Chapter 7

G.R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita

Vedānta

Sharad Deshpande

Abstract  This essay explores G.R. Malkani’s reinvention of Advaita Vedānta in

the context of neo-Vedānta in Indian academia during the colonial period. The first
section examines why Advaita Vedānta received more attention than Buddhism
despite unintelligibility of its central doctrine of the reality of Brahman and the
unreality of the world of every day experience and why various forms of Vedānta
continued to be vitally relevant to Indian society in its task of reforming itself
into a vibrant modern society. The subsequent sections give a detailed account of
Malkani’s presentation of some key concepts and issues in Advaita Vedānta and
the Hegelian influence on his ‘free rendering’ of classical Advaita Vedānta.

Keywords Neo-Vedānta ·  Advaita Vedānta  · Ajñāna · Hegel · Absolute · Absolute

spirit  · Reason · Faith · Intuition · Intellect · Revelation · Monism · Ontology · God

7.1 Advaita Vedānta and Modern Indian Philosophers

Modern Indian philosophers’ engagement with Advaita Vedānta during the colo-
nial period is a phenomenon in itself. As compared to other schools of classical
Indian philosophy, especially Buddhism for its appeal to the masses, Advaita
Vedānta received more attention despite the fact that it’s central doctrine propa-
gates that Brahman alone is real and the world of everyday experience is mithyā:
an illusion. Such a doctrine could not have been intelligible to the modern Indian
intellectuals whose outlook towards the world around them was being shaped by
positivist, empiricist and realist philosophies of the late 18th and the early 19th
century European philosophers. But despite this unintelligibility, the philosophy of

Some parts of the exposition of Malkani’s thoughts are drawn from my earlier work The
Philosophy of G.R. Malkani (Ed) Sharad Deshpande, 1997, I.C.P.R. Delhi.

S. Deshpande (*) 
Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India
e-mail: [email protected]

© Indian Institute of Advanced Study 2015 119

S. Deshpande (ed.), Philosophy in Colonial India, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural
Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 11, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-2223-1_7
120 S. Deshpande

Advaita Vedānta occupied the intellectual life of most of the newly educated mod-
ern Indians who were actively engaged in various reform movements in the public
sphere and also in the academic set-up of the newly established university system.
Unlike other systems of traditional darśanaśāstra, the philosophy of Advaita
Vedānta did not remain a matter of antiquarian interest. Its propagation in the
wider public sphere and its professional pursuit in the academia was largely deter-
mined by diverse considerations such as (a) to assert that science, i.e. scientific
knowledge of phenomena (aparā vidyā) needs to be complemented by a synoptic
vision of reality (parā vidyā); (b) to register the national identity as a form of self-
assertion; and (c) to negotiate with the dominant Western philosophers and their
philosophies; especially, the Bradleyan version of Hegelian Idealism on equal
terms. For achieving these objectives, the Advaitic doctrine of Brahman proved to
be more promising than any other doctrine from any other school of Indian philos-
ophy. In order to achieve these objectives, reformulation of the classical Vedānta,
particularly of Śaṁkara’s non-dualistic Advaita Vedānta, seems to have become a
major preoccupation of academic and non-academic philosophers during the colo-
nial period. Such nomenclatures as ‘contemporary Vedānta’, ‘neo-Vedānta’,1
‘abhinava Vedānta’ or ‘practical Vedānta’ as popularized by Swami Vivekananda,
and sometimes even such nomenclatures as ‘modernist restatement of Vedānta’, or
‘Vedāntic socialism’ (Ramatirtha) or ‘political Vedāntism’ (Aurobindo) came into
vogue to characterize various reformulations of classical Vedānta. In the colonial
discourse on the emerging national identity, these nomenclatures were frequently
taken as synonyms of ‘neo-Hinduism’—the phrase first introduced by Robert
Antoine while introducing as a ‘pioneer of Neo-Hinduism’ (Halbfass 1990: 221).
These nomenclatures expressly stress the ‘new’ or the ‘modern’ orientation that the
classical Advaita Vedānta and Hinduism gained by coming into contact with the
West. All these nomenclatures under the rubric of neo-Vedānta “had a significant
impact on the public culture of India and the manner in which India has presented
itself to the rest of the world” (Halbfass 1991: 377).
However, what is conveyed by these nomenclatures is not inclusive of the age-
old heterodox traditions across the country, encompassing the ancient Cārvākas
who revolted against Vedic authority and Brahmanism; the mediaeval Sant Kabir
and Sant Ravidass, and 19th century dissenters like Pandit Iyodhi Thass, Jotiba
Phule and Narayaṇa Guru. This exclusion of heterodox traditions is a carry for-
ward from the 14th century Sarvadarśanasaṁgraha of Mādhavāchārya. Even
Paul Deussen’s account of the history of Indian thought in his famous Allgemeine
Geschichte der Philosophie is based upon Sarvadarśanasaṁgraha. Barring the
exception of Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya’s Lokāyata: A Study of Ancient Indian
Materialism (Chattopadhyaya 1959), Sarvadarśanasaṁgraha seems to have served
as a model for most histories of Indian philosophy written during the colonial period
and even after. S.N. Dasgupta’s celebrated A History of Indian Philosophy which
runs into five volumes includes the heterodox Buddhist and Jaina schools but does

