Merck-Tagore Award Discourse to Prof. Ram Adhar Mall

by Elise Coquereau-Saouma

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In the academic world, there are few opportunities to express our gratitude to those whose thought has influenced us, and I am grateful for this opportunity today. I am also happy that this opportunity is given to me in India, in Bangalore, because Prof. R. A. Mall has accompanied me for more than ten years on my philosophical journey between Europe and India. It was when I left my first university exchange at JNU that I sought to connect what I had learned from classical Indian philosophy with what I had studied in France that I read his book 'Intercultural Philosophy'. ‘Intercultural Philosophy’ was first for me a philosophical orientation to think about philosophy today beyond the strong Eurocentrism in our European educations, and the exclusion of India from our curricula. I was 20 years old, and I was lucky enough to have spent a year in Delhi. Prof. Mall was a kind of inspiration and guide, because he is one of the very few who does not think either 'only' about Indian philosophy, or 'exclusively' about European philosophy, but who also thinks about what thinking 'between' means, what it changes in our way of philosophizing. His book led me to Vienna to work in intercultural philosophy, and thus Prof. Mall strangely also led me to the German language, which eventually brought me back to India today. For many other students in Germany, he is undoubtedly even more: the very introduction of Indian ideas and concepts, but more importantly, the possibility of thinking beyond one's own conceptual framework and expanding one's philosophical horizon.

There are precedents in 'comparative' philosophy, of course, and Indian philosophers play an important role in it, such as the well-known philosopher and former president of India, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. But the intercultural philosophy of which Prof. Mall is a pioneer addresses some problems of previous attempts, especially the fixity and essentialization of contrasts such as 'spiritual India', 'rational West' that responded to the European exclusion. Prof. Mall’s intercultural philosophy argues against rigidifying the debate by looking for either 'equivalents' among cultures, for example in logic, or radical differences. He also questions the problem of the monocultural perspective of the one who compares different philosophies, being himself situated in a certain tradition. What he proposes to us is always an introspective awareness of our own standpoint, and ways to approach the other’s view inspired both by Indian philosophies like the Jain anekanta vada and German hermeneutics such as Gadamer’s, in search of overlaps. From this reflection on how to philosophize between cultural traditions, he develops a theory of interpretation and understanding, an analogical hermeneutics, which is situated between the two extremes of identity and radical difference - between exclusive universalism and total relativism. In between these two preponderant models in the history of Western philosophy, he suggests to consider 'analogy', defined as 'a likeness of relation among unlike things' and 'overlap' as important grounds to consider similarities and differences between cultures. This leads to locating intercultural philosophy as "situated unsituatedness" or "unsituated situatedness" (orthafte Ortlosigkeit or ortlose Orthaftigkeit). Prof. Mall’s philosophy is an exploration of this orthafte Ortlosigkeit or ortlose Orthaftigkeit.

Such a conception can only come, I think, at a time when this kind of approach was absolutely marginal in the academic milieu, from a personal experience. Prof. Mall's experience is as 'pioneering' as his philosophy, and as intercultural. Prof. Ram A. Mall's story is the story of a trajectory between the cultures of India and Germany, between the languages Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, English and German; but also between the cultures of the academic world of Kolkata and Germany, notably Göttingen, Cologne, Trier, Wuppertal, Bremen, Heidelberg, Munich and Jena, and his village of origin in Bihar. Even today, so many barriers have to be overcome for those who want to access culture and a renowned education if they do not come from an educated, urban, wealthy family, whether it is by socio-economic barriers, linguistic barrier, or lack of access to information even on education. Prof. Mall's story is an inspiration for those who need to dream that they can cross land and sea to have access to higher education - and this is not a metaphor, it is by boat that Prof Mall arrived in Germany in 1961 with a DAAD fellowship, after two weeks of travel on the sea. His story is also, in India as in Germany, the story of many obstacles and sometimes exclusion by the academic elites. His story also embodies that of the European rejection of India from the field of philosophy, the idea that spiritual India is not fit to philosophize, when a professor from Cologne refused to consider his manuscript because he could not imagine that an Asian, that an Indian, could understand the European philosophical spirit well enough to become habilitated (habilitiert) in Germany. Despite the memory of powerlessness in this judgement, and having to start over a second Habilitation, Prof Mall writes that it was also the impact of this experience that would later lead him to found the Society for Intercultural Philosophy/Gesellschaft für interkulturelle Philosophie.

The Society for Intercultural Philosophy remains one of his major contributions. Founded by him and his students and colleagues in 1991, it was the first of its kind in Europe: a platform for non-European philosophy, a platform for systematic research on the terms of their relation and mutual understanding between philosophical traditions, at a time when - unfortunately, this time is not truly over - anything that was not European was not considered as 'properly', 'truly' philosophical, 'rational'. A large number of publications, and lectures originated from it; it counts today hundreds of members from all over the world, monthly lecture series, yearly conferences, and a publication series. It not only promotes and makes accessible intercultural philosophy, but also connects intercultural philosophers worldwide.

We are here to honor Prof. Mall for his decades of work to introduce the very possibility of intercultural philosophy in the German-speaking world, in India and beyond, to establish its principles, and to create lasting structures that allow us to look at the future of intercultural philosophy with optimism. We owe him our gratitude for his philosophical works and teachings, but also his supervision and mediation between generations of German students who would not have had access intercultural philosophy without him, in an academic world where it is still very often difficult to find a space to work on anything that is not the mainstream history of European philosophy. For the principles of intercultural philosophy, future generations will be able to rely on his works such as Philosophie im Vergleich der Kulturen. Interkulturelle Philosophie – eine neue Orientierung (1995); Intercultural Philosophy ; Essays zur interkulturellen Philosophie ; Grundpositionen der interkulturellen Philosophie. Prof. Mall also contributed to the introduction of Indian philosophy in the German language by writing monographs on Hinduism, Buddhism, or specific major figures of India such as Mahatma Gandhi that are accessible to students and researchers of philosophy, such as Der Hinduismus. Seine Stellung in der Vielfalt der Religionen and Buddhistische Lehre und die inhaltliche Toleranz. These books are also accessible to philosophers who are not specialists of India and who do not study in departments of Indology or South Asian Studies. In doing so, he also shows the way for those of us who refuse to confine Indian studies to area studies, and who wish to work in dialogues between cultures, looking for overlaps and analogies. He proceeds to highlight the philosophical insights and concepts that enrich all traditions, such as nonviolence or ahimsa, tolerance and diversity. In these times more than ever, it is a tremendous privilege for me to present the work of a bridge-builder, neither exclusively Indian nor exclusively German, a mediator and thinker of the relationship between cultures, looking for tolerance, openness and diversity.