Indic Studies and Western Hermeneutics

Thus Europeans developed their own subjective bias, dogmas and postulations in the name of ‘scientific objectivity’ to interpret the culture and history of the colonial people as per their suitability. They developed their own Eurocentric ideology and a historical framework based on their own history which was applied by them and is still applied by their followers to Indian and other cultures inappropriately. This distorted hermeneutic exercise of occidental scholars presented a flawed view of Indian culture and history. They were obsessed with fitting the data to their postulated and pre-conceived model. In this effort they first doubted and then completely negated and ignored Indian hermeneutics while interpreting Sanskrit literature, philosophy, culture and history. This resulted in the misleading interpretations of Sanskrit literature, philosophy, culture and Vedas. In this monograph an humble attempt will be made to assess the viability of western model of hermeneutics with respect to Indic Studies.