CHAPTER TWELVE

AT THE END OF A JOURNEY

Now that we have reached the end of our journey, it is time to look back.
Not only do we need to see how far we have come but also assess the
nature of the arguments put across. In the first section, I shall provide a
quick overview of the former. Here, I shall retrace the route very briefly
through the signposts of the titles of the individual chapters. I will not
summarise the arguments, but presuppose them instead. In the second,
I will summarise the basic thrust of the story and make a proposal
regarding the epistemic status of the arguments. Together, they should
help one take a stance with respect to the essay as a whole. In the third
section, I shall relate the story of my book to a meta-theoretical argu-
ment in anthropology about the possibility of ever describing the other.

12.1. THE DIFFERENT REST HOUSES

The essay begins with the following observation: both the western intel-
ligentsia and the western-trained intellectuals from other cultures hold
firmly that religion is a cultural universal. This belief is both part of the
commonsense and a claim in the theoretical and empirical literature
on the subject. Furthermore, the proponents of this idea are not prac-
titioners of any one particular field but, instead, represent a consensus
that cuts across social and human sciences: from anthropology through
sociology to human socio-biology.
The belief in the universality of religion does not merely imply that
there are believers in different parts of the globe or that there are re-
ligious communities in different cultures. When people say that reli-
gion is a cultural universal, be it as an empirical generalisation or as
a claim about the nature of human beings, they do not just say, for
instance, that there are Christian communities in all cultures. In the
twentieth century world we live in, the claim does not mean that every
human being has a religion either. These theorists notice the existence
of atheism, agnosticism, or indifference to religious matters. They also
notice that secular ideologies play a dominant role in the social life of
most countries in the West.
448 “THE HEATHEN IN HIS BLINDNESS”

If religion is a universal, it means that some or another religion is

native to human cultures. That is to say, all cultures must have an in-
digenous, as against imported, religion (at least one). To the extent that
religion is a cultural universal, the claim is not merely that native reli-
gions exist in all cultures but also that religion is constitutive of human
cultures. That is, some or another religion lends identity to a culture, or
that it is indispensable to a culture. Again, it is important to notice that
both scholars and non-professionals hold this belief in the twentieth
century. When socio-biologists and cognitive neuroscientists ask ques-
tions and put across speculative hypotheses about the genetic or neural
basis of religion; or when the Europeans try to understand the immi-
grant communities in their midst (mostly from Turkey and Morocco)
by talking about Islam; the presupposition is that cultures can be de-
scribed (partially but not exhaustively) by relating religion to culture.
The burden of this essay is two fold. It argues that religion is not a
cultural universal while clarifying at the same time why one believes in
its universality. The philosophical and scientific merit of the essay con-
sists in the fact that the argument about the nature of religion captures
both foci. I do not put forward ad hoc explanations and the argument is
amenable to empirical and logical control. Together with their heuristic
potential, these two aspects lend credibility to the reasonableness of the
argument.
The entire essay constructs one argument and develops two themes:
is religion a cultural universal? Why do people think so? Each chapter
signals a shift in the argument to come and, for the sake of convenience,
I have dubbed each theme as ‘half of an argument’.
“Some Puzzles and Problems”, as the first chapter is titled, is in-
tended to show that the way contemporary authors speak about reli-
gion in other cultures is rather puzzling. On the one hand, they appear
unsure that what they speak about, “properly speaking”, is a religion
at all. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, the religion of the Greeks and
the Native Americans, they tell us, do not look like religions. On the
other hand, and this is the puzzle, having recorded this observation,
they proceed to describe and give account of these “religions”. The
several citations show the puzzles these authors pose. My arguments
show that these puzzles confront us with several problems. I formulate
the theme of the next seven chapters by suggesting that there is a prima
facie inconsistency in their reasoning and by asking the question why
these authors have not seen it. Exploring the ways open to render them
consistent provides us with the questions that the subsequent chapters
answer. From chapters #2 through #7, the essay looks at the two pos-
sible grounds for the belief that religion is a cultural universal. One is a
theoretical ground and the other is an empirical ground.
The second, third, and the fourth chapters constitute a group and
have two different functions. On the one hand, they explicitly address
 AT THE END OF A JOURNEY 449

