Dr. Subhasis Chattopadhyay

This is a vignette from my time with the Christian Brothers of Blessed Edmund Rice. I see hospitality and the gift of time as some of the greatest gifts the Brothers gave me when I was a child. The article is meant to show what Catholic Religious Life actually is; and what constitutes dialogue --- dialogue is when Baba Kinaram speaks to the Brothers through this unworthy writer. This blog post points out how interreligious dialogue is facilitated also from the Hindu side --- the most extreme forms of Hinduism like Tantra and Aghora too want to understand other worldviews. And in between, I mention how Tantra is not as esoteric as people make it out to be.

"[T]he vast repositories of Sanskrit Hindu literature [continue to be dismissed] as mythological, degenerate, or historically unreliable. This colonial gaze effectively stripped the plural religious history of South Asia of its foundational Hindu layers, projecting a false autonomy onto Buddhist developments. However, contemporary philological, ethnographic, and textual analyses reveal a radically different genealogy. The esoteric practices of Vajrayāna Buddhism, the complex visualization methodologies of the Hevajra Tantra, and the somatic codifications found in the earliest Haṭhayoga manuals, such as the Amṛtasiddhi, are demonstrably and deeply derivative of older, dominant Hindu Śaiva and Śākta models. The central argument of this essay is that Buddhist forms of yoga and Tantra did not emerge sui generis from an isolated doctrinal core. Rather, they represent a sophisticated, systematic appropriation and adaptation of Hindu metaphysical paradigms, ritual architecture, and physiological mapping." The editor of ESamskriti suggested that I write this...I request the reader to read the brief note I have appended here. I have removed all annotations because one a blog, one cannot have all manner of citations including those from Reddit. Interestingly, Reddit discussions help me a lot in formulating my own understanding of most theological and philosophical matters. The books I refer to are mostly with very few exceptions PDFs since hardcopies are hard to come by and are too expensive. I cannot afford hardcopies of books anymore.

This paper reads Atonement by Ian McEwan through the interwoven theological motifs of Yom Kippur, Christian sacrificial atonement, and Briony’s imaginative self-redemption. It argues that McEwan destabilizes traditional notions of sin, guilt, and repentance by foregrounding narrative unreliability and moral ambiguity. Drawing on Elizabeth Loftus, René Girard, and biblical hermeneutics, the paper contends that McEwan negates transcendence within a Darwinian framework where sin becomes a hermeneutical construct rather than metaphysical reality. Ultimately, Atonement emerges as a novel about narration itself, exposing atonement as both aesthetic illusion and epistemological uncertainty. This was written in some hurry for students during the Covid pandemic.

"In the panoramic history of Indian intellectual thought, few figures occupy a position as pivotal yet paradoxically under-examined as Vijñānabhikṣu. Emerging in the sixteenth century, a period characterized by vibrant sectarian fermentation and the looming shadow of Mughal political consolidation, Vijñānabhikṣu stands as a colossus of syncretic scholasticism. His intellectual project was nothing less than the philosophical unification of the orthodox (astika) systems of Hindu thought—Samkhya, Yoga, and Vedanta—against the perceived nihilism of the heterodox (nastika) schools and the illusionist metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta. To understand Vijñānabhikṣu is to understand the crystallization of "Hinduism" not merely as a colonial of the soul. construct, as some post-structuralist historiography might suggest, but as an indigenous, precolonial theological category defined by a shared adherence to the Veda and a realist ontology of the soul". The Editor of Esamskriti changed the title of the paper for some Google SEO.

"The dominance of Karl Rahner in Indian theology was a historical necessity; it provided the confidence for a local church to assert its identity. But the "transcendental" paradigm has reached a point of diminishing returns. It risks dissolving the distinctiveness of the Christian event and unintentionally colonizing the Hindu experience. Henri de Lubac, the neglected partner, waits in the wings. His theology—steeped in the Fathers, obsessed with the paradox of the concrete, and fiercely protective of the social unity of mankind, offers the corrective needed for the next century. For an India grappling with the violence of abstraction, de Lubac’s insistence that "humanity is one" not by a vague concept, but by the concrete blood of the Corpus Mysticum, is a message of radical hope. The future of Indian theology may well depend on a "Return to the Center":a return to the paradox of the Incarnate that de Lubac so faithfully guarded."

