First published in Indica Today as a three part series. Link provided at the end
PART 1
About This Series: This three-part series is based on a talk given by Sri Chittaranjan Naik at a Round Table Conference on Hinduism held in Hyderabad in the year 2014, which was organised by Dr. Aravind Raoji and sponsored by Sri Hari Kiran Vadlamaniji. The PowerPoint presentation prepared for delivering that talk was shared with Dr. Pingali Gopal recently and he felt that the ideas and points presented therein were as much valid today as they were back then in 2014; and he suggested that they be put down in an article and published for the benefit of a larger audience. Dr. Pingali Gopal took up the task of transcribing these points into the form of an article. What follows is the result of that endeavour.
Introduction
Indian philosophy is equated with only Vedanta, and that is a two-edged sword. No doubt, it represents the pinnacle of understanding the world and reality around us. However, using the so-called “illusory world” ideas in the understanding of the actual world presented to the individual or in defining the duties of the individual or the community—the Dharma and the karma—is fallacious. Indian Darshanas developed its three-tiered understanding of the world depending on the categories of mind it was addressing.
It was the Nyaya and Vaisheshika philosophies that were center stage at the practical level of dealing with the world and community around an individual. As a science of reasoning, Nyaya was used to interpret even the Dharma Shastras and Mimamsa, including Uttara Mimamsa or Vedanta. Nyaya therefore has a very important role to play in Vedic society. As an aside, Indian Darshanas are strictly not the philosophies associated with the Western traditions. However, to avoid confusion, we call them philosophies.
Along with Nyaya and Vaisesika, we have Samkhya and Yoga, which are the disciplines of knowledge relating to the discrimination between truth and untruth (viveka) and the control and cessation of mental modifications (chitta-vrittis). At the highest level of understanding of man, nature, God, and the final Reality, there was the philosophy of the Vedanta. The last was for the highest seekers, and using that alone to assess what Indian civilization accomplished or did not achieve amounts to a partial and distorted understanding of our culture and civilization.
Nyaya is held to be the queen of the Darshanas because it is the science which lays down the method of logic and reasoning required for establishing the rational foundations of all the vidyas. It deals with all aspects of reasoning including various ways of debating, the syllogistic rules of inferential reasoning, and the epistemological method of obtaining correct knowledge about the world based on the pramanas. Even though Vedanta represents the pinnacle of all knowledge, it does not replace Nyaya at the level of worldly transactions (vyavahara).
As an analogy, quantum mechanics or string theory may provide the final explanation of the matter around us, but in the gross world, it is Newtonian classical physics that forms the backbone of most technology, including sending satellites to the moon. Einstein may have given better explanations, but it subsumes Newton without rejecting it. Vedanta may be the highest explanation, but it does not prevent Nyaya and Vaisheshika from taking centre stage in explaining the world around us and laying the foundations of a huge knowledge output. Nyaya and Tarka form the foundational basis in all fields of science, technology, medicine, arts, literature, and the Dharmasastras, guiding a human being towards liberation.
Unfortunately, the teaching of Nyaya is largely ignored, and most Indians come out of schools and colleges absolutely unaware of the richness of Indian philosophical systems. Even worse, some of them take a disdainful view of these systems. The pushing of Indian philosophies into the realm of “religion” and then removing it from secular studies was initiated in the German universities of the 19th century to ward off the challenges to Western philosophy. The study of India became the exclusive domain of Indology, which was a racist enterprise. These aspects have been thoroughly documented in the book The Nay Science by Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee.
There is an urgent need to revive the system of Nyaya and Tarka to present an alternative view of the world around us. The ontology (explanation of reality) and epistemology (acquisition of knowledge) have a far surer method in Indian Darshanas than Western philosophies, which appear stuck in both areas at some level with little hope of easy resolution in the near future.
The Civilization Heritage of India
India and Greece were the only two countries that developed logical formalism in philosophy. In Greece, logical formalism began with Aristotle. However, in Greek philosophy, logic, however, has no sound base in linguistics or language philosophy. Even ethics and justice have no sound foundation. In contrast, the tradition of Tarka (philosophy and reasoning) in India predates Aristotle by many hundreds of years. Linguistics and language have been the bedrock of Indian philosophy even as ethics and justice are based on the archetypes of the universe (Vedic Word).
India and Israel are the two lands with very ancient religions. Judaism, based on the written letter, the secondary form of language, is, however, of recent origin (around 3000 BCE) and follows a monotonic or single path to God. In India, Sanathana Dharma is based on Sabda, the primary form of language. It is ancient, beginningless, and based on knowledge where faith is only a pedagogic device. Multiple paths to liberation exist based on the adhikara, or the competence of the individual.
In the spheres of the arts and aesthetics, there was no other civilisation that reached such heights of aesthetic efflorescence as India. The civilisation was not merely “otherworldly,” but it celebrated life in all its aspects; the sixty-four arts of the Gandharva Shastras stand as testimony to this. In no other civilisation were the arts and aesthetics based on the strong foundations of knowledge, i.e., a theory of aesthetics.
In the sciences and engineering too, it was the knowledge of India that was carried over to the rest of the world. There were great contributions in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, surgery, architecture, civil engineering, town planning, shipbuilding, and industrial technology. We had our own political principle too. Politics in Western civilisation was based on a notion of order with its focus on civic virtue and civic body. The Indian concept of politics was based on Rta, the natural ordering principle of the universe, with its focus on both (i) maintaining order and harmony in society and (ii) channelling the actions of the individual towards the highest human goal, i.e., liberation.
Indian polity was not lacking in the generation of wealth, too. The Indian civilisation was the wealthiest civilisation on earth. Until the 17th century, 25% to 30% of the entire world’s wealth was concentrated in India. Despite the high population, India maintained a fair level of per capita income.
The Indian civilisation was undoubtedly the greatest to have flourished in the world. It had prolific accomplishments in philosophy, linguistics, logic, religious goals, arts, poetry, aesthetics, sciences, engineering, state polity, and wealth generation. A massive body of literature amazingly survives intact across thousands of years. While other civilisations had one or two aspects that made a civilisation great, India excelled in every aspect of it. The Indian civilisation was without a parallel in which every aspect of life is based on knowledge, and the root of the civilisation is the Veda.
The Situation Today
The intellectual tradition of India has all but disappeared from the land. Even our own schools and universities do not teach our Vidyas, with the result that most people do not even know that we had a great intellectual tradition. We view our own culture and Dharma through Western ideas and notions, mocking our “superstitious past.” Our knowledge systems, our arts, and our culture are being sacked by the Western Academy, the Christian Missionaries, and the marketing cultures of the corporate world. Yet, we look up to the West to seek recognition for scholarship even in our own Vidyas. In terms of wealth and prosperity, poverty is widely prevalent.
