(a) How does the Vedantic view of Religious Pluralism address the conflicting truth claims of different faiths ? Answer with…

(a) Vedantic pluralism and Vivekananda

Vedanta addresses conflicting truth claims by separating the ultimate from the empirical. In Advaita, Brahman is one non-dual reality, and the individual self is identical with it; religions differ in names, forms, rituals, deities, and institutions, but point to the same ground. Vivekananda’s Universal Religion is not a new dogma, but the recognition that every genuine religion aims at realizing divinity in the self. He distinguishes the essential core—spiritual realization, ethics, devotion, knowledge, selfless action—from non-essential accretions such as ritualism, caste prejudice, sectarian exclusivism, and institutional power. Conflicting claims are handled through ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti: one truth is spoken of in many ways. The four Yogas—karma, bhakti, jnana, raja—are not rival systems but complementary paths adapted to temperaments. This makes Vivekananda’s pluralism ontological rather than merely tolerant: if all souls are Atman, no faith can monopolize salvation. He rejects proselytization and religious imperialism, urging respect for all religions as expressions of the same divine reality. A difficulty is that historical and moral conflicts may be reduced to provisional differences, but the view still provides a Vedantic basis for coexistence.

(b) Nyāya proofs for the existence of God

Udayana’s Nyāyakusumāñjali gives eight proofs for Īśvara, the first five being: from the world as effect (kāryāt), from its combination/arrangement (āyojanāt), from its support and destruction (dhṛtyādeḥ), from traditional arts and word-meanings (padāt), and from the authoritativeness of the Veda (pratyayataḥ). The first argues that the world is an effect and needs an efficient cause; the second that ordered combination cannot arise from inert matter; the third that continued existence and dissolution need a conscious sustainer; the fourth that the arts and conventional meanings of words need an original teacher; and the fifth that the validity of the Veda points to an omniscient author. Udayana infers Īśvara as nimitta-kāraṇa: the world's order and existence are not explicable by unconscious pradhāna or by atoms acting on their own. Pradhāna lacks intention, knowledge, and will, so it cannot produce, arrange, maintain, dissolve, or cognize the world. Related Nyāya discussions of adṛṣṭa and śabda support the same conclusion, and Udayana's list adds three more: from śruti (scripture's testimony to a creator), from vākya (Vedic sentences, like all sentences, imply a speaker), and from saṅkhyāviśeṣa (the dyad magnitude of the first compounds arises from the number two, which needs the relating cognition, apekṣā-buddhi, of a conscious being at creation). The proofs were contested by Mīmāṃsakas (the Veda is authorless), Buddhists such as Ratnakīrti (the world is not shown to be an effect of one agent) and Cārvākas, and Nyāya answered each objection. Thus God is inferred from experience and logic, not merely revealed; this makes Nyāya a theistic rationalism, not a mere article of faith.

(c) The Gītā on immortality and rebirth

In the Gita, rebirth (dehāntara-prāpti) is the change of bodies (2.13, 2.22), while the self is avināśi, unborn, indestructible, and eternal (2.20-25). Immortality is logically prior to rebirth: if the self perishes with the body, there is no subject to migrate, and Carvaka denial of the soul thus denies transmigration. But immortality alone is not sufficient. The Gita ties rebirth to karma, desire, and ignorance; the bound jiva transmigrates according to karma, while the liberated sage (sthitaprajña, brahmabhūta) remains immortal but does not return to birth (8.15–16, 15.6). Thus immortality is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Buddhism’s anātmavada shows that some traditions posit rebirth without a permanent soul, but within Gita’s metaphysics, rebirth presupposes an enduring atman plus karmic bondage. The Gita therefore separates survival from transmigration: the soul’s permanence makes rebirth possible; karma makes it actual. This also answers the objection that an immortal soul might simply persist without changing bodies: persistence is not the same as saṃsāric return. Hence the Gita’s rebirth is not mere survival but morally conditioned renewal, and immortality is its metaphysical precondition.