Religion - A Discourse in Realist Philosophy

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About the Book This book deals with religion and some related issues from the standpoint of realistic Philosophy. Some of the questions addressed in this book are: what is religion? Is religion merely a set of beliefs and practices common to a large number of people in a community? How are we to understand unity and diversity of religions? Is there any solution to religious conflicts? How far is religious conversion or re-conversion just? etc. The author makes a thorough and critical examination of these issues and presents novel and stimulating answers to them.

Preface On the invitation from the University of Calcutta to deliver endowment lectures under its Stephan’s Nirmalendu Ghosh Memorial Lectureship Programme of the year, the author delivered in the Department of Philosophy of the university a course of eight lectures, between November 20 and 30, 2012. The present work is mainly an outcome of those lectures. According to the terms of the endowment the lecturer was supposed to choose as subject of his lectures what may be generally called religious themes and discuss them from "a standpoint of comparative religion".

It is a pity that religion is not a core subject of mainstream academic courses of the departments of humanities or philosophy of Indian Universities. Sometimes some university departments of India offer courses in philosophy and religion and are named accordingly. The interposed conjunction relates the two subjects as much as it highlights their difference. It seems to show that we are more reluctant than willing to relate philosophy to religion. The audience also seem not to notice, or if they notice they think it excusable, if a scholar, after accepting the offer to lecture in the present course, speaks instead on philosophical, historical or such other topics of his current interest. It is considered enough if it could be shown that the topic is somehow, however indirectly or distantly, related to religion. We, however, resolved to speak . almost exclusively and directly on religion or religion related themes. There were two major reasons. First, the decision was closely in accordance with the terms of the endowment. Secondly, the decision was informed by some noticeable changes that have occurred particularly in India in the post world war years. On the one hand religion and religion related issues are now among the burning socio-political issues and, on the other hand, many academicians today have developed what may be called an ambivalent attitude to religion. In public life they remain rather shy about religious matters and do not openly speak much in favor of religion. But in their personal life they are inclined to align themselves with one religious order or another and find time and interest to study religious literature or listen to religious discourses of some kind. These changes are among the marks of liberal Hinduism which we hope to discuss in this work. Apart from the more familiar issues like interfaith conflict, we need to seriously discuss the conditions of the emergence of liberal Hinduism and its implications.

It may be found that we have somewhat deviated from the terms of the endowment. Instead of making comparative religion the preferred approach of our discussion we have turned it more into a subject of our discussion. We have been guided mainly by two considerations. For making comparative religion one's own standpoint, one must be clear about and state explicitly what is or should be understood by comparative religion. We just cannot begin by assuming that we know what it is or by accepting it in the received sense. Secondly the author is acutely aware of his own limitations and at the same time he is unable and unwilling to change the standard of requirements laid down in the terms of the endowment. In the beginning of the lectures he confessed that in his long span of life he came personally in contact with only one scholar who in his opinion could do complete justice to the subject of comparative religion. It is enormously difficult to achieve expertise in all the disciplines of knowledge mastery of which is needed in order to be well posted in the subject. Many studies, claimed to be from the standpoint of comparative religion, do not fulfill this requirements.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages