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If Truschke, Doniger, Pollock et al claim that India has religions just like West has Christianity and Arabia has Islam, what are the “theological” tracts that give self descriptions of these “religions” ? What is the Indian equivalent of “Summa Theological” ?
If India does not have religions in the sense that Christianity, Islam are religions words like communalism, secularism hold no meaning nor do religious reform or faith or devotion. The domain (ex: ethical) is structured differently. We cannot speak of India the way we do today.
Notice the caution exercised in speaking about China, Japan, Thailand and even Korea. Regressive, archaic traditions etc are not thrown around in abundance nor are hypothesis made by the dozen. For this to happen even after 1947 is not ideal at all. It is preposterous.
We need a theory to explain what we are seeing empirically. This theory cannot possibly use entities available to Europeans in the 17-18th C or their derived categories. They have to native to the culture we seek to build a theory for. The discord in experience is HUGE.
We speak about India the way the West experienced India. And we speak about the West using western self description.
How would the world look if we could speak about both to how it looks to us Indians and to Indian culture ?
With India gaining prominence we should ask this Q
How would the world look if we could speak about both to how it looks to us Indians and to Indian culture ?
With India gaining prominence we should ask this Q
Ex of the problem: Classical Chinese or Sanskrit have no words for - Morality, rights, freedom, free will, theology, religion etc.
And yet we describe both the West and Eastern using these categories and entities.AKC realised this. He spoke of Indians thinking about Indian ideas
And yet we describe both the West and Eastern using these categories and entities.AKC realised this. He spoke of Indians thinking about Indian ideas
Application of this idea: We are troubled by the question of Islam or conversions. What can we do about it ? How does a society that does not have religions find a solution to problems like conversion, historical supersessionism etc ? How would (did) our ancestors respond ?
It is well and good to say that we have survived or we lost so much but India seems to be the only place that retains much of “self” that came into contact with Christianity and/or Islam ? Why ? We do not have theory to even start talking about the answer(s)