themselves to answering the question whether the belief about the uni-
versality of religion is a result of empirical enquiries. On the other, they
lay the groundwork for looking into the theoretical grounds for this
belief in chapters five, six, and seven.
The second chapter, “Not by One Avenue Only…”, sets the scene for
what is to follow. The title alludes to the famous relatio of Symmachus.
More importantly, by looking at the matrix in which Christianity grew,
it signals the gulf separating the last pagan prefect of Rome from the
first Christian one. By contrasting the Roman religio with the religion of
the Jews and the Christians, this chapter suggests that we should seek
the origin of our problem in the emergence of the Christian world.
“The Whore of Babylon and Other Revelations” picks up the story
around the sixteenth century. The European culture encounters other
cultures elsewhere in the world for the second time. The first occurred
during the Greek and Roman civilizations. Empirical investigations, if
any, into the universality of religion will have to begin here – if any-
where. Indian culture is the ‘other’ now.
The travel reports of this and the subsequent periods assume that
religion exists in India too, except that it is the religion of the heathens.
Before long, in Europe itself, heathens and pagans were to become very
important. That is the first obvious reference to Protestantism in the
title: we meet the whore of Babylon in the book of revelations and the
former, said the Protestants, is what the Roman Catholic Church is.
This leads to the second reference to Protestantism: the schism with-
in Christianity, between the Protestants and the Catholics, determines
how one approaches the question of religion. The opposition between
‘false’ religion and the ‘true’ one – the drama from the times of the
Romans – is replayed with new actors.
The third, but not so obvious reference of the title has to do with
the ‘revelation’ that a group called the philosophes are amongst the new
actors. The Enlightenment thinkers, I argue, not merely reproduced
protestant themes but did so energetically. The secular sons of the Age
of Reason extended Christian themes in a secular guise.
‘Revelations’ do not stop here. They go further – into and beyond the
fourth chapter, whose title ‘reveals’ the truth about Hinduism and Bud-
dhism, “Made in Paris, London, and Heidelberg”. It shows where the
Indian religions are made and plots the trajectory of the manufactur-
ing process: it begins in Paris, the cultural centre of the Enlightenment
Europe. This suggests that one must understand the creation of reli-
gions in India in terms of the compulsion of a culture. The process then
shifts to London, the administrative and the political centre of colonial
India. The British administrators lay the foundation for “the Orien-
tal Renaissance”. The product, the religions of India, is finished and
reaches wholesale distribution centres under the expert guidance of the
Germans, especially the German Romantics. While this is the obvious
450 “THE HEATHEN IN HIS BLINDNESS”