"Comparatively, Bhishma stands as an answer to the Sramana challenge. He integrates the Jaina ideal of the "Good Death" and the Buddhist ideal of the "Righteous King" but grounds them in the Vedic necessity of Danda and Svadharma. He asserts that true liberation is not found in fleeing the social order, but in upholding it with the detached consciousness of a renouncer. Thus, Bhishma on the bed of arrows is the ultimate symbol of the Indian synthesis: the stillness of the ascetic inextricably bound to the support of the world, proving that the highest Ahimsa is the strength to protect the weak, even at the cost of one's own soul."

"The dramatic monologue, as perfected by Robert Browning in the Victorian era, represents not merely a literary genre but a distinct philosophical event; a suspension of historical time wherein the speaking subject is caught in a perpetual state of "inoperativity," revealing the fissures between intent and execution, spirit and matter, theology and desire"...This study uses Agamben's tropes and John Caputo's understanding of a weak God to interrogate Browning's 'The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church'. Since this essay is mainly for students; there is provided a glossary of key terms; sudden veerings into Maslow and Lacan. This has been done to provide as much information as is possible within one essay without a candidate having to refer to multiple sources if she has to take her exams at short notice. But the central argument is based primarily on Agamen's works.

This paper is in honour of Prof. Swapan Seal, a mentor and inspiration who asked me to write on Biographia Literaria. "In an age of Artificial Intelligence which currently operates on the level of "Fancy" (aggregating and predicting based on "fixities and definites" of large datasets), Coleridge’s distinction becomes crucially important. Can a machine possess the "Secondary Imagination"? Can it "dissolve and diffuse" to create a new "I AM"? Or is it forever trapped in the Associationism of algorithms? Coleridge’s Biographia asserts that to be human is to be a creator, an echo of the infinite. It challenges the reductionist tendencies of modern science (Ryle’s machine) by insisting on the "ghost" of subjectivity. It challenges the skepticism of deconstruction (de Man) by offering a faith in the unified symbol. As a prototype for understanding the human psyche, it stands as a monument to the belief that the mind is not a mirror of nature, but a lamp that illuminates it."

"In 2026, Sylvia Plath’s Daddy remains an open wound in the American literary canon. It refuses to be healed, sanitized, or fully assimilated. Through the lens of Piaget, we see it as a cognitive regression to a world of dangerous magic where metaphors become reality. Through Klein and Kristeva, we understand it as a necessary act of psychic violence to expel the abject and survive the ‘poison’ of the father. Through Arendt, we recognize the terrifying homology between the fascist state and the patriarchal home, a warning that the "banality of evil" exists in the nursery as much as in the bureau. And through Levinas, we see the tragic failure of ethics when the Other is reduced to a monster, necessitating a ‘killing’ that resolves nothing. The poem’s longevity evidenced by its continued presence in doctoral research and viral social media debates lies in this refusal to resolve. It does not offer the "catharsis" of Greek tragedy but the "repetition compulsion" of trauma. As long as the "black shoe" of patriarchal and historical oppression exists, Daddy will continue to be read, debated, and reviled; a "stake" in the heart of the canon that flowers, perversely, with each new generation of readers. The speaker declares "I'm through," but the cultural obsession with the poem suggests that we, as readers, are far from finished."

"The legacy of this Aristotelian framework (mimesis) is evident in Western literary history, where it served as a critical lens for understanding the work of authors from Shakespeare, who used mimesis to capture the universal human condition, to Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad, who employed it to represent the complexities of internal consciousness and the pathologies of social violence. Today, mimesis continues to be a relevant and vital concept, reinterpreted in a world of simulation and digital technology and used by critical schools to analyze everything from Biblical texts to postmodern social structures. The comparison with Sanskrit poetics demonstrates that while the core act of imitation is universal, its philosophical purpose—whether it is for catharsis or for the achievement of Rasa, is culturally specific. Ultimately, mimesis, in all its forms, remains a central intellectual concern because it attempts to answer a fundamental question: what is the relationship between art and the world it seeks to represent"?

