, and continuity… the cardinal values of the Hindu tradition. The kings and the priest were the two important elite roles in this tradition. Both the roles were derived from the caste system which offered a cultural and moral frame of reference to the elite structure. It was the duty of the king to be an effective military leader, to protect the caste order by enforcing its obligations on people, to strictly adhere to caste-norms himself, to protect the priestly class and offer it congenial environment for meditation and performance of religious duties” (Singh 1973: 131–132).
Yogendra Singh refers here to Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism in this context (Singh 1973: 37).
I am indebted to the unknown reviewer of this paper whose suggestion helped me to revisit this article and re-do it in the light of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach. Taking cue from the reviewer’s learned opinion I would add that there has been a process of creation, re-creation and transition of Indian tradition as Yogendra Singh has shown (Singh 1973). The process has never been smooth and it had its own tensions and social breakdowns. India has been a historical site of intercourse between various civilizational flows and forces.
S. K. Saksena is another erudite contemporary Indian philosopher who has been ignored in the current philosophical discussion of classrooms in Indian universities. A product of Universities of Allahabad and London, Professor S. K, Saksena was a professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii. He taught at Agra, Delhi, and Saugar Universities, and the author of Nature of Consciousness in Hindu Philosophy (Saksena 1944)—a book of great significance for the students of Comparative Philosophy and Indian Philosophy where the central theme is the metaphysical problem of the existence and nature of a transcendental consciousness which gives source and ground to our empirical awareness.
It could be alluded from this statement of D. M. Datta: “In epistemology, as elsewhere, the Indian mind has regarded philosophical discussion as a means to better life, and consequently great emphasis is laid on living and realizing in life the truths obtained in philosophy” (Datta 2008: 134).
I am grateful to the unknown referee who suggested seeing my critique in this manner. Salad bowl is not at all a “melting pot.” Both paradigms are entirely different. In salad bowl, without losing their identity the contents contribute to a common effect. Similarly, one can have special liking for any particular module of the salad bowl. So Murty’s take for spiritual facet could be seen in similar way. Hence, the salad bowl metaphor could accommodate and justify the inconsistency a critical reader finds in Murty’s work.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the two unknown reviewers for their comments and suggestions on the first draft of the paper. The present version is the revised and modified one in the light of their comments and observations.
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Sebastian, C.D. The Heterodox Insider K. Satchidananda Murty: A Critique of His The Indian Spirit . J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 34, 33–49 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-016-0074-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-016-0074-6