How has this come about? From a historical perspective, the shift from the Old Order to the New Order occurred between 1600 and 1700 CE. This was when the Indian intellectual tradition lost its vigour and vibrancy. This was the time when the Great Indian Renaissance, which began in Nava Dwipa (Navya Nyaya reached its peak here), ended with the fall of the Vijayanagara Kingdom. This was also the same period when Western thought acquired a vigour with the advent of the European Renaissance, which brought with it new ideas in the fields of Western philosophy, Western science, and Western social theory. The declining vigour of the Indian intellectual tradition, combined with the resurgence of Western thought, resulted in our culture and Dharma being sacked by the West. This phenomenon continues today in the guise of Western academic scholarship and the upholding of Western ideals of humanism.
The Dominance of the West
Western scholarship has today acquired the status of Apta-Vakhya (the word of authority). We now live in a world that is shaped and defined by the West. This is mainly due to Western science and technology having brought tremendous material comforts to humankind. Powerful Western institutions cater to the welfare of human material comforts through the principles of humanism, human equality, and liberty. The West sees these phenomena as a continuation of its superior Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian heritage. They have developed tremendous self-confidence, and the result is an enduring attitude of Western superiority.
The most dangerous outcome of Western scholarship’s dominance is that the stage of discourse on Hinduism has now shifted to the West. The debates on Hinduism are now taking place not on the soil of Bharata Varsha but in the academic halls of the West. Our own scholars seek to publish papers on Hinduism and get recognition for their work from Western academia, especially America.
For 300 years, the West has sacked our Dharma and culture. Today they stand poised to take control of the discourse on Hinduism. Meanwhile, our tradition remains cocooned within its own narrow circle, far removed from the needs of contemporary India. Our tradition is still engaged in clearing the doubts that people had in their minds hundreds of years ago instead of confronting and clearing the doubts that the modern world has put into their minds. If we fail to revive our intellectual tradition and challenge the West, we are solely responsible. We need to take control of the discourse on Hinduism.
The West’s Shield of Protection and Its Weapon of Destruction
Contemporary Western philosophy has all rejected any higher goals or a grand narrative for philosophy. For the West, the shield of protection has been the professionalisation of philosophy. The Academy recognises “philosophy” only when articulated or written by its professional philosophers and peer-reviewed by its own coterie. The Academy rejects any philosophical traditions other than its own, rejecting them as not constituting ‘philosophy.’
Psychoanalysis of the “other” is its destructive weapon. The rejection of the Grand Narrative has brought about a shift in focus from philosophy to the philosopher. Since the Grand Narrative is thought to be a delusion, the next step is to use psychoanalytical methods like deconstruction, Jungian, and Freudian techniques to look at the philosopher’s mental state and figure out what led him or her to believe in such a philosophy.
Scholars of Indology and Hinduism, like Wendy Doniger, wield the destructive weapon, crafted by the Western philosophy tradition, to wreak havoc in the soil of our culture and Dharma. But individuals are foot soldiers; the real enemy sits in the philosophy departments behind the shield of protection. In focusing our attention solely on fighting individuals, we are dissipating our energies in fighting decoys while the real enemy is left unhindered to shape the worldviews of the future detrimental to our Dharma. The real enemy, protected by the shield of professionalism, feels that Indian philosophy is dead and has been consigned to the departments of archaeology.
In this scenario, we have the ideal opportunity to revive the Indian Tarka tradition by challenging the fundamental underpinnings of the Western shield of protection, as well as the fundamental principles of what modern Western philosophy refers to as “the quintessential feature of modernity”—the rejection of the larger goals of philosophy. In attacking the real enemy and refuting the key principles that have gone into building the modern worldview, we will be reviving our tradition of Tarka as a living force in the world.
The Sack of Our Culture Without Debate
The sustained efforts of the Nyayayikas and Mimamsikas to engage the Bauddhas in rational debate led to the overthrow of Buddhism in India. The fate of Buddhism in India was finally sealed by the logical arguments of Kumarila Bhatta and Udayana. The West, on the other hand, has never tried to refute our siddhantas through even a semblance of rational debate; it has simply foisted and superimposed its own half-baked ideas on our philosophies through unfair means and methods. As a result, all our philosophies and vidyas have been presented to the world through the muddy and fractured lensof half-baked Western scholarship.
There has never been a clash between civilisations; the West has simply avoided it by adopting deceitful and backdoor methods to subvert our culture. It is time for a real clash between civilisations. We cannot undo the events of history. But we have the option to shape the future of our country. We need to scrutinise the ideas, philosophies, and sciences of the West through the indigenous, perhaps superior, platform of Pramaana Shastra.
We have to throw the challenge back to the West instead of passively accepting their ideas and ideals. No one has ever undertaken such an enterprise before. Reviving the Indian intellectual tradition as a living force will lay the seeds of a future renaissance in our country. Importantly, it will preserve the kernel and not merely the outer shell of our Dharma.
A Survey of Western Traditions: Loss of a Higher Purpose
From Descartes to the rise of Analytic and Continental philosophy, a 300-year arc of history destroyed the entire framework of Scholastic philosophy. Empiricism replaced the “categories” as the foundation of logic. The ontological status of the perceived world became, and continues to remain, a point of debate. The foundation of inductive reasoning suffered a setback. The absence of categories calls into question even the foundation of analytic truths.
Only truth preservation from the premises to the conclusion, not truth determination, became the scope of logic. Logic clearly distinguishes itself from epistemology. The latter has lost its ground and is trending towards fallibilism, the belief that no belief can be proven or justified with absolute certainty. A posteriori reasoning has replaced a priori reasoning in science, leading to the acceptance of bizarre theories as sublime truths. A priori knowledge is knowledge that comes from the power of reasoning based on self-evident truths; it usually describes lines of reasoning or arguments that proceed from the general to the particular, or from causes to effects. A posteriori means “from what is later.” It describes knowledge based solely on experience or personal observation.
Western civilisation has rejected the concept of any “grand truth,” and it wants to impose its loss of faith on other civilisations. Contemporary Western philosophy consists of two streams—the Analytic and the Continental—and both of them reject the higher goals of philosophy, though for different reasons. The French philosopher Lyotard succinctly captured this theme when he stated, “The end of the Grand-Narrative is the quintessential feature of modernity.”
The grand narrative has indeed become an anathema. Analytic philosophy rejects the pursuit of the higher goals of philosophy as a futile and irresponsible exercise because philosophers had not come to an agreement even after 2000 years of philosophy. Analytical philosophy defines itself as a style of philosophy characterised by precision and thoroughness about narrow topics, as well as resistance to imprecise and cavalier discussions of broad topics.Continental philosophy (now post-structuralism) rejects the higher goals of philosophy because it believes that reality is shaped by language and that language itself has no fixed centre; it is nothing more than a set of floating symbols determined by social and historical factors.
