Hijacking Sanskrit Away from Hindu Dharma

Introduction

This detailed post, which analyzes the work of Sheldon Pollock, Professor of South Asian Studies at Columbia University, is a sequel to the article in this space that exposed the Hinduphobia of his protege Ananya Vajpeyi, and her 'Breaking India' network. We recommend that you read that post here first, to understand the background to this post. We must subject to intense scrutiny, the actual positions and writings of influential people like Pollock, who only appear to be on the side of Dharma, in order to avoid falling into the trap of getting misled and digested. Readers will discover here that what is going on is nothing short of a brazen attempt to hijack Sanskrit away from Hindu dharma.


Additional Background on 'digestion'
'Digestion' is a term coined by Rajiv Malhotra and has been discussed in various threads on this forum. To understand the process of digestion (if you are not familiar with the concept), please refer to these threads on this forum, or better still, join the discussion forum (link at the end of this post).
Difference between Digestion and Conversion
Why are Hindus Celebrating the Digestion of Hinduism? - Part 1 and Part-2
Jesus in India and Digestion of Hinduism


Here is a video link from Rajiv Malhotra's site for his book Being Different, which deals with this subject of digestion.

Summary

After summarizing Rajiv Malhotra response to Ananya Vajpeyi's article in the Hindu and elaborating on the ecosystem that is nurturing and promoting Hinduphobic scholars, it is important for us to take a step back and refocus on the bigger picture, starting with her mentor, Sheldon Pollock, who is currently very influential as an 'Indophile' among intellectual circles both in India and abroad. More importantly, he is gaining huge financial backing from wealthy and influential but misguided Indians who believe very naively that he has Dharma's best interest at heart.


This post might be updated in multiple parts over time, owing to the fact that this expose is slowly but surely developing as more scholars begin to scrutinize Pollock's work seriously and share their findings. This blog is a detailed introduction to readers to make them aware of a clear and present danger to India's Sanskriti, and Hinduism due to this well-entrenched and well-funded cabal of Hinduphobic scholars.

Who is Sheldon Pollock?

(picture linked from http://www.columbia.edu)

Rajiv Malhotra started the discussion by noting that Pollock was someone potentially more dangerous than Wendy Doniger, Professor of History of Religions at University of Chicago or Michael Witzel, Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University, because while the latter two were discredited before they had made their way to Indian billionaires and their deep pockets, it was a different case with Pollock. Doniger's and Witzel's sphere of influence was limited to the Indian leftists but Pollock was different in that he could persuade wealthy Indians into pledging huge funding to the Western nexus involved in project Breaking India. This is a hypothesis Rajiv Malhotra is now researching in order to get to the bottom of things.

Rajiv Malhotra says:

Pollock is the most successful person from this club to solicit millions of dollars from wealthy Indians. He is the new "raja of Sanskrit" as some Indian supporters like to call him. Pls see attachment in India Abroad newspaper showering praise for him -- dressed in dhoti etc and called a "pandit". Remember Sir William Jones who was saluted as a pandit by Indians? The PR machinery at Columbia has used many pathways to reach Indian media and wealthy Indians. He became useful to the Indian Left because he dished out "data" on Sanskrit which fit the views of Kancha Ilaiah, Arundhati Roy, and numerous others who were too ignorant of Sanskrit to backup their views. Now he wants to "secularize" sanskrit to make it more "mainstream". 

There is also a write-up on Pollock which appeared in the India Abroad magazine this June. Pollock is one of the recipients of the India Abroad Person of the Year 2013 Award. The document is embedded here.

Sheldon Pollock--India Abroad Award as FRIEND OF INDIA AND MEDI-1

Manish said:

Sadly, our fellow Hindus are quite often incapable of distinguishing a friend from a foe.....

..... Sadder still, we see this inability to distinguish friend from foe, show up not just in academia but in all fields, whether it is diplomacy, geostrategy, international trade, forging joint ventures, securing our energy supplies, cultural exchanges, collaborating in non-academic research ---- everywhere !! Our industrialists and corporate executives are huge huge suckers for the most part when it comes to sepoy like behaviour  (Narayan Murthy, Shiv Nadar, Anand Mahindra, Harsh Goenka --- their public statements and actions show a pattern of naïveté that's stunning).

It is so disheartening to see enemies of Hinduism laughing all the way while making suckers out of Hindus....and even worse is to see these naive Hindus feeling a perverse sense of pride in being suckered.

