Recriação conceitual e pós-colonialidade: “ciência” e “religião” nas obras do escritor indiano Amitav Ghosh

Abstract

This study analyzes the appropriations of Western notions of science and religion by the Indian writer in English Amitav Ghosh, in his respective works The Calcutta Chromosome and The Circle of Reason, through dialogues, tensions, and negotiations between these notions and religious and philosophical paradigms of the Indian civilization, characterized by its inclusive and dialogical characteristics. These paradigms form an existential matrix that crosses generations and even influences contemporary India. To this end, this work focuses on fictional literature as a critical tool for the discussion on science and religion, since fiction provides contextualization for things/beings, that is, the comprehention of these in their entirety. With this, we also seek to provide a historical, linguistic, literary, scientific, philosophical and religious context in order to better understand some of Amitav Ghosh‘s choices, namely the English language, the novel as literary genre, the themes of tropical medicine and phrenology and the appropriation of the doctrine of transmigration of the soul (saṃsāra), the law of karma and the theory of guṇas discussed in sources such as the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad-gītā. As tools of analysis, we use especially postcolonial theories of subalternity, unitarian traditions of Hindu philosophy, nonfictional works of the author himself and the works of the most important literary critics of Ghosh‘s work. With literary analysis we show that Ghosh, besides using the inclusivist Indian tradition, demonstrates the superiority of ―spiritual domain‖ over the ―material domain‖ (concepts coined by Partha Chatterjee) and also rehabilitates the notion of an exclusionary Western rationality transforming it into an enlightening and liberating reason.