Girish Mahajan (Editor)

The Heathen in his Blindness...

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
8.8
/
10
1
Votes
Alchetron
8.8
1 Ratings
100
90
81
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Rate This

Rate This

Country
  
India, Europe

Publisher
  
E. J. Brill

Originally published
  
1994

Page count
  
563

Countries
  
India, Europe

4.4/5
Goodreads

Language
  
English

Pages
  
563

Author
  
S. N. Balagangadhara

ISBN
  
90-04-09943-3

The Heathen in his Blindness... t0gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcT5AatibUQBohZbEP

Subject
  
Religious Studies, Social Sciences

Publication date
  
1994 (I edition) 2005 (II edition)

Followed by
  
Reconceptualizing India Studies (2012)

Similar
  
Reconceptualizing India Studies, The Ideology of Religious, Orientalism and religion, Romans, Eros on the Nile

"The Heathen in his Blindness...": Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion was first published in 1994 by E. J. Brill. A second, hardcover, edition of the book was published in 2005 by Manohar books. A third, paperback, edition came out in 2012, published by the Manohar books. This much discussed book is about religion, culture and cultural difference.

Contents

Chapters

This book has 12 chapters, an introduction and bibliography.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Some Puzzles and Problems

2. "Not by One Avenue Only ..."

3. The Whore of Babylon and Other Revelations

4. Made in Paris, London, and Heidelberg

5. Requiem for a Theme

6. "Shall the Twain Ever Meet?"

7. "Guilty as Charged, My Lords and Ladies?"

8. A Human Tragedy or the Divine Retribution?

9. "Blessed Are Those Who Seek"

10. "Imagine, There Is No Religion…"

11. Prolegomena to a Comparative Science of Cultures

12. At the End of a Journey

References

Understanding the Book

Scholars have generally found this book difficult to understand. It has also been suggested that it is better to begin by understanding some of the following articles written by S.N. Balagangadhara as they provide independent arguments and epistemic warrants to the claim that Indian traditions are not religions: "How to Speak for the Indian Traditions: An Agenda for the Future" (2005); "The Secular State and Religious Conflict: Liberal Neutrality and the Indian Case of Pluralism" (2007); "Spirituality in Management Theories: A Perspective from India" (2010). A detailed "Chapter-wise Questions and Answers" to understand the The Heathen in his Blindness is also available freely on the web.

Abridged version of the Book

In 2014, Manohar publishers brought out a condensed and shortened version of the The Heathen in his Blindness... (1994), entitled Do all Roads Lead to Jerusalem? The Making of Indian Religions (2014). Divya Jhingran worked for two years to bring out this simple, easily accessible and a very readable version of the original work.

Review

In this “ground-breaking work … SN Balagangadhara … wrote a devastating critique of the very language we use today to describe religious phenomena in India. In his book … Balagangadhara questioned whether it is appropriate to use terms like "religion", "orthodoxy" and "Hinduism" at all. He asked whether what are essentially Christian categories may be imputed to non-Western systems of belief and practice without utterly misunderstanding their content and misrepresenting their function."

Kannada Translation of the Book

A Kannada translation of the book was published in 2010 by Akshara Prakashana (Ninasam), Heggodu (Karnataka, India). The title is Smriti-Vismriti: Bharateeya Samskruti (in Kannada ಸ್ಮೃತಿ-ವಿಸ್ಮೃತಿ: ಭಾರತೀಯ ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತಿ). The translation was done by Rajaram Hegde of the Centre for the Study of Local Cultures.

The basic thesis that this book presents, "that Hinduism does not exist", it has been pointed out, "will alter our notion of Indian culture and social structure fundamentally. This seemingly pulls the carpet out from under the feet of the caste studies. ... [But] it does not leave the caste studies reeling helplessly.Rather,it provides a strong conceptual foundation and shows new directions to caste studies."

A review of the Kannada translation of the work claims that Balagangadhara's book has "prompted an intellectual revolution of sorts and those who have engaged with the questions he raises in the book cannot escape engaging with the answers he provides as well. To put it strongly — any scholar in the field of cultural studies and its related disciplines, will have to respond to his work. ... It traces the history of the two encounters of European culture with other cultures and empirically shows that the existence of religion was assumed both these times. It argues that the ‘universality of religion' is a falsifiable assumption and that religion is not a cultural universal."

Prof. Rajaram Hegde won the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award for the year 2011, for this translation of the The Heathen in his Blindness... into Kannada.

References

The Heathen in his Blindness... Wikipedia


Similar Topics