Special Call Prof. Jay L. Garfield Commemorative Volume · Submissions Open
Announcements Newsletters About Us Contact
Search Donate
Nilambar Chakrabarti
Contributing Scholar Indian Epistemology & Cross-Cultural Philosophy

Mr Nilambar Chakrabarti

Doctoral Research Scholar & Sylff Fellow · Department of Philosophy
Jadavpur University / Smith College (Kolkata, West Bengal, IND)
PID: PV-2026-NC12
nilambar.chakrabarti1@gmail.com
Peer-Reviewed Articles
2
PIJCACE Journal
Ideas Essays & Dialogues
0
Poorvam Ideas Platform
Symposia & Dialogues
10
Poorvam Seminars Series
Subscribed Readers
0
Followers on Poorvam
Academic Status
Contributing Scholar
Poorvam Ecosystem

Symposia, Seminars & Academic Dialogues

10 talks & symposia
Exploring The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics
Session Chair / Moderator
Open
Authors in Conversation Online (Microsoft Teams)
October 11, 2026 · 8:00 PM IST

Exploring The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics

With: Prof Ruth Vanita

Authors in Conversation: The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics Violence, Cruelty, and the Question of the Animal In this session of Authors in Conversation, Prof. Ruth Vanita joins us to discuss her book The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species (Oxford University Press, 2022), with the conversation centred specifically on violence, cruelty, and the place of animals within the epic imagination of dharma. While the book more broadly examines how the Mahabharata and Ramayana stage debates over discrimination on grounds of gender, varna, age, disability, and species, this session turns to a thread often left at the margins of epic scholarship: how the Sanskrit epics represent cruelty toward animals, and what this suggests about the boundaries the epics draw, and unsettle, around who or what deserves compassion and justice. The conversation will be moderated by Nilambar Chakrabarti, followed by an open Q&A with the audience. Date & Time: Sunday, October 11, 2026, 8:00 PM IST Mode: Online (Microsoft Teams), free and open to all

EXPLORING CRITICAL LIVES: FERNANDO PESSOA AND PHILOSOPHY
Session Chair / Moderator
Open
Authors in Conversation Online (Microsoft Teams)
September 20, 2026 · 6:00 PM IST

EXPLORING CRITICAL LIVES: FERNANDO PESSOA AND PHILOSOPHY

With: Dr. Bartholomew Ryan

What does it mean to be plural? What happens when a poet invents not just characters but entire selves — each with their own name, biography, and philosophy — and disperses identity so thoroughly that the very notion of a unified author dissolves? In his philosophical biography Critical Lives: Fernando Pessoa (Reaktion, 2024), Bartholomew Ryan navigates the labyrinthine inner world of Portugal's greatest modernist poet — from his early years in Lisbon and South Africa to the birth of his heteronymic universe, his messianic dream of an empire of poets, his forays into esotericism and astrology, and his unfinished prose masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet. Alongside this, as co-editor of Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy: Countless Lives Inhabit Us (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), Ryan has assembled a landmark volume that reads Pessoa in dialogue with philosophy — from nihilism and transcendentalism to Indian philosophy, Daoism, and Islamic thought. In conversation with the editors of Poorvam, Bartholomew Ryan will reflect on what it means to write the life of a poet who refused singular selfhood, on the intersection of biography and philosophy, and on what Pessoa's radical experiments with identity reveal about the deepest questions of human existence. This session is part of Authors in Conversation, an online seminar series hosted by Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions.