Sheldon Pollock's works

Sheldon Pollock comes across as a disciplined and charming individual who plays his cards close to his chest, saying the right thing, dropping the right names, and doing what is necessary to keep his projects going smoothly. To use a poker analogy, one has to scratch beneath the surface to detect Pollock's 'tell' - parsing the seemingly India-friendly statements by Pollock to detect those parts that gives his agenda away. Shalini reviewed the pdf to draw some important conclusions:

Start Quote: [Page M121, col 1]

My point is that in the last 50 years - these are hard questions and very few people talk about them openly and critically and knowledgeably, with a sense of the deep past - as a friend of India and a long term observer, words like janambhoomi and karmabhoomi - to take that particular case, have been captured, so to speak, by a certain politics in India today that makes it difficult to use those terms in a non-political way

End Quote

Me: Is the Sangh parivar, the Hindu Acharyas, and in particular the think tanks in the current BJP setup even looking at such statements carefully?

Start Quote: [Page M121, col 1]

Let me give you a silly example. Maybe it will resonate. I have a friend, a kannada writer, (U.R) Ananthamurthy. Bangalore was a big centre - I dont know if it still is - for the Sathya Sai Baba movement. []

Once he was on a plane and someone on the plane was passing out vibhuti, you know, ash that had been touched by Sathya Sai Baba. It was like a commodity. Like a contemporary commodity.

There was an elderly, very traditional gentleman in the plane with Ananthamurthy, dhotivallah type, very traditional. Somebody came up to him and said here is some vibhuti. He said: " No, I don't take it. I am a very traditional man."

The old tradition had a non-commodified sense of this precious material, the sacred ash. And in the present day it has somehow become commodified and I dont say cheapened.

End Quote

Me: So many things absolutely conjecture in this para. First, never miss the profiling done on the "dhotivallah type" as if all dhoti wearing people belong to a certain type of mindset.

Next, who is Pollock to spin a theory about commodifying the vibhuti? What is the basis for arriving at that conclusion? Nothing of the thought process that allowed him to state this has been explained by him. []

Then, the dhotivallah says he wont take it. Why does Pollock believe that his refusal to take the vibhuti has anything to do with commodification? []

This pdf tells us that Pollock's friends in Karnataka include UR Ananthamurthy and Girish Karnad, both known to be Hinduphobic, and virulently anti-Modi. However, identifying Pollock's tell also involves recognizing what Pollock leaves unsaid: and Pollock has absolutely nothing positive to say about Dharma and Sanskriti. Guru posted a two-part video of Pollock's interview to Tehelka, an Indian magazine. The video links can be found here and here. 

Guru writes in with this:

Though he claims to have a secular interest in researching Sanskrit, we can see he really has other motivations which he tries hard to disguise. His disdain and contempt for Hindu beliefs are very evident throughout the talk.

Earlier on, while describing his journey into Sanskrit studies, he says he wished to say he came to Sanskrit  as Saraswati came in his dream and asked him to be her lover, but he could not. 

Look at the appalling insensitivity towards non-judeo christian cultures. It is really sad that such people who disparage the Vedic Goddess of Learning are going to get grant from 'Sharada Peetam' of all places. []

Then around 3:40 he condescendingly berates the 'Ram janma bhoomi' movement and questions why myths like Ramayana are taken seriously in India to form parties around these when nobody forms parties in Rome around Virgil's Iliad. Note he finds Rama equivalent to Western tradition's mythic hero Virgil of Homer and not to its living tradition's "historical" figure of Jesus.

Even after being a Sanskrit scholar for so long, he happily treats Saraswathi like some Greek goddess Venus looking for mortal lovers. He equates Ramayana to Illiad just to make Hindus look dumb. This type of condescending behavior is deliberate and only miseducated liberals would be taken by it. []

Additional analysis of his interview reveals this:

At around 00:03:07, he refers to the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 and how that event spurred him on to be a torch bearer for secularism in India since he felt that classicism was being used as a very powerful political tool to influence narratives.

At around 00:14:22 Pollock says Sanskrit has to be kept safe from 'enemies of History', from anti-history people. He means that he is the savior to prevent destruction from modern day Hindus.

At around 00:14:36, Pollock talks about re-invigorating Sanskrit and allowing it to re-discover its "creativity" and "intellectual innovation" in a secular manner thus decoupling Sanskrit from Dharma.

