Abstract
The demand for the recognition of non-Western philosophy has often brought about the opposition of substantialized entities such as ‘India’ and the ‘West,’ which has nourished the drifts of nationalistic rhetoric. As a decolonizing process but also as a deconstruction of nationalistic revivals, it is necessary to investigate the presuppositions involved when defining ‘Indian philosophy’ in these post-colonial demands for recognition. Considering that the understanding of what is ‘Indian philosophy’ and its claim for recognition is a prerequisite for its reception, I focus in this paper on analyzing the problems of reception of post-colonial Anglophone Indian philosophy. What is it today that prevents the reception of Anglophone Indian philosophy in Indian academics and in the global world? Leaving aside the insufficient integration in Western structures of non-Western philosophies, I focus here on the internal difficulties of Anglophone Indian philosophy in India today. I suggest that the following interrelated obstacles prevent a global reception: the language, in terms of disparity of linguistic communities; the conditions of distribution and diffusion of the philosophical material; the historical rupture in the forms of transmission of knowledge; regionalism or fragmentation into micro-groups; and finally, the complexity of the situation of utterance or enunciative context, namely, the difficulty for Indian philosophers to answer the question: to whom are we speaking?
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With this volume, a major issue that we wanted to address has been engaged with the recognition and the reception of contemporary or post-independence Indian philosophy/ies, which for the present proceedings is mostly limited to Anglophone Indian philosophy (Muzaffar Ali’s paper is the only partial exception). In the past, the demand for the recognition of (usually classical and Sanskrit) ‘Indian philosophy’ presented by Anglophone Indian philosophers often turned into a self-defense of the idea of ‘India,’ with the dangerous consequence of polarizing the substantialized entities ‘Indian’ versus ‘Western.’ This in turn fomented some nationalistic ideologies, which responded to the idea of colonial superiority imposed on them with some kind of ‘Indian’ superiority. Contemporary Indian philosophy has inherited these dilemmas and challenges when it comes to positioning itself in the world philosophical picture, between decolonizing attempts and identarian quest (and sometimes even nationalist drifts), often navigating between the former two, like in the case of S. RadhakrishnanFootnote 1 and K. C. Bhattacharyya.Footnote 2 Bhagat Oinam comments in this volume that the ‘emergence of nationalist ethos cannot be understood in isolation, but it has to be seen as offshoot of colonial rule,’ pointing at the fragile border and restricted choices of post-colonial Indian philosophers. In order to present viable post-colonial projects, avoiding both the extremes of letting one’s heritage and sense of identity evanesce due to the prevalence of the Western paradigm and the other extreme of magnifying one’s heritage and recreating a distorted sense of ‘Indian identity,’ it has become urgent to promote a direct dialogue between this ‘India’ and the ‘West.’Footnote 3 With English as the ‘international’ language of academics and Internet resources, a priori no obstacle should have prevented a worldwide reception of contemporary Anglophone Indian philosophy and the facilitation of an equal platform for philosophical exchanges. An immediate and original diffusion should have been available. Needless to say, this scenario is not to be found, and we are bound to ask why. For both these reasons, namely, the necessary decolonizing endeavor and the deconstruction of the contemporary nationalistic revivals,Footnote 4 it is necessary to first address the problem of reception of the colonial or post-colonial Anglophone Indian philosophy in Indian academics and in the global world.