Post-structuralism promotes the idea of anti-essentialism which means that there are no intrinsic essential properties to objects or entities. Poststructuralism is characterised by the belief that there is no truth with a grand “T” and that anyone speaking of a higher truth needs therapy. Post-structuralism views itself as a therapeutic philosophy. So, modern Western philosophy has created and pushed a view of the world in which any philosophy that talks about a Grand Truth or a Grand Narrative (or Meta Narrative) is seen as trying to return to a totalitarian past or as part of a regime of dominance.This fundamentally clashes with the view of Indian philosophy, whose grand purpose is to liberate an individual from bondage to freedom and transform the state from ignorance to knowledge.
The Loss of the Ideal of Dharma
The misrepresentation of our Dharma happened because our society has lost sight of the Vedic Ideal. The idea of separating religion/Dharma from secular life is the root cause of the corruption of our cultural soil. This idea of secularism, or separating the sacred from the secular, is directly antagonistic to the Eternal Dharma (Sanathana Dharma) that Lord Krishna came to reiterate on earth. In our Dharma, there is no such thing as separation of religion from secular life. Dharma determines every human action and every aspect of human life. Dharma is the regulating principle that tempers all our actions and leads us towards the highest goal of human life.
It is the key factor that has prepared the soil for the missionaries to convert our people. Where did the concept of separating religion from secular life originate? It originated in the West, in an epoch of human history that began approximately 1700 years ago, known as the Ecumenical period. It was born out of the corruption of the Christian religion by the Christian Church itself. It is the false principle propagated by the Church that says that “grace supersedes law.” It created a vacuum in the Western world with respect to the regulatory principles governing human action.
This vacuum was filled up by the ideal of humanism fostered by the Western Renaissance and Western Enlightenment and by man-made laws based on the principles of human equality and liberty designed to serve the welfare of the body in complete disregard for the welfare of the soul. As a result, Religion/Dharma was completely cut off from Secular Life. This created a religion without any rules for how people should act, as well as a set of rules made by people to guide how people should act in secular life.
Proselytisation thrives when the ideal of Dharma is lost. Formerly, people in our country fell into Adharma not because they did not know Dharma, but because desire and temptation were too strong. Today, we have lost even the ideal of Dharma. Therefore, not only have we lost the restraint on the pull of desire and temptation, but we have also lost the normative principles that guide our actions. How can we stop the growth of Adharma when people are unaware of the distinction between righteous and wrongful action? How can we contain the missionaries’ work?
Knowing Dharma and Fighting Adharma
The fight has to be strong in the effort to restore Dharma. If our fight is only to prevent street-level conversions, what do we gain by it? When the very ideal of Dharma is lost, what is the use of ensuring that we have large ‘numbers’ wearing the label of ‘Hindus’? When we lose the inner core, what is the purpose of preserving its outer shell? We need the numbers, of course, because we live in a democracy and the numbers help to shape national policy, but the more important goal is to preserve the kernel of our Dharma as a living tradition rather than achieve victory in terms of mere numbers. Fighting Adharma is not an end in itself but is a part of the enterprise to restore Dharma.
Our primary focus has to be on restoring Dharma. The truth about what Dharma is and what Adharma is can be known only by knowing what Dharma is in the first place. Knowing what a lotus is the only way to know what it is not—a rose, cow, mountain, etc. But one cannot know the identity of a thing merely by knowing its difference from other things. Knowledge of difference from other things is rooted in knowledge of its identity. If one does not know what Dharma is, one cannot fight effectively against Adharma because one is then liable to mistake one for the other.
Our fight against Adharma, therefore, cannot be an independent project. Our endeavour to restore Dharma in our society must include this fight. Otherwise, the result will be the perpetuation of more confusion. This confusion is exemplified in many areas where even well-meaning scholars get involved, like (1) the efforts to date the Vedas, (2) the denial of Varnashrama Dharma in keeping with ideals of equality and liberty, (3) anti-essentialism, and (4) ethics based on the human being as tabula rasa at birth, denying the ideas of karma and rebirth. Our primary focus has to be on restoring Dharma. This naturally leads to the fight against Adharma.
PART 2
Maintaining the Ideal of Dharma in our Tradition: Nyaya
Ours is a knowledge-based tradition. At the core of our tradition lies the uncompromising pursuit of truth and the striving to obtain the highest knowledge, which confers liberation on the soul. It takes two steps to fully understand an object: first, we have to make sure that our understanding matches the Pramaana that applies to that object; second, we have to get rid of any doubts that keep us from fully understanding the object’s truth so that the knowledge attains stability and certainty. As long as doubts remain, knowledge is not complete.
The entire process is an intellectual churning that goes by the name of Nyaya or Tarka. Its form is in the nature of a discourse aimed at knowing, or establishing in the public domain, the truth of an object in a veridical manner. We simply call it ‘Tarka’ when we apply reasoning to knowing the truth of a general linguistic proposition. We call it ‘Mimamsa’ when we apply it to understanding Vedic-vakhya meanings. Tarka, or Nyaya, is at the heart of our intellectual tradition. It is the intellectual discourse by which the tradition upholds Truth and Dharma in our society. Today our tradition has become cocooned within its own narrow circle, far removed from the religious needs of the contemporary Hindu. It has thus lost the vigour and vibrancy that it once had that made our country and our civilisation the centres of learning in the entire world.
Why Our Tradition Has Lost Its Relevancy
Today, teaching about Hinduism has become synonymous with teaching Vedanta. But Vedanta is Nivritti Dharma. It is applicable to only a few people, i.e., to the mumukshus whose desires for the world have burnt out, as it were, whereas the educational needs of the vast majority of Hindus who are qualified only for Pravritti Dharma are being entirely ignored. What is left of our tradition has absolved itself of its crucial responsibility of educating the vast majority of Hindus about the Dharma that is applicable to them, i.e., Pravritti Dharma or Dharma with regard to human action.
We are thus left with a situation where Hindus (and even the Supreme Court of India) utter inane, banal, and cliched platitudes like “Hinduism is a way of life” without anyone being able to even articulate what this way of life is. In such a barren land, where our tradition fails to teach the Hindu majority their Dharma, how can missionaries be blamed for converting our people? We must first address our own issues before confronting anyone else.Meanwhile, while our tradition is stuck in clearing old doubts and busy teaching Vedanta instead of Dharma with respect to action, the discourse on Hinduism shifted to the West.
The discourse on Hinduism has to be brought back to India, where it belongs. Our Shastras are given to us for us, Hindus, to know about our Dharma; they are not meant for teaching the West or the Americans about our Dharma. Our Shastras are based on the apaurusheya Veda and are hence self-established and self-validated. They do not need the validation of the West or the West Academy when there is a basic incommensurability of the paradigms. Bringing back the discourse on Hinduism to India will serve as a means to restore the ideal of Dharma in our society.
