Rethinking Advaita Within the Colonial Predicament : the "Confrontative' Philosophy of K. C. Bhattacharyya (1875-1949)

I shall examine in this paper the distinctive way in which the prominent Indian philosopher Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1875-1949) engaged with Advaita Vednta during the terminal phase of the colonial period. I propose to do this by looking, first, at ways in which Krishnachandra understood the role of his own philosophizing within the colonial predicament. I will call this his agenda in confrontative' philosophy. I shall proceed, then, by sketching out the unique manner in which this agenda was successfully enacted through his engagement with the Advaitic notion of self-knowledge. Finally, I will suggest that putting K. C. Bhattacharyya's thought into the historical perspective of cross-cultural philosophy will reveal a number of shortcomings that need to be revised in a postcolonial setup