1  Neo-Vedānta is usually held to be a reinvention of classical Advaita Vedānta in terms of Kant’s

transcendental idealism, Hegel’s Absolute idealism and British neo-Hegelianism.
7  G.R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Vedānta 121

not even mention the Cārvāka school of thought. Based on the fundamental distinc-
tion between heterodox systems which do not accept the authority of the Vedas and
orthodox systems which do so, Sarvadarśanasaṁgraha follows a certain order of
sequencing these systems. Among the heterodox systems, the Cārvāka, Buddhist
and Jaina views are presented as pūrvapakṣa, by refuting which the truth and
validity of orthodox Brahminical systems of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Sāṁkhya-Yoga and
Pūrva and Uttara Mimāmsā, i.e. Vedānta is established. This sequence is so well
established that despite its employment of new pedagogic strategies, the first-ever
syllabus drafted by B.N. Seal in 1924 for teaching Indian philosophy in Indian uni-
versities followed the same Sarvadarśanasaṁgraha order of sequencing Indian
darśanas (Seal 1924). The Sarvadarśanasaṁgraha sequencing of 16 systems is
taken as suggesting a gradual ascension of all philosophical thought culminating
in Advaita Vedānta. The title of R.D. Ranade’s book Vedānta: The Culmination of
Indian Thought (Ranade 1970) most directly expresses this belief. But this belief is
not tenable since the heterodox traditions of Cārvaka, Buddhism and Jainism do not,
in any sense of the term, ‘culminate’ into the non-dualist Vedāntic philosophy. This
claim must have been made by the followers of Śaṁkara and was reiterated even in
the colonial period. Under the spell of the ‘culmination theory’; the nomenclatures
mentioned above are used almost exclusively for various restatements of the doc-
trines of traditional Vedānta, and more importantly, for the defence of Hinduism. In
order to get a somewhat clearer picture of what is conveyed by these nomenclatures,
it is necessary to have a brief background of the tradition of Vedānta.
It is well known that at least for the last two millennia, the tradition of Vedānta
has been a living tradition in India and as it happens in the case of every living tra-
dition, it has undergone continuous evolution in terms of its basic doctrines, posi-
tions and points of view due to changes initiated from within and outside. As it is
well known, Śaṁkara’s Kevalādvaita (absolute monism), Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣtādvaita
(qualified monism), Madhava’s dvaita (dualism), Nimbārka’s bhedābheda (differ-
ence–non-difference) and Vallabha’s śuddhādvaita (pure monism) indicate the doc-
trinal changes from within. These changes are centred on the conception of the
ultimate reality, i.e. Brahman, vis-à-vis the world of experience. For Śaṁkara, the
Brahman is without qualification and hence nirguṇa and the world of our experi-
ence is māyāsvarūpa, i.e. of illusory nature. But, this is not so for later Vedāntins
like Rāmānuja, Madhva and Nimbārka, and accordingly, different positions are
taken within the tradition of Vedānta itself which shows the evolving nature of the
Vedānta tradition. In addition, there are innumerable tikās, bhāṣyas and vārtikas
which clarify the basic arguments and positions held within the tradition of Advaita
Vedānta. As far as the outside influences are concerned, it is well known that
Śaṁkara is branded as a ‘prachhanna Bauddha’—a Buddhist in disguise—because
of his admission of ālaya vijñ͂āna. This is indicative of the Buddhist influence on
him and by implication on his brand of Vedānta. But even before him, the Buddhist
influence, particularly that of Vijñānavādins and the Mādhyamikas, is also evident
in Gauḍapāda’s  Mānḍūkyakārikās, since Gauḍapāda talks of saṁvṛtti and ajāti.
All this shows that the tradition of Advaita Vedānta is an ever-evolving tradition.
This process continued throughout the Middle Ages until the advent of the
122 S. Deshpande

British and even after. During the colonial period, this process assumed the dimen-
sion of self-assertion as against the colonial subjugation, but it also involved inter-
nal self-criticism of the decadent Hinduism in the light of new ideas and ideals
drawn from Christianity and scientific rationality, liberalism and philosophical doc-
trines coming from the West. Various restatements of the classical Vedānta, particu-
larly that of Śaṁkara Vedānta, were attempted by the (a) paṇḍits from the system of
pāthaśālas who were part and parcel of the living, though fast vanishing, Vedānta
tradition, (b) modern Indian philosophers teaching at universities and colleges and
(c) social, religious and political reformers during the colonial period. To this, we
can also add the teaching of Vedānta by spiritual gurus like Ramakrishna
Paramahansa and Śri Ramana Maharshi. Numerous examples can be cited to sup-
port this classification. For instance, (i) as part of the living tradition of refuting the
rival positions, Kashinathshastri Abhyankar in his Advaitāmodsiddhi (Abhyankar
1925) defends the Advaita position against that of Viśiṣtādvaita, while Pandit
Panchānana Tarkaratna’s Sanskrit commentary on the Brahmasūtras which con-
ceives the ultimate reality as power is yet another example of the restatement and
creative interpretation of the Vedāntic position (Chakravarti 2009). But these and
numerous other restatements and interpretations were in Sanskrit and therefore
remained outside the newly emerging mainstream philosophy of the day whose
medium of expression was English. In addition to the corpus of philosophical litera-
ture in Sanskrit and Prākrit, there is a vast philosophical literature in regional lan-
guages across the country.2 (ii) Modern Indian academic philosophers like
Rasvihary Das, G.R. Malkani, T.R.V. Murti and S. Radhakrishnan also attempted a
response to the colonizer in the form of a restatement of Śaṁkara’s Advaita Vedānta
and projected the uniqueness of Indian philosophy on that bases and (iii) internal
self-criticism of Hinduism and through it the reinterpretation or even reformulation
of the Vedāntic position by reformers like Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Dayānanda
Saraswati and Swami Vivekananda.

