Western learning ignited the pioneers of Indian nationalism

Raja Ram Mohun Roy - Page 150 Nalin C. Ganguly - 1934 - In rational thought the reformer was much influenced by the Muta'zalas (Moslem Rationalists) and the Absolute Vedanta, as well as by Locke, Rousseau, Hume, and the Encyclopaedists; yet he 'was above all and beneath all a religious ...

Studies on Sri Ramakrishna - Page 119 - Ramakrishna Mission. Institute of Culture - 1988 - In his 'pure and rational theism', he was widely influenced by the Mutazales and monistic Vedanta, as well as by Locke, Rousseau, Hume, and the Encyclopaedists. At all events, he studied the major religions and searched out the element common to them all, viz. the unity of God.

Encyclopaedia Indica: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh - Volume 100 - Page 223 - S. S. Shashi - 1996 - In his inaugural address read at the Sri Ramkrishna Centenary Parliament of Religion and published in the Modern Review in April 1937, Dr Brajendranath Seal said: The Religions of the world - Volume 1 - Page 110 - Ramakrishna Mission. Institute of Culture, Sri Ramakrishna Centenary Committee - 1938 -  Dr. Brajendra Nath Seal RAMMOHUN, KESHABCHANDRA AND RAMAKRISHNA Rammohun Roy, the precursor and in a very real sense the father of modern India, sought the Universal Religion, the common basis of the Hindu, Moslem, Christian and other faiths.

Glory Of Indian Culture - Page 84 Giriraj Shah Satya Pal Ruhela - 2003 - Preview The writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Shakespeare, Locke, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Mill, Dante, Nietzche and Karl Marx opened ... In this direction, pioneering work was done by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Maharishi Debendranath Tagore.

Rammohun: a study - Page 32 - Nirmālya Bāgacī - 2005 - Brojendra Nath Seal has pointed out that Rammohun followed Voltaire and Volni when he classified mankind into four categories; and he had been influenced by Locke and Hume when he discussed the causes of superstitious beliefs.

Indian Political Thinkers: Modern Indian Political Thought - Page 18 - N. Jayapalan - 2000 - Preview Dr. Brajendra Nath Seal sums up his assessment of Roy as under : "He (Raja Ram Mohan Roy) gave a modern meaning and purpose to these ancient and medieval elements of Indian polity. He went on to link them up with representative ...

Hinterlands and Horizons: Excursions in Search of Amity - Page 34 - Margaret Chatterjee - 2002 - Preview - More editions

Taking factors such as these into account, Raja Rammohun Roy's patient debate with Marshman, and his support ... In both Shiv Nath Shastri's and Brajendrath Seal's assessment, the Raja's universalism points to a future in which religion ...

Swami Vivekananda: A Reassessment - Page 51 - Narasingha Prosad Sil - 1997 - Preview That he was deeply influenced by the Vedanta is attested to by his senior college mate Seal.52 Even Nivedita has reported Swamiji's acknowledgment of Rammohan's acceptance of the Vedanta, propagation of patriotism, and acceptance 3: ...

Ram Mohan Roy: social, political, and religious reform in 19th ... - Page xi - S. Cromwell Crawford - 1987 - For Sophia Dobson Collet, Ram Mohan presents "a most inspiring study for the New India of which he is the type and ... Brajendranath Seal credits him with having laid "the foundations of the true League of Nations in a league of National ...

Gandhi and the Challenge of Religious Diversity: Religious ... - Page 47 - Margaret Chatterjee - 2005 - Preview Raja Rammohun Roy (1772-1833), amidst his polemical encounters with Baptist missionaries, was anxious to maintain in ... but at the same time he did not accept any book or teacher as infallible'. Brajendranath Seal saw in him a man who ...

Modern Indian Political System: Problems and Prospects - Page 8 - B. K. Verma - 2006 - Preview - More editions Ram Mohan Roy was inspired by the teachings of Christian unitarianism and French enlightenment. Keshav Chandra ... Hegel's influence can be traced upon Brajendranath Seal, Aurobindo and Subhas Chandra Bose. Nietzsche's concept of...

