Georges Dandoy

Georges Dandoy (5 February 1882 in Hemptinne, Namur, Belgium – 11 June 1962 in Kolkata, India) was a Belgian Jesuit priest, missionary in India, theologian and Indologist. He is included in the so-called ‘Calcutta School of Indology’ (sometimes also known as the ‘Bengal School’).

After a year of philosophical studies at Namur (1904–1905), he was sent to Stonyhurst, England to complete his philosophy (1905–1907), and to begin studying Sanskrit at Oxford University (1907–1909). Sent to Kolkata, he began teaching at St Xavier’s College (1909–1912) before beginning his theological studies at St Mary’s, Kurseong, near Darjeeling (1912–1916). He was ordained priest in November 1914.

His theological thinking was influenced by William Wallace SJ, a former Anglican priest who had become a Roman Catholic following his study of Hinduism. Dandoy was, above all, very close to the missiology of Pierre Charles, who encouraged an approach that was both respectful of the religions and open to the cultures of the East. After some years of teaching theology at Kurseong (1917–1922), Dandoy returned to Kolkata where he passed the rest of his life. While in Kurseong, in 1919, he published An Essay in the Doctrine of the Unreality of the World in the Advaita. In 1932 he published L'ontologie du Vedanta: Essai sur l'acosmisme de l'Advaita; Jacques Maritain and Olivier Lacombe both contributed commentaries at the end of the work.

While being rector of a house of formation, he devoted himself totally to research and wrote articles and books in the field of the encounter between Catholic theology and Hinduism. With Pierre Johanns he founded and edited the monthly The Light of the East.

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