7.2 Modernist Restatement of Advaita Vedānta

The restatement and defence of Vedānta and Hinduism by social and religious
reformers during the colonial period have been extensively documented and
researched. But modern Indian academic philosophers’ engagement with classical
Vedānta still remains a neglected topic of research. Their attempt to present Indian
philosophy as comparable and in certain respect even superior to Western philos-
ophy needs a closer look, particularly on the background of the newly acquired
world-views from the West. In the light of those world-views, indigenous tradi-
tions of metaphysical thought were proving to be irrelevant for the colonial forms

2  In philosophy in Fifteen Modern Indian Languages (Bedekar 1979) gives an exhaustive account

of how rich and diverse is the contribution of innumerable thinkers who wrote in regional languages
and offered various reformulations of key Vedāntic concepts and also of Hinduism more generally.
7  G.R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Vedānta 123

of life. The indigenous thought and practices were fast losing their cognitive worth
and efficacy to determine the emerging praxis of colonial Indian society. The clas-
sical metaphysical systems were getting “exempted from being put to the test of
any kind of verification in experience. They thus remained secure but immobile
… structures … can never clash with the course of experience, lack the power
and responsibility to organize and direct our acting in response to it” (Rege 1996:
195). This description fits well to systems like Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika or Sāṁkhya. But
Advaita Vedānta seems to be an exception. The “consensus among Indian think-
ers of nineteenth century seems to have been that…the various forms of Vedānta
continue to be vitally relevant to Indian society in its task of reforming itself into
a vibrant modern society” (Rege 1996: 195). The demand of the newly emerging
modern Indian society was one of being transformed from hierarchical structure of
varṇas and jātis to an egalitarian social order based on the autonomy of an indi-
vidual. The 19th and early 20th century reformers in colonial India saw in Advaita
Vedānta the possibility of theorizing the notion of an autonomous subject in the
domain of philosophy and political theory. Thus, Advaita Vedānta could be con-
veniently “paralleled and compared with Hegelian metaphysics, and ontology of
Bradley, Bosanquet and McTaggert” (Deshpande 1997: xxi).
The nature and mode of this fusion was varied. Some like Radhakrishnan and
P.T. Raju followed the comparative method by putting Upaniṣadic philosophy and
Advaita Vedānta alongside Western idealism; others like K.C. Bhattacharyya fol-
lowed the method of assimilation in terms of ‘svarāj in ideas’, while philosophers
like G.R. Malkani followed the method of a free rendering of both the Indian and
the Western traditions of philosophy. The method of comparison and the method
of assimilation presented problems of one kind, while the method of a free ren-
dering presented problems of another kind. Within the bounds of methodological
requirements, free rendering of texts involved a high risk of being inauthentic,
being unfaithful to the tradition of Vedānta, being non-standard and being ­deviant.
Malkani’s Vedānta is not presented in the traditional form of commentary on
Brahmasūtrabhāṣya or any other major or minor text which is integral to the
­tradition of Vedānta, but in the form of self-contained essays in which philosophi-
cal problems are directly raised and answered. This method is typically Western
and Malkani, like his contemporaries, finds no difficulty in following it. That he
took the risk of following this method is amply evident from the two quotes from
his texts mentioned below as well as from his style of writing. Malkani’s style of
philosophizing was direct; and as commented by Burch, there is ‘no evolution’ in
his thought; “he has never changed his views and he has never doubted their cor-
rectness. He has only sought for greater clarity in expressing them” (Burch 1970:
66). As opposed to the obscurity of expression in K.C. Bhattacharyya’s writings,
Malkani “writes such clear and fluent English that the reader risks being lulled by
the simplicity of style into missing the profundity of content” (Burch 1970: 66).
Malkani’s writings have evoked extreme reactions. The sympathizers of oriental
metaphysics appreciate him as a philosopher whose exposition of classical Vedānta
is strictly rational and hence “If it is true anywhere and at any time, it is true
everywhere and always” (Burch 1970: 70). But he is also critiqued as an ardent
124 S. Deshpande

exponent of Radhakrishnan’s “spiritualist interpretation of the traditional or the

classical Indian conception of philosophy” which, according to the critics of this
interpretation, suppresses the critical, analytical, and empiricist trends in Indian
philosophy and equates it with spiritualism and mysticism (Prasad 1982: 295).

7.3 Delinking Vedānta from Tradition

Among the modern Indian philosophers, G.R. Malkani3 was perhaps the only one
to boldly declare that keeping the spirit of classical Vedānta alive and its free ren-
dering independent of the age-old tradition need not conflict with each other. The
prefaces he wrote to three of his books, i.e. Vedantic Epistemology, Metaphysics of
Advaita Vedanta and Philosophy of the Self are frank and clear in their statement.
In the Preface to Vedantic Epistemology, he writes:
… my exposition of the subject is a free and independent rendering which keeps the spirit
of Vedānta intact and at the same time adapts the expression to the understanding of those
who are imbued with the spirit of Western thought and who are in the habit of thinking on
the compartmental lines of western philosophy. It has always been my desire to modernize
the form of Vedāntic philosophy so that it can appeal to the wider public and which the
modern man can understand easily. (Malkani 1953: v)

In the Preface to Metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta, he writes:

… my attitude to the subject is not that of the orientalist who views ancient systems as
really ancient and so dead and past. What I want to expound is a living system, though
ancient. My presentation again will not be scholarly or rooted in the original Sanskrit texts
and their commentaries. It will be a presentation of a truth seeker who is more interested
in the truth than erudition or scholarship, and who believes what he says. My arguments
will be from the books, or they may not be all fours with them. Since I have not taken
shelter behind any reputed author of Advaita Vedanta, it will be quite irrelevant to say that
my views do not agree with those of any great giant in the field and are therefore to be
rejected as not the genuine views of Advaita Vedanta. Many different people can under-
stand this system differently. I claim only a particular interpretation of it, which appeals to
me most. (Malkani 1961: vi)