At around 00:18:13 In response to the interviewer's question of whether there was energy just in chanting mantras which were according to interviewer's elders, put together scientifically, Pollock's answer is to DISMISS it by saying that energy is in the eyes of the beholder and that he is completely SECULAR.

At around 00:01:39 in part 2 of the interview, Pollock states his anti-Hindutva/BJP position very clearly.

At around 00:03:58, he says that Kannada and Sanskrit have played out their narratives as one which is something of a re-enactment of "Unity in diversity". And, he finds it CORNY to state that. Why?

A Hindu-funded Hijacking of Sanskrit

Rajiv writes back on the forum elaborating further on Pollock's positions especially with regard to Sanskrit. It is reproduced below.

In his famous essay titled "The Death of Sanskrit", he opens with the following paragraph. His political motives and his attitude towards Sanskrit is not in doubt:

"In the age of Hindu identity politics (Hindutva) inaugurated in the 1990s by the ascendancy of the Indian People’s Party (Bharatiya Janata Party) and its ideological auxiliary, the World Hindu Council (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), Indian cultural and religious nationalism has been promulgating ever more distorted images of India’s past. Few things are as central to this revisionism as Sanskrit, the dominant culture language of precolonial southern Asia outside the Persianate order. Hindutva propagandists have sought to show, for example, that Sanskrit was indigenous to India, and they purport to decipher Indus Valley seals to prove its presence two millennia before it actually came into existence. In a farcical repetition of Romantic myths of primevality, Sanskrit is considered— according to the characteristic hyperbole of the VHP—the source and sole preserver of world culture. The state’s anxiety both about Sanskrit’s role in shaping the historical identity of the Hindu nation and about its contemporary vitality has manifested itself in substantial new funding for Sanskrit education, and in the declaration of 1999–2000 as the “Year of Sanskrit,” with plans for conversation camps, debate and essay competitions, drama festivals, and the like.

Yet this man got the [Padma Shree] (perhaps because of this work) received $20 [million] from Narayan Murthy to lead the translation of Indian classics, then became India Abroad's "Person of the Year in 2013.

The climax of his career is now happening. He is potentially going to control the selection of the scholar for a $3.5 million donation from a group in NY/NJ who are working with Sringeri mattha to set up this new Hinduism Chair at Columbia Univ. It will be the flagship of Sringeri mattha in the academy.

Pollock's game plan has gone through three phases:

1. First he established his credentials as a young Sanskrit scholar by doing translations of Sanskrit texts into English - using dictionaries as he is said to be unable to converse in Sanskrit. These were non controversial works =just to get established. But he is not a sadhak, hence it is textual analysis only.
2. Then he turned into a Leftist social scientist and started producing a large quantity of anti-Sanskrit works like the above quote. His thesis is that Sanskrit has been abusive against dalits, women, minorities. That the Aryans brought Sanskrit and its texts to India. That Hindu chauvinists are trying to revise history and claim otherwise. The above para quoted says it all.
3. Finally, he started to champion the revival of Sanskrit but in a specific manner: He wants to secularize it by removing or criticizing references that are Hindu. He considers mantras to devatas unimportant or even a problem. He is leading many projects in USA to bring Dalits to Columbia and train them in Sanskrit - which would be great if it were not done with any political spin. So what he ends up facilitating is a doctored up approach to Sanskrit that is not in line with our traditional approach. He praises this as "modernizing Sanskrit". This is similar to decoupling Yoga from Hindu in the name of "modernizing Yoga". The implication is that tradition is flawed and must be upgraded by de-contextualizing it of its dharma and thereby modernizing = secularizing it.

This is a replay of how Oxford became the world center for Indology in the British era. That was under British rule but now it is under Indian rule.

Indians in the next decade will throng to Columbia to get certified if they want to be taken seriously in India as Sanskrit experts. 

This means such Indians will get a heavy dose of Western hermeneutics which is the theoretical lens used in Columbia and elsewhere in Western academics. This lens sidelines all Indian siddhanta. It replaces the siddhanta with things like:

• Freudian psychoanalysis
• Western  feminism
• Subaltern studies
• Marxism
• Postmodernism
• 'Dalit studies
• etc

So traditional Sringeri interpretations of their own guru will fade away, and be replaced by the "modernized" fashions. Indian pandits and acharyas will find themselves at a disadvantage and feel like outsiders in such discussions, unless they submit themselves to get trained in hermeneutics -- in which case they will end up brainwashed as Ananya Vajpeyi did.

