In the course of three plenary sessions three clearly formulated theses about the general theme of the conference will be taken up for discussion by four experts. These experts will either defend or challenge these theses. In each session, one thesis will be taken up for discussion. Each speaker will get 10 minutes to briefly outline his or her position. This will be followed by a well-moderated debate between the four speakers.
Day 1: The current representations of Indian religion are products of a monologue, not a dialogue.
The descriptions we have of religion in India do not reflect a dialogue but a European monologue. Indian contributions to these descriptions, when they collaborated with Europeans, were absorbed and transformed into the European conceptual framework. This did not alter the nature of this framework, nor did it fundamentally change the way in which Indian culture was described. Fragments from the Indian intellectual traditions have been integrated into the European representations, but their meaning has been changed and distorted. In order to appreciate this point, it suffices to ask the following question: Which Indian theories have been adopted in productive ways in the development of Western intellectual traditions? It is difficult to think of any, with the exception of linguistics. Indians did not understand the European questions and descriptions about religion, which find their origin in a Christian theological framework; Europeans were equally unable to grasp the meaning of Indian concepts.
Day 2: The dialogue is more accurately described as a meeting of two monologues with distortions of meaning on both sides.
The insight that the European and Indian cultures operate with two conceptual frameworks that are fundamentally different from each other needs to be taken more seriously. These frameworks have come (and continue to come) into contact with each other. Concepts from both sides are adopted and interpreted within the other's framework. However, accordingly as they are integrated into a different constellation of concepts they also get distorted. These respective distortions have much to teach us about the conceptual frameworks and the differences between them. To give an example, the concept puja has been absorbed into the European representations of religion in India by translating and interpreting it as ‘worship’. But ‘worship’ has a specific range of meanings in European culture and is connected to a range of concepts specific to its conceptual framework: ‘God’, ‘religion’, ‘idolatry’... As such ‘puja’ has been misunderstood and its meaning distorted. In much the same way, once Indians had learned that ‘worship’ should be translated as ‘puja’, they mapped ‘worship’ onto the semantics of ‘puja’ and totally misunderstood what ‘worship’ refers to in Christianity and the European natural languages.
Day 3: Towards mutual understanding
Through a study of what happens to concepts from one culture when they are absorbed into the conceptual framework of another we can learn a lot about both of the cultures in question and about the differences between them. Once we have an understanding of the respective conceptual frameworks a new kind of dialogue could start to take place. Questions here are: How can we progress towards better mutual knowledge, understanding and dialogue? Can cultures really learn from each other through such a dialogue?