3  Ghanshamdas Ratanmal (G.R.) Malkani (c. 1892–1978) was born at Hyderabad Sind (now in

Pakistan). Having obtained his Masters degree in 1916 from the University of Bombay, he became
a research fellow in the first batch of the Indian Institute of Philosophy which was situated at
Amalner, a small town in the north-western region of India known as East Khandesh in the erst-
while Bombay Presidency. Malkani obtained an M. Litt from Cambridge in 1921 under the supervi-
sion of James Ward, a famous psychologist and philosopher of idealist orientation. During his stay,
he became acquainted with the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, and also of Bradley, Bosanquet
and Bergson. On his return from Cambridge, he was appointed first as the superintendent in1924,
as editor of the Philosophical Quarterly in 1926, and finally as the Director of the Indian Institute
of Philosophy in 1935 succeeding K.C. Bhattacharyya (Deshpande 1997; Burch 1970). Malkani
remained the Director of the Institute till its closure in 1966. Besides a large number of articles and
monographs, his major publications include Philosophy of the Self (1939, Rpt. in U.S in 1966),
A Study of Reality (1927), Vedantic Epistemology (1953) and Metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta
(1961)—all published from Indian Institute of Philosophy, Amalner.
7  G.R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Vedānta 125

These quotations reveal how Malkani views his engagement with Advaita Vedānta
in particular and philosophy in general. It is a ‘free presentation of a truth seeker’,
and it is primarily for those who have no acquaintance either with Sanskrit or with
the classical Indian texts. In fact, some contemporary historians of modern Indian
philosophy admire Malkani by saying that by restating Vedānta, Malkani has
“freed it from dependence on the Sanskrit language with which it has always been
associated” (Burch 1956: 122). By and large, this is true of modern Indian phi-
losophers who wanted to present the doctrine of Vedānta through the philosophical
idiom of Western philosophy. That is why they chose to write in English without
attending to the problems of translation from Sanskrit into English. By admitting
that their works were not necessarily consistent with the traditional sāmpradāyic
expositions, modern Indian philosophers like Malkani assumed the role of free and
independent thinkers than that of Indologists. K.C. Bhattacharyya’s most reputed
Studies in Vedāntism (Bhattacharyya 1907) are “problematic constructions on
Vedāntic lines” and are intended to bring out its “relation to modern philosophi-
cal systems” (Bhattacharyya 1907: 1). In this exercise, Bhattacharyya claims
‘wide latitude of interpretation throughout.’ In this interpretative engagement with
the classical texts, the more substantial issue that the modern Indian philosophers
were addressing to was that of understanding the tradition of thought as living sys-
tem and not as a historical past. This has helped them define their role as interpret-
ers of ancient systems of thought rather than the narrators of historical texts and
traditions. This made Bhattacharyya pronounce, “The attitude of the mere narrator
has, in the case of the historian of philosophy, to be exchanged as far as possible,
for that of the sympathetic interpreter” (Bhattacharyya 1983: 1).
Malkani’s bold assertion that he is delinking the thought couched in the con-
cept of Advaita from the tradition which is built around that thought makes it
clear, among other things, that he does not confine himself to the kind of academic
scholarship which demands textual validation for the exposition of concepts and
doctrines present in the classical texts. He hardly cites textual references to support
the views he is expounding. Though he had learnt Śaṁkara’s Brahmasūtrabhāṣya
from Pandit Atmaramshastri Jere, a renowned Vedāntin at the Indian Institute
of Philosophy at Amalner (see Chap. 1), Malkani had only a slight knowledge
of Sanskrit and hardly had a first-hand acquaintance with Sanskrit texts. But for
him, as was the case with most modern Indian philosophers, this was not a hand-
icap, since he was expounding a Vedāntic point of view, a hermeneutic reading,
and was not engaged in an etymological, philological or historical exercise. This
certainly was a step beyond a mere Indological engagement with classical Indian
philosophy. Since Malkani was working at the institute which was modelled on
the Western system of research, he did not follow the methods of argumentation
characteristic of the Indian tradition, which would take other schools of thought
as pūrvapakṣa. In this respect, he is unlike K.C. Bhattacharyya who takes Kant’s
notion of self as a point of reference while interpreting the Advaita notion of the
subject as freedom. On the other hand, Malkani does not defend the Advaita point
of view against any particular philosophical system of the West, except by refer-
ring to certain well-known positions, nor does he undertake any sustained textual
126 S. Deshpande

comparison between Vedānta and its seeming analogues in Western philosophy.

This too “sets him apart from some of his contemporaries like P.T. Raju and
S. Radhakrishnan, who put Vedānta alongside Western idealism and offer a com-
parative account of both” (Deshpande 1997: xxiii). Malkani is not doing com-
parative philosophy, nor is he interested, as are the Indologists, in the history of
Advaita Vedānta. What he presents is his own understanding of some key concepts
and doctrines of classical Vedānta. In all his writings, Malkani seeks to explicate
and defend only one thesis, i.e. the non-duality of Brahman. A close textual read-
ing of any one of his writings reveals his overall philosophical position. As Burch
writes, “He is not interested in anything except philosophy, and in any philosophy
except Vedānta” (Burch 1956: 124). Being a modern Indian philosopher trained at
Cambridge, he was well acquainted with the main tenets of Western philosophy,
yet he also declared that though the method of exposition he adopted was that of
European philosophy, “the ideas are essentially Indian”, that “the substance is ori-
ental but the form is very much occidental” (Malkani 1939: v, 1953: v).
Like many of his contemporaries, Malkani draws very heavily from Hegelian
idealism as expounded by Bradley and other British idealists. The Hegelianization
of Advaita Vedānta or the Vedāntization of Hegel—both in terms of their terminol-
ogy and the structure and operation of concepts—is the main feature of Malkani’s
exposition of Advaitic thought. This is evident when one finds Malkani taking the
Hegelian notion of Absolute Spirit which creates the appearance of the world as
an act of will. This is a typical rendering of Hegel that finds its fuller exposition in
one of Malkani’s monographs titled “The Absolute” which was serialized in four
consecutive issues of The Philosophical Quarterly (Malkani 1934, 1935a, b, c).
Not only in this essay, but in most of his writings, it is abundantly clear that
Malkani is influenced by the Hegelian idea that the reality of the world of objects
is a manifestation of Absolute Spirit and as such has no independent status. What
Hegel meant by self-alienation of Absolute Spirit was, for Malkani, the appear-
ance of reality. When this appearance is viewed as self-existent and hence real,
it would be an instance of erroneous perception, i.e. ajñāna. Malkani employs
the Hegelian notions of absolute, substance, quality and spirit in his exposition of
Advaita Vedānta which seeks to establish the non-duality thesis. But this in turn
initiates new dichotomies such as ‘experience or reason’ and ‘revelation or reason’
which are not present in the tradition of classical Advaita. The introduction of such
dichotomies into the traditional mode of indigenous thinking has its own effects
which need to be studied in detail (Deshpande 1997: xix).
One can ask the following questions not only to Malkani but to modern Indian
philosophers who were negotiating classical Vedānta with Hegel or Kant: (a)
Can the Advaitic thesis of non-dual reality be expressed in Hegelian or Kantian
interpretative categories? (b) Is the Advaitic thesis of non-dual reality valid? The
first question requires an extensive exploration of Hegelian and Advaitic tradi-
tions of thought which are labelled as idealistic. But with its interpretative open-
ness, idealism can create many apparent similarities between the Hegelian and the
Advaitic world-views. In order to make sense of these similarities, it is necessary
to trace the implicit continuities from Śaṁkara to Hegel. But neither Malkani nor
7  G.R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Vedānta 127