significance of ‘Heidelberg’, there is something more. Between whole-

sale distribution and the consumer, other phases intervene: packaging,
advertisement, attractive discount rates, promotion and publicity, and
so on. Heidelberg, a provincial town, houses a university of interna-
tional repute staffed largely by the gründlich intellectuals of Germany.
The fifth chapter sings a “Requiem for a Theme”. Here, I look at
the most influential idea – which knows of several versions – that the
origin of religion has to do with our experience of the world and our
responses to it. This chapter discredits the proposal by showing that, on
the same grounds, one may argue with equal plausibility for the oppo-
site conclusion. I show that neither the experience of the world nor our
responses to it need be the same and, therefore, that which is supposed
to account for the origin of religion in human societies can do no such
thing. The ease with which one can reverse the conclusion tells us that
we do not have a theory on our hands but merely some kind of a pre-
theoretical idea. This argument reinforces the suggestion made earlier
in this chapter that the belief about the universality of religion is not a
part of any one theory but that it underlies theory-formation.
The sixth chapter, “Shall the Twain ever Meet?”, continues the story
further. It is a thematic narrative of the nineteenth century, which car-
ries us well into the twentieth century. It explores the theme of religious
experience. An experience of the ‘holy’, of a ‘mysterium tremendum et
fascinans’, is alleged to characterise religious experience. To show that
this description cannot pick out a universal cross-cultural experience,
the chapter briefly analyses the texts of Schleiermacher and the ideas of
Söderblom and Otto. These experiences presuppose that an individual
is located in a specific religion, and that speaking of religious experi-
ence in these terms is parasitic upon being located in, and accepting the
truths of a particular religion, in our case, the Protestant religion. In
two ‘secular’ theorists, Eliade and Durkheim, who speak about religion
in terms of experiences of the sacred, I trace the subsistence of these
themes.
The seventh chapter, “Guilty as Charged, My Lords and Ladies?”,
builds a case for the charge I made in the earlier chapter that the secular
world is a secularised religious world. (These are the twain, which the
title of the earlier chapter speaks of.) It argues that the question ‘who
is a Brahmin?’ presupposes a society where the ‘caste’ system exists, in
exactly the same way ‘who is a religious person?’ makes sense within a
culture where religion exists. Thus, we are acquainted with those who
speak of atheistic religiosity. The chapter ends by showing how some
anthropological facts are merely secularised claims from the Bible.
Taken together, these seven chapters argue the theme that the belief
about the universality of religion is a theological idea, and that its per-
sistence indexes the secularisation of religious themes.
 AT THE END OF A JOURNEY 451

In the next four chapters, I try to make sense of this process of secu-
larisation. Now, the manifest theme is what was latent hitherto: why,
then, have reputed thinkers in the West not seen what they have been
doing? Answering this question requires that one studies what religion
is. To do so, it appears, we need to begin with a definition of the concept
of religion.
“A Human Tragedy or the Divine Retribution?”, the eighth chapter,
tackles this issue. It shows that we need not define the concept of reli-
gion at this stage, but merely accept constraints on the way we use the
word ‘religion’. Thus, we restrict the reference of the concept of relig-
ion. Our object of study is religion, not its concept.
“Blessed are Those Who Seek …” gives a preliminary characterisa-
tion of religion. It does so by building upon the results of the earlier
chapters. The ninth chapter conceptually reproduces the journey of the
previous ones in order to say what religion could be. The question, of
course, is whether we know we are studying religion and not some
other object. The answers to this question are the adequacy tests: does
the characterisation capture the different intuitions about religion and
the several descriptions of religion? What is faith? What is its relation to
doctrines? What is religious experience? What is worship? Because we
can answer these questions without ad hoc modifications of the hypoth-
esis, one can show that religion is the object of study. My hypothesis
also makes sense of the questions about the meaning of life and the
possibility of atheistic religiosity.
“Imagine, There is no Religion…”, the obvious allusion to the fa-
mous song, is the tenth chapter. It shows that a great deal of imagi-
nation is not necessary to do so. There are cultures without religions,
because certain necessary conditions required for their existence and
propagation are systematically absent. By arguing that studying religion
as religion forces us to do theology, it shows that we could try to investi-
gate religion as worldview. Religion may be more than a worldview, but
it is also a worldview. This shift in concepts tells us why it is interesting
to ask the question whether religion is a cultural universal. If it is not,
then cultures and individuals exist who do not need worldviews to go-
about in the world. The argument tries to establish that India is one
such culture.
“Prolegomena to a Comparative Science of Cultures” tries to take
the first step in making sense of the possibility that cultures exist with-
out worldviews. This chapter shows why the West believes in the uni-
versality of religion. Both the themes come together here: it is in the na-
ture of religion to generate the belief that religion is a cultural universal.
This chapter shows how religion has been a constitutive element of the
West, and suggests how to thematise cultural differences.
The eleventh chapter conceptually reproduces the previous chapters.
It does so without modifying the hypotheses in an ad hoc manner.
452 “THE HEATHEN IN HIS BLINDNESS”