Indian Political Thinkers: Modern Indian Political Thought - Page 14 -N. Jayapalan - 2000 - Preview Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a great champion of rights, Like Locke, Grotius and Paine, he accepted the theory of natural rights. Roy not only advocated the natural rights of life, property and liberty but also believed in the moral rights of the ...

Explorations in Modern Bengal, C. 1800-1900: Essays on Religion, ... - Page 31 - Amiya P. Sen - 2010 - Preview Rather than interpret or reinterpret dogma for the sake of defining belief, the greater intellectual challenge was to investigate the nature, tendency and function of belief itself. Like Locke and Newton whom he greatly admired, Rammohun ...

Social, Political, Economic, and Educational Ideas of Raja ... - Page 9 - Poonam Upadhyaya - 1990 - Preview - More editions But unlike some of the encyclopaedists, Rammohun was not a materialist. He also repudiated the ... As regards the political ideas of Rammohun Roy, he accepted like Locke, Grotius and Thomas Paine, the immutable sanctity of natural rights.

Calcutta: Society And Change 1690-1990 - Page 62 - Samaren Roy - 2005 - Preview - More editions Later Rammohun acquainted himself with the writings of empiricists from Bacon to Locke and Newton as well as the works of Hume, Voltaire and Tom Paine, and still later the Utilitarians. Never did Rammohun quote the Empiricists or Deists ...

Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective - Page 260 - ANU E Press - 2005 - Preview - More editions In a careful analysis of the material conditions of Rammohun's thought, S. N. Mukherjee did not erect the usual barrier ... Rammohun's faith in individualism was inspired by Western political philosophy, more particularly by the works of Locke and Bentham, ...

Guru English: South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan Language - Page 41 - Srinivas Aravamudan - 2005 - Preview - More editions Rammohun was ultimately an anglicist, or an orientalist modernizer, depending upon one's interpretation. ... One of the earliest published accounts of an encounter with him by an English traveler records that he “quotes Locke and Bacon on ...

Vidyasagar: The Traditional Moderniser - Page 111 - Amales Tripathi - 1974 - Preview - More editions While Rammohun accepted British rule as affording pretection to natural rights, they might demand a government freely created by the consent of the Indians themselves, and even for an egalitarian right to property. Locke's utilitarian ethics ...

Gandhi And Indian Freedom Struggle - Page 144 - Mazhar Kibriya - 1999 - Preview Many of them studied the political ideas of Burke, Herbert Spencer, Macaulay, John Stuart Mill, Locke, Rousseau, Mazzini, Cavour, Voltaire, and Thomas Paine, and were imbued... Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Dadabhai Naoroji, W.C. Banerjea, Surendranath Banerjce, Pherozeshah Mehta, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and D.E. Watcha were all educated in Western learning, and they became the first pioneers of Indian nationalism.

Ram Mohan Roy, his era and ethics - Page 32 -S. Cromwell Crawford - 1984 - The best-known guardian of the old ways was Radha Kanta Deb who crossed swords with Ram Mohan on more than one ... They sat at the feet of philosophers such as Locke, Hume, Reid, Stewart, Brown, Bentham; scientists, such as Dewey and Newton, social thinkers such as Tom Paine, Voltaire, and Adam Smith; and were...

History of political thought from Rammohun to Dayananda (1821-84) - Page 126 - Bimanbehari Majumdar - 1934 - Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Comte, Laplace and Malthus. Not only does he mention their names ... The method of investigation followed by Akshoykumar differs fundamentally from that of Raja Rammohun Roy. The Raja drew his conclusions ...

Rammohun Roy: prophet of modern India - Page 76 - Sajal Basu - 2003 - Rammohun, the Father of Modern Political Movements in India. As the history of Western political thought ... like Plato and Aristotle in the ancient world, from Aquinas and Marsigli in the middle ages, and from Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, ...

Islam and the modern age - Volume 4 - Page 80 - Islam and the Modern Age Society - 1973 - Ram Mohan was thoroughly familiar with the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Jefferson and Thomas Paine. He drew inspiration from the spirit of the French and American Revolutions. He was so much stirred by the French Revolution ...

