Vivekananda and Navya-Nyaya : What changed between 1895 and 1902 ?

 

 Nyaya and Indian Enlightenment

I have been studying Jonardan Ganeri's wonderful book 'The lost age of reason - Philosophy in early modern India 1450-1700' that chronicles the intellectual history of early modernity in India especially Navya-Nyaya (new reason) school and explores the alternative conception of modernity not as rejection of past but change of attitude towards it.

I have been interested in Nyaya school not only because of interest in logic and epistemology but more broadly as I believe Nyaya with its notion of 'Apta' - that doesn't discriminate among human beings and 'deistic' notion of 'God' (in udayana and later Raghunatha) may provide a 'philosophical basis' for an Indian 'Enlightenment'.

  

Neglect of Nyaya in Indian Renaissance/Freedom Movement

In this regard i am interested about how Nyaya influenced thinkers of Indian Freedom movement/Renaissance and I am surprised by the apparent neglect of it and (advaitha)vedantha-centrism - emphasis on vedantha that had continued to this day.Related to this I am also interested in influence of west on formation of Indian identity.For example in Bagavadgeetha becoming the holy book of the Hindus I guess there is influence of one holy book concept of abrahmic religions as even in the vedantha schools prasthanathrayas that are basic scriptures which comes to atleast 12 books. [1-Brahma Sutra,10- canonical Upanishads, and Bhagavadgeetha]

 

Question - For Vivekananda What changed between 1895 and 1902 ?

 What is the reason for dramatic change  Vivekananda about Navya-Nyaya between 1895 and 1992 ? and is it representative of views of other leading people in the Independence/renaissance movement ?

 

In 1895 -Vivekananda has Positive attitude about Navya-Nyaya [From Ganeri's book - The lost age of reason]

 

Vivekananda, writing at the end of the nineteenth century, evinced a continuing awareness of the power and influence of the movement:

 

Transported from the soil of Mithilā to Navadvı̄pa, nurtured and developed by the fostering genius of [Raghunātha] Śiromani, Gadādhara, Jagadı̄śa, and a host of other great names, an analysis of the laws of reasoning in some points superior to every other system in the whole world, expressed in a wonderful and precise mosaic of language, stands the Nyāya of Bengal, respected and studied throughout the length and breadth of Hindusthān. (1895: 336)

 

 

Later in 1902 - Sceptical about Nyaya and Full Praise for Advaita Vedantha 

 

A few years later he had become less complimentary about the ‘new reason’, and gives voice to what was already a standard cliché. Speaking to a Bengali student, he says:

 

Why do you not set about propagating Vedānta in your part of the country? Rouse and agitate the country with the lion-roar of Advaita-vāda. Then I shall know you to be a Vedāntist. First open a Sanskrit school there and teach the Upanishads and the Brahma-sūtras. I have heard that in your country there is much logic-chopping of the Nyāya school. What is there in it? Only vyāpti [pervasion] and anumāna [inference]—on these subjects the pandits of the Nyāya school discuss for months! What does it help towards the knowledge of the ātman[the self]?(1902:256-267] 

 

Hindu religion has now become the only thing worth studying, and ‘new reason’ philosophy is reduced to so many soteriologically irrelevant logical games.

 

 Such a drastic change in his views in such a short span of time. Reading about Daya Krishna is justifying my suspicion that neo-vedantic interpretation was inspired by west's view of spiritual east .

From Preface of the book - contrary thinking - a collection of his essays .

 

Daya Krishna’s was a much-needed iconoclastic voice, given the resurgence of

neo- Vedānta in the nineteenth century, which he saw as Hinduism’s quest for scripture analogous to the Semitic religions conditioned by the Orientalist fiction that India is a spiritual civilization, in contrast to Europe. His articles raise the question, “What is śruti? “In “The Vedic Corpus,” he highlights how each śākhā had its own Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, Āraņyakas, and Upanişads. It is only with the Mīmāṃsāsūtra and the Brahmasūtra that the idea of a unified śruti arose.