most of his contemporaries undertake this task, though their writings do provide
a basis for such an exercise. The second question, i.e. whether the Advaitic thesis
of non-dual reality is valid, is to be answered in the context of other contesting
claims regarding the nature of reality. From within the Indian traditions, Sāṁkhya,
Buddhist, Jaina and Lokāyata traditions reflect upon the nature of reality as much
as the tradition of Vedānta does; but they do not hold the thesis of non-dual reality.
However, this second question and its resolution do not concern Malkani. What
concerns him is a restatement of the implicit logic of Advaita as he understands it.

7.4 Reinventing Classical Advaita

A selective reading of some of Malkani’s writings in logic, epistemology, meta-

physics and ontology reveal the range of issues he addresses to in his books and
monographs. In conformity with the prevalent self-image of philosophy, Malkani’s
major and abiding concern was metaphysics, since that was held to be the inner-
most core of philosophical reflection on the nature of reality. All other branches of
philosophy were thought to be ancillary, though internally and organically related
to metaphysics. For instance, in the idealistic framework, whether of Western or
of Indian origin, the epistemological issues concerning the relation between intel-
lect and intuition, the nature of philosophical knowledge, the nature of philosophi-
cal truth and the validity and invalidity of knowledge become significant only
in the context of knowledge in relation to the self. In the context of Advaita, the
problem of the authority of śrūti or revelation, and the nature of ajñāna assume
additional significance. It is interesting to note that Rasvihary Das and T.R.V.
Murti, two leading philosophers of Malkani’s times, wrote along with Malkani,
a book titled Ajñāna which registers three different perspectives of three differ-
ent authors on the same issue (Malkani et al. 1933). A theory of knowledge deals
with the source, validity and nature of knowledge, and Malkani discusses these
issues from a Vedāntic point of view. His point of departure from other posi-
tions and his conclusions pertaining to the epistemological issues cited above lie
in the firm conviction of the existence of the reality of one undifferentiated uni-
versal spirit called Brahman and the possibility of its direct awareness. With this
conviction, the autonomy of epistemology, i.e. the possibility of considering epis-
temological issues in themselves, is reduced to the ontological position that one
takes. This reduction is based on the assumption that the appropriateness of the
means of knowledge and of the very concept of knowledge is determined by the
conception of reality. In Malkani’s metaphysics, there is only one kind of knowl-
edge that is true, and that knowledge is the knowledge of the Brahman. Since the
ultimate reality, the Brahman, is one without duality of any kind, the appropri-
ateness of knowledge is to be determined by its being able to grasp the non-dual
character of reality directly. On this view, only the intuition or the revelation of
śrūti and no other means of knowledge such as intellect or reason can grasp the
non-dual nature of ultimate reality. In the essay “Intellect and Intuition” (Malkani
128 S. Deshpande

1930: 262–269), Malkani dwells upon the nature, the function and also the limita-
tion of both intuition and intellect. The intellect is the ‘faculty of thought or think-
ing generally.’ The two questions concerning intuition that he addresses are (i) are
intuition and the intellect distinct modes of knowledge? And (ii) can the ultimate
reality be intuited? For Malkani intuition is ‘an immediate non-relational mode of
knowledge’, a ‘direct awareness of anything real that does not involve thought.’ As
he defines it, intuition is an immediate non-relational knowledge. Hence, for him,
knowledge involving the subject–object distinction is not intuitive knowledge. But
intuitive knowledge has to have a content which, on the above definition, must be
distinctionless, i.e., it must be devoid of subject–object duality. But since intui-
tion presupposes consciousness, the subject has to be present in intuition. So the
only alternative is to say that in intuition, the subject knows only itself and nothing
else. So the only intuition possible is that of the self. In Malkani’s metaphysics, the
intuition of the self is the ground of all knowledge. Malkani’s reply to the second
question, i.e., whether the ultimate reality can be intuited is that there cannot be
an intuition of the ultimate reality apart from the intuition of the self. Here, a his-
torian of Vedānta might find a resonance of the controversy between the Advaitin
and the Viśiṣtādvaitin on the mode of knowledge. But as said above, Malkani does
not engage himself in the presentation of the philosophical issue involved, i.e. the
nature of intuition and the ultimate reality in a historical perspective. His rigid logic
terminates in saying that “Either the intuitiveness of our nature is itself the ultimate
reality, and there is no need to try to know it in any way other than that in which
it is already known to itself, or there is no other ultimate reality that can be intu-
ited…” (Malkani 1930: 269). The intellect, on the other hand, is a “distinct mode
of knowledge”; since to be a mode of knowledge is to be a particular way of know-
ing a certain concept. In Malkani’s metaphysics, the duality of the subject and the
object constitutes the content of knowledge. But the intuition, qualified as rational
intuition, has no content in so far as it transcends the subject–object duality. “The
content-less intuition is thus non-relational apprehension of the real; and being non-
relational, in the sense of transcending subject–object duality, intuition is ‘identical
with the reality’” (Deshpande 1997: xxii). “Intuition as an epistemological concept
is thus replaced by intuition as the very being, the ontological thing-in-itself that
knows itself” (Malkani 1930: 269). ‘To know’ is thus identical with ‘to be.’
This kind of identity thesis is further elaborated in the essay titled The Self in
Relation to Knowledge by raising two questions, namely (i) Is the self a real sub-
stance needed to account for knowledge or is it a formal unity, a unity of appercep-
tion and (ii) Is knowledge identical with the self or distinct from it? (Malkani 1932:
430–435) The second question leads him to ask whether knowledge is a quality
of the self. These questions have been raised by various philosophers of Vedānta
and other traditions. Malkani’s treatment of these questions is typically Vedāntic in
nature, and he does not depart from it. That the self is a substantial reality and not
a theoretical presupposition as it is in Kant is a well-known Vedāntic doctrine. The
core of this doctrine consists in recognizing that there is consciousness which is not
conscious of anything different from itself. And this is not a theoretical presupposi-
tion, but a matter of experience as in the case of a deep or dreamless sleep. In fact,
7  G.R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Vedānta 129