Hindu revivalism in Bengal: Rammohan to Ramakrishna - Page 19 - Kamal Kumar Ghatak - 1991 - Bacon to Locke and Newton as well as the propaganda of free thinkers like Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Tom Paine and others gradually confirmed Rammohun in his rejection of miracle, dogma and ritual. In his first philosphical work, the ...

Politics & society: Ram Mohan Roy to Nehru - Page 26 - Gollapalli Nagabhushana Sarma, Moin Shakir - 1983 - Ram Mohan Roy was also acquainted with the writings of Bacon, Locke, Blackstone, Bentham, Montesquieu and Adam Smith. The whole effort of Ram Mohan Roy was to create a "new '' religion on the basis of the rational interpretation of the ...

Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and ... - C. A. Bayly - 2011 - Preview - More editions Equally, Recovering Liberties contributes to the rapidly developing field of global intellectual history, demonstrating that the ideas we associate with major Western thinkers - Mills, Comte, Spencer and Marx - were received and transformed ...

Indian society: historical probings, in memory of D. D. Kosambi - Page 359 - R. S. Sharma - 1974 - It is not possible to single out any particular Western work which had influenced Rammohun most. But his works and correspondence clearly show that he was well acquainted with the works of Bacon, Locke, Blackstone and Bentham. It is ...

Sri Aurobindo is still a marginal figure in academia

Between Mental Manufacture and Pure Transcript The Viability of a Theory of Poetry in the Letters of Sri Aurobindo - Vinod Valiathakidi Balakrishnan Associate Professor, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, 620 015,  Tamilnadu, India Email: winokrish@yahoo.co.uk Published April 18, 2012

It is a matter of amusement that a person like Sri Aurobindo who has substantially contributed to the understanding, consolidation, propagation, and furthering of Indian thought should still be a marginal figure in academia. Sri Aurobindo’s contribution to the many aspects of Indian Culture makes him a cultural institution whose value must be cherished and merits critical revaluations from time to time. This study is a response to that perceived need…

So, there is an engagement, a dialogue, an interaction between the well-considered question and the appropriate response. There is also the possibility of keener application to problems because at the time of replying to each of his interlocutors, Sri Aurobindo was responding to a given problem where all the other issues would be kept in abeyance. Perhaps, even he was unaware of the multitude of issues identified and attended while the beautiful conversation on poetry, with multiple interlocutors, was unfolding. In this respect, the Letters may be seen to resemble Plato’s Republic or Sir Philip Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry.

HIndus and their enemies PIONEER SATURDAY, 17 NOVEMBER 2012

Koenraad Elst’s book suffers from occasional ignorance of recent developments. Readers need to separate the wheat from the chaff to benefit from his criticisms, writes Navaratna Rajaram

Where the author goes wrong is when he ventures into unfamiliar territory like science (genetics) where he fails to distinguish between transient opinion and fact. It is not easy to do full justice to a book that covers such a large territory. There are discussions of karma and rebirth, humour in Hinduism, Macaulay, historicity of the Vedas and the like in which he expresses opinions on these and other topics where the reader has to accept or reject them based on one’s own beliefs and prejudices. (This reviewer found most of them to be familiar and a few, like his interpretation of apauresheya, to be plain wrong. Philosophy, metaphysics in particular, is not the author’s strength.) All told, the patient reader will find the book provocative even if the author’s positions are not always sound. The reviewer is the author of several books on Indian history and his current interest is history and philosophy of science

Who Milks This Cow? Ramachandra Guha - Outlook MAGAZINE NOV 19, 2012

I was born in a home of broad-minded Hindus. My father, though by caste a Brahmin, never wore a thread. His own father’s brother was a lifelong opponent of the caste system; a hostel he opened for Dalit students still functions in Bangalore city. My mother went from time to time to a temple, but was happy to eat with or make food for humans of any background or creed. Two of her brothers had married out of caste; a third had married a German.