But first, what does a study on reception imply in philosophy? A major problem for thinking the idea of reception in philosophy concerns the methodology: reception is usually either approached from a historical perspective as the reception of X or Y, or as some posterior implications of the author X or Y and his/her influence on his successor W, or as reinterpretations of X’s or Y’s texts, etc. It is less analyzed per se, i.e., what the concept of reception means and what it unveils about how we think, who we read, and why we read these particular authors. Specifically, in post-colonial contexts, such questions become relevant: Who/What decides the reception of X or Y, what does it imply, why is X less received than Y, and how to interpret it? In our common understanding, reception somehow seems to carry a kind of ‘aura,’ a ‘mystery,’ some ‘good luck,’ ‘coincidence,’ and ‘chance’ for the one who gets received and acknowledged. But is it so? This seemingly hazardous aspect, moreover, hides an important potentiality in the idea of reception. While the political dimension is obvious when applied to post-colonial contexts, a hermeneutic aspect can also be emphasized. Some inspiration can be derived from the thought of Daya Krishna. He himself does not directly question the concept of reception, even when critically analyzing the Developments in Indian Philosophy from Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and Western; still I think some of his remarks can be of use to underline the relevance of some features of reception. In thinking about the construction of history, Daya Krishna regularly criticizes the sanctity of the frozen pictures of Indian philosophy and the homogeneity of the narratives which appear as ‘given’ and unquestioned. He writes for example that the historian ‘is certainly responsible for the act of selection that generally operates in connection with what is to be counted as evidence in the context of the relevant knowledge that is obtained in his/her own time’ (Daya Krishna 2001, p. 3). This selection is based on a rather unconscious ‘valuation hierarchy’ (Daya Krishna 2006, p. 95) (and further complicated by the mediation of the colonial to value ‘what is philosophy’), which defines our interests at a given time in a certain society.Footnote 5 To counterbalance the operated selections, multiple narratives in history are required—and a plurality of narratives, I believe, can rely only on a plurality of sources and of ways of receptions.
Daya Krishna sees an opposition between the ‘retrospective understanding’ of history, which fixes the facts and standardizes the systematized knowledge, and the openness of the future, in the form of future possibility, chance, and uncertainty: ‘The “retrospective understanding” of it is undertaken in terms of the situation prevailing before it. All talk of probability, plausibility or “chance” has ceased, and the “certainty” of “is” has taken its place’ (Daya Krishna 2006, p. 100). The idea of reception mediates between retrospective understandings and future possibilities: everything can happen, a forgotten text can be rediscovered, an author can be re-evaluated, and he/she can find new readers. It also conciliates the fixity of the finished product (texts and works) with the openness contained in the possibility for rediscoveries, which entails a factor of ‘chance’: chance belongs to a certain extent to reception insofar as there can be fortuitous discoveries, which is what imparts to ‘chance’ a mysterious aura. But although we all have had the experience of discovering ‘new’ works in dark corners of antiquarian bookshops, or forgotten manuscripts in some ancient dusty libraries, the element of chance remains limited: one has to be already engaged in a certain direction in order to discover related works. For example, while working in the field of classical Nyāya philosophy, it is less ‘probable’ for me than for a Husserlian scholar to discover hidden Nachlass (manuscripts) by Husserl. To complete Daya Krishna’s critique of history, reception can be seen as the transitional part between past and future, between the closure of the text and the openness of further developments, between fixed results and possibilities to think them further. It is also in this sense that I believe it should not be underestimated.
In the case of the meta-philosophical debate on contemporary Indian philosophy, it is interesting to notice that very little has been written on the meaning and the distribution of the philosophical reception. The debate has focused on the one hand on the definition of Indian philosophy (Rama Rao Pappu and Puligandla 1982; Barlingay 1998) vis-à-vis the West and on the other hand on the authenticity of Indian philosophy vis-à-vis India,Footnote 6 namely, ‘what is “Indian” in (contemporary) Indian philosophy and in philosophy made in India?’Footnote 7
While the discussion is directly or indirectly defined as an answer to Western prejudices, it is interesting to notice how little the lack of reception has been addressed. Or more exactly, while the lack of recognition by the ‘West’ has received much attention by Indian philosophers, it is surprising to see that very few analyses try to reflect on the reasons why. The tone is usually one of bitterness, resignation, or lamentation, shifting the blame onto the past colonizers and characterizing the Indian experience mostly in the passive tense—even when it comes to the reception of contemporary Indian philosophy in India. A. Vohra gives us an example in the following quote:
