Contemporary Indian Philosophy

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This work has been undertaken just to negate the impression that contemporary India does not have a philosophy of its own. In fact, sincere attempts have not been made to present Contemporary Indian Philosophy in the mould of academic philosophy. This is a fact that contemporary Indian thinkers are true to their tradition, but attempts have not been made to highlight such constructive aspects of their thought that bear the mark of original thinking and insight. Their attitude to-words tradition, is 'reverential', and therefore. They appear to be tradition-tied and dogmatic. Tradition, at times, does become a source of dogmatism in philosophical thinking, but this also is true that a complete and radical breaking away from tradition is impossible. Those who wish to do so become 'homeless' and start looking towards other sources for inspiration. The philosophy that they produce becomes derivative a kind of moon-light philosophy. Therefore, what is needed is to re-think the thoughts of the contemporary Indian thinkers emphasizing both the points of repetition and those of original thinking. The present work claims to serve that purpose in its own modest way.

The work is mainly expository; at times, reflection or critical comments have been made, but they have been made with the sole intention of clarifying some of the complex concepts. For a faithful exposition of a thought or a point of view, its appreciation is necessary, and in order to appreciate a thought-system it is essential to establish some kind of identification with it. That is why the exposition throughout is somewhat sympathetic, even when objections are raised and difficulties apprehended, they serve the purpose of helping the understanding of a difficult notion or an idea.

In India today there are two distinct currents of philosophical activities flowing almost side by side. One is the kind of philosophy in which both the intellectuals and philosophical activity that is purely academic and somewhat 'professorial'. This work has not given due regard to the latter although thinkers like K. C. Bhattacharya and Radhakrishnan can be said to be the representatives of this group. But it is possible to develop a comprehensive view of the philosophical activities and are being pursued in the universities of India by the teachers and students of philosophy, that of course will be a major work in itself and hence will deserve a separate treatment.

The attempt to arrange these thoughts in an academic and systematic manner met with an initial difficulty - the difficulty regarding the selection of topics. Naturally, only such topics were selected which appeared to be 'philosophical' and which, taken together, could give a comprehensive picture of a thought-system.

The work includes roughly the thinkers of the twentieth century with the sole exception of Swami Vivekananda, whose philosophical activities were confined to the late second half of the nineteenth century.

This work does not claim to be fully comprehensive as some of the contemporary Indian thinkers have not been included in it. That is chiefly on account of the fact that any attempts to reduce their thoughts into the academic models of philosophy will necessarily involve repetitions.

My thanks are due to M/S Motilal Banarsidass for consenting to publish the work. I am particularly grateful to Shri Jainendra P. Jain who took personal interest in the project and inspired me to expedite the work.