Contemporary Indian Philosophy Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Iqbal is a monotheist.

Muhammad Iqbal, the poet-philosopher of The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, built his philosophy on the Islamic belief in one God. He described God as the Ultimate Ego, the most perfect individual, from whom all finite egos proceed, and urged the development of the human self (khudi) in relation to Him.

He was not a polytheist, believing in many gods. He was not a positivist, since he defended religious experience as a source of knowledge against narrow empiricism. And he was not a sceptic, since his whole philosophy rests on faith in God and the self.

Answer: D

The verse is oft-quoted by Swami Vivekananda.

The line comes from the Katha Upanishad (1.3.14): arise, awake, and having reached the great ones, learn. Vivekananda made it his call to the youth of India, rendering it 'Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached', and it has become his best-known motto.

Sri Aurobindo, Radhakrishnan and Iqbal all wrote on the awakening of the self and the nation, but this particular call is identified with Vivekananda.

Answer: B

The goal of evolution for Aurobindo is divine life.

In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo holds that evolution is the progressive ascent of consciousness from matter through life and mind to supermind. Because spirit first descended (involution) into matter, evolution will culminate in the descent of the supramental consciousness into earthly life, transforming humanity and establishing a divine life on earth.

Integration describes his integral yoga, the method, rather than the goal. Bliss (ananda) is an aspect of Sachchidananda, and individual liberation is precisely what Aurobindo held to be insufficient, since he wanted the transformation of life itself, not escape from it.

Answer: B

The official key labels K.C. Bhattacharya's philosophy Transcendental Idealism. I could not find a source that uses this exact label, so it is the key's reading.

Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya (1875-1949) built his thought on the subject, which he held to be free of every object. His best-known essays, Subject as Freedom and The Concept of Philosophy, draw on Kant and on Vedanta, and he moves by stages through what the mind can know toward an Absolute. Kant's own system is the transcendental idealism, which is why the label is used for a thinker who takes the knowing subject, not the object, as the starting point.

Options C and D (Logical and Pure Idealism) are not names attached to him. Option A (Absolute Idealism) is the usual label for Hegelian or Bradleian systems; he does write of the Absolute, so it could be argued, but the key prefers the Kantian label. Because accounts describe him in several ways, the key is kept as printed.

Answer: C

The key is (a)-(4), (b)-(3), (c)-(2), (d)-(1). Two of the four pairs are firm and two rest on the key.

Firm: Swami Vivekananda is linked with the Universal Religion, the harmony of all faiths he taught as practical Vedanta, and Sri Aurobindo with Integral Yoga. That already removes options A and D, which give Vivekananda Integral Yoga or Transcendental Idealism.

From the key: K.C. Bhattacharya is paired with Transcendental Idealism, as in the previous question of the paper, and Radhakrishnan with Universal Redemption. Option B swaps these two, which would contradict the key to Question 18. I could not find a published source that names 'Universal Redemption' as Radhakrishnan's label, so that pair is the key's own and could not be confirmed.

Answer: A

The view is J. Krishnamurti's.

Krishnamurti taught that freedom cannot be reached by effort, discipline or method, since all effort is the self struggling to become something and so strengthens the self. Freedom comes from choiceless awareness, the direct perception of 'what is'. In his words, it is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

K. C. Bhattacharya stressed the spiritual discipline by which the subject frees itself. Tagore spoke of creative self-expression and union with the universal, and Gandhi of strenuous moral effort, self-discipline and satyagraha. None of them denied the role of effort in this way.

Answer: A

For Krishnamurti the religious mind is important: Yes.

Krishnamurti distinguished the religious mind from the religious person who follows rituals, beliefs and organised religion, all of which he rejected. The religious mind, in his sense, is a mind that has freed itself from the known, from fear and conditioning, and is wholly attentive; only such a mind can discover what is true. He held it to be essential, and some of his talks are on 'the religious mind' itself.

So 'No' is wrong, and 'Can't say' and 'Neither' evade a question his talks answer directly.

Answer: C

The reasoning reminds us of the teleological proof.

The teleological argument, or argument from design, infers an intelligent designer from the order, harmony and purpose found in the world, as in Paley's watchmaker analogy. Tagore's move from the harmony of the universe, a 'symphony', to God as the 'music-maker' has exactly this shape: the order of the work points to its maker.

The ontological proof argues from the concept of God alone, without appealing to the world. The cosmological proof argues from the existence or causation of the world to a first cause, not from its harmony. The moral proof argues from the moral law or conscience.

Answer: D

The statement not true for Ambedkar is To believe in God is Dhamma.

In The Buddha and His Dhamma, Ambedkar sets out what is Dhamma, what is not Dhamma and what is Saddhamma. Among the things that are not Dhamma he lists belief in God, belief in the soul and belief in the supernatural. Dhamma for him is a moral and social way of life, not belief in a creator.

He lists as Dhamma to maintain purity of life, to reach perfection in life and to live in nibbana, so the other three statements are true in his account.

Answer: D

The highlights are of Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy.

Gandhi insisted that means and ends are inseparable: 'the means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree', so an impure means cannot produce a pure end. This is why he rejected violence and deceit even for the goal of independence, and why truth and non-violence are the means of satyagraha as well as its goal.

K. C. Bhattacharya is known for his philosophy of the subject as freedom, J. Krishnamurti for choiceless awareness and freedom from the known, and M. N. Roy for radical humanism. None of them made the purity of means the centre of his thought.