some of the work done on Western philosophical issues by Indian philosophers, particularly those who are, or were, teaching in Indian universities, is comparable to the work done by Western philosophers themselves; yet, little notice has been taken of it by Western philosophers. This is despite the fact that some of the Indian philosophers’ articles and books were published abroad in well-known journals, and by prestigious publishers. Even if notice of them was taken it was only tangential to the issues in question, even though Indian philosophers have controverted the arguments, and questioned the evidence given by the Western scholars, and have produced counter-evidence in their own support. This apathy by the Western scholars, probably made some Indian philosophers feel that they would be recognized by the West only if they work in the area of Indian philosophy as well. (Vohra 1994, pp. 15–16)
Is such a situation sufficient to describe the situation today, and even if it is, what could be done to change it? I do not intend to deny or diminish the responsibility of the international audience vis-à-vis ‘non-Western’ philosophy, and the attitude that still prevails, exemplified by the insufficiency in the syllabi, institutes, research, diffusions, and the multiple prejudices that Indian philosophers face abroad, which have been at length denounced by Indian and non-Indian scholars working in the field. And even if the situation has improved after the institutionalization of movements such as post-colonial studies, intercultural studies, and regional studies of philosophy, further limitations operate: first, the standards of academic thinking and writing have not been influenced much by the integration of different modes of philosophizing—they have rather been integrated under the rules of writing and presenting of Western academics. Second, non-Western philosophies find a reception mostly when they can contribute to the already established syllabi: non-Western logic can be established as an appendix to a ‘Logic’ course, but it does not question the ‘compartmentalization’ itself into which the teaching is divided.Footnote 8 Furthermore, the opposite is, as far as I know, not true: Sanskrit compartments have, for example, never influenced English philosophical divisions. Thirdly, the motivations to integrate non-Western philosophy often aim to criticize interpretations of Western philosophy itself, rather than to further develop non-Western philosophy. The interests in creating tools with (especially political and social) non-Western theories lie rather in showing the incompleteness or defaults of Western theories, as in post-colonial studies, and remain de facto then, rather Western-centered.
This partly explains the difference of recognition of Indian scholars in India and abroad: these scholars, such as B. K. Matilal, J. N. Mohanty, or even G. C. Spivak, do answer to the academic environment where they are located, which is precisely not Indian. They answered the American or English prejudices against Indian philosophy, developed critiques of the monopoly of the West, methods to integrate classical Indian categories into Western (analytical/phenomenological) studies, and further alternative categories such as subaltern. They did so in defining themselves abroad and dislocated the debate to create new categories. They were located in a determined enunciative context—which I will discuss later—from where they could delimit their address and audience. Much of the institutionalized movements abovementioned were initiated by them, and as such, their reception and recognition, even if not equal to their Western counterparts in the same field (J. L. Mehta’s and J. N. Mohanty’s contributions on, respectively, Heidegger and Husserl, though well-known, are not yet as famous as those of European authors, say of Gadamer or Ricoeur), are less problematic. This phenomenon also attests to a rupture between contemporary Indian philosophy in India and abroad, which remains largely unthematized—it has also been left untouched in this volume.
Thus, what is the difference between the situation of Indian philosophy in India and abroad, and how to explain the reception of Indian philosophers abroad and the indifference towards Indian philosophers in India? There are different obstacles that can hinder the reception of contemporary Indian philosophy today: (1) One concerns the ‘old’ thematic of language and translation, which is in the case of Anglophone Indian philosophy not a direct obstacle. However, since it contributes to the fragmentation of Indian philosophy into different and separate linguistic groups and the exclusion of linguistic minorities, it remains a relevant issue. It also reveals difficulties for Anglophone Indian philosophers who try to articulate the classical Sanskrit traditions into a contemporary language and concern, such as the dharma and vāda debate vis-à-vis the Western category of Ethics, as explored by Muzaffar Ali in this volume. Furthermore, the linguistic issue is related to the mostly hostile reaction towards those Indian philosophers who are neither ‘Western’ (since they are Indian) nor ‘Indian’ (since they write in English), contributing to the difficulties of Indian philosophers to define themselves.