The Role of Nyaya
“The discussion of the meaning of the Vedic sentences is the main object of Mimamsa. These two vidyas, Mimamsa and Nyaya, have different functions. Mimamsa is known as Vakhyarthavidya (i.e., it deals with the meanings of Vedic sentences) but not as Pramanavidya (which deals with the means of valid knowledge).”
“The Nyaya-shastra is the main pillar of all the systems because it is the means to establish the authority of the Vedas. “
(Nyaya Manjari, Jayanta Bhatta)
What does Nyaya Shastra mean in our context? It is not a speculative philosophy, nor a philosophy made by system builders, as Karl Potter says. It is a Vedic Darshana having its birth in the knowledge contained in the Vedas. Each of our Darshanas adopts Nyaya in the context of challenging the Western tradition. The disagreement between our own schools on some finer nuances is part of the vibrancy of our tradition. They all have their common foundation in the Veda, in Pramaana Shastra (epistemology), and in sabdartha (padartha or meaning of words and objects). The ideas generated by the contemporary Western tradition are contrary to the spirit and foundational elements of our tradition. The revival of Tarka tradition ensures Avirodha (consistency) to our own tradition.
The Revival of The Tradition of Tarka
The West treats our philosophies as archaeological relics while it treats its own philosophies as a living tradition. Indian philosophy has been known to the West for at least 300 years. Since the beginning of the 20th century, scholars have translated the key texts of most Darshanas into English. But philosophy papers and philosophy books written in the West do not mention Indian philosophy or any Indian philosopher even with regard to topics on which India has had a rich philosophical past and the West has had none. Instead, we find attempts to trace the ideas to some scant references (often limited to a vague paragraph) in some old Western philosophy text.
At the same time, just next door to the philosophy departments of the Western Academia, enormous effort and money are invested to study Indian texts in departments bearing titles such as ‘Indology’ or ‘Indic Studies.’ The West employs Indian philosophy as a rich source of ideas to uphold its own tradition as a dynamic force, exemplified by Ferdinand De Saussure, while simultaneously attempting to eradicate Indian philosophy by treating it as a mere archaeological relic from the past.
In our tradition, we view the study of shastras as an obligation we owe to the Rishis. The West, on the other hand, steals ideas from our Rishis and claims ownership. It can get away with doing so only because our tradition has receded into a shell and has stopped confronting the world.
Dismantling The Overarching Principles of Contemporary Western Philosophy
Our first and foremost task should be to break the protective shield that so-called professional philosophers have erected for themselves by demolishing the ground on which it stands. Ironically, the only discipline that has gained professional status, not due to its successes, but despite its remarkable failures, is philosophy. Failure is not a valid reason to formalise or professionalize a discipline. A method obtains its authority not by its mere acceptance by a select community.
There is no uniform philosophical method in the Western tradition itself to justify the professionalisation. The methods of Analytic philosophy and of Continental philosophy are vastly different from each other. Furthermore, each method relies on fallacious arguments and false principles, as demonstrated by Pramaana Shastra.
The approach of Analytic philosophy of taking up only small topics at a time while rejecting the larger goals of philosophy violates a fundamental principle of epistemology. If one fails to perceive the rope clearly, it may appear as a snake, and one keeps studying the snake. The West has never been strong in theories of error. It is a topic that is dealt with in detail in the Indian tradition, and it is easy to show how the approach of Analytic philosophy is entirely misguided and prone to error at every step.
Continental philosophy, which believes that language consists of floating symbols, is self-negating with respect to its own assertions. It reduces to a form of the liar’s paradox. Western philosophy has no clear grasp of the nature of language. There is much confusion between the objective nature of a word’s meaning (yathartha) and the word’s appearance in the mind, which may be yathartha or ayathartha. Similarly, the freedom to choose a word (a set of phonemes) by the language-speaking community at the point of its etymological origin and the word-meaning itself is not subject to human determinations. In Indian Darshanas, words have origins beyond the body and mind at the highest level of Consciousness.
A comprehensive demonstration of the objective nature of word meanings would contradict the claims of Post-Structuralism both with respect to language being “floating symbols” and the thesis that there is no truth with a Grand ‘T.’ The professionalisation of philosophy and the rejection of the metanarrative intertwine with each other. One stroke can demolish both of them.
Bringing The Discourse on Hinduism Back
Our primary aim is to bring the discourse on Hinduism back to India. A paradigm going in the opposite direction would never accept Indian paradigms for doing philosophy or seeking knowledge. In accordance with this aim, we should not attempt to publish papers or theses in the West or seek recognition from the Western Academy. Our own university should present and publish the papers/theses. The revival of the tradition of Tarka by itself would mark the birth of a new university.
To begin with, the university need not be a building made of bricks and stones which can come later. All it needs is an identity and a periodic gathering of scholars for presenting papers and conducting dialogues on key issues of philosophy. The papers and theses will be addressed to Indian scholars and the Indian audience, not to the West or the Western Academy, since their primary purpose is to impart knowledge of our Dharma to our people. The refutation of opposing views is merely avirodha, clearing the field of all contradictory theories that (i) stand in the way of understanding our Dharma, or (ii) belittling our tradition.
The Western Academy will try to ignore or belittle this phenomenon. Let them. Today, they can afford to ignore our traditions because they do not confront the worldviews promoted by the West. We will chip away at their tradition’s foundations one by one in a cogent, logical, and sustained manner, forcing them to notice and respond. We then become the initiators of the dialogue, and they become the responders. The centre stage of the dialogue will then begin to shift from the Western Academy to the soil of Bharata Varsha.
When we revive our tradition as a living force, we will create our own Aptas or authorities. Today, people cite the names of Chomsky, Davidson, Chalmers, Tarski, Richard Rorty, Popper, Rawls, etc., when we speak on the key topics that determine our beliefs. When people start citing the names of our own scholars, the effects of the tradition will begin to percolate into our society.
Today, the national discourse has no place for the viewpoints of our shastras. When we have people with the status of Aptas participating in the dialogue on key national issues with the viewpoints of the shastras, our Dharma will begin to take its rightful place on the stage of national discourse. The power of verbal testimony in society has been grossly underestimated. It has a far-reaching influence on almost every aspect of our lives, and it shapes our value systems.
The Larger Project
Reviving the tradition of Tarka is part of a larger project to restore Dharma. That larger enterprise will consist of establishing a university, among other things, for the revival of the study of all the Fourteen Vidyas (Chaturdasa Vidyas) and not just of Vedanta.
The requirements of the Hindu householder must align with the teachings of Hindu Dharma. The common Hindu must learn the meaning of Swadharma and Dharma in relation to action, not just Vedanta alone. Hinduism is not a laissez-faire religion, as it appears to have largely become today. If we do not match the teaching of our shastras with the requirements of the common Hindu householder, nothing else will save us—not the teaching of Vedanta, not fighting the missionaries, not preserving the numbers, and not becoming a powerful Hindu nation. Grahasthashrama is the main field of Dharma, and it should be the focus of the teaching with regard to what Hindu Dharma means.
