Lecture on "What is Religion?" by Professor Sonia Sikka

Lecture on
“What is Religion?”

by Professor Sonia Sikka,
Professor of Philosophy, University of Ottawa, Canada

Monday | 6th February 2017 | 3.30 pm – 5.30 pm

Co – organised by The International Centre Goa
and Department of Philosophy, Goa University

Entry Free | Open to public

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Professor Sonia Sikka’s current focus of research is on the idea of religion, and about the political negotiation of religious as well as cultural identities. She also works on issues of race and racism, and on multicultural education. At the same time, she retains a research interest in authors with German philosophy, particularly Heidegger and Herder. Professor Sonia Sikka has published in reputed journals and has edited anthologies. She has authored the books titled Forms of Transcendence: Heidegger and Medieval Mystical Theology. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1997 and Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Synopsis
A common idea of religion associates it with belief in the absolute authority of a particular set of texts or teaching, and, by extension, in the authority of institutions or individuals charged with interpreting and applying those texts and teachings. This is what many people understand by “faith,” a term often used interchangeably with “religion.” Yet this idea of religion, where it is connected with belief in a divine or otherwise extraordinary revelation considered to be exclusive, is derived from Western Protestant Christianity, and is a poor fit for other religious landscapes such as that of India. Eminent philosophers such as B.K. Matilal, for instance, have highlighted the extent to which philosophy is part of religion in India, so that in the Indian case “religion” did not evolve by appeal to a mode of belief contrastingwith reason. At the same time, sociologists and historians have emphasized the importance of practice rather than belief to religion in India, while political theorists have tended to frame Indian religion in terms of group identity requiring recognition. I examine these and other ways in which Indian forms of religion do not fit the idea of “faith,” asking what are the consequences for our ideas about what religion is, and our judgements about what it ought to be, in the Indian context.