12.2. ABOUT THE ARGUMENT

In a way, one could also describe the entire argument of the book in the
following way. A culture, the West, believes that all cultures are consti-
tuted (partially) by religion; it further believes that individuals and cul-
tures require worldviews to orient and navigate themselves in the world.
These beliefs are those of a culture and I show that they partially consti-
tute the West. To show this, I specify how cultures differ from each other.
Relating learning processes to cultural differences help us here.
What is the epistemic status of my proposal and the arguments that
have brought us so far?
As I have been at pains to emphasise throughout, this essay does not
pretend to provide a theory about religion. It is the first phase in such a
process. What you have on your hands is a partial description of a peo-
ple and their culture as provided by someone from another culture.
Despite this, the description is not mere ‘ethno-graphy’. Nor does it
merely plead the case that people from different cultures could provide
different partial descriptions of the world. It does more; better put, it is
forced to do more.
The essay shows that the belief in the universality of religion is false.
Because this belief is pervasive in the common sense of the West and
among intelligentsia in cultures other than the West, it is not enough
that I appeal to pluralism in descriptions and rest content with it. More
is required on my part. That ‘more’ is simply this: provide you with
good reasons, why my description is more acceptable than the received
wisdom of the last three hundred years. These reasons, quite evidently,
are meta-theoretical arguments.

Constraints on a Description

My proposals are cognitively productive. Many, many new problems

have come to the fore; solution to each problem has generated newer
questions. If science is a problem-solving activity, surely, my approach
is scientific.
The competitor theories are both barren and unproductive. Hume’s
‘theory’ from the mid-eighteenth century and the Euhemerian ‘theory’
antedating the birth of Christ are still in vogue today. That is to say,
more than two hundred years of theoretical and empirical enquiry has
not gone beyond the question: ‘why does religion exist in all cultures?’
Because it is ‘God-given’ says one camp; because it is ‘man-made’ says
the other. The question is the same, and the answers do not generate
any new problems for enquiry. One runs where one is standing, which
is a healthy exercise; but it does not bring us far.
 AT THE END OF A JOURNEY 453

One could also judge scientific theories in terms of their explanatory

power. Should one use this criterion, the essay does not disappoint. It
is able to bring together beliefs about religion with the nature of the
object. It connects these with the experience of ‘self’ and the discussion
about personhood, relates social organisations to ritual, etc. in a tightly
interlinked and a minimal number of hypotheses. Consequently, the
hypotheses are promising; they indicate how theory formation should
proceed. One cannot say the same of other ‘theories’ or ethnographic
descriptions.
Thus, one could take up each philosophy of science and show that
this essay is a more promising candidate than the others are. To do so
would be irrelevant to my purpose. It is irrelevant not only because I
have no theory, but also because of the status of my description and the
context of the dialogue. I shall begin with the former first.

Status of a Description

History of natural sciences has taught us that many scientific theories,

which we believed were true, have turned out to be false. Consequently,
it would be nothing short of a miracle if all my claims turn out to be
true. Even though it is not obvious to me now, and I believe that my
claims are true, the probability is high that many/some of them are not.
Because of this, it is important to know how treat my claims.
Though contested, an interesting distinction in the philosophy of
sciences ties our theories to two contexts: the context of discovery and
the context of justification. The former broadly picks out the relevant
context(s), socio-psychological ones, of the origin of a theory; the latter
refers to the relevant epistemic context(s) of theory appraisal. Like all
interesting distinctions, it draws our attention to different problems:
how does a theory come into being? Why accept it at all? One does not
have to endorse a rigid distinction between these two contexts (discov-
ery and justification) in order to appreciate that the scientific theories
confront us with different kinds of problems.
One such, applicable to the phase of theory-formation my proposal
is in, is about the context of acceptance. The ideas in this essay require
further exploration and development before it can become a theory.
Such explorations involve a collective effort. The latter presupposes
that you take these proposals as candidates for testing and elaborating.
However, how can I persuade you to take my claims seriously?
One strategy would draw attention to the counterintuitive character
of my stance. However, every eccentric argument is also counterintui-
tive. The second strategy would show that, if true, the proposal has
immense and important consequences. Many other claims can do the
same: things might disappear when no one is looking; we are really ro-
454 “THE HEATHEN IN HIS BLINDNESS”

