ABSTRACT
The essay surveys different approaches to the question of truth and salvation/liberation in Hindu–Christian encounters, by focusing on a few representational figures who provide important signposts to mark the many approaches to this question. In surveying these approaches the article makes use of the classical threefold frameworks of exclusivism–inclusivism–pluralism and the jnana–karma–bhakti margas, and explores the several intersections and interactions within and between these categories, across the two faiths. For reasons of focus the essay concentrates on the late modern period—in which questions of truth and salvation were a persistent and often problematic aspect of Hindu–Christian relations. The essay is foregrounded in the recognition that colonialism, as well as the more “Christological” question of salvation through Christ, determined the contours and content of the different approaches to the question of truth and salvation vis-à-vis the other.