consciousness in its essence transcends the duality of subject and object, which is a
mark of forms of consciousness. The traditional exposition of this doctrine consists
in the analysis of waking, dreaming and of dreamless experience. Without giving
the details of this analysis, Malkani only makes a general statement about the sub-
stantiality of the self. For Malkani, if knowledge is not to be “an illusory appear-
ance resting on things that are physical” then such knowledge “must be grounded
in a substance that is spiritual” (Malkani 1932: 432–435). This substance is the self
and it alone knows. The reality of the self thus implies the reality of knowledge and
the two stand to one another in a relation of identity and hence, knowledge is not
a quality of the self. As regards the second question, namely ‘Is knowledge identi-
cal with self or distinct from it?’, Malkani’s answer is again consistent with the
Advaitic position that knowledge constitutes essential intelligence of the self, and
hence, any distinction between self and knowledge is relative to objects that are
known as constituting empirical reality.
The two essays, Philosophical Knowledge (1942) and Philosophical Truth
(1950)4 complement each other in defending the Advaitic position on the knowl-
edge of the highest reality. These essays, and also many others on the same issue
discussed by Malkani or other modern Indian philosophers, appear to be in
response to the growing impact of science, and the legitimacy scientific knowledge
was gaining in the colonial era. Therefore, not only Malkani, but also many others
undertook the defence of philosophical knowledge and philosophical truth against
the scientific knowledge and scientific truth. All these writings address the issue of
the ends of philosophy where philosophical knowledge brings forth the philosophi-
cal truth which is imminent in experience and the moment of its realization is a
kind of mysticism in which reality ‘as it is, is presented.’ Truth for Malkani is then
a ‘consummation of all values and its realization brings peace to the will.’ Thus,
truth is the highest good and a marker of the goals of philosophical vocation.
One of the chief preoccupations of the Indian epistemological tradition is the
nature of prāmaṇya, that is the validity and invalidity of knowledge. Malkani
investigates this question by translating it into the idiom of the correspondence
and coherence theory of truth in the Western tradition. Śrūti is also examined from
this perspective. In the Vedāntic spirit that he has imbibed, Malkani concludes that
the truth must be self-evidently true. What he offers is the standard argument that
validity is internal and invalidity is due to ‘external influence.’ This is captured in
the familiar Vedāntic distinction between the svataḥ-prāmāṇya and the parataḥ-
prāmāṇya of knowledge. From the Vedāntic point of view, there cannot be any
theory of truth unless we know what truth is. On this view, truth is not an empirical
discovery but self-certifying revelation. With regards to Śrūti, Malkani rejects it in
the empirical domain as dogma, but in the domain of the supra-sensible ‘revealed
word’, śrūti is the instance of truth. His modernist restatement of Vedānta amounts
to a reconciliation of the religious tradition that stresses revelation and the modern
Western secular tradition of philosophy that stresses discursive reason.