Exploring Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu's Metaphysics
Session Chair / Moderator
Concluded
Authors in Conversation Online (Microsoft Teams)
August 16, 2026 · 6:00 PM IST

Exploring Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu's Metaphysics

With: Prof Monima Chadha

Selfless Minds offers a new interpretation of no-self metaphysics in Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosa-Bhasya. Monima Chadha reads Vasubandhu as defending not only eliminativism about self but also about persons, and illusionism about the sense of self and all kinds of self-representation. This radical no-self thesis presents several challenges for Abhidharma Buddhist philosophy of mind. Even if we then grant that there is no self, we are left with deeper questions about the sense of self or self-representations implicated in our ordinary everyday experience and thought about the world and ourselves. And if we grant that there are no persons, questions remain about the status of our person-related concerns and interpersonal practices. Selfless Minds answers these questions on behalf of the Abhidharma Buddhist. The first part of the book defends the hypothesis that we can salvage much of our experience and thought without implicating self-representations. The second part of the book examines the revisionary implications of the no-person metaphysics. Some of these seem unpalatable, if not downright absurd. This, she argues, give us reason to re-evaluate both the Abhidharma metaphysics and our ordinary person-related practices and concerns in light of each other by using some sort of wide reflective equilibrium. Selfless Minds is a contribution to cross-cultural philosophy that studies the nature of selfless minds from a place at the crossroads of different traditions and disciplines: philosophy in the traditional Buddhist and contemporary Western traditions, and contemporary cognitive sciences.

Exploring Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality
Session Chair / Moderator
Concluded
Authors in Conversation Online (Microsoft Teams)
July 18, 2026 · 9:00 PM IST

Exploring Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality

With: Swami Medhananda

Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance. Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñana, " his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñana, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil. Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism--when grasped in all its subtlety--proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.

The Dramatic Element in Kumārasambhavam – A Dialogue with Arjun Bharadwaj
Session Chair / Moderator
Concluded
Authors in Conversation Online (Microsoft Teams)
June 13, 2026 · 6:00 PM IST

The Dramatic Element in Kumārasambhavam – A Dialogue with Arjun Bharadwaj

With: Arjun Bharadwaj

AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION The dramatic element in Kumārasambhavam A dialogue with Arjun Bharadwaj DATE: Saturday, 13 June 2026 TIME: 6:00 PM onwards (IST) MODE : Online What makes a literary work render itself like a drama before the mind's eye? What gives a kāvya its theatrical vitality — and what is it that makes some works truly come alive while others remain inert on the page? In his new book, The Dramatic Element in Kumārasambhavam, scholar and connoisseur Arjun Bharadwaj turns to one of Kālidāsa's greatest works to explore this question. Drawing on the analytical frameworks of the Nāṭyaśāstra — particularly the four modes of abhinaya — and the rasa theory of the Dhvanyāloka, he examines how the epic's layered verses generate what he calls a dramatic element: an animated, almost theatrical experience of action, character, and affect that arises entirely through language. In conversation with the editors of Poorvam, Arjun Bharadwaj will reflect on the ideas animating this work — the relationship between kāvya and nāṭya, the tools that Indian aesthetic treatises offer for reading poetry, and what Kālidāsa's epic reveals about the deepest possibilities of classical Sanskrit literature. This session is part of Authors in Conversation, an online seminar series hosted by Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions.

Being We: Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology – A Dialogue with Dan Zahavi
Session Chair / Moderator
Concluded
Authors in Conversation Online (Microsoft Teams)
May 17, 2026 · 6:00 PM IST

Being We: Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology – A Dialogue with Dan Zahavi

