Philosophy in India
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Abstract
During the course of last winter I attended the Indian Jubilee Philosophical Congress in Calcutta as their guest and the representative of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and also lectured at the Indian universities of Calcutta, Patna, Benares, Allahabad, Agra, Lucknow, Aligarh, Delhi, Bombay, Baroda, Poona and Mysore. I spoke alike before Hindu, Jain and Muslim institutions. I thus obtained a varied and extensive, if somewhat hasty and superficial, experience of the country, and readers of this periodical might be interested to know a little of my impressions of present-day Indian philosophy. In general, two things struck me particularly forcibly. The first was the widespread and keen interest in the subject. At mostruniversities both the number of students making a specialized study of philosophy and the number of teachers were greater than, I think, at any British university, except Oxford. At the Congress itself, the audience was estimated as high as 700. The idea that the philosophers might have something to say which would help the world to emerge from the present deplorable state of international affairs is more widespread than in this country, and Indian philosophy is traditionally more connected than English with the search for the good life in a religious sense, but at the universities the main motive struck me as being simply genuine intellectual interest in the subject. I was not, however, in a position to form any idea of the quality of the students since, as is apt to be the case, the great majority of those who spoke in any discussions after my lectures were university teachers, not students. Secondly, Indian philosophy is surprisingly little affected by the tide of positivism which has submerged so much in the west. India remains a great (perhaps at the moment the only) stronghold of metaphysical idealism, based on epistemology, mystical experience, and the idea that a study of the nature of the self discloses that it is identical with the supreme principle of reality. The kind of idealism prevalent is absolutistic or at least theistic, and though there are of course a number of exceptions it is probable that at most Indian universities the philosophical atmosphere is rather like that of Oxford in the 'nineties. Most students are still brought up on Bradley to a large extent. It is a commonplace that the Indians are a very religious people, and the connection between philosophy and religion fostered by Hinduism and the fact that Indian philosophers are on the whole much more interested in the problems raised by the philosophy of religion than in those raised by the philosophy of science help to account for their immunity to naturalism and positivism. The religious temperament of most Indians probably also accounts for the fact that Communism, in spite of the great and widespread poverty, is still very weak in India. We may also note that the sting of a good many anti-metaphysical arguments would be removed by the old Indian philosophical tradition according to which we are debarred from ascribing positive attributes to ultimate reality, except in a very qualified sense. One must not, however, ascribe present-day Indian idealism simply to the old Indian philosophy. Till a few years ago at any rate. Western philosophy formed a very much larger part of the curriculum than did the philosophy native to the country, and this tradition still persists to a considerable extent.