(2) A second one pertains to the conditions of distribution and diffusion of the material. Although non-philosophical in nature, this concern should not be underestimated, as the availability of resources determines the possible reception of a work.Footnote 9 The relevance of academic bodies in sustaining a work has been for example underlined by K. Satchidananda Murty in Philosophy in India. Traditions, Teaching and Research (1985) or by Daya Krishna, through his emphasizing the need to circulate recent works in different languages in his regular letters and through his efforts to bring visibility to different communities of philosophers.Footnote 10 Recently, the double initiative of Nalini Bhushan and Jay L. Garfield in publishing a ‘reader’ of the Anglophone Indian Renaissance (colonial period and immediate post-independence) (Bhushan and Garfield 2011), followed by a ‘handbook,’ a history of ideas of the same period (Bhushan and Garfield 2017), has facilitated the creation of a usable systematic academic corpus of colonial and post-colonial Anglophone Indian philosophy. The necessity for such a corpus is justified by Raghuramaraju’s important remarks in this volume on the inherent unevenness of intercultural comparisons due to the lack of intellectual context and of the material body of resources to appreciate and compare sources. He goes even further than me, since he does not only argue that this material insufficiency is an obstacle for the reception of contemporary Indian philosophy, but, furthermore, makes the systematic multiplication and completion of these resources a prerequisite for the post-colonial program for intellectual equality when he demonstrates the weakness of cross-cultural comparisons without an even corpus.
(3) A third obstacle concerns the historical rupture in the form of transmission of knowledge, from the traditional model to the British University model. The model in which one is trained locates us in a certain intellectual context, partially determining the work that we hear about, the authors that we read, and also our valuational judgment (to speak in Daya Krishna’s terms). Belonging to a certain school seems to guarantee a certain reception within the school, as well as the school’s opponents. It delimits a certain intellectual milieu within which debates occur and texts are read, commented, and further passed on to the next generation, etc. It defines an organic living body where knowledge is lived, grows, and is passed to the next generation. Sharad Deshpande thus comments on the colonial estrangement that emerged from this forced transition:
what was happening as a matter of fact was a replacement of the traditional system of education by a new one in which the traditional guru-śiṣya paramparā (teacher-disciple lineage) was completely altered. In this alteration, the roles and relationship between the guru and śiṣya were completely changed. Teachers began to receive their monthly salaries by virtue of which they became professionals. Pupils began getting scholarships and stipends for being full-time students and prizes for their performance at regularly conducted examinations. The relationship between the guru and the śiṣya became incidental to the system of annual examinations. With these alterations, the basic structure of the traditional system which was based on the inseparable relation between the form and content of knowledge acquisition was mutilated. (Deshpande 2015, p. 14)
It is therefore much plausible that this shift not only disturbed works written in Sanskrit, but also disrupted the reception of even Anglophone Indian philosophy, which lost a direct community of readers and an audience ensuring the reception of works. Situated in spite of themselves between the colonial forces and a Sanskrit heritage from which they had been uprooted—nevertheless with a feeling of allegiance to this heritage arising from the rejection felt by the West and the colonial subjection—they had to face multiple contradictions and a further dismantlement of their philosophical communities. Such dilemmas permeate the generation of Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya, for example, as demonstrated by Pawel Odyniec in this volume.
(4) This regionalism or fragmentation into micro-groups stands at the core of the difficulties of reception in contemporary Indian philosophy. Delocalized and subject to ‘ideological lineage’ where one figure is made exemplary to all rather than a starting point to engage different positions, as Nalini Bhushan and Jay L. Garfield also note, the extraneous connection and the position of insider or outsider to powerful institutions or actors can also explain the difference in reception between some groups or some individuals:
While the community of artists and art critics were bound by well-known journals, and enjoyed a receptive public, there was no analogous visible community of Indian academic philosophers. Sri Aurobindo, Nobel Laureate Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, and Swami Vivekananda all worked outside of the academy, and those within the academy who came into public consciousness, like Dr Radhakrishnan, were few in number, standing as prototypes of philosophy rather than members of a community of academic philosophers. Not only has philosophy no public canon of criticism comparable to that of art, Indian academia, and a fortiori, philosophy, was subject to a regionalism that structured the discipline during this period. As a consequence, philosophy flourishes in micro-communities that are tied to specific geographic regions and to members of philosophy departments in universities of those regions. (…) There is a second similarity: a single genius and perhaps his disciples, and his school, get credited with avoiding the dilemma. KC Bhattacharyya becomes philosophy’s Abanindranath Tagore. In his lifetime, and to this day, the one academic philosopher from this period who has name recognition and respect for his philosophical work is KC Bhattacharyya. (Bhushan and Garfield 2008, p. 97)
