Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, FBA is the Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University.^[1] His research focuses on Indian religions – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – and comparative phenomenology, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. His studies include the conceptual roots of contemporary beliefs, politics and conflict in religious context, and the religious identities of South Asian diaspora in the United Kingdom.^[1] He was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017.^[2]

Education

Ram-Prasad is an alumnus of Sri Sathya Sai Institute, and earned a masters and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford.^[3]

Career and Work

Ram-Prasad is the Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at the Lancaster University. He was the Associate Dean for Research, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (2009–14), and a member of the Academic Advisory Council at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He has been a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4's Beyond Belief and Sunday Programme in the United Kingdom.^[4]

Ram-Prasad has published eight books and some fifty peer-reviewed articles on Indian religions, comparative religions (Hindu-Christian, Buddhism in India and China), contemporary Indian politics and religion, multiculturalism and British society, and comparative political philosophy.^[5] His studies have included religious literature in Sanskrit, Pali and Tamil.^[2]

In a review of Ram-Prasad's award-winning book Divine Self, Human Self based on the Bhagavad Gita, the Cambridge University scholar Ankur Barua states, "Ram-Prasad skilfully engages Śaṁkara and Rāmānuja in conversations over classical Vedantic themes of selfhood, being, and agency" to exegetically and hermeneutically explain how these two influential Hindu scholars interpreted the same text to reach two views of Self (Atman) in Hindu philosophy.^[6]

Honours

His book "Divine Self, Human Self" was the winner of the Best Book 2011–15, by the Society for Hindu Christian Studies.

In July 2017, Ram-Prasad was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.^[7]

Selected publications

Books

• Knowledge and Liberation in Classical Indian Thought (Palgrave, 2001), ISBN 978-1-4039-1373-9
• Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An outline of Indian non-realism (Routledge, 2002), ISBN 978-1-3150-2939-9
• Eastern Philosophy (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005)
• Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi (2013). Divine self, human self : the philosophy of being in two Gita commentaries. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1441176813.
• Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi (2007). Indian philosophy and the consequences of knowledge : themes in ethics, metaphysics and soteriology. Aldershot, England. ISBN 9780754686767.
• Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi (2006). India : life, myth and art. Duncan Baird. ISBN 1844832872., which has been translated into French, Polish and Finnish
• Irina Kuznetsova; Jonardon Ganeri; Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (2016). Hindu and Buddhist Ideas in Dialogue: Self and No-Self. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-12193-0.

Journal articles and chapters

• Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi (1995). "A Classical Indian Philosophical Perspective on Ageing and the Meaning of Life". Ageing and Society. Cambridge University Press. 15 (1): 1–36. doi:10.1017/s0144686x00002105. S2CID 145798344.
• Ram-Prasad, C. (2000). "Knowledge and Action I: Means to the Human End in Bhātta Mīmāmsā and Advaita Vedānta". Journal of Indian Philosophy. Springer Nature. 28 (1): 1–24. doi:10.1023/a:1004744313963. S2CID 170635199.
• Ram-Prasad, C. (2000). "Knowledge and Action II: Means to the Human End in Bhātta Mīmāmsā and Advaita Vedānta". Journal of Indian Philosophy. Springer Nature. 28 (1): 25–41. doi:10.1023/a:1004776719414. S2CID 171038504.
• Ram-Prasad, C. (2000). "Hindu Nationalism and the International Relations of India". Religion and International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 140–197. doi:10.1057/9781403916594_7. ISBN 978-1-349-27846-6.

References

External links

• Lakshmi, BBC Radio 4 In Our Time, link. Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad on the panel with Jessica Frazier and Jacqueline Suthren-Hirst.

This page was last edited on 5 August 2023, at 15:44