We cannot afford to be ignorant of the opponent’s arsenal and weapon systems anymore. We must impart the study of Western philosophies to our traditional scholars at the university to ensure a thorough understanding of the Purva-Paksha. Only then can we effectively defend our Dharma. The enemy operates at the field level in an orchestrated manner through organisations that have established themselves in our society for hundreds of years. We too need to have a field-level strategy that is long-term—a strategy whose vision goes beyond a hundred years. We suffer today because of three hundred years of neglect and loss of direction. We should not commit the same mistake again.
The Need to Develop a Two-Level Strategy
We urgently need a long-term strategy to restore our Dharma by dismantling the opposition along with short-term strategies to tackle the street-level activities of the missionaries trying to convert. The short-term strategies by themselves are inadequate because the scope of the opposition is wider and grander in scale. The institutions attacking our Dharma are strong politically and financially and adept in the art of knowledge subversion. We need to fight on a more organised scale by identifying the root causes, delving deep into history, focussing on our mistakes, and strategizing better.
The opponent, whom we are confronting, is an axis of three,comprising the political institutions of the West, the Christian Church, and the Western academy. The academic institutions shape the way of human knowledge and value systems in the modern world. The political institution of the West directs human action towards the inappropriately universalised principles of equality, liberty, and unbridled capitalism through threats and pressure tactics. The Christian Church propagates narratives showing only one religion as true and the religions of other cultures as false. Acting in concert, this powerful axis undermines civilisations and cultures.
This axis has been a destroyer of cultures and civilisations. It destroyed not only its own Judaic law but also the civilisations of Egypt, Babylonia, and Mesopotamia. It destroyed the native religions of its own lands—the Celtic religion of the British Isles, the Nordic religion of Scandinavia, and the Gaul religion of France. It destroyed the Mayan civilisation, the Inca civilisation, and the Apache civilisation in the Americas. It destroyed the shamanic religions of the Pacific. Wherever it went, it left a trail of destruction for the native cultures, the native religions, and the native civilisations. In Bharat, it is continuously trying to subvert the very texture of our Vedic religion.
The world we live in today is shaped by the West. A carefully designed long-term strategy that identifies the root causes of the problem and effectively dismantles them is what the country needs. We cannot fight an opponent without knowing their tactics well. We need to study Western philosophies so that we can counter them effectively. Kumarilla Bhatta learnt the Buddhist scriptures meticulously so that he could refute them comprehensively. The task is huge, but we have no option left if we are to preserve our Dharma and survive as a unique culture and civilisation. We need both the short-term to fend off the opponent temporarily and the long-term to defeat the opponent effectively and comprehensively.
PART 3
The Resurrection of Tarka
It is time to challenge the banishment of our philosophies and our culture and to throw the challenge back to them.
The main areas of contemporary Western philosophy’s focus are:
- Logic
- Language
- Consciousness / mind
Indian philosophy has the richest history in all these three areas, while the West has hardly any. The West excludes us from these discussions, while its research in these three areas shapes the world. The ideas engendered by them are often confused and are directly against the principles and tenets of our own tradition. If we choose to remain excluded while the West is shaping the world contrary to our Dharma, whose fault will it be?
WESTERN LOGIC
The contentious issues in Western logic from the Nyaya point of view are
- The definition of logic
- The conception of truth
- On the idea of logic being ontology-free
- Logic independent of the “categories”
The Definition of Logic
Logic is defined in contemporary Western tradition as that which provides validity to deductive inferences alone, i.e., to truth-preservation and not truth-determination. Is not the truth determination of a proposition part of logic? If not, the determination of the truth of a proposition becomes something other than, or beyond, logic. Is such a definition justified?
The result of such a definition is a divide between logic and epistemology as if they are two separate and independent disciplines. The consequence is that Western philosophers’ resort to the language of ontological commitment as if it is a private affair—a private commitment—of the philosopher. For this reason, the Western philosophical tradition has abandoned the concept of the meta-narrative.
The Conception of Truth and the Unresolved Problem of Ontology
Ontology (‘onto’- real or existence; ‘logia– science) studies what is real and what exists. When it comes to perceiving objects in the external world, the standard Western paradigm is that light falls on an object first. This reflected light enters the eyes and falls on the retina, from where neural impulses travel via the nerves to a region of the brain. Here, an image is reconstructed, and the person ‘sees’ the object. The same sequence is true for all the other senses too, like hearing, touch, smell, and taste. This is the ‘stimulus-response theory of perception,’ a stimulus of some sort evoking a response inside our brains through an intermediate causal chain.
Thus, contemporary science and philosophy subscribes to the idea what we perceive in the external world is not as it really exists but how the interpretation occurs in our brains, which depends on our endowed senses. This is Representationalism – the perceived world as only an internal representation of an external world; hence, it is an indirect form of reality. The world outside is not a true world in this sense. In Kantian philosophy, the original unknown is the ‘noumenon’ (in modern parlance, ‘the non-linguistic’ world), and the known constructed reality is the ‘phenomenon’. Representation gets the term ‘Scientific Realism’ or ‘Indirect Realism’ and forms the basis of both philosophy and neuroscience.
In contrast, Indian philosophy for thousands of years has been clear on its stand on ’Natural Realism’ or ‘Direct Realism’ as explained in the book “Natural Realism and the Contact Theory of Perception” by Chittaranjan Naik. Indian philosophy, with some minor variations, propound an active theory of perception where the perceiver, central in the scheme of things, goes out and reaches the object in the world. This is the ‘contact-theory of perception’ where contact with the object by the perceiver gives direct information about the world as it exists. Hence, the external world, as seen or heard, is an actual world in its reality and not a construction.
This establishes the role of pratyakṣa, or direct perception, as a valid pramāṇa, or means of knowledge. This contrasts with Western philosophy, where the world can never be known; hence, perception is never a valid source of knowledge in western traditions.
In the overwhelming contemporary position, which says that the world is mind-dependent, there are two further subgroups of explanations: a) Representationalism (Scientific Realism or Indirect Realism) believes that the perceived world is an indirect form of reality. b) Idealism believes that the world we perceive is a construction. The world has no existence independent of the mind or our subjective perceptions of the world. Thus, in the “mind-dependent world” position, the mind either constructs an image of an existing outside world or the world itself with no outside world at all. If there is a mind-dependent world only, then what is the ontological status or the true reality of the world? All we ever know is the ‘phenomenon’, with the true ‘noumenon’ always unknown.
By the beginning of the 20th century, there was an impasse in the philosophical world, which was the ‘problem of the external world’: The perceived world appears to be external to us and to exist independently of our minds. Yet, what we perceive are secondary qualities, as presented to our sensory faculties and their specific powers. They are not the primary qualities that belong to the objects themselves. All Representationalist systems cannot thus effectively address the topic of ontology (reality), as the real world (noumenon) is always beyond our capacity of comprehension.
