India, June 7 -- A question I have been asked often is why, in my recent book Echoes of Eternity: A Journey Through Indian Thought from the Rigveda to the Present, which is a compendium of the remarkable wisdom of our land over the last eight thousand years, I chose to include only J. Krishnamurti and Osho among India's modern philosophers.

The question is valid, and others could have made different choices. However, my yardstick was to select those-and it was impossible to include all-who I felt made an original contribution to Indian philosophy. Krishnamurti and Osho, to my mind, made the mark.

J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was born into a Telugu Brahmin family. His father worked for the Theosophical Society, and when the family moved t...