T. N. (Therani Nadathur) Sudarshan considers himself to be an eclectic amalgamation of dharmic modernity. With a traditional upbringing in a practising SriVaishnava household and hailing from a Acharya lineage in the Visistadvaita Sampradaya, he is schooled in the western methods and techniques of Sciences and Engineering, and is a Computer Scientist by profession, engaging primarily in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and related technologies. He also performs the role of a Pancaratra Agama archaka (priest) at his native village whenever he is able to visit it. He is also currently pursuing studies (Sri Bhashya and other SriVaishnava granthas) in a traditional setting with sampradaya gurus. He is widely read and deeply conversant with the Western Dialectic, its epistemology, academic mechanisms of delivery and dissemination and the abrasive civilizational encounters between the Indian (Dharmic) and the “rest”.
His research and practical interests in the extant civilizational encounter have been to formalise and enable the reification of the dharmic dialectic and its related semantics (both epistemologically and ontologically) not only in the socio-cultural space but also in pedagogy, both in the Sciences and Social Sciences. As a published scholar in the Swadeshi Indology Conference Series, and also having performed at world-class levels in engineering and leadership for more than a decade in building technology and engaging with the real world (across the globe), this unique experience (methods and techniques from various areas of expertise) is brought to pragmatically bear upon the formulation and enabling of the Dharmic narrative both in academic, real-world and pedagogical settings.
Abstracts Of Papers From SI-1 And SI-3
SI-1 Paper Abstract
Title: The Science and Nescience of Śāstra
The interpretations of śāstra as done by Professor Sheldon Pollock (hereafter Pollock) are critically appraised in this paper, with a firm grounding in the traditional perspectives and vocabularies of the vidyā-s (poorly translated by Pollock as theory) – as practiced (śāstra) by actual practitioners of the Vedic tradition. The foundational perspectives and motivations that have driven the theorization of the grammars and metaphors Read More…
SI-3 Paper Abstract
Title: The Science and Nescience of Comparative Linguistics: Examining the Nature and Veracity of Comparative Linguistics with Implications to the Aryan-Dravidian Hypotheses
The two century year old “field” of study of Comparative (Historical) Linguistics (henceforth CL) is critically examined along various dimensions – primarily its evolutionary drivers, the nature of its methods, the supposedly scientific nature of its theories, the assumptions underlying its theories and its Read More…