Even the intervening medium, such as space or air, through which data transmits from the object to the mind, would have existed prior to the appearance of the representations. In other words, they are noumena. In which case, how can we speak of the ideas of motion, medium, space, time, and their relations when they are all categories applicable to phenomena? The stimulus-response theory of perception presents a riddle. If we do not possess the capacity to speak of the real world external to us (or the noumenon) in meaningful terms, how would we indeed be able to investigate the topic of ontology? In the field of Western philosophy, this problem is unresolved to this day.
Due to its inability to determine the ontological status of the world, Western epistemology has become muddled in its conception of truth. They have taken various themes into consideration.
- Naïve Realism
- Idealism (the world as idea)
- Phenomenalism (transcendental epoche and objects of intentional consciousness)
- Representationalism (separation between phenomenal or folk view and scientific view)
The Western theory of perception has thrown the Western tradition out of balance. As a result, Western philosophy has produced a variety of theories of truth, like Correspondence theory, Coherence theory, Pragmatic theory, Deflationary theory, Consensus theory, Semantic theory, etc.
On Logic Being Content-Neutral Due to Argument-Form
In logic, it is important to have a method of argumentation that is content-neutral so that it can be applied to all topics of human discourse. The term ‘formal logic’ in contemporary Western philosophy refers to logic as content-neutral or topic-neutral because of the argument form it adopts. This theme of content neutrality deriving from the argument-form has its genesis in a certain reading of Aristotle and it has percolated very deeply into the Western tradition. This was one of the prime motivations behind the attempts of Analytic philosophers to go beyond the surface grammatical structure of language and develop a Symbolic Logic or Predicate Calculus similar to the functions of mathematics.
Logic thus came to be considered as dependent on argument form only, i.e., on the form of the argument independent of its content. Today, formal logic is seen as an unquestionable truth, and a lot of work is being put into figuring out the building blocks of the logical form, such as logical operators, logical constants, and so on. Such a conception of logic directly mitigates against the Indian tradition, which holds logic to be dependent on the natures of the objects themselves. Knowledge, or epistemology, is intricately linked to and is the prime purpose of Indian logic.
The Descartes argument serves as an example. This goes as follows:
1) I can pretend that the material human Descartes does not exist.
2) I cannot pretend that I do not exist.
3) So, I am not the material human Rene Descartes.
We can now have a hypothetical argument based on the above:
1) I can pretend that Stalin was not a Georgian.
2) I cannot pretend that the only Georgian dictator of the Soviet Union was not a Georgian.
3) So, Stalin was not the only Georgian dictator of the Soviet Union.
The conclusion of the hypothetical argument (on RHS) is wrong. However, its argument form is the same as that of Descartes’ argument. Therefore, the conclusion of Descartes’ argument is wrong. (This example is from ‘Mind and Its World’ by Gregory McCullock.)
Logic in Indian traditions does not allow such inconsistencies while seeking knowledge about the world.
The Banishment of the Categories
Aristotle’s logic was based on the categories—the “Predicamentia.” The rise of empiricism saw the rejection of the categories as figments of the human imagination. The debate between rationalists and empiricists, which pitted a priori reasoning against a posteriori reasoning, has shifted the balance in favour of the empiricists. Modern Symbolic Logic / Predicate Calculus entirely dispenses with categories.
After displacing the categories from logic, the Western tradition now attempts to study them as part of metaphysics. By what means can it do so? But this is what Nyaya says: “Reasoning is impossible in the absence of knowledge of the categories (padarthas).” It also says,“Knowledge of the categories is the means (though not the direct means) that produces knowledge of the self.” (Annambhatta’s Dipika on Tarka Samgraha (X.24))
Nyaya Challenges
The challenges placed on Nyaya in the context of Western logic are manifold.
- Refutation of the Western definition of logic
- Refutation of Representationalism and establishment of a Coherent Direct Realism (and thereby of recovering the meaning of truth as correspondence to the object ‘as it is’).
- Establishing that logic is directly related to cognitive episodes and hence married to epistemology and the determination of truth.
- Refuting the idea that the content-neutrality of logic derives from logic being ontology-free.
- Re-establishing that the “categories” are indispensable elements of the structure of logic by showing that the content-neutrality of logic derives from the generality of the padarthas that pervade all objects.
LANGUAGE
A few issues in Western philosophy of language and semantics concern with the definition of meaning, the liar’s paradox, and the origin of language.
The Definition of Meaning
There have been many attempts to define “meaning” itself. The Indirect Reference theories (Sense and Reference theory; Descriptivist theory) suggest that words or phrases do not directly refer to a thing in the world but instead rely on context, descriptions, or shared knowledge to identify the intended meaning. This is pointing to something without explicitly naming it. Direct Reference theory is the idea that a proper name or a definite description directly refers to an object without the mediation of any descriptive content.
In Western traditions, knowledge is defined as “Justified True Belief.” In the realm of epistemology or knowledge theories, competing theories such as “Internalist” and “Externalist” exist to elucidate the process of justification. Externalism contends that the meaning or content of a thought is partly determined by the environment. This refutes Descartes’ traditional Internalism assumption, which holds that the content of a thought remains fixed regardless of the external world. Descartes believed that he could know the content of his thoughts while suspending all judgement about his environment. There is a serious debate between the two positions, and it pertains to many central concerns of philosophers, such as the nature of knowledge, the relation between mind and world, memory, and so on. There are also other debates regarding knowledge about the world, like a “phenomenal view” versus a “scientific view.”
Knowledge is the supreme ideal in Indian traditions. One of the attributes of Brahman, or the Self, which is the ground of the universe, is knowledge, and hence the pursuit of knowledge is the most divine pursuit in human endeavors. Indian texts developed an extensive theory of knowledge. Without such a theory, we could not have produced the enormous amounts of literature covering all aspects of life in the material (aparā) and spiritual realms (parā).
Any knowledge must have a certain means of acquiring it. Pramāṇa (proof or a valid ‘means of true knowledge’) plays an important role in Indian philosophical traditions. The first three are the main ones, and the other three are auxiliaries. These are:
- Perception or direct sensory experience (pratyakṣa)
- Inference (anumāna)
- Testimony of reliable authorities (śabda)
- Comparison and analogy (upamāna)
- Postulation and derivation from circumstances (arthāpatti)
- Non-perceptive negative proof (anupalabdhi)
However, Western philosophy had failed to provide a sound basis for epistemology (the theory of knowledge), and it became a complex maze of verbiage that ultimately led to the discrediting of everything metaphysical and of philosophy itself. The justified true belief definition of knowledge is the basis of its knowledge, and Gettier showed many problems with this notion by providing counterexamples. It is once again surprising to note that the West, which prides itself on so many scientific and technological developments, does not have a proper theory of knowledge.