With: Prof Dan Zahavi

Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions invites you to a philosophical conversation with Prof. Dan Zahavi — one of the foremost phenomenologists of our time — on his landmark new work exploring what it means, philosophically and existentially, to belong to a we. What does it mean to be a "we"? We say it so casually — we believe, we decided, we suffered — and yet behind this small word lies one of the deepest puzzles of human existence. When two or more individuals constitute a we, something genuinely new comes into being. But what, exactly? Is the we a mere sum of its parts, or does it carry its own irreducible weight? And what does it do to you — to your sense of self, your relation to others, your experience of the world — to be folded into one? These are the questions at the heart of Being We: Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology (Oxford University Press, 2025), Prof. Zahavi's bold and ambitious contribution to social philosophy. Drawing on the rich but often underread tradition of early phenomenology — from Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein to Max Scheler, Gerda Walther, Aron Gurwitsch, and Alfred Schutz — Zahavi takes up one of modernity's most pressing philosophical challenges: the ontology of collective life. Being We is not merely a work of historical retrieval. It breaks new ground at the intersection of phenomenology, social cognition, and collective intentionality, weaving together questions of first-personal experience and selfhood with the broader concerns of sociology, anthropology, and social psychology. At its centre is a novel account of the complex, irreducible interrelation between I, you, and we — and the surprising ways in which each transforms the others. Does individual subjectivity require a communal grounding? Or does any we presuppose a prior plurality of selves? What kind of understanding — what kind of openness to the other — must be in place before a we can emerge at all? And once it does emerge, can it endure, dissolve, be betrayed? This event promises a rich and searching conversation on: The phenomenological tradition and its resources for social ontology How we-experience transforms selfhood, perception, and world-orientation The relationship between individual subjectivity and collective life What Husserl, Stein, Scheler, and their contemporaries saw that we are still catching up to The dialogue between phenomenology and the social sciences The ethics and fragility of we — how a we forms, and how it falls apart Join us for an evening of rigorous and generous philosophical dialogue — a conversation that asks not merely who I am, but what it means that I am never entirely alone in being so. Date: Sunday, 17 May 2026 Time: 6:00 PM IST onwards Format: Free online event (Microsoft Teams) RSVP: editor@poorvam.com Curated by Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions

Cite It: A Cautionary Note on Matilal’s Way of Doing Indian Philosophy
Session Chair / Moderator
Concluded
Cite It Online (Microsoft Teams)
May 09, 2026 · 6:00 PM IST

Cite It: A Cautionary Note on Matilal’s Way of Doing Indian Philosophy

With: Prof Nirmalya Narayan Chakraborty

Poorvam is pleased to launch a new event series titled “Cite It.” In this series, we invite thinkers to discuss their papers, followed by an in-depth conversation. The paper will be circulated prior to the discussion. In the inaugural session, Nirmalya Narayan Chakraborty will discuss his paper, “A Cautionary Note on Matilal’s Way of Doing Indian Philosophy.” Date: 9th May 2026, 6.P.M onwards.

Fernando Pessoa: Imagination and the Self – A Dialogue with Jonardon Ganeri
Session Chair / Moderator
Concluded
Authors in Conversation Online (Microsoft Teams)
April 19, 2026 · 6:00 PM IST

Fernando Pessoa: Imagination and the Self – A Dialogue with Jonardon Ganeri

With: Prof Jonardon Ganeri

On 19 April 2026 at 6:00 PM IST, Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions invites you to a captivating philosophical dialogue with Prof. Jonardon Ganeri on his landmark contribution to the philosophy of mind, selfhood, and cross-cultural thought. What does it mean to be a self? And what happens when imagination becomes not merely a faculty of the mind, but its very mode of self-creation? These are the questions at the heart of Fernando Pessoa: Imagination and the Self — a work that takes as its unlikely point of departure the life and writings of Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935), the Portuguese poet and prose writer who stands as one of the most philosophically daring figures in modern literature. Pessoa, affiliated with no institution and beholden to no school, invented for himself a radical new philosophy of the human subject. Writing in both Portuguese and English, he argued that imagination is the key to human flourishing — that each of us possesses the power to pluralize ourselves, to live simultaneously and in sequence as a plurality of distinct subjects. He called these crafted inner lives "heteronyms": artefact minds, poetically conjured selves, new ways of experiencing the world. In Fernando Pessoa: Imagination and the Self, Prof. Ganeri reconstructs this bold philosophical vision with both rigour and sensitivity. But what makes this work truly distinctive is the bridge it builds across traditions. Ganeri traces deep resonances between Pessoa's pluralist theory of selfhood and classical Indian philosophical thought — particularly the Mokṣopāya (or Yogavāsiṣṭha), the great metaphysical storybook of India, with its nested virtual realities and reconstructed selves, and strands of reflection found in the Mahābhārata and the Upaniṣads. Far from a coincidental parallel, Pessoa himself was well-read in Indian literature and philosophy, making this a genuine cross-traditional encounter, not merely a comparative exercise. This event promises a rich and searching conversation on: The philosophy of imagination and its role in constructing the self Pessoa's concept of "heteronyms" and the plurality of inner life The meeting points between modern European thought and classical Indian philosophy The Yogavāsiṣṭha, the Mahābhārata, and their theories of virtual selfhood What poetry and literature can reveal that philosophy alone cannot The possibility — and the stakes — of genuinely cross-traditional philosophical engagement Join us for an evening that moves across continents and centuries, from the saudade-filled streets of Lisbon to the metaphysical forests of ancient India, in pursuit of a richer, more plural understanding of what it means to be a self. Date: Saturday, 19 April 2026 Time: 6:00 PM IST onwards RSVP: editor@poorvam.com Curated by Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions

Exploring the Externalism and the Mental : A Dialogue with Prof Madhucchanda Sen
Session Chair / Moderator
Concluded
Authors in Conversation Online (Microsoft Teams)
March 15, 2026 · 6:00 PM IST

Exploring the Externalism and the Mental : A Dialogue with Prof Madhucchanda Sen

With: Prof Madhucchanda Sen

Authors in Conversation Exploring the Externalism and the Mental A Dialogue with Madhucchanda Sen On 15 March 2026 at 6:00 PM IST, Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions invites you to an engaging philosophical dialogue with Prof. Madhucchanda Sen on her important contribution to contemporary philosophy of mind. At the heart of philosophical inquiry lies a persistent and profound question: What is the relation between mind and world? The debate between internalism and externalism—whether mental content is determined solely by what is inside the subject or partly by factors external to it—has shaped much of recent philosophy of mind and language. Yet, despite decades of argumentation, the terms of this debate often remain unquestioned. In Externalism and the Mental, Prof. Sen revisits this foundational dispute with striking originality. While acknowledging her own sympathy toward externalist positions, she resists the simplicity of taking sides. Instead, she interrogates the conceptual scaffolding that has sustained the divide itself. What do we really mean by “external”? What counts as “internal”? And does the boundary between them hold under sustained scrutiny? Through a rigorous analysis of the history of externalist thought, the book exposes tensions embedded within compartmentalised frameworks that have long structured philosophical reflection. It calls for a paradigm shift—one that reimagines the mind–world relation not as a binary opposition but as a dynamic, interwoven field. Significantly, this work opens a rare and necessary conversation between analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and the precision of Navya-Nyāya logic. In doing so, it gestures toward a philosophical future that moves beyond inherited East–West divisions and cultivates a genuinely dialogical mode of thinking. This event promises a rich discussion on: The contemporary state of the externalism–internalism debate The relationship between mind, language, and embodiment The philosophical cost of rigid conceptual binaries The possibility of cross-traditional philosophical engagement Join us for an evening of rigorous inquiry and intellectual generosity as we explore how rethinking the “external” and the “mental” may transform our understanding of consciousness itself. Date: Sunday, 15 March 2026 Time: 6:00 PM IST onwards RSVP: editor@poorvam.com Curated by Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions

Exploring the Subject as Freedom: A Dialogue with Jay and Nalini
Session Chair / Moderator
Concluded
Authors in Conversation Online (Microsoft Teams)
February 21, 2026 · 6:00 PM IST

