Abstract
This essay explores G.R. Malkani’s reinvention of Advaita Vedānta in the context of neo-Vedānta in Indian academia during the colonial period. The first section examines why Advaita Vedānta received more attention than Buddhism despite unintelligibility of its central doctrine of the reality of Brahman and the unreality of the world of every day experience and why various forms of Vedānta continued to be vitally relevant to Indian society in its task of reforming itself into a vibrant modern society. The subsequent sections give a detailed account of Malkani’s presentation of some key concepts and issues in Advaita Vedānta and the Hegelian influence on his ‘free rendering’ of classical Advaita Vedānta.
Some parts of the exposition of Malkani’s thoughts are drawn from my earlier work The Philosophy of G.R. Malkani (Ed) Sharad Deshpande, 1997, I.C.P.R. Delhi.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Neo-Vedānta is usually held to be a reinvention of classical Advaita Vedānta in terms of Kant’s transcendental idealism , Hegel’s Absolute idealism and British neo-Hegelianism .
- 2.
In philosophy in Fifteen Modern Indian Languages (Bedekar 1979) gives an exhaustive account of how rich and diverse is the contribution of innumerable thinkers who wrote in regional languages and offered various reformulations of key Vedāntic concepts and also of Hinduism more generally.
- 3.
Ghanshamdas Ratanmal (G.R.) Malkani (c. 1892–1978) was born at Hyderabad Sind (now in Pakistan). Having obtained his Masters degree in 1916 from the University of Bombay, he became a research fellow in the first batch of the Indian Institute of Philosophy which was situated at Amalner , a small town in the north-western region of India known as East Khandesh in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency . Malkani obtained an M. Litt from Cambridge in 1921 under the supervision of James Ward , a famous psychologist and philosopher of idealist orientation. During his stay, he became acquainted with the philosophies of Kant and Hegel , and also of Bradley , Bosanquet and Bergson . On his return from Cambridge, he was appointed first as the superintendent in1924, as editor of the Philosophical Quarterly in 1926, and finally as the Director of the Indian Institute of Philosophy in 1935 succeeding K.C. Bhattacharyya (Deshpande 1997; Burch 1970). Malkani remained the Director of the Institute till its closure in 1966. Besides a large number of articles and monographs, his major publications include Philosophy of the Self (1939, Rpt. in U.S in 1966), A Study of Reality (1927), Vedantic Epistemology (1953) and Metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta (1961)—all published from Indian Institute of Philosophy, Amalner.
- 4.
General Presidential Address, Indian Philosophical Congress , XXIV Session, Patna, India, 1949.
- 5.
But Malkani was aware of these developments such as Logical Positivism (Malkani 1950).
- 6.
This debate is carried out in many ways. One such attempt—to which Malkani is responding—is by P.T. Raju in his Idealistic Thought of India (Raju 1953).
References
Abhyankar, K. (1925). Advaitāmodsiddhi. Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
Bhattacharyya, K. C. (1907). Studies in Vedantism. In G. Bhattacharyya (1956) (Ed.), Studies in Philosophy. Calcutta: Progressive Publishers.
Bedekar, V. M. (Ed.). (1979). Philosophy in Fifteen modern Indian languages. Pune: Continental Prakashan for the Council for The Marathi Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
Burch, G. (1956). Contemporary Vedānta philosophy. The Review of Metaphysics, 10(1), 122–157.
Burch, G. (1970). Oriental metaphysics. In R. E. Wood (Ed.), The future of metaphysics. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
Chakravarti, A. (2009). Looking upon reality as ‘power’: Reason and philosophical creativity in India during the Colonial Period. Lecture at the seminar on Philosophy in Colonial India. University of Pune, March (unpublished).
Chattopadhyaya, D. P. (1959). Lokāyata: A study of ancient Indian materialism. Peoples’ publishing house.
Datta, D. M. (1956). India’s debt to the West in philosophy. Philosophy East and West, 6(3).
Deshpande, S. (1997). The philosophy of G.R. Malkani. New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research.
Halbfass, W. (1990). India and Europe: An essay in philosophical understanding (Indian edition). Motilal Banarsidass.
Halbfass, W. (1991). Tradition and reflection: Explorations in Indian thought. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Mādhavāchārya. (1996). The Sarvadarśanasamgraha: Or, Review of the different systems of Hindu philosophy (trans.: E. B. Cowel & A. E. Gouch), London (1882, First Indian edition), Motilal Banarsidass.
Malkani, G. R. (1930). Intellect and intuition. The Philosophical Quarterly, 5(4).
Malkani, G. R. (1932). The self in relation to knowledge. The Philosophical Quarterly, 7(4).
Malkani, G. R. (1934). The Absolute, part I. The Philosophical Quarterly, 10(3), 199–224.
Malkani, G. R. (1935a). The Absolute, part II. The Philosophical Quarterly, 10(4), 351–364.
Malkani, G. R. (1935b). The Absolute, part III. The Philosophical Quarterly, 11(1), 97–104.
Malkani, G. R. (1935c). The Absolute, part IV. The Philosophical Quarterly, 11(2), 107–117.
Malkani, G. R. (1939). Philosophy of the self. Amalner: Indian Institute of Philosophy.
Malkani, G. R. (1950). Philosophical Truth. The Philosophical Quarterly (Reprint in Deshpande, 1977), 20–53.
Malkani, G. R. (1953). Vedantic epistemology. Amalner: Indian Institute of Philosophy.
Malkani, G. R. (1955). Two traditions of pure philosophy. Philosophical Quarterly (Rpt in Deshpande, 1977), 407–414.
Malkani, G. R. (1961). Metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta. Amalner: Indian Institute of Philosophy.
Malkani, G. R. (1963a). Ontological reflections (Being and necessary being), part I. The Philosophical Quarterly, 36(2), 85–91.
Malkani, G. R. (1963b). Ontological reflections (From appearance to reality), 36(3), 171–177.
Malkani, G. R. (1964a). Ontological reflections (From non-being to being), 37(4), 235–244.
Malkani, G. R. (1964b). Ontological reflections (Absolute reality or God), 38(1), 21–34.
Malkani G. R., Das, R., & Murti T. R. V. (1933). Ajñana. Amalner: Indian Institute of Philosophy.
Moore, G. E. (1903). Refutation of idealism. Mind, 12.
Prasad, R. (1982). Tradition, freedom and philosophical creativity. In S. S. Rama Rao Pappu, & R. Puligandla (Eds.), Indian philosophy: Past and future. South Asia Books.
Raju, P. T. (1953). Idealistic thought of India. Cambridge, MA: The Harvard University Press.
Ranade, R. D. (1970). Vedanta as culmination of Indian thought, (Basu-Mullick Lectures, Calcutta University 1929) Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
Rege, M. P. (1996). New Quest, (Editorial), July–August 1996.
Seal, B. N. (1924). Syllabus of Indian Philosophy Based on the Lectures of Dr. Brajendranath Seal. Bangalore: University of Mysore.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Indian Institute of Advanced Study
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Deshpande, S. (2015). G.R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Vedānta . In: Deshpande, S. (eds) Philosophy in Colonial India. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 11. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2223-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2223-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New Delhi
Print ISBN: 978-81-322-2222-4
Online ISBN: 978-81-322-2223-1
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)