Vivekananda’s Views on Christianity and Islam

Vivekananda was the Hindu revivalist of nineteenth century who preached the message of equality of all religions. In his lectures, he guided people to assimilation of religions and not their destruction. He emphasized on peace and harmony of religions that could only be attained through tolerance. This paper explores his claim of equality of religions from his writings regarding two religions - Christianity and Islam. Critical approach is utilized to identify the fact that either he is equating all religions or he is trying to submerge the non-Hindu religions in his philosophy of neo-Vedanta. Apparently, the tension between these two positions makes his theory of pluralism suspicious. In other words, his popular image of being a pioneer of religious pluralism needs to be reassesses by studying his writings and presentation of the beliefs, rituals, and practices of other religions, as well as, his practical interactions with the followers of different religions during his life. In this connection, it is important to explore how he perceives and depicts the personalities of Jesus Christ and Muhammad.

Firdawsis Sikandar: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study

This hermeneutic phenomenological study explored leadership by means of assessing the lived experiences of both Firdawsi and Sikandar as given in the Shahnamah. The premise of the study was that leadership is not a fixed or static phenomenon and that leadership study needs to be humanized. Leaders cannot be categorized into the good/bad model. The study focused on two diverse ideas or paradigms as 1) theories of leadership content (what we include or exclude within the leadership framework i.e. all leadership theories/models, effective or destructive) and 2) theories of leadership affect (how historians, writers and individuals view leaders) as these two have been the subjects of investigation in most leadership studies. The author, Firdawsi, wrote about a very well-known and dynamic historic leader, Sikandar, who played a vital role in reshaping not only the history of Persia, but the world. With his conquest of Persia, Sikandar breached the East-West divide.. This study will focus on the story of Sikandar. Though comparisons with the historical Sikandar will be used from time to time, this study is focused on the story of Sikandar from the Persian perspective, namely Firdawsi’s retelling of the story in the Shahnama, a well-known Persian epic which is a lengthy narrative poem. The Shahnama is an epic narrative. Narrative is thus used to transition from ‘knowing into telling’ while the epic narrative of the Shahnamah depicts the exploits of people in high-ranking positions such as kings who are regarded as leaders. Thus in this case five emerging phenomena or themes of Sikandar’s descriptive qualities of leadership according to Firdawsi’s text came to the forefront namely the phenomena of fear, hubris, avarice, valour and magnanimity. Firdawsi’s characteristics of writing also emerged which incorporates his lifeworld existentials namely spatiality, corporeality, temporality and rationality, which formed the reflective process, were also incorporated as the essence of the hermeneutic phenomenological study. Thus Firdawsi’s characteristics of writing about a leader and leadership in general became a focal point. Yet, it was important to fuse this to 21st century models of leadership and the two which could be used, were the narcissistic leadership model and the concept of transformational leadership. In closing, this dissertation reflects on the implications of this leadership study.