Greek philosophy Adluri approaches ancient Greek philosophy, especially
Parmenides and
Plato, as a meditation on mortal existence rather than on timeless metaphysics. In his book
Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy: Return from Transcendence, he draws on
Heidegger,
Schürmann,
Nietzsche,
Arendt and related twentieth-century critiques of metaphysical abstraction to read Parmenides' poetry as a reflection on the mortal
thumos, bound to birth and death, as it aspires to transcendence but ultimately must return to finite, “radically individual” existence. Adluri argues that Socratic mortality and singularity overshadow purely metaphysical interpretations of the soul's ascent, challenging
Derridean deconstruction and emphasizing the embodied, finite human at the center of Greek thought.
Indology Much of Adluri's work has focused on textual criticism of the
Mahābhārata, arguing for a reading of the text that focuses on its literary, philosophical, and spiritual integrity as opposed to
Orientalist approaches that view it primarily as a disjointed or incomplete historical record. He argues that German scholarship in particular takes a Eurocentric approach to evaluating ancient Indian texts. He brings evidence for latent Protestant biases in Western scholarship, arguing that much of this work fails to understand the nature of Indian knowledge systems. Adluri argues that the apparent scientific objectivity of much modern scholarship on ancient Indian texts veils structural biases.
Reception Adluri's criticism of what he calls "German Indology" has elicited mixed responses. The supervisory committee for his PhD thesis at the University of Marburg initially did not approve his dissertation defense, which was highly critical of the German tradition of Indology and linked it to
Nazism. After protest by Adluri, the university reconstituted the committee without any German Indologists and he was conferred a PhD despite criticisms of the reconstitution by his supervisor, Michael Hahn. In 2011, Hans Harder, Angelika Malinar and Thomas Oberlies, published an editorial for
Zeitschrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien on combating "discrimination, racism and sexism", where they argued that Adluri engaged in polemics against multiple German scholars under the justification of probing the ideological orientations of their scholarship. Others, such
Eric Kurlander and Nicholas A. Germana praised the book, with Garry W. Trompf praising it as an "extraordinary work". == Selected works ==