The Wendy Incident: A View from Europe–SN Balagangadhara
Original [Context: Note though that this piece merely expresses my irritation…] I am from Bangalore, India, but work as a professor in Belgium, Europe. My name is not Batra but…
Read moreThe Secular State and Religious Conflict: Liberal Neutrality and the Indian Case of Pluralism
Editor’s Note: This article appeared in the Journal of Political Philosophy. Authored by SN Balagangadhara and Jakob De Roover. For an alternative research programme (paradigm) for studying India, Indian culture…
Read moreHow to speak for the Indian traditions: an agenda for the future–SN Balagangadhara
Editor’s note: This article appeared in the Journal of American Academy of Religion Abstract The paper attempts a contrast between the process and the structure of the Christian and the…
Read moreNeurobiological Theory of Religion
You ask whether ‘in principle’ a neurobiological theory on religion could “account” for the experience of the believers. The answer depends on what kind of an account you are asking for and…
Read moreReconceptualizing India Studies by Balagangadhara–a new book
What does it mean to be an Indian in this time and age? What does India have to give to the contemporary world? These overarching questions that echo in the…
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…
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