The difference between the public figures outside Indian academia and those working in Indian universities is indeed flagrant, and their positions in politics, or their influential backgrounds, as well as their direct engagements while traveling around the world, certainly show the importance of political influence for a reception. The latter’s positions allowed them to address directly a global audience in their numerous talks abroad and boosted their political positions, or positions as intellectual leaders. The case of Radhakrishnan as a ‘public philosopher,’ trying to construct philosophically the national identity of India in his ‘Report of the University Education Commission’ of 1948–1949 (1950) is developed by Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach’s analysis in this volume, and a typology elaborated by Bhagat Oinam further distinguishes between these philosophers, highlighting their differences and sometimes their overlaps. Furthermore, another category of public philosophers, not those of the national leaders but those opposing them can be here mentioned, which includes the Freedom Fighters, these philosopher and political activists who elaborated political philosophies to defend independence. The case of Lala Lajpat Rai is exemplified in the analysis of Nalini Bhushan and Jay L. Garfield in this volume. These philosophers stand at a liminal place in my analysis: largely received and read by a clearly defined audience in their own ‘Samaj,’ actively connected to fellow activists and political intellectuals abroad and internationally acknowledged by affiliated groups or sympathizers, their writings suffered a post-independence oblivion, undoubtedly (partially) orchestrated by British authorities, probably also lacking adaptation or reinterpretation to a different political context.
(5) The difference between the public philosophers (the national leaders) and the academic philosophers, the political reception and the general indifference towards academia, points to a certain dissatisfaction that emerged in the colonial time and persisted afterwards. In another paper with the same name (‘Whose Voice? Whose Tongue? Indian Philosophy in English from Renaissance to Independence.’), Nalini Bhushan and Jay L. Garfield mention the tragic consequence of the failure of this address for those who, unlike the categories above, were not directly exposed to traveling or by their influential international political careers:
Daya Krishna (…) correctly characterizes the experience of Anglophone Indian intellectuals under colonial rule when he says in the same interview:
. . . The deepest anguish of the Indian intellectual is that he is unrecognized in the West as an equal, or as an intellectual at all. Ibid.
This failure of recognition is tragic. These philosophers wrote in a context of cultural fusion generated by the British colonial rule of India. They were self-consciously writing both as Indian intellectuals for an Indian audience and as participants in a developing global community constructed in part by the British Empire. They pursued Indian philosophy in a language and format that could render it both accessible and acceptable to the Anglophone world abroad. In their attempt to write and to think for both audiences they were taken seriously by neither. (Bhushan and Garfield 2011, p. XIV)
This brings us to a constitutive difficulty of Anglophone Indian philosophy, namely, the problem of the situation of utterance—the enunciative context: to whom is Anglophone academic Indian philosophy addressed? Nalini Bhushan and Jay Garfield mention ‘both audiences’ and the failure (they do not precise the reasons of this failure) when they were not recognized or received by ‘neither.’ I instead try to emphasize the failure of the enunciative context and rather argue that they may have addressed neither of these audiences. In avoiding Sanskrit, they separated themselves from the paṇḍit community. But they may also have missed their Anglophone colleagues, and the Anglophone world abroad, not only in terms of material conditions of producing knowledge, but in the very way of addressing colleagues. Why? I take help of Raghuramaraju’s statement for the first case, who mentions ‘disrupted’ dialogues and disturbance of the dialogical tradition due to the colonizationFootnote 11; in other terms, a certain indifference and ignorance of these micro-communities, due to the regionalism stated above:
The Indian philosophers are like fractured parts that, though very close to each other physically, have been turned topsy-turvy, and are thus unable to communicate with each other. These distances can be very effective in disrupting communication despite physical nearness. Moreover, even while talking to each other, the talking has to be mediated by the external relay station. (Raghuramaraju 2006, pp. 13–14)
Raghuramaraju continues with a striking example—the fact that when referring to other works, many contemporary Indian authors do refer to non-Indian works by the name of their authors, but do not necessarily do so when coming to their colleagues’ work. It is indeed difficult to retrace in Anglophone Indian philosophy the contemporaries that are addressed. Raghuramaraju notes the example of Sorabji’s article naming the ‘Stoics,’ the ‘Epicurian,’ and the ‘Utilitarian,’ but not Daya Krishna, whom he is actually replying to, as shown by the textual parallels—as if he could not locate him well enough to attribute him a name, or a category (Raghuramaraju 2006, p. 9). Daniel Raveh’s interpretation of Ramchandra Gandhi responding to Mahatma Gandhi in thinking death (without addressing him or his death) in this volume also illustrates this point, an ‘unnamed’ dialogue. These examples could be multiplied: even Daya Krishna, who has been a great reader of his contemporaries, many a times does not refer directly to them (N. V. Banerjee, N. K. Devaraja, etc.) in his own writings.