bots programmed by Martians; our memories are false; we are figments

of a dream…Each one of these, if true, has immense and important
consequences. Nevertheless, we do not take them seriously, do we? The
third strategy would demonstrate the truth of my hypotheses. That is
precisely what building a theory would enable us to do: test the truth
of a theory.
The only way is to combine all these three strategies (suitably di-
luted) and compare my proposal with those that exist in the market-
place. I have tried to do this. My proposal could be true (there are some
indications); it appears to be cognitively productive and heuristically
fertile; it promises to deliver us an empirically testable theory. In each
of these aspects, it fares better than its rivals do. Therefore, shall we try
to see what this will give us?
Maximally, in other words, I can extend an invitation. Present a
reasonable case for the interesting nature of the endeavour. More, I
cannot.
Therefore, let me bring the case to a completion. I have been bat-
tling constantly not against a well-articulated theory or even a set of
them, but against a deeply entrenched commonsense idea, which is a
hydra-headed monster. While true of a culture whose commonsense it
is, it has also prevented the emergence of an understanding and appreci-
ation of other cultures.
The previous statement, however, is controversial for more reasons
than one. In the last and concluding section of the book, I want to look
at one such reason. In fact, it takes the form of a challenge issued by
some versions of contemporary anthropology. My previous paragraph,
they might suggest, runs directly into…

12.3. EPISTEMIC QUESTIONS

Questions: how could we ever describe the other? How could one ever
break out of one’s conceptual framework to describe the ‘otherness’ of
the other? Could one describe the other without using one’s own cat-
egories?
Let me begin with a ‘naïve’ formulation of the convictions behind
these questions. Our theories about the world and its concepts deter-
mine our experiences of the world. Consequently, in describing the
otherness of the other, we use our categories. Even if we use the cat-
egories of the other, the problem of translation guarantees us that we
end up describing a variant of our experience of the world. Hence, it is
not possible to describe the other. This is an epistemic dilemma for all
cultures: they cannot describe the otherness of the other. The other is
beyond language.
 AT THE END OF A JOURNEY 455

A Simple Formulation

Let us look at a simplified version of the naive formulation first: we

project our categories upon other cultures. Thus, what we describe as
the other is merely a variant of ourselves.
This is hardly a problem. Assume that the only way we could ever
begin describing the other is by projecting our own categories. In that
case, let members from other cultures project their categories upon the
social world as well so that we have multiple descriptions. When we
have such multiple descriptions, we can ask the Kantian question: how
should the social world be so that it allows multiple descriptions? The
answer to this question will be the beginning of a comparative science
of cultures. It is comparative in the sense that it begins – from its very
inception – by taking multiple descriptions as the facts it must account
for.
In my book, I have tried to exhibit what the ‘projection’ actually
consists of. Here, I have tried to identify two phases. In the first, there is
a secularisation of theological themes and this generates some facts. In
the second and subsequent phase, meta-level reflections develop theo-
ries, which retain the facts of theology and try to explain them. That is to
say, one does not begin by projecting some concept of religion. Instead,
one generalises themes, generates facts, and accounts for them.
Theology was the first theory of religion. Secular theories trans-
formed theological facts into their explananda. These facts are low-level
themes from theology: for instance, all cultures have religion. In other
words, the European intellectuals did not project their own categories
in the process of understanding other religions.
My opponent might not agree that my portrayal of history is veridi-
cal. However, that does not matter. The dispute is not any more about
the epistemic possibilities of human beings. Instead, it takes on an em-
pirical character.
The same conclusion holds with respect to the more general ques-
tions as well. I will argue that the convictions supporting them are not
epistemic but empirical in nature.

