In the Roundtable sessions we will look at the Indian side of the dialogue: how have Indians responded to the European descriptions of their religion and culture?
Each of the three Roundtable sessions will be initiated by one paper presentation, which will circumscribe the questions for the debate. This will be followed by a focussed response by a specialist and a Roundtable discussion with the core group of respondents. These sessions will also function as a preparation for the Platform sessions. They will provide the historical and empirical foundation for the Platform debates of the afternoon.
Three Indian responses to the European descriptions by important scholars will be looked at. The main questions are: how European representations and the concepts used by them have been absorbed into the Indian framework, how they have been interpreted and distorted, and what we can learn from this about the nature of Indian culture and its traditions.
Throughout the 18th and 19th century, the Indian responses were varied. While many had no interest in participating in any dialogue with the Europeans, other Indians adopted and reproduced the descriptions of Europeans. Movements such as the Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj and people like Ram Mohan Roy accepted the descriptions which depicted the Indian traditions as degenerate religion and tried to reform them on the model of Protestant Christianity.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, different forms of resistance emerged to the European representations of India. Indian writers such as Gandhi started to point to the Indianness of the Indian traditions and their difference from European religion. Such descriptions still made use of the European concepts albeit in a distorted way.
In the previous century, thinkers like Dharampa and some of the postcolonial scholars have started to point to the inadequacy of European concepts in describing the nature of the Indian traditions. They call for developing alternative descriptions that are understandable across cultures. In doing so, they have initiated the process of building new knowledge about the Indian traditions and decolonising the social sciences.