Regarding the Anglophone global audience, it forms a complex situation. While the works of analytical philosophy have been received quite directly in English, the reception of French and German philosophy is itself limited to translations and partial texts (and no commentator), a situation that has indeed been criticized.Footnote 12 Pawel Odyniec shows in this volume some limitations in the understanding of German idealism when criticized from the Advaitin point of view, in this case, of Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya, and Dor Miller argues for the necessity of reconstructing a dialogue between Daya Krishna and Derrida, although the former dismissed several times the post-modernity of the latter. According to Miller, this may partially originate from a misunderstanding of the idea of post-modernity by Daya Krishna, further propagated via an insufficient availability of Derrida’s texts in India at that time—and thus, in spite of Daya Krishna, Miller sees many affinities and openness for dialogues. Thus, it seems as if Indian Anglophone philosophers principally addressed their texts to the ‘West,’ an entity that remains ill defined, unclarified, and partially imagined, as explained by Nirmal Verma: ‘India is one tragic example of a country which still nurtures a kind of fossilized idea of “Europeanism”, at a time when the idea of Europe as one unified civilization itself seems to have become obsolete’ (Verma 2000, p. 43).
Another evidence supporting this interpretation is the contrast between the long list of well-established critiques against the orientalism of Western Indologists and a certain ‘Occidentalism’ of India. This is not explicitly thematized, although this undefined ‘West’ remains constantly a reference point for thinking ‘India.’ It is indeed very difficult to find a clear definition of what is meant as the ‘West’ by Anglophone Indian philosophers, or who exactly could be addressed under this term, although it remains a constant reference point (Raghuramaraju 2006, p. 11). Summing up, although with some great exceptions, Anglophone Indian philosophers tend(ed) to believe they were addressing ‘everybody’ while actually speaking to nobody—neither to the close colleagues, nor to the far-away ‘Westerners’ who may not recognize themselves in the given depiction of the ‘West.’ Therefore, to agree with Raghuramaraju’s critique, if Anglophone Indian philosophy is not addressed to historians of classical Indian philosophy, it is usually ignored by Sanskritist philosophers or philologists, and it is also not addressed to contemporary Western philosophers, which place remains for contemporary Indian philosophy and which audience could receive it?
Different answers have tried to remedy the enunciative problem and to engage more closely and directly with their own or with other philosophical communities, and this volume further presents several possibilities in this direction. Raghuramaraju discusses the very condition of addressing Western philosophy in India, that is, by ‘bending’ external philosophers to make them appropriately ‘usable’ in contemporary Indian contexts; once ‘bent,’ they can address the Anglophone Indian communities. Raveh is located on the other end of the discourse. In speaking with Ramchandra Gandhi’s works about ‘the readiness to die,’ an exemplary quality of the greatest leaders, martyrs, and religious-historical figures in the world, Raveh touches the universality of the human condition on death, although from the exemplarity of transcultural figures such as Mahatma Gandhi. In between this spectrum of universality and locality, Nalini Bhushan and Jay Garfield connect Indian political discourses with the global audience in analyzing the urgent problem of terrorism today from the categories elaborated by the political activist and philosopher Lala Lajpat Rai—de-locating his context into ours, by which they unveil new understandings of the meanings of terrorism. Dor Miller creates new connections between Daya Krishna and Derrida, a missed encounter during their lives, which he turns into a philosophical dialogue, a way to a posteriori address each other in a new reading. With a more methodological focus, Pawel Odyniec elucidates the position of K. C. Bhattacharyya as addressing the colonial predicament in his subtle reinterpretation of Advaita philosophy—a critical engagement with German idealism sometimes hidden behind the Sanskrit, which explains the poly-directionality of his address. Bhagat Oinam more generally reflects on the condition of the dialogue between contemporary Anglophone Indian philosophers and the global world, focusing our attention on the disparity and diversity of the local philosophical communities in India, and the question of how to relate them. Finally, Muzaffar Ali investigates the dialogical method itself in the Indian traditions, deriving from the Sanskrit Indian dialectical theories of vāda a contemporary ethics that could be meaningful in contemporary India. All these attempts are intended to create a platform for direct encounters and dialogue; not renouncing movement between India and the West, they do so in creative ways, carefully aware of the difficulties of the discourse.
