Subject as Freedom: A Contemporary Translation

Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (KCB) has been India’s foremost twentieth-century philosopher and is considered the father of contemporary Indian philosophy (CIP). His works have been dense, and scholars have often struggled to unravel the true depth of his philosophical acumen. One such text is KCB’s Subject as Freedom, originally published in 1930 by G. R. Malkani (another twentieth-century Indian philosopher) from the Indian Institute of Philosophy, Amalner. Interestingly, Jay Garfield and Nalini Bhushan have brought out an English-to-English translation of the Subject as Freedom recently.

The translation aims to make “the contents of the text more accessible and provides a guide to reading the original text.” As such, KCB’s original text and the translation are presented “on facing pages.” The Introduction contextualises Subject as Freedom between its bookends; the two essays of KCB (Śaṅkara’s Doctrine of Māyā & The Advaita and Its Spiritual Significance) to ensure an embedded understanding of the text. As Garfield and Bhushan argue;

“We do so because they (the bookends) make explicit certain commitments that animate Subject as Freedom, but which are less explicitly addressed in that text. Because they are left in the background, if one does not attend to this context, it is easy to misunderstand what KCB is doing in that book. This is because one will inevitably misunderstand his use of idiosyncratic technical terms, which, despite their centrality and connection to Vedānta vocabulary, he does not gloss.”

By framing Subject as Freedom between KCB’s essays on Māyā and Advaita, the editors, in my opinion, facilitate the reader to navigate KCB’s movement from the “Object” to the “Subject”; or from the realm of “Objectivity” to the realm of “Subjectivity.”

In conclusion, the effort by Garfield and Bhushan is a landmark moment for Contemporary Indian Philosophy (CIP). It acknowledges that KCB’s difficulty stems not from a lack of clarity, but from the sheer depth of his synthesis, where Western transcendental philosophy meets the rigour of Advaita Vedānta, and may have a lot more for us to explore.