Richard De Smet

Richard De Smet (16 April 1916 – 2 March 1997) was a Belgian Jesuit priest, and missionary in India.

As Indologist he became a renowned Sankara specialist.

Born at Montignies-sur-Sambre, near Charleroi in Belgium, he came to India as a young Jesuit student of theology in 1946.

Upon completion of his theological studies, he studied Sanskrit in Calcutta under Georges Dandoy, Pierre Fallon and Robert Antoine, all members of the so-called "Calcutta School" of Jesuit Indologists.

Provoked by a talk by Dr S. Radhakrishnan at a meeting of the Indian Philosophical Congress at Calcutta in 1950, where Radhakrishnan claimed that Sankara was a purely rational philosopher, De Smet decided to show that he was, instead, a srutivadin, a theologian who subordinated reason to the revealed (apauruṣeyā) scripture.

De Smet went on to do his doctorate on The Theological Method of Samkara, completing it at the Gregorian University, Rome, in 1953.

Though he never got round to publishing this thesis, it became famous among Indologists and there are hundreds of copies in circulation.

Returning to India in March 1954, De Smet began to teach at the newly opened centre for philosophical studies of the Jesuits at De Nobili College, Pune.

At first he was assigned courses traditional in Roman Catholic seminaries (which he taught in Latin, also composing Guidelines for students): Introduction to Philosophy + Minor Logic; General Metaphysics: Rational Theology (which he subtitled Brahma Jijnasa), Special Questions of Metaphysics.

But he also introduced a course on Samkhya, and began inserting "large doses of Indian philosophy" into the traditional treatises.

In the meantime, right from 1954 De Smet began attending various meetings of Indologists and Indian Philosophers: the Indian Philosophical Congress, the Poona Philosophy Association, the Bombay Philosophy Union, the newly formed Indian Philosophical Association.

After an initially suspicious reception (a Dr Chubb roundly accused him of excessive missionary zeal at the Kandy session of the Indian Philosophical Congress in 1954), his competence and self-possession won the day and he soon found himself being invited to lecture or give courses at universities and colleges across the country.

He was also asked to collaborate with the Marathi Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Marathi Tattvajnana Mahakosa) project in Pune, and went on to become the most prolific contributor with a total of 68 articles.

Besides these, he wrote some 128 entries for Verbo: Enciclopedia Luso-Brasileira de Cultura, of which some 47 are still to be found in the latest edition, and 2 entries for the Telugu Encyclopedia.

De Smet engaged not only in dialogue not only with academics and scholars but also with religious people.

He was a frequent invitee to the Sivananda Ashram at Rishikesh, where he would lecture on Sankara and other topics, but also, on request, about Jesus and Christianity.

He visited the Ramakrishna missions in various parts of the country, and also the Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry.

He had contacts with the Caitanya Vaisnava movement at Vrindavan.

Invited by the Sikhs to the four hundredth anniversary celebrations of their founder, he spoke about Guru Nanak and Jesus Christ.

Despite not being an expert in Islam, he found himself being invited also by Muslims of the Jamia Millia University in Delhi.

He spoke often to the Jains of Pune and wrote for their The Voice of Ahinsa.

He participated in the pro-dialogue meetings organized by Swami Abhishiktananda (the French Benedictine monk Dom Henri Le Saux) under the patronage of the Swiss Ambassador, J.-A.

Cuttat.

He was invited for lectures on Hinduism to the Kurisumala Ashram founded by Francis Acharya (Fr Francis Mahieu) at Vagamon, Kerala.

He also engaged willingly with Christians of other denominations, teaching in their universities and seminaries, participating in their conferences, meetings and seminars, and even giving retreats to staff and students, far before the word ecumenism became popular in the Catholic Church.

De Smet will be remembered for two major contributions to Indological scholarship.

The first was his fresh interpretation of Sankara as a non-dualist realist rather than a world-denying illusionist.

This interpretation hinged on his discovery, or rather reinforcement of Olivier Lacombe's discovery, of the fact that Sankara used analogical predication in expounding the meaning of the mahāvākyas (great sentences) of the Upanisads such as Tat-tvam-asi and Satyam Jnanam Anantam Brahma.

The world is neither atyanta Sat like Brahman, nor is it atyanta Asat like the son of a barren woman.

It is, instead, a reality that is completely and ontologically dependent on Brahman.

And once the notion of creation is purified of anthropomorphism, it is possible to speak of Brahman as creator and cause of the world, without detriment to its oneness, immutability, perfection and freedom.

The second was his demonstration that, given the original meaning of 'person' which was coined by Christian theologians to speak precisely of the divine mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation, the supreme Brahman (Nirguna Brahman), far from being impersonal, is indeed personal in the highest and supreme sense of the term.

By 1968, he was able to open a special section for Indian Studies in his institute, by now renamed Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth (JDV).

Over the years 1968–75, he composed his Guidelines in Indian Philosophy, cyclostyled notes for students beginning with the Ancient Indian Vedic period and going up to Sankara.

Richard De Smet died in Brussels, Belgium on 2 March 1997.

Julius J. Lipner, professor at Cambridge, student and friend of De Smet, called him one of the "unsung pioneers" of the interpretation of Indian thought, and his death "the end of an era in the annals of Indological scholarship in India," the era of "the foreign missionary scholar who made India a home over many years, loved its peoples and its cultures, empathetically studied rich strands of its religious inheritance, and sought in a spirit of enlightened appreciation to enter into a dialogue at depth."

Bradley J. Malkovsky calls him "one of the twentieth century's giants in Hindu-Christian dialogue" and "one of the foremost authorities in the twentieth century on the Hindu theologian Samkara."

Early in his career, De Smet made the option to meet requests arising from his dialogical activity inside India rather than produce pieces of Indological research.

He also decided to give preference to the requests of Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Muslims, etc. over those of Christians.

As a consequence, most of his production consisted of occasional pieces in a wide variety of relatively inaccessible Indian publications.