6 ideas
Ramanujan's father was a mathematician and astronomer who corresponded with Western scientists, yet he also practised astrology and cast horoscopes, apparently untroubled by the contradiction. To his modernising son this looked like inconsistency. The essay reframes it: each practice belonged to its own context, and the father felt no need for a single system that governed both.
Context-free rules claim to apply universally, whoever is involved and whenever it happens, as in 'thou shalt not kill.' Context-sensitive rules make what is right depend on who is acting, toward whom, where and when. Ramanujan proposes that cultures differ in which kind they idealise, and that traditional Indian culture leans strongly toward the context-sensitive.
Manu's lawbooks assign different duties and punishments by caste, stage of life and circumstance, so the same act carries different weight for a Brahmin and a Shudra. Even the exceptions are codified: apad-dharma sets out the conduct permitted in emergencies.
Calling Indians hypocritical or illogical assumes that context-free universality is the standard of coherent thought. Seen through a context-sensitive grammar, the same behaviour is consistent, because each rule is correctly applied within its own domain. The charge of contradiction tells you about the observer's ideal as much as about the observed.
Ramanujan argues that modernity is partly a movement from context-sensitive toward context-free ideals, such as universal law, equality before the law and scientific generality. Each kind of culture also carries its opposite as a counter-movement. In India, bhakti devotion and renunciation reject caste and context, while context-free societies develop their own situational exceptions.
The preference for context appears beyond ethics as well. In medicine, Ayurveda matches treatment to a person's constitution, place and season. Tamil poetics (akam/puram) uses landscapes that code emotions, and Indian narrative frames stories within stories so that each tale's meaning depends on the frame that surrounds it.