In the vast and often contentious canon of Anglo-Irish literature, John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea occupies a position of peculiar paradox. For decades, particularly within the undergraduate syllabi of universities across India and the postcolonial world, the play has been canonized as the quintessential "one-act play" serving as a pedagogical tool used to demonstrate economy of form, the use of local dialect, and the atmosphere of rural tragedy. It is read, studied, and examined with a frequency that suggests familiarity, yet this very ubiquity has bred a critical complacency. It is frequently categorized as a "folk play," a realistic snapshot of peasant life on the Aran Islands, or a minor prelude to Synge’s more controversial The Playboy of the Western World. Such reductive readings fail to grasp the monumental ambition and theoretical weight of the text. As James Joyce, a contemporary who viewed Synge with a mixture of rivalry and awe, eventually conceded, Riders to the Sea is a play that one can "riddle mentally" without finding a single "sound spot". It is not merely a play about fishermen; it is a high modernist experiment that fuses the ancient structural rigors of Greek tragedy with a radically new, "artificial" linguistic medium.

"To the contemporary scholar, the poem offers a rich field of inquiry, serving as a convergence point for Victorian anxieties about gender, the marketplace of art, and the stability of the self. It acts as a bridge between the Romantic ego and the fractured, ironic consciousness of High Modernism. Andrea del Sarto is not merely a period piece about a Renaissance painter, but a proto-modernist text that anticipates the "common greyness" of the twentieth-century condition." This essay is being made freely available to UG and PG students and any reference to this work should be properly cited.

"The task of defining Shakti requires a departure from the reductionist tendencies of early Indology, which often categorized the Goddess merely as a ‘consort’ or a ‘fertility archetype’. Within Shakta Upasana (worship of Shaktism), Shakti is not an attribute of the Divine; She is the ontological definition of Divinity itself. She is the kinetic absolute, the dynamic aspect of the ultimate reality (Brahman) that renders the transcendent accessible, cognizable, and realizable. Shakti is the mechanism of Vimarśa (divine self-reflection); the mirror in which the infinite Consciousness (Shiva/Prakāśa) recognizes its own existence. Without Shakti, the Absolute is Shava (a corpse): inert, powerless, and effectively non-existent."

"While often presented as complementary or convergent by theologians who read Shankara through a Thomist lens (such as Richard De Smet and Sara Grant), further interrogation suggests that Advaita Vedanta offers a specific ontological robustness regarding the nature of the Infinite that Thomism, bound by its commitment to Aristotelian substance ontology, struggles to articulate. By examining the core tenets of Being, Creation, Simplicity, and Grace, and drawing upon the critiques of interstitial theologians, it becomes evident that the Advaitic understanding of Brahman challenges the Thomistic Actus Purus in ways that reveal potential limitations in the Western dualistic framework of Creator and creature."

The essay proceeds in five parts. "First, will be delineated the architecture of Jain non-absolutism, examining the textual basis and philosophical function of Anekāntavāda, Nayavāda, and Syādvāda with reference to foundational Jain Āgamas and treatises. Second, this essay will explore potential antecedents and conceptual parallels within the Vedic corpus, particularly the paradoxical descriptions of Brahman in the Upaniṣads, to assess the claim of derivation. Third, it will analyze the systematic critiques leveled against Jain pragmatism by the major orthodox (āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy: Vedānta, Mīmāṃsā, and Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. Fourth, it will adopt a "Hindu lens" to interpret the Jain ideal of the perfected being, the Tīrthaṅkara, by comparing the Jain concept of Kevala Jñāna (omniscience) with the Sāṃkhya-Yoga concept of Kaivalya (isolation) and examining the Puranic assimilation of Jain figures. Finally, the essay will address the question of Jainism's origins, marshaling evidence to evaluate its status as a sui generis tradition, independent of but in constant dialogue with its Hindu counterparts." The editor of ESamskriti has given a different title so that Google indexes it. But the body of the text is (hopefully) the same.

