My friend, a philosopher, who was going to participate in this conference, asked me to spread news of the following:
A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
My friend, a philosopher, who was going to participate in this conference, asked me to spread news of the following:
From the article:
” ……. the most that a tribal can be permitted to talk about in a seminar on plurality of religions is “proper” religions, and not her/his own because the belief that there is such a thing is mistaken – the community of religions has no place for what the tribal thinks is her or his religion,” Miri told The Wire in an email. “Such thoughts can suggest themselves only to a sadly, but dangerously, inadequate and academically illiterate mind,” he added……”
What can one say to such thinking? Such closed-mindedness is totally outrageous. Moving beyond the obvious bigotry involved in such statements, there is simply massive ignorance about what religions are, how they are formed, and what religious history looks like. What on earth is a “proper” religion?
For example, even if India’s “tribal” peoples had no history of religious traditions of their own, next week they could turn around and form their own independent religious idendities if they chose to. Thus a paper on tribal religions would absolutely appropriate for the conference.
This nonsense about considering some religions as worthy of study and others as unworthy is another form of Sanskritization/Brahminism.
From: S R Bhatt srbhatt39@gmail.com Subject: Re: An urgent letter of concern
Date: 11 April 2018 at 12:58
To: jonardon.ganeri@nyu.edu
Sir, The news is misrepresentation of facts. Prof. R.K.Shukla will explain the situation SRBhatt
On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 6:29 PM, wrote:
Dear Professor S. R. Bhatt,
I am a member of the ICPR Research Project Committee, and yet I have just learned from the press about the postponement on controversial grounds of the ICPR seminar “Religion, Pluralism and the Relationship between Religions”.
https://thewire.in/education/objecting-to-papers-on-adivasi-religion-government-body- cans-philosophy-meet
I would have expected to be consulted in advance of such a decision. I find the grounds given for the decision, as per the letter of April 6 2018 signed by R. K. Shukla, to be extremely worrying indeed and potentially extremely harmful to the integrity of the ICPR.
Would you please provide me with a full explanation of the ICPR decision with respect to this seminar.
Yours sincerely, Jonardon Ganeri FBA
Professor of Philosophy Fellow of the British Academy