Dharma in the Academia
Never before in history has Indian culture been studied by more students than it is today in the curricula of formal education systems in America. It is an integral part of the today’s World Civilization and World History courses at both K-12 and college levels. Through these courses millions of students acquire “authoritative”—but questionable—knowledge about […]
The Three Motivations for DCF’s work
There are fundamentally three motivations for funding the study of Dharma in general and Hindu Dharma in particular, in main-stream academic Universities that underlie the work of Dharma Civilization Foundation. I. Engage the students of the diaspora. We believe that an intellectual engagement with the authentic teachings of Hindu Dharma is often […]
The Why of DCF
One of the foundations of Indian Civilization (also called Indic or Bharatiya – to use a Sanskrit word) is the conception of the human potential for spiritual and transcendental realization. The primacy accorded this tendency towards the spiritual and transcendental, as well as the great plurality of perceptions of ultimate reality and the multiplicity of […]
Constitutional Confusion
Article 28-1 of the Indian constitution says that “No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of State funds”. In other words, any State funded institution whether it is a Central University (like Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia or the Banaras Hindu University) or a State University like University […]
The Lens of Suspicion
When approaching the systematic academic study of Religion in academic settings, there are two fundamental positions that a scholar may lean towards – the position of a believer of the faith tradition, or the position of a dis-believer. While these two positions – belief and dis-belief are two ends of a spectrum of possibilities, any […]
Studying Hinduism through the Lens of Suspicion
The phenomenon of how the secular orientation expressed through the hermeneutics of suspicion distorts the study of Hinduism is best illustrated through the use of some examples. Here is a Marxist view of the Caste system – Varna and Jati as it obtained in India. A Classification system like that of Varna is ultimately the […]