In traditional Indian philosophy, assertions about the objects of the world are grounded either in perception or in inference. Hence, there is no scope for these assertions to stray into speculative thought. If they do stray, it is only due to the incorrect application of the pramāṇas. And when it comes to assertions about things that lie beyond the range of the senses, the assertions are grounded in scriptural sentences (śabda) and in inferences that depend entirely on these scriptural sentences. If they do stray here too, it is again due to an incorrect understanding of the scriptural sentences, or the inferences drawn from them.
The Liar’s Paradox
These are sentences whose meanings are “true if false and false if true.” These sentences lead to incoherent conclusions on the basis of the accepted principles of logic. This is the most virulent strain of paradox, and dealing with it has been an important task in logic for about as long as there has been logic, as the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy states.
A classic example is the statement “This sentence is false.” If the statement is true, then it must be false, and if it’s false, then it must be true, creating a paradoxical situation where the statement cannot be definitively true or false. Then we have a Deflationary theory of truth to explain the Liar’s paradox, which says that to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. It eliminates the truth-predication. But this is a specious argument because the intrinsic truth-assertive force of a statement does not vanish even in the absence of an explicit assertion of truth. We cannot utter statement ‘This statement is false’ without it having an intrinsic truth-assertive force.
In Indian logic, these kinds of cases are intimately related to the nature of language and the invariable connection that exists between a word and its meaning. A case similar to the liar’s paradox arises when it is asserted that a hare has horns because, in Indian logic, if it has horns it can’t be a hare and if it is a hare it can’t have horns. The expression ‘hare with horns’ has no denotation; it is a mere verbal construct. Likewise, the liar’s paradox has no reference to any state of affairs in the world and is a mere verbal construction. In other words, they are not legitimate verbal expressions.
The origin of language
Western tradition regards language as an artefact of human creation. But there are some contemporary ideas that actually point to a contrary nature of language. Post-structuralists say that language is not a neutral tool for communicating fixed meanings. Instead, they see it as a complicated system where meaning is unstable, fluid, and constantly being constructed through power dynamics and the gap between signifier and signified. This means that there is no one “true” interpretation that can be used.
Jerry Fodor’s Mentalese, or Language of Thought, is another theory to explain language. Mentalese proposes that our thinking processes are fundamentally structured like a language, with basic building blocks of thought combining to form complex ideas. This language-like structure allows for complex thought through its compositional nature, similar to how words in a language combine to form sentences. Like a natural language, Mentalese is believed to have a syntax (rules for combining concepts) and semantics (meaning of concepts) that allows for the systematic construction of complex thoughts. The major problem with this theory is that it is not falsifiable. However, these contrary theories of language have some parallels to Nyaya thought regarding language.
The Nyaya Challenge
The first is to establish that meaning is objective (i.e., it is not subject to human determination). It needs to establish that the variation between mental content and objective truth is due to subjective human factors and is not a feature of semantics (or meaning). The next challenge for Nyaya is to establish that the categorisation needs to be yathartha (objective truth) and ayathartha (truth derailed by subjective factors) and not Internalism and Externalism.
Nyaya would seek to establish that the relationship between words and objects is natural, objective, and not determined by human beings. Last, but not least, it needs to sever from the roots the misappropriation of ideas from Indian tradition by the West. In reviving our tradition, these ideas need to be traced to our philosophical texts and revived as part of a continuous living tradition, thereby giving the lie to Western claims of originality.
WESTERN CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND MIND
The Issues
The main issue in Western philosophy is the non-distinction between consciousness and mind, on the one hand, and the paradox of the divide between mind and object, on the other. Similar is the categorisation of consciousness as ‘creature consciousness’ and ‘state consciousness.’ Neuroscience has actively taken up the study of consciousness and is attempting to use the latest technologies like functional MRI to map the neural correlates of consciousness.
There are many explanations for consciousness (functionalism, epiphenomenon, behaviourism, etc.), but all of them are physicalists in some sense or another (i.e., none of them consider consciousness a primary substance). It seems to appear secondary to some other material. David Chalmers considers consciousness to be non-reductive but also non-causal at the same time. WhileChalmers’ position coincides partially with the Indian philosophical position that consciousness is non-reductive, it refrains from treating it as an independent substance. Chalmers treats consciousness as non-causal and all cognitive operations to be dependent on a physical substrate.Also,Western philosophy tends to assume that the human being is a tabula rasa at birth. This has a deep influence on the ethics and social order imposed on the world.
The Nyaya Challenge
Indian and western philosophies distinctly differ on the issue of Consciousness, mind, and matter. Fundamentally, Consciousness (also known as the Self, Puruṣa, Cognizer) is primary in Indian traditions; it is secondary to matter in contemporary western traditions. In Western definitions, the deep sleep state is equivalent to the absence of consciousness. In Indian traditions, Consciousness is transcendental as well as pervasive of the three states of waking, dream and deep sleep. Mind and matter are different from this Consciousness.
Indian philosophy makes a clear distinction between the Self and mind-matter as two distinct identities. Mind and matter belong to the same category. In Indian traditions, the category of the cognizer is the Self (or Puruṣa), whose characteristic feature is consciousness. Hence, Self, consciousness, cognizer, and Purusha belong to the same category of sentience. Mind-matter, also known as prakṛti and always insentient (inert or having jaḍatva), belongs to the distinct category of the cognized.Mind and matter are the two modes in which objects of cognition appear, revealing legitimate objective reality.
Unlike the western notions of an unknowable noumenon (original), where the perceived world loses its intrinsic character; in Indian philosophy, the term ‘unknowable object’ is devoid of reference (vikalpa), and is an illegitimate verbal construction (like the son of a barren woman). In Indian traditions, a conceived object cannot be unknowable, and if it is unknowable, there is no conceiving. In this overarching principle, where the perceived world is independent of the mind, we return to the one world that we all experience and live in.
Nyaya postulates Consciousness /Self as a primary non-reducible and causal substance. Cognition is inherent to consciousness. Since knowledge is consciousness itself, the definition of the former is impossible. The only thing possible to define is right and wrong knowledge, not knowledge itself. Nyaya challenges the Western definition of knowledge as ‘justified true belief’ as untenable since it reduces knowledge to a kind of belief and involves circularity of definition.
The second challenge is from the Nyaya position that Consciousness is not non-causal. It has the capacity to act on the world (kriya-shakti). Free will and destiny have a clearer understanding in Nyaya than in the Western traditions. The most important aspect of Nyaya in consciousness is that it takes the mind as simply an object. The relation between mind and ‘matter’ is not a difference between intension and extension but a difference in the conditions of object-hood and word-meaning (Bhartrahari).
