Interpretation of Kabir, premodern and modern

Speaker: Prof. Jaroslav Strnad, senior fellow, Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic, he graduated with a degree in Hindi and History. He participated in compiling the first Hindi-Czech Dictionary (1998), The History of India (2003), Textbook of Sanskrit (latest ed. 2023) and “Triveni: Morphology and Syntax in Early Modern Languages of North India: A Reader” (2023). In 2013 he published “Morphology and Syntax of Old Hindi: Edition and Analysis of One Hundred Kabir vani Poems from Rajasthan”. He is currently engaged, together with Linda Hess, in an edition and English translation of Kadir pads from old Dadupanthi manuscripts

Chair: Shri Ashok Vajpeyi

Contemporart manuscripts interprets Kabir’s mystical experience as either non-theist (Nath-yogi view), or theist (Vaishnava bhakti interpretation), or philosophically monist. His mundane experience crystalized into his warnings (cetavanis), and attacks all types of orthodoxies, hypocrisy, false outward devotion, violence, egoism and greed. Was he a social reformer mobilizing against inhuman oppression and casteism? Did he try to induce harmony in the relations between Hindus and Muslims? He does not cease to attract interest in the modern world, albeit in a somewhat different way, than was the case of the Dadupanthis of the early 17th century. Each interpretation seems to highlight an aspect of his message that is relevant across time and space.

(Collaboration: The Raza Foundation)