Exploring the Subject as Freedom: A Dialogue with Jay and Nalini

With: Prof. Jay L. Garfield · Prof. Nalini Bhushan

Join us for an enriching dialogue on one of modern Indian philosophy's most significant yet underexplored texts. "Authors in Conversation: Exploring the Subject as Freedom" brings together distinguished scholars Prof. Jay L. Garfield and Prof. Nalini Bhushan to discuss their groundbreaking contemporary translation of Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya's seminal 1930 work. KC Bhattacharyya's Subject as Freedom stands as the most important philosophical treatise composed in India during British occupation, offering a profound meditation on human consciousness and self-knowledge. Through a remarkable synthesis of Advaita Vedanta, Kantian critique, and Husserlian phenomenology, Bhattacharyya develops an intricate analysis of subjectivity as a hierarchy of self-consciousness—each level representing a unique mode of freedom from the objects of knowledge. Despite its towering reputation among scholars of Indian philosophy, the text has remained largely inaccessible due to Bhattacharyya's dense prose and specialized vocabulary. This new Oxford University Press edition features not only the original text but also a fresh translation into contemporary philosophical English, complete with explanatory notes and a comprehensive introduction, making this masterwork available to a new generation of readers. In this conversation, translators Garfield and Bhushan will illuminate Bhattacharyya's anticipation of ideas later developed by Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Davidson, while exploring his unique insights into embodiment, language, and introspective consciousness. The discussion promises to reveal why this text matters today and how it speaks to contemporary debates in philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy. Date: Saturday, 21 February 2026 Time: 6:00 PM IST onwards RSVP: editor@poorvam.com Curated by Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles (PIJCACE)

2 articles
Philosophy and Theoretical Inquiries Open Access
Aug 15, 2026

The emergence of the modern-day Bhāṣyakāras in the discourse of modern Indian Philosophy

Authors: Mr Nilambar Chakrabarti · PIJCACE Vol. 2, No. 1

This review essay examines Nalini Bhushan and Jay L. Garfield's new translation of Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya's Subject as Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2026), a text long regarded as philosophically significant yet notoriously difficult. It argues that the edition exceeds ordinary translation practice, functioning at once as translation, commentary, and interpretive intervention, and proposes that Bhushan and Garfield are best understood as contemporary bhāṣyakāras: active philosophical participants rather than neutral transmitters. The review discusses the editors' lexical choices, such as rendering "object" as "intentional object," and their extensive introduction, which situates the text within Bhattacharyya's engagement with Advaita Vedānta through the "bookend" works of 1925 and 1936. While affirming the sophistication of this Advaitic reading, the review questions whether it constrains the text's methodological independence, given Bhattacharyya's phenomenological idiom and his departures from traditional Advaitic vocabulary. It concludes that the edition's parallel text presentation and editorial apparatus make it the standard English entry point into Bhattacharyya's thought, restoring him to philosophical discussion beyond his usual classification as an Advaita representative alone.

DOI: 10.63752/pijcace.0201S09
Philosophy and Theoretical Inquiries Open Access
Mar 07, 2026

Ideology as the Final Arbiter of Truth: A Critique

Authors: Nilambar Chakrabarti · PIJCACE Vol. 1, No. 2

This paper examines Pranab Kumar Sen's distinctive and comparatively lesser-known analysis of the concept of ideology, as articulated in his 1992 seminar paper "Philosophy, Science and Ideology," later included in Knowledge, Truth and Realism. While Sen is widely recognized for his contributions to debates on truth, meaning, logic, and the realism-anti-realism controversy, his reflections on ideology reveal a striking moment of intellectual courage. Against the prevailing and often populist invocations of ideology, Sen undertakes a conceptual inquiry into its very meaning. The paper focuses on one central issue Sen treats with seriousness: the relation between philosophy, science, and ideology. By identifying certain defining characteristics of ideology, such as dogmatism, closure to criticism, and resistance to self-correction, Sen argues that ideology is fundamentally incompatible with philosophy and science, both of which are essentially self-critical and epistemically open enterprises. This study reconstructs Sen's analysis of ideology without engaging the broader political-philosophical literature on the subject, as its primary concern is his conceptual framework. In doing so, it also offers a critical reflection on Sen's position, assessing its implications for understanding the normative role of philosophy in society.

DOI: 10.63752/pijcace.0102W03