On Equivocation and Suppression

Consider the two cultures I have talked about: India and the West.
Because we are talking about the ‘other’ in anthropological terms, it
means that (a) Indian culture is the other of the West; (b) The West is
the other of the Indian culture. Let us examine the claim that it is im-
possible to describe the otherness of the other.
456 “THE HEATHEN IN HIS BLINDNESS”

If we grant that cultures experience the world differently and that

their descriptions reflect this difference, it follows that: (c) the other-
ness of India, as the westerners experience it, depends on the western
culture; (d) the otherness of the West, as the Indians experience it, de-
pends on the Indian culture. Therefore, it follows: if these cultures are
different, so are their experiences of each other. Hence, one cannot logi-
cally infer that it is impossible to describe the otherness. It is a matter of
empirical research. Into what? Into how each of these cultures succeed
or fail in describing the otherness of the other culture. In other words, it
is a logical fallacy to claim that one could never describe the otherness:
may be one can; may be one cannot.
Of course, one could challenge the truth-value of the assumptions
I have made. It might be the case that cultures do not experience the
world differently; it might also be the case that their descriptions do
not reflect their experiences. Again, this is an empirical issue about two
cultures, not an epistemic point about human beings.
Suppose that one is willing to grant the truth-value of the above
premises, and still insist that it is impossible to describe the otherness
in language. We need a further premise to argue the epistemic impos-
sibility: each culture is the other in exactly the same way. This too is an
empirical premise. After all, cultures could be the others of each other
in different ways. To argue that this is not the case requires recourse to
language. That is, one has to argue that the difference between cultures
is of the same kind. In that case, one cannot any more argue that the
otherness is not expressible in language. Alternately, the assumption
about the otherness is of uncertain truth-value: the ‘unsayable’ other-
ness of the other may or may not distinguish cultures from each other.
Perhaps, it is typical of one specific culture that the ‘otherness’ of the
others disappears from its descriptions of cultures.
Given the argument of my book, the last point requires elaboration.
Western culture has brought forth anthropology and ethnography, as
we know them both. This fact makes the empirical premise transparent.
Each culture (as the West has described them) is the other (of the western
culture) in exactly the same way. What is the ‘otherness’ in the Western
description? It is merely ‘anotherness’. That is, the western description
has effaced the otherness. It has transformed the other into another – a
variant of self. This means that the Indian, the African, etc. cultures – as
the West has described them – is the ‘other’ of each and of the West in
exactly the same way.
The western cultural descriptions of both itself and other cultures
make each one of them the other in the same way. The other of each
is merely another – this is how the West has described the world. This
situation gives raise to the feeling that the otherness has disappeared
(which it indeed has) from the western descriptions.
 AT THE END OF A JOURNEY 457

In other words, one has to assume that each culture experiences

the other the way the West describes (and experiences) the other. Now
the empirical nature of this assumption is more transparent: one has to
assume that the way the West experiences and describes itself and the
other is the way all cultures experience themselves and others. This as-
sumption could be true, but it is a matter for empirical demonstration.
For the same reason, it could be false as well.