Sri Aurobindo and Hinduism by Peter Heehs (from AntiMatters)

I am not, and never have been a religious person. My parents were Protestant Christians, though neither was religious. I was sent to Sunday school in order to satisfy my grandmother, but took no interest at all in what was taught there, and never entered a church or any other place of worship as a worshipper. If I ever stepped into a church (or synagogue or mosque or temple) it was to admire the architecture and artworks, and perhaps also to enjoy the atmosphere of peace that sometimes fills such places. But I found the beliefs and practices of every religion I encountered to be pointless and uninteresting. The search for truth was important to me; but it never crossed my mind that religion could be any help in this. Rather I turned to poetry, philosophy and psychological experimentation in my search for enlightenment. These interests led me to yoga and, because yoga usually is taught by people who come from the Hindu tradition, I was exposed to the literature and some of the practices of the Hindu religion. I found, and still find, the literature profound and significant. As for the practices, I found them colourful and charming, though certainly not the sort of thing I could incorporate into my life. 

Now you may well ask, why should I, a non-Hindu, choose to speak about Sri Aurobindo and Hinduism? … What he offered in his major works was a means to achieve an experiential truth that surpasses the doctrines and practices any religion of the past or present. He did not prohibit religious expression, but he expected those who needed it to rise above sectarianism and conventionality. For such things can only act against the full expression of his work. At the same time he offered those who were proud of their Hindu heritage an unusual opportunity. They could serve as links between an ancient religion and the new possibilities offered by his path of yoga. A Hinduism open to the transformative power of this yoga could become a force for transformation in the world. 

Freedom of choice: a classical defence from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele

“Freedom” is among the most central concepts in our political vocabulary. I think it is deservedly so. But it’s also a concept with a notoriously large number of meanings. Libertarians identify freedom simply with the absence of state coercion; by contrast, the most widely used Sanskrit term with an equivalence to freedom is probably mokṣa, liberation from the suffering of worldly existence. And the most common use of “freedom” today is something different again: the ability to make unrestricted choices, to decide for oneself what one will do.

Freedom in this sense of choice played a fairly limited role in premodern political thought, and I think this is because the ancients understood its limitations. Human beings often do not make the best decisions for themselves. At a large scale, we get addicted to alcohol and other drugs; we fall into paralyzing depression and even suicide; we get misled by demagogues into murderous hatreds. At a smaller level, we lash out in anger at minor annoyances; we procrastinate the things we know it would be best for us to do; we get bitter and vain about matters of social status and material possessions. Given all this, the ability to make choices can be bad for us, since the choices themselves are so often bad.

All this is the view, shared by Xunzi, Augustine, and Freud, which I have referred to in the past as chastened intellectualism. (I have tempered my enthusiasm for chastened intellectualism on the grounds that the good elements to human nature should not be ignored, but the bad ones remain there as well.) It is well known that Xunzi also endorsed a political system which greatly restricted freedom (in the sense of choice). Looking at all the terrible things people do, how can you trust them to make decisions for themselves? …

The view I have just articulated has some affinities with political libertarianism, which is similarly suspicious of government attempts to make decisions in the name of people’s individual best interests. It is not the same, however. A critique of libertarianism could take its own post. Suffice it to say here that given the importance of money and property in creating possibilities for action, insofar as individual choice is a good, that good is not actually best realized by a social system that keeps many people in abject poverty.

A Must Read New Book on Friedrich Hayek from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Eamonn Butler: “Friedrich Hayek: the ideas and influence of the libertarian economist”

Holding to his unfashionable convictions for decades led Hayek into intellectual isolation. He was, albeit, politely tolerated rather than listened to by faculty in the universities he taught at. Mainstream economics passed him by during the Keynesian years.  Nobody, for example, mentioned him during my undergraduate years from 1965-69…

Hayek’s life and legacy testify to the lasting power of ideas over the fleeting influence of individual politicians who, because they misunderstand the dynamics of human societies, normally promote the wrong ideas. Radicals of Left and Right believe they can change society by capturing the legislature to correct what they regard as society’s systemic errors. Hayek noted, sardonically, that if designed changes tried to change the world, we cannot be sure that the outcome would please either its designers or those affected by their changes.

Hayek insisted that human institutions throughout history were the result of countless individual human actions, but not from anyone’s deliberate designs.  Yet while human institutions from the primitive to the most complex have some sort of order within them, it does not follow that they were or can be deliberately invented.  Hayek called the process through which societies formed over time examples of “spontaneous order”… Hayek affirmed that a free society was not one without rules or government – rulers and citizens remain constrained by the predictable rule of law, not the whims of designers.