First it is shown how Buddhism undermines Sāṃkhya. Then it is shown how Sāṃkhya and Advaita negate the fundamental tenets of Buddhism. They do not critique Buddhism. They actually show the insufficent exegesis of Buddhist thinkers. The following is from a global expert on both Hinduism and Buddhism who mailed me and he sums up the position of this article eloquently: "This next [after something else in the earlier part of the email] is more of an observation than a critique, and does not involve any change to the article. The focus of the article is on the Buddha’s teaching as presented in the Theravāda literature (some of the earliest literature of which we are aware from the Buddhist tradition). My sense is that later Buddhists, in the Mahāyāna tradition, reintroduce the Self in the form of Buddha Nature (the Tathāgatagarbha), or alternatively, in the concept of the Dharmakāya. There are even Mahāyāna texts which assert that the Brahman affirmed in the Vedic literature is the same as the Buddha Nature/Dharmakāya (such as in the writings of the Madhyamaka philosopher Bhāviveka). As the article rightly points out, the object of Buddhist critique is “self” in the conventional sense, which Sāṃkhya and Advaita Vedānta also reject as an ultimately illusory construct. Many Buddhists (though without using the term “self” or “Self”) do affirm, though, the reality of something which sounds a lot like the infinite being-consciousness-bliss (anantaraṃ sat-cit-ānanda) of Vedānta. One can find this most strongly in the Tibetan and Zen traditions. The Theravāda tradition is the most adamant about there being nothing like a self, even the Self of Sāṃkhya and Vedānta. But importantly, even in the Theravāda literature, one finds the following affirmation attributed to the Buddha: “There is that which is not born, not brought into being, not made, not conditioned. Without that which is not born, not brought into being, not made, not conditioned, there would be no escape from the born, the brought into being, the made, the conditioned.” (Udāna 8:3) My sense is that the Buddhists were charting the same territory of consciousness as the Sāṃkhya and Advaita Vedānta traditions, but often using different terminology. One of my former teachers, the late Steven Collins, goes so far as to call the no self doctrine a “linguistic taboo”–essentially, a way of affirming tribal identity. This is ironic, given that the point of this doctrine is to reduce our clinging to conditioned identities!" The editor has inserted a lot of images, it is suggested that the article be downloaded and read.

This letter is in response to Pope Francis's exhortation to Catholics globally to align themselves to Vatican II's underatanding of humanity as one --- not as merely a division between the baptised and the non-baptised. This letter speaks of historical wrongs which need to be forgiven. And then goes on to rethink Karl Rahner's idea of the 'anonymous Christian' to that of a crypto-Catholic/crypto Hindu in the send that Acharya Gaudapada is thought to be a crypto-Buddhist to date. This in spite of the fact that by no imagination possible is the Acharya a Buddhist of any denomination. Nor is his commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad Buddhist in any manner. Certainly the Upanishad in question is not a Buddhist work. Therefore this letter is important since it raises questions about accepted categories of set thought within Western Christian studies and even within Western Hindu polemics. There are as usual, typos in the letter which has now become habitual with this publication. They were originally not there in the typed WORD file. Even conventions like italicisations of the names of texts are being not followed by whoever reads the proofs.

Recently the dour L&T Chariman who is a plutocrat demanded of his employess the giving up of Sundays as days of rest and like the nameless of Pharaoh whom we encounter in the Hebrew Scriptures, advises his employees who earn peanuts to work 90 hours every week. This letter to the editor reinstates the day of rest as crucial to both Hindus and Christians. It refers cursorily to Heidegger and then also attacks cram schools in India where kids are taught to rote learn to pass often meaningless competitive exams. There are typos in the letter. One often forgets that religions were meant to be countercultural forces of resistance and not of slavery to the letter of the law, ignoring the spirit of the law.

