Student Question
What are the major points in the essay "Is there an Indian way of Thinking: An Informal Essay"?
Quick answer:
In "Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?", A. K. Ramanujan explores the title question from several different angles. For example, he claims that a uniquely Indian way of thinking would be the product of many different outside influences and that there are many different Indian ways of thinking.
A. K. Ramanujan begins "Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?" by pointing out that the question in the title can be asked in several different ways. He then spends the first part of the essay trying to answer each in turn:
- Is there an Indian way of thinking? Ramanujan says there was, but it has largely vanished with the end of India's caste system.
- Is there an Indian way of thinking? Ramanujan says no. Rather, there are many different Indian ways of thinking.
- Is there an Indian way of thinking? Ramanujan says maybe. On the one hand, Indian culture is full of outside influences; on the other, the way these influences are melded together is uniquely Indian.
- Is there an Indian way of thinking ? Ramanujan again says no—"thinking," or rationalization, is a Western habit. Indians tend to combine rationality with mythos and to emphasize actions rather than...
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- the rationalization behind them.
In the next part of the essay, Ramanujan points out that "an Indian way of thinking," so far as there is one, is full of contradictions and inconsistencies. He gives the example of his father, a South Indian Brahman, who combined Indian and English styles in his dress and logic and myth in his work.
The third part of the essay expands on Ramanujan's exploration of inconsistency by discussing concepts like karma and talaividi, as well as perceptions of "truth" (which he says is not considered to be one universal thing separate from humans in India, as it is in the West).
Next, Ramanujan explores the way Indian culture is context-sensitive. A common understanding of universal law, story framing, and similar "big picture" ideas are essential in order to understand the words or motivations of any one person. Ramanujan points to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as examples of this context dependence.
Ramanujan also compares context-dependent societies like India (where some specific concepts may be context-free) to context-free societies like the West (where some specific concepts may be context-dependent). He points out that no society is 100 percent context-free, but that different societies rely on context in different ways and to different degrees, which affects their artistic and spiritual values.
In the final part of the essay, Ramanujan describes how India has begun embracing a more context-free approach. For example, people today might listen to any raga whenever they want, instead of waiting for the precise time and date for which the raga was written. However, he says that new Western ideas are being incorporated into Indian tradition rather than replacing it—which means that, instead of truly making Indian thought context-free, Western ideas are just creating a new context.