4  General Presidential Address, Indian Philosophical Congress, XXIV Session, Patna, India, 1949.
130 S. Deshpande

7.5 Nature of Avidyā

Advaita Vedānta is known to be a system of extreme monism or non-dualism

since it recognizes the reality of Brahman alone, and therefore, on this view, the
world of veridical experience is an appearance. This appearance is due to avidyā,
i.e. false knowledge. The two determining notions of the non-dualistic thesis of
Advaita are, thus, Brahman and avidyā. According to Malkani, these two are there-
fore, the ‘only two important concepts in Advaita’, and we may add, in Malkani’s
own system. However, Advaita does not account for the world of appearance. For
Malkani, if appearance is part of reality, the question of avidyā or error will not
arise; but since appearance and reality are not identical, the knowledge of appear-
ance as identical with reality is erroneous. This erroneous knowledge is called
ajñāna. Malkani’s essay titled Ajñāna (Malkani 1933) fully and systematically
explores the concept of ajñāna as expounded in Advaita Vedānta. Avidyā, as
Malkani emphasizes therein, is a name of the activity of misconstrual or miscon-
ception. But this misconstrual or misconception is not psychological, but meta-
physical. Unlike many others, Malkani does not attribute any explanatory function
to Avidyā, nor does he take it to be any ‘mystical entity’ which will provide an
explanation for the ‘illusory appearance of the world.’ Malkani does not construe
avidyā as a substantial or causal entity like God or prakriti. Avidyā for Malkani
is self-constitutive. But there is also a relation of simultaneity between the illu-
sory appearance of the world and the frame of avidyā, i.e. erroneous perception.
The world and avidyā thus share the relation of implication and are generated
from the ‘same sort of reality.’ It is to be noted that within the Advaitic tradition,
there has been a debate over the priority of avidyā, i.e. false knowledge vis-à-vis
adhyāsa, i.e. superimposition. For some Vedāntic writers, avidyā is the cause of
adhyāsa. According to this view, as stated by Malkani, avidyā is the material cause
of the superimposition and hence objective. Malkani rejects this view. For him,
“if there is no illusory appearance of anything there can be no erroneous
­perception either” (Malkani 1933: 5). Malkani’s two-valued approach compels him
to avoid the temptation to treat ‘the illusory’ as an intermediate category between
existence and non-existence. According to Malkani, the ‘illusory’ is non-existent
and there is no explanation for it. In fact, ajñāna is indescribable, anirvachanı-ya.
What is the locus of avidyā? This is one of the central questions in Advaita
Vedānta. It cannot be an individual since an individual himself is a product of
avidyā. Hence, avidyā precedes the individual chronologically and also ontologi-
cally. This avidyā is called mulāvidya which appears to reside in the ultimate real-
ity of the Brahman. But avidyā cannot reside in Brahman, since it would attribute
the Brahman impermanence, illusion and causality, thus subverting its status as the
ultimate reality. So Malkani’s fundamental question is about the locus of avidyā,
and his answer, consistent with his Vedāntic spirit, is that it is neither the indi-
vidual jı-va, nor the Brahman. This is because avidyā or ajñāna has no substantial
reality, and for the same reason, its removal does not involve any process in time
since there is nothing to be negated substantially. Malkani’s subtle metaphysics
elaborates this timelessness of avidyā and its cancellation, saying that “The end
7  G.R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Vedānta 131

of avidyā may be said to be a timeless and eternal fact; for whatever is brought
in time is itself avidyāic” (Malkani 1933: 23). The Advaitic notion of ajñāna or
avidyā problematizes the whole idea of ontology, of ‘what there is.’

7.6 Ontological Reflections: The Absolute

Malkani’s writings include the themes that determined the philosophical discourse
in India during the colonial period. These include, with variations in their verbal
expression, such themes as ‘Intuition of the Self’, ‘Creation or Illusion’, ‘The
Absolute’, ‘Freedom through Knowledge’ and ‘Reality and Value.’ Owing to the
limitations of space, it is not possible to summarize Malkani’s views on each one of
these, except making a few observations to bring out the character of his ‘free ren-
dering’ of the Advaita doctrine of the reality of the Brahman. From among his other
essays, the one titled Ontological Reflections (Malkani 1963a, b, 1964a, b) brings
out the point made above in relation to his monograph titled The Absolute serial-
ized in the issues of The Philosophical Quarterly (Malkani 1934, 1935a, b, c).
Thematically, the arguments in these essays are grounded in Malkani’s reflections
on the ‘intuition of self.’ For Malkani, the self is aware of itself, but the analysis of
this intuition cannot transgress the limit of ‘I’-ness which is the ultimate ground.
Malkani dwells upon this theme further in The Absolute, saying that the dualism of
the subject and object is the ground of separation between knowledge and reality. It
is only in reflective consciousness that knowledge becomes reality itself. “The
Absolute is the self-evident ground of the identity of reality and experience.”
(Deshpande 1997: xxvi) The Absolute eludes dualistic epistemology, but can be
grasped in mystical experience. The Absolute as revealed in mystic consciousness
is not to be identified with reflective consciousness since it admits the revealed con-
tent as distinct from itself. Malkani maintains that if the distinction between con-
sciousness and its content is made explicit then the “object term can sustain no
relation and would simply be nothing” (Deshpande 1997: xxvi). In fact, the explicit
distinction between the subject and the object generates a dialectic which cannot be
overcome. Malkani’s main contention is that the terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’ gain
validity only in the unity. According to him, this unity is possible, in four alternate
ways. These are (a) a de facto unity between consciousness and its content, (b)
unity through an asymmetric relation, i.e. either the consciousness or the content
having primacy, (c) unity in a more fundamental sense which is, as it were, neutral
to both the consciousness and the content and (d) one of the two being real and the
other not. Here, one is reminded of G.E. Moore who in his famous Refutation of
Idealism formulated the idealist position in a similar way, way back in 1903 but in
order to expose the idealist fallacy (Moore 1903: 433–453). Malkani’s formulations
are dated 1934. It is surprising that neither Malkani nor most of the idealist modern
philosophers seem to have taken cognizance of Moore’s refutation despite the fact
that it appeared in Mind—a very prestigious journal which represented the British
philosophy of the day. Perhaps, Moore’s refutation of idealism, along with
Russell’s criticism of the idealist doctrine of internal relations, was just the
132 S. Deshpande

beginning of a sustained critique of Bradleyan idealism on the British soil.5 For