I do not confine here the possible obstacles to the reception of Anglophone Indian philosophy to the one elaborated here. The situation is complex and would deserve more attention to clarifying (back)grounds and offering possible remedies. As for the solution to this lack of attention, I can only underline some attempts that have been made until now: the Vienna conference and its proceedings in the present volume are one more step for bringing academic awareness to Anglophone Indian philosophy, by illustrating its manifoldness, contemporariness, and relevance today, for Indian academics, for cross-cultural analyses, and also for global thematics. For sure, other initiatives have been earlier attempted, and more importantly, new ones should take shape to continue or replace what has been tried. These conclusive notes try to delineate a starting point for further discussion with possible difficulties to take into consideration, some of which are material, some political, and some dialogical and enunciative. I believe that in today’s post-colonial context, the question of the audience and the address—namely, to whom are we speaking?—is primary to the awareness of how the global discourse is constituted (in terms of persistence of Euro-American centrism and post-colonial limitations) in order for Anglophone Indian philosophy to access it and, with it, to achieve the reception and recognition that it rightly claims.
Notes
See Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach’s paper, ‘Representing Indian Philosophy through the Nation: An Exploration of the Public Philosopher Radhakrishnan’ in this volume.
See the analysis by Pawel Odyniec of K. C. Bhattacharyya’s ‘reactive’ feature and ‘confrontative’ approach in this volume, in ‘Rethinking Advaita within the colonial predicament: The “confrontative” philosophy of K. C. Bhattacharyya (1875–1949).’ See also Bhattacharyya (1984).
The ‘West’ is an inadequate and yet unavoidable conceptual entity in post-colonial discourses. In its common use in the Indian context, it mostly means ‘what is not India’ and generally is limited to the geographical zones of North America and Europe and linguistically to the Anglophone intellectual productions of these regions. Its negative definition as ‘(all) that, what is not-India’ was rendered necessary in the colonial logic to construct a hierarchy and for Indians to reject the colonizers. At the same time, this negative definition turns out to be problematic in that it does not further investigate what exactly the West is, which leaves a certain permeability to the term (notably dangerous in the nationalistic propaganda, which relies on a certain fantasized idea of the West). I am aware of the problem of the lack of positive characteristics of the term, which makes its use normally function more as a dichotomic relation vis-à-vis India (the West being used in relation to what India is not and vice versa, without any precise definition of the content of each of these entities). However, this relational use as well as the difficulty of avoiding the term is relevant, since it translates the difficulty of contemporary Indian philosophers to define themselves without the mediation to this colonial/post-colonial externality.
See the unique venture of Nalini Bhushan and Jay Garfield who effectuate both gestures at once in their study ‘Lala Lajpat Rai’s Classification of Nationalism: Can It Help Us to Understand Contemporary Nationalist Movements?’. In proving the resourcefulness of the political philosophy of the Arya samaji Congressman and activist Lala Lajpat Rai for (re)thinking ‘terrorism’ today, they demonstrate how Indian contemporary philosophy can be an asset to understand contemporary world problems; in so doing, they, at the same time, confront nationalistic rhetoric and ideologies and dismantle the nationalistic propaganda of contemporary Indian Hindutva.