This letter to the editor deals with the challenges of interreligious dialogue and the liminal position of those who engage in dialogue within their own religious communities and of course, by the perceived 'Other'. Further, this letter looks forward to building a new community of men in decades to come through the author's study of the (Irish) Christian Brothers. It remains a misfortune that typos have been introduced in this letter and 'Lamentations and the Tears of the World' by Kathleen O'Connor, had not been italicised. Even 'Lamentations' should have been italicised. Further the last two points of this letter refer to the Christian Brothers in the early 1990s at Calcutta/Kolkata. It is a pity that we do not have any fuller chronicle of the Brothers mentioned in this letter and their contributions to the making of Calcutta's intellectual woof, thus risks being erased from our collective memory. The letter quotes the senior-most Christian Brother in India today, Br. Maurice Baptists Finn cfc. "Agamben's book Karman?' should have had "Karman" italicised as also the names of other books given in the letter. Sadly, nobody bothered to proof-read this Archdiocesan mouthpiece.

The review shows how Guha reinstates the sacred within Eliot studies in India. Through his efforts at reading Eliot; Guha effects a literary turn and rescues Eliot from purely materialist readings which Eliot himself would not have been able to recognise. Let the review speak for itself: "We knew about Baudelaire and his flamboyant short life. But how many of us know of Baudelaire’s spirituality? Guha writes that Baudelaire had a profound understanding “of Original Sin” (92). It is another matter that, as Guha points out, Eliot too shared this Baudelairian sense of Original Sin (92). Before reading this book, the reviewer was aware of Eliot’s self-confessed Christianity, but there exists no work where Baudelaire’s views on spirituality have been connected to Eliot’s poetry and criticism. Guha’s genius unearths for us a new Baudelaire and a new Eliot. Who would have thought before Guha researched Eliot that Baudelaire took a dim view of Victor Hugo being opaque to spirituality? In fact, Guha’s Baudelaire is not a picaresque avant garde, he is a young man searching for the numinous."

This letter to the editor highlights the need to study theology for both Hindus and Roman Catholics. It points out the dangers of NOT studying theology for both religious communities and while doing so, it touches upon AI. It poignantly touches upon Saint Chavara and the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate. The letter has some typos: it is Madhukanda from the Brihadaranyak Upanishad...it is Carmelites of Mary Immaculate. This is my patrimony as an Indian Hindu who is a Hindu-Christian and the late Fr. Raimundo Panikkar was a Christian-Hindu. Should have been This is my patrimony as an Indian Hindu Tantric who is a Hindu-Christian as the late Fr. Raimundo Panikkar was a Catholic priest who was a Christian-Hindu. Sdaly these corrections/proofing were NOT done. Further it is "Achintya-Bheda-Abheda " / अचिन्त्यभेदाभेद...

This article shows why it is important to not "hastily condemn the condemnation of Gutiérrez by ecclesiastical authorities, [instead] we should learn from those censures". Then the essay shows why the last two Popes, John Paul the Great and Pope Bendict were sceptical of liberation theology. Nonetheless, this mode of theological praxis is now pervasive throughout global and Indian academia. The last part of this long essay contextualises how liberation theology has concetreley shaped the Indian Church and also, to an extent, Hinduism.

Research is increasing becoming AI dependent and is being done for fulfilment of various academic requirements. Researchers are spending a lot of time 'reinventing the wheel' and use word-padding to trick themselves and their examiners/peers happy. Often bibligraphies are longer than the research papers just to impress others. Often researchers do not know how to cita and rely solely on machine-created bibliographies which are insufficient bibligraphies. They tend to follow the letter of the law, discarding the spirit of the law. While discussing research, the author comments on the Kathleen O'Connor; Graham Greene, Dracula, Hamlet, Blake, Plato and Augistine of Hippo. And Hannah Arendt. Some of his observations in this essay are unique; like he asks Levinas scholars to interrogate certain lines of thoughts which have hitherto not considered. In short, he teaches how to connect the dots. Here and in the Herald he has pointed out the contributions of Fr. Adrian Van Kaam, these need to be worked on by others in the field. An entire section is on Hindu religious research in terms of the Anuttara Trika. Another section is on Gerard Manley Hokins and sprung rhytm. A very interesting observation which he touches on is Samkhya and Plato. Through these and many more examples this essay tries to cleanse the research process of blah and abracadabra.