Malkani, the concept of relational consciousness is a misnomer. For him, unitary
consciousness is not the same as ‘unity of relation.’ If this is realized, ‘conscious-
ness is freed from its relatedness to content.’ The conclusion of Malkani’s reflec-
tions is that consciousness freed from relatedness of any kind is the Absolute. The
four alternative modes of the unity of consciousness that Malkani examines point to
a kind of spiritual unity since the spirit is conceived as transcending the subject. But
Malkani also clarifies that if this transcendence is either some kind of higher syn-
thetic experience, the way Bradley conceives of it, or a transcendental presupposi-
tion as Kant conceives of it, or a unity of consciousness and content as the Idealists
in general suppose, then these are not acceptable to Malkani.
The essay Ontological Reflections addresses four issues in succession, namely
(a) the distinction between being and necessary being, (b) appearance and reality,
(c) being and non-being and (d) the absolute reality or God. It is evident that these
issues are discussed in the mediaeval scholastic tradition of the West. For example,
we find this to be a major preoccupation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s famous cosmo-
logical proof for the existence of a necessary being, i.e. God. Malkani’s reflections
on the distinction between being and necessary being is neither a restatement of
nor a rejoinder to St. Aquinas’s position. He takes the notion of being as ‘what
is’, which is fundamental to all knowledge. But necessity does not characterize
‘what is’ per se. Malkani makes an interesting claim that ‘necessity is external to
being.’ “We introduce it into being through extraneous considerations such as illu-
sory appearance and causality” (Malkani 1963a: 88). A necessary being is neither
a pure concept nor a Platonic idea, since they are only conceived and conception
is not “the same thing as direct or intuitive awareness of a self-existing real thing”
(Malkani 1963a: 88). Here, Malkani alludes to the Vedāntic notion that knowledge
is vastūtantra, i.e., the character of knowledge is determined by the object. By
invoking this notion, Malkani is then able to critique the idea that the substance
which is conceived as uncaused and thing-in-itself is a necessary substance. But
Malkani argues that “insofar as we are carried to it through the … temporal pro-
cess, it has a necessity in respect of the latter. It is a derived necessity” (Malkani
1963a: 90). So, even the uncaused thing-in-itself, conceived as a necessary being,
is not a necessary being. Malkani problematizes this approach and asks “why go to
a transcendent and immutable cause?” He insists that the cause must be essentially
active, dynamic and creative. But then this applies even to the empirical causes,
“every actual entity is a creator of its successor…only it is not a causeless cause,
and it need not be one” (Malkani 1963a: 90). But if we have to look for the first
cause, for example God, under the persuasion of theologians, then Malkani argues,
‘we can combine in him mobility with immobility.’ Mobility accounts for dyna-
mism of the process. But since the creation must have a goal which cannot be out-
side the creation, God may be said to be ‘immobile or static in nature.’ “We can
thus accept a non-empirical first cause that combines the static with the dynamic.

5  But Malkani was aware of these developments such as Logical Positivism (Malkani 1950).
7  G.R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Vedānta 133

God is permanent and eternal, and at the same time, he is an actor and a creator.
“The world is his creation” (Malkani 1963a: 90). Malkani then connects this idea
of the being which is both immobile and static with the problem of creation and
suggests that the apparent conundrum as to how a being which is static can cre-
ate anything at all can be resolved by treating the creation which presupposes tem-
porality as false. This obviously echoes the Vedāntic concept of Māyā. In all his
elaborations of the concept of the Absolute, Malkani does not depart from his basic
position that reality of the self alone is what the transcendental consciousness is, it
is what the ātman is. The appearance of ātman as a knowing subject or the jiva is
not the ultimate reality. The problem of the certainty of knowledge that engaged
Descartes and the phenomenologists also engaged Malkani. But as an Advaitin, he
looks at this problem in terms of the adequacy of our knowledge to reality as such.
It is only from the transcendental standpoint that the certainty of our knowledge
can be anchored in the certainty of pure awareness. The certainty of pure aware-
ness is not disclosed in any individual act of consciousness, but it is presupposed in
every such act. For Malkani, we are obliged to go from the notion of consciousness
as act to the notion of consciousness as actless. The consciousness as actless in the
Vedāntic metaphysics is self-revealing, i.e. svaprakāśa.
Like many of his contemporaries, Malkani’s exposition of Advaita Vedānta is
stressed by the burden of resolving the dichotomy between reason and faith. It is argued
that the employment of reason stresses the rational, argumentative and critical side of
Advaita Vedānta, while the faith stands for Vedānta as a way of life. The rational and
the critical side of Advaita Vedānta refute the rival views like the dualism of Puruṣa
and Prakriti and anātma-vāda and establish the reality of non-dual Brahman. However,
like most of the Vedāntins, Malkani also believes that the rational aspect of Vedānta cul-
minates into faith, thus making Vedānta philosophy as a part of Vedānta religion. The
distinction between Advaita Vedānta as philosophy and Advaita Vedānta as religion, i.e.,
as a way of life, has always been a problem for those who emphasize the analytical and
critical aspect of Advaita Vedānta. But for both the traditional Advaitin and for modern
Indian philosophers like Malkani, the passage from reason to faith or revelation is not
unnatural since as a Vedāntin, Vedāntic philosopher accepts revelation of Vedas and as
a philosopher he accepts reason. This is similar to the problem of the relation between
reason and revelation as conceived in Christianity, and Malkani’s approach towards the
resolution of this dichotomy is very much Augustinian.

7.7 Is Doing ‘Pure’ Philosophy Possible?

While reinventing the classical Advaita Vedānta, Malkani also actively participated
in some of the debates of his times. One such debate is about the possibility of
doing ‘pure’ philosophy in the colonial and post-colonial context.6 The debate

6  This debate is carried out in many ways. One such attempt—to which Malkani is responding—

is by P.T. Raju in his Idealistic Thought of India (Raju 1953).

134 S. Deshpande

assumes that Indian philosophy is, and European philosophy is not, antiquarian.
Philosophy, which is not antiquarian and merely interpretative of tradition, or is
not mixed up with religion, is ‘pure.’ But can the ‘spirit’ of Indian philosophical
traditions be revived? Would the methods of European philosophical traditions be
of any use? These considerations have led many modern Indian philosophers to
propose a synthesis of Indian and Western traditions of philosophy. But Malkani
laments these attempts saying “we are alternately Hindu metaphysicians
(tattvajñānis) and full-fledged European philosophers” the result being that “we
are not creative as philosophers” (Malkani 1955). He even goes on to say that we
have a choice of doing either Indian or European philosophy, but also cautions
saying that “on our decision depends the future of philosophy in India” (Malkani
1955). Malkani not only reflects on the difference between Indian and European
methods of doing philosophy but also critically ponders over the difference
between the goal and the ideal of Indian and European philosophy. The final
answer that he gives to the questions posed by modern European thought is in
terms of imbibing the spirit of Vedānta which he could never give up.

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