Phenomenology in India

Abstract

Phenomenology in its original European (and to that extent, Western) form, has not been a native philosophical movement in India and can be counted as a recent entrant on the Indian scene. Unlike the Anglo-Saxon (British) philosophies at large and European Continental philosophy from the Greeks to the early twentieth century, Husserlian phenomenology and related existentially oriented philosophies remained far less familiar to Indian philosophers in general until around the 1950s. One reason for that was, of course, the paucity of English translations of Husserl’s works and of expositions. But no less was this due to an overbearing influence of British philosophy, mainly empirical, and partly neo-Hegelian, on modern Indian academics. As a result, until at least the first half of this century, Indian philosophers could hardly relate or show inclination to this relative newcomer—and in a way a heterodox one—in European philosophy. Even the postwar impact, however marginal, of the French existentialism of Sartre, Camus, etc. on the Indian intellectual could make little dent in academic philosophy as such.