ABSTRACT
G. R. Malkani worked under the colonial milieu by negotiating his own indigenous tradition of philosophical speculation with those of the West. By freeing the central doctrine of Advaita Vedānta from the classical texts, he reinvented it in terms of the nature of ultimate Reality which for Hegel is the Absolute and for Śaṅkara the Brahman. Throughout his writings Malkani explicates and defends the non-duality of Brahman by discussing (a) the relation between the one (Absolute/Brahman) and the many (Jagat); (b) the relationship between the Absolute consciousness (Brahman) and the individual consciousness (jīva); and (c) the relationship between truth and error. These issues are mapped on the Hegelian notion of the “Absolute” which Malkani appropriates via British Neo-Hegelianism. Whether this appropriation leads to Hegelianization of Advaita Vedānta or to the Vedāntization of Hegel—both in terms of their terminology and the structure and operation of concepts—remains an open question.