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Today, people equate truth with what science says—so much so that even contemporary philosophers have capitulated to the inducements of science. But science is not infallible, and its foundations are questionable. There have been many understandings and revisions in the philosophy of science, which itself belies the claim that science could be the perfect proposition to understand the world around us. Starting with David Hume’s scepticism and Kant’s response, scientific philosophy—the method of science—has undergone many transformations. This includes the ideas of theory-ladenness, positivism, the paradigms of Thomas Kuhn, the falsifiability criterion of Popper, and so on.
Many people use mathematics to interpret the descriptive universe. However, the transformation from the mathematics to the contours of descriptive reality is speculative and subjective; it has neither linguistic nor logical basis. In the absence of the categories, the interpretations are often absurd (reasoning a posteriori). The paradoxes of modern science are the outcomes of interpretations that violate the nature of the categories.
Scientific theories have misused probability. Probability is neither a pramaana in the Indian sense nor is it a proof in the Western sense, but it has been justified by some Western philosophers as a form of reasoning under such names as abductive reasoning. There is rampant misuse of the notion of probability in some scientific theories. Scientists freely assign probability values to conceive possibilities, without determining whether dispersions of matter can converge to such conceived outcomes.
The inertial property of matter necessarily leads to atrophy. We must consider the rate of atrophy before assigning probability values to outcomes. This is because random initial dispersions of matter will never converge to certain outcomes when the rate of atrophy is considered. The atrophic aspect of material objects is never considered in many scientific theories, leading to fallacious propositions. It can be demonstrated that there are certain things in nature whose occurrence cannot come about through matter acting purely under physical laws, for example, goal-orientated actions of living beings. In turn, this means that the coordinated activities of the organism, which are based on the free will of the living thing, cannot just be a mechanical device following physical laws.
This is the route for the proof offered for the existence of the Self by Chittaranjan Naik in the book, On the Existence of the Self. Any hypothesis in Indian traditions needs verifiability for acceptance. The author chooses to employ uses difference in probabilities between the following two cases:
- Case 1: The probability of the creation of an ordered spatial configuration (like clocks from random dispersions of matter) when they are subject purely to physical laws.
- Case 2: The probability of the creation of an ordered spatial configuration when there is the intervention of living beings.
He demonstrates that when matter is subject purely to physical laws, the probability of the material parts coming together in some ordered configuration tends to zero. But in the presence of human intent, suddenly the probability of the material parts coalescing into some ordered configuration begins to approach the value 1. Thus, one will have to presuppose the presence of some extra-corporeal entity acting in a goal-directed manner to explain the kind of outcome; and it is the presence of human beings that brings about such an outcome.
The proof is the establishment of a correlation between the presence of intention and the outcomes of ordered dispersions of matter happening repeatedly, millions of times every year, in the form of the production of cars, beehives, microchips, aeroplanes, buildings and a million more things. In each case, there is the presence of intention and actions directed towards the material components which acquire 100% biases to be in exactly the required spaces and the required orientations to fall in place. There is a case to establish a definite causal connection between the intention and the results of ordered configurations of matter.
This correlation, or vyapti in Indian logic, enables one to infer the presence of the soul from the presence of goal-oriented actions. For, where there is an intentional action, there is always a soul present as the source. Yet, in contemporary discourse, intention does not have the pride of place as an ontological principle. It simply is a manifestation of some underlying physical state in the brain or body. The ‘explaining away’ is not through a logical elucidation but by asserting a dogma which lulls the mind into thinking that the phenomenon cited for the inference of the self is a mere appearance.
Nyaya Challenges
Our tradition needs to undertake a thorough critique of science. The Nyaya critique of science does not attempt to explain how science works like Western traditions, but rather to show its boundaries and place it in its proper domain so it does not make inaccurate truth claims.
Knowledge comes from pramaana, not science, so applying the right one determines:
- Those claims of science that are true
- Those claims of science whose predictive aspects are true but descriptive aspects are false
- Those claims of science that are patently false
Pramaanas should demonstrate each case of the above to help us define science and place it in the vidyas. Nyaya and the pramaanas should take center stage in the evaluation of scientific theories and not the other way around.
Concluding Remarks
Sri Aurobindo said, “Philosophy is the intellectual search for the fundamental truth of things; religion is the attempt to make the truth dynamic in the soul of man. They are essential to each other; a religion that is not the expression of philosophic truth, degenerates into superstition and obscurantism, and a philosophy which does not dynamise itself with the religious spirit is a barren light, for it cannot get itself practised.”
The Self (Brahman, Purusha, Consciousness) is the basis of both our ontology and epistemology. Perception and knowledge acquisition is an inside to outside process. The various schools of Indian philosophy have different perspectives on the nature of relationship between the individual Atman and the Brahman, but the gross principles of ontology and epistemology remain the same. For example, Advaita says Atman and Brahman are the same; Vishishtadvaita says that the individual Atmans are many and constitute the infinite body of Brahman in asesha-seshi relationship; Dvaita speaks of them as separate identities dependent on Brahman and falling into hierarchies (taratamya); Nyaya talks of multiple infinite Atmans; and so on.
The four aims of life in Indian culture are Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha. They are uniquely blended into one whole where other aspects like the Self (Atman), Varnashrama dharma, Karma, and rebirths are integral parts. The Dharmasastras are crucial in guiding the life of the majority of people in the practical reality of the world. The Vedantic ideas are the highest explanations and using the “illusory” world ideas to explain the reality of the world around us is a fallacy and a distortion.
Nyaya and Vaisheshika form the crux around which the logic of Dharma and Dharmashastras revolve, and it also gives the most solid foundation for the acquisition of knowledge about the world. The padarthas-jnana of Nyaya is also indispensable for attaining knowledge of vakhyartha, the meanings of the Vedic statements. The basis of Indian Knowledge Systems in both the para and apara realms is Nyaya and there is a strong need presently to bring it back into our curriculums from the earliest possible level. It is time to internalise the ideas of Indian systems of logic, debate and, and reasoning to confront the West and to show there can be alternative world-views with better explanations to the perennial problems of philosophy.
The West and its worldview have dominated the world for the last 300 years. There is no reason why this should continue. We need a Renaissance that will critique the foundations of Western ethics, the Western concept of the nation-state, the West’s notion of the division between religious and knowledge pursuit, Western historiography and its depictions of other civilisations, Western education systems and pedagogical methods, and many more. We can then offer an alternative worldview that is more inclusive and more rational.
Such a Renaissance can come only from India. Our heritage includes all the elements that make a civilisation great, while other civilisations have had only one. The world is now at a crossroad of history. To secure our rightful position on the global stage, we must initiate the seeds of a Renaissance now. The field of Western tradition is rife with confusion. It provides a fertile field for Nyaya to reap a rich harvest. We need to plough the field well; the harvest will follow. If the West could build a new world through three hundred years of sustained effort, we can do it too. But to achieve it, our vision must span one or two centuries, not just five or twenty years. We have to work in the spirit of Niskaamya-karma, and that is the only way.
RANDOM MUSINGS 