See Dor Miller’s essay in this volume, ‘Reading Derrida with Daya Krishna—Postmodern Trends in Contemporary Indian Philosophy,’ for more details on Daya Krishna’s post-modern affinity in questioning the singularity presupposed in our understanding of ‘knowledge’ and his concept of ‘I-centricity,’ for which reason maintaining a plurality of narratives is necessary.
‘One who is asking “What is Indian philosophy? What is “Indian” about it?” has already situated himself outside of that tradition which we call “Indian”. None of the philosopher who shaped that tradition, and with those writings we are acquainted, ever asked such a question. They lived and thought within that tradition, which today we are, by the very questions we are asking, thematizing. In that very act of thematizing, a rupture has taken place.’ (Mohanty 1982, p. 233). See also Deshpande (2015), Raghuramaraju (2013), and Potter (1985).
An important contribution of the latter can be read in this volume in ‘“Philosophy in India” or “Indian philosophy”: Some post-colonial questions’ authored by Bhagat Oinam, who reformulates this issue in the future, namely, ‘what will constitute Indian philosophy,’ which is opening more and new doors to reflect upon.
‘However, one aspect common to all these philosophers is their training in western philosophy that compartmentalizes the discipline of philosophy into sub-disciplines – metaphysics/ ontology, epistemology, and ethics. One may add logic and aesthetics into the list. While division and compartmentalisation enable us to understand philosophical problems with clarity, they also carry several limitations. For instance, while investigating reality, one ends up knowing one aspect of the reality without being able to comprehend the total reality. Furthermore, when one concentrates on the theory of knowledge, say, to understand the nature of self – what gets often left out is the ontology of the Self. One may tactfully respond by saying that his/her job is to look at the epistemological side of the investigation; but this only shows the limiting aspect of the exercise.
The above argument to critique compartmentalisation may not have many takers; yet this has its strengths and limitations. The division of philosophy into metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc. and handling philosophical problem from one of these methodological prisms certainly limits our understanding of reality. Further, it falls short of capturing what is known as worldly wisdom and insights, which the idea darshana envisages.’ (Oinam 2011, pp. 85–86)
The parallel elaborated by Sheldon Pollock between the fall of Sanskrit creativity and the fall of the political structure responsible for maintaining it would be another example to argue for the influence between material support, condition and structure and the production of creative knowledge (in particular in the Kashmiri case [Pollock 2001, p. 399; Deshpande 2015, p. 14]).
The ‘Who’s Who’ (Daya Krishna 1991), a directory tracing the scholars of the country, was published for this effect. The publication of his multilingual dialogues (saṃvāda) (Daya Krishna et al. 2000, 1991) engaging with the paṇḍits also clearly attempts at bringing them visibility; his later series fostering contemporary Indian philosophers aim to bring visibility on the contemporary Anglophone academic community (Chatterjee 1990; Mohanty 2001).
‘Colonialism (…) disrupted the relational network existing in Indian philosophy. However, the demolition undertaken was not complete, which is what increases its complexity.(…) Alternatively, I think the most important achievement of colonial intervention in the Indian psyche is that it disturbed its structure and dialogic tradition.’ (Raghuramaraju 2006, p. 7)
‘This group is in a “pitiable state” because what they write in English on Indian religion or philosophy has no market in India, and if translated into an Indian language their writings will be hardly taken cognizance of by the pandits. So, their “stuff”, he says, is meant only for the foreigners who cannot judge whether this group has represented or misrepresented Indian thought. Different from these are two groups, one which has “drifted” towards western philosophy and another towards western theology and religion. Those “working on the issues of western philosophy think they are beings of a higher order”, but they are, he says, in a “really pitiable position” (…) These produce every year a considerable number of books and papers, but their work is not taken cognizance of by the West, just as that of Indian scholars writing on western literature is not. Their “stuff”, he says, is meant for consumption in the local market, but he does not say whether the local market consumes it or not.’ (Murty 1985, pp. 151–152). Murty refers to a report written by Suresh Chandra.
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Coquereau-Saouma, E. Politics of Addressing, Problems of Reception: To Whom Are Anglophone Indian Philosophers Speaking?. SOPHIA 57, 489–500 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0674-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0674-5