Alternative ontologies and epistemologies: Is there an Indian way of knowing and theorizing in social sciences?
In an “informal essay” (1989), poet, translator, and folklorist A. K. Ramanujam asks an intriguing question, "Is there an Indian way of thinking?” Taking inspiration from the celebrated essay, without any misconception of equivalent competence, I ask, Is there an Indian way of knowing and theorizing in social sciences? Ramanujan's answer was in the affirmative for an imagined India in the deep past, but not for the post-colonial India of the present. The subtext of his argument was, in contemporary India we do not have an Indian way of thinking capable of producing context-free theories with universal applications. Provocatively, Ramanujam suggests there are only Indian experiences but no thought. His analysis suggests, following a violent and subjugating encounter with the west, the Indian (or Vedic) way of thinking—rooted in a logic of chaos, context-dependent nature of truth, and a majestic celebration of ambiguity—was displaced by a bundle of inconsistent and contradictory ontologies and epistemologies. In this talk, I argue for possibilities of ontological and epistemological pluralism in context-dependent ways of knowing. A pluralism in thinking that gives rise to concepts and associated explications of alternative theories of society, cultures, polities, and economies. Context-dependent alternative understanding and explanations, which in a post-colonial sense challenge the hegemony of Eurocentrism in knowledge production. Using some examples, including from my earlier work on theorizing cultures of protests in dhandak and jan andolan (2014), I discuss Indian way of knowing and theorizing.
Bio: Anup Kumar is professor of communication in the School of Communication, Cleveland State University. He completed his PhD from the University of Iowa in 2008. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed communication and political science journals and is the author of Making of a Small State (2014). Prior to joining academia, he was a journalist, then an environmental activist, and before that a chemist.