From a Dilemma to a Problem

Let me reformulate the above paragraphs very succinctly: we do have

an epistemic dilemma of the ‘other’ on our hands, if the West is the
Cosmos of all cultures and if cultures do not differ from each other in
different ways but only in the way the West imagines it to be the case.
However, if the West is but one culture in the universe of cultures; if it
is typical to the way in which the former has looked at itself and the
others; then it is not a dilemma at all.
In fact, that is how I have tried to make sense of the western culture:
why does the ‘otherness’ disappear from the western descriptions of
other cultures? Why does everyone shine in the splendour of mono-
chromatic dullness? I have answered these problems partially but not
by blaming the big bad wolf, viz. religion. After all, it is my argument that
religion has produced both western culture and science. What I have
tried to do is something other than apportion blame. I have argued that
the otherness of the western culture, when viewed against the background
of mine, lies in its transformation of the other into another.
There are two independent tasks here. First, there is the task of pro-
viding a description of the mechanism of transforming the other into
another. Subsequent to this, one has to argue that this constitutes the
otherness of the western culture.
With respect to the former, my description is subject to multiple
constraints: accessibility, intelligibility, and objectivity (see #12.2).
Because I am describing the western culture, my description must be
accessible to the members of this culture; it must make their experience
of the world intelligible. However, in order to prevent the description
from becoming ad hoc, it must be possible for me to bring together
hitherto unconnected phenomena, pose new problems, be falsifiable,
etc. That is, my description must satisfy the multiple conditions of ra-
tionality and scientificity. Such a description is hypothetical – as all our
theories about fragments of the world are. This is no weakness but an
epistemic strength. Regarding the second task, the situation is more
complicated. With respect to the theme of the book, this is a meta-level
question about my experience of the world. The description of the West
is located within my experiential world. The object-level description
458 “THE HEATHEN IN HIS BLINDNESS”

suggests that the West has the truth about the world and that it has the
view of the world. From the meta-level (or from my experiential world),
this description has the following import: this is typical of the western
culture; it is the western way of going-about in the world and not mine.
In other words, I have merely located my description of the western cul-
ture in an experiential context. However, the task involves an explica-
tion of the experiential context as well. Completion of this task requires
further theorising. That is, one has to describe the Indian culture as
that culture sees itself. This is a task for the future; the flag-waving with
respect to ritual in the previous chapter hints in a possible direction.
The choice for the title of the eleventh chapter is motivated on these
grounds. What we need today is some kind of a theory about cultural
differences. However, the prerequisite is that we break the shackles of a
descriptive straightjacket, which is centuries old.
In any case, what appeared as an epistemic dilemma is not destruc-
tive because it is actually a combination of two questions, each applica-
ble only to one level. The first is an object-level question: how can one
describe the other? The second is a meta-level question: how to accom-
modate such descriptions in one’s experiential world?
The answer to the first question is obvious. One describes the other
in such a way that the other recognises the description of his own world.
One’s description is constrained here by different notions of rationality,
scientificity, and objectivity. This is theory generation under constraints
and it is never a finished job. Such a description is hypothetical; it is
partial; it merely describes one kind of difference – and even that at a
very high level of abstraction. In other words, it exhibits the dynamic
of scientific theorising. All scientific theories face analogous problems.
How could we ever falsify a theory, when the facts at our disposal are
theory-laden? How could we ever generate an alternate theory, when
imprisoned by the received theory? In the case of science of cultures,
the job is easier and less mysterious. There are different cultures and,
therefore, different partial descriptions of self and other are possible.
Hence, one can generate different theories. Theories could compete
with each other, whatever the epistemic status of the facts might be.
Regarding the second question, the answer emphasises differences.
As human beings, we have been living with all kinds of differences for
centuries long. No culture imprisons anyone.

A Note

What have I done in this book then? I hope to have shown why the exist-
ence question of religion is cognitively interesting. It is not a definition-
al question. It requires developing a theory about religion, culture, and
their mutual interrelationship. Conceiving it in this fashion has enabled
 AT THE END OF A JOURNEY 459

me to raise many interesting problems for enquiry. I do not know the

extent to which I have persuaded you to take my ideas seriously; at
least I hope to have made plausible why I think that a serious discus-
sion about this issue will require a rethinking of the entire problematic.
The ideas proposed in this essay could turn out to be wrong, but that
is hardly the problem. There is wrong and there is wrong. It is better to
be wrong in an interesting way than to recycle and peddle barren ideas
that everyone wrongly believes to be right.
With these remarks, I have reached the end of this essay. Even
though the journey – in which this particular book has the position of
a resting place – is far from complete, the feeling is that one has at least
come some way. Perhaps, this is the best one could say about any essay,
any journey, and not merely this particular one.