G. Ramakrishna A prolific author and a versatile researcher, Professor Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya is among those who gave a qualitative turn to the methods and content of research in more disciplines than one. Essentially a student of Philosophy – Indian and Western – he has authored quite a few authentic works in the area of…
G Ramakrishna The murky record of idealism as a vicious weapon on the one hand and philosophical obscurantism on the other has a shining contrast in materialism. Once again the historical limitations of the ancient Indian materialist philosophers cannot be overlooked. The rudiments of materialism are quite clear in many anti-idealist schools of though and…
G Ramakrishna India, like many other countries, has produced luminaries of great repute. They have blazed the path of their successors. The illumination that they have provided has been a beacon of light for many a pathfinder. Every age has its own ‘prophets’ who, through their identification with the struggling people and consciousness for a…
G Ramakrishna A total rejection of idealism means the acceptance of a secular, rational and scientific approach, while idealism has religion-orientation, faith in the scriptures, and superstitions in most of its major forms, for its accessories (p 234). The other major contribution of the anti-idealist schools of thought consists of the defence of practice as…
G Ramakrishna Indian Philosophy, especially the school of Vedanta with its source in the Upanishads, has been the subject of endless panegyric on the part of writers on the subject. Here are a few choice examples of their exuberance: “The Upanishads contain a scientific search for the substratum underlying the phenomenal forces of nature”. “In…
G. Ramakrishna A significant enunciation, with copious evidences, by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya was that the Lokayata-s were not always looked down upon by the elitist sections of society in ancient India. Denunciation of the Lokayata-s based on their alleged hedonistic approach to life is philosophically and historically quite medieval in thinking. It is one of the…
G. Ramakrishna While laying the foundation-stone for a planetarium in Bangalore recentlyi the President of India explained how the Vedic lore is replete with astronomical knowledge. He almost felt that the Vedic people seemed to know more astronomy than we do. Shortly after the president’s revelation about Vedic astronomy came Maj. Ahluwalia’s analysis about the…
G Ramakrishna Karl Marx pointed out that truly human liberation is to be achieved only by breaking every kind of bondage that mankind has been subjected to in the course of the evolution of society through different social formations. Emancipation has its philosophers even as oppression has its agents and defenders. Marx as the most…
G. Ramakrishna I am among those who happened to know Dr. Sanjay Kumar Biswas even before he came to the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. I was in Kolkata – Calcutta of those days – for some personal work in the National Library for more than a fortnight and Sanjay’s brother Siddhartha used to be…