Our well-intended leaders simply lack enough competence to be able to make such strategic choices without a lot of coaching.

Even if the first occupant of the Adi Shankara chair planned at Columbia University is a good one for us, there are serious issues long term:

• Subsequent selections as per contract will be 100% controlled by Columbia U.
• The power center for Sanskrit studies will shift from Sringeri to USA. This means adhikars to run conferences and journals, control translations (Pollock already does that with Murthy's $5 million), produce the next generation of PhDs for deployment worldwide including India.
• This chair will be cited as a role model to approach all other matthas and Hindu organizations. Taking Hindu money and using it to control their discourse will become a fashion in the name of "collaboration", "globalization", "modernizing", etc.

It seems that we have not learned any lessons from what happened under the influence of Robert de Nobili in the 1600s, William Jones in the late 1700s, and Max Mueller in the 1800s. We are as colonized mentally as ever. Dangle some affiliation with westerners and look at the way many Indians go chasing the limelight.

Sringeri is the last remaining pure center we have from the past era that has never got compromised or violated during the long period of Mughal and then British rules. Now the question is: Are our own folks are paying money to invite foreign domination?

The same folks like Pollock/Ananya who despise"Brahmanical  hegemony" find it desirable to replace it with Western hegemony."

Readers interested in learning and participating in this vigorous discussion can do so by signing up with yahoo and joining the Rajiv Malhotra Discussion group. This particular thread can be followed here. 

A very important discussion has also started on the issue of setting up Hinduism chairs at universities in America using funding from Indians. We are adding it to this thread since it impacts very strongly here too. Sheldon Pollock is also in the process of getting the Shringeri Mattha to set up a chair at Columbia.

Bahu wrote in to say that Dharma Civilization Foundation (DCF) had an announcement to make which was that they were facilitating the setting up a Center for Dharma Studies in partnership with the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) at GTU, California. The announcement also stated that the first two courses were going to be offered in the fall semester of 2014.

Here is Rajiv Malhotra's response and a very important one too.

"This DCF is another initiative with similar characteristic to what I am criticizing at Columbia. The common facts are as follows:

1. I take some blame for having educated our diaspora for 20 years on the importance of entering the academy with Hinduism studies. But these folks are stuck on Release 1.0 of my proposals, whereas my experience with 20+ such academic initiatives has caused me to move on much further.
2. Typically, a group of businessmen want to become important, seen by the public to be helping dharma, want limelight as the next thing to achieve personally.
3. They lack specific competence to evaluate the subject matter expertise and content of the academy -- which requires far greater tapas than any of them did on this type of analysis or would be capable of doing.
4. Hence they look at superficial things. I constantly hear things  like "they are nice people", "they say good things about Hinduism", etc.
5. These rich donors do not even know basic things about the history of de Nobili, William Jones, Max Mueller, and the armies of modern anthropologists. They lack understanding of concepts like digestion, sameness, etc. They are so easily duped and impressed.
6. They dont know, and worse still, they do not want to know, details that would be discomforting and would require getting outside their comfort zones. To use business terminology qwhich they understand, they have not done independent due diligence on the subject matter. In their own field of specialty they would never invest millions on some venture with no due diligence just because the recipient of the investment is "a good person". They know that persona of the other party is not enough to support some project. But here that mental faculty gets switched off. What takes over is the craving for acceptance at the high table of white establishment, maybe a deep inferiority complex that even millions of dollars has not overcome.
7. To get legitimacy, they rope in some blessing from a well-know Hindu guru, preferably by naming a chair after him or his organization.
8. But the guru, though extremely well-meaning, has not gone into specific details. He assumes these people have done that already. So he trusts them and gives his blessings. After all, gurus routinely bless those who are sincere devotees.
9. To do "industry analysis" of this field, one has to survey prior experience in 20 or so similar initiatives. What happened to the programs later on? Did they produce anygame-changing impact in our favor? Was the activity merely for show, lots of meetings, events, gatherings, talks, etc. -- but so what? Did they change the discourse in our favor on any specific issue? The answer is always NO. I have yet to meet any donor who can answer such questions in a satisfactory manner.
10. Even when the first appointment is pro-Hindu, the long term control is lost. That's how the contracts read in all such cases. A good example is the UCLA chair on Indian History named and funded by Naveen Doshi, a real estate millionaire in LA. After his own friend Prof Sardesai (who was good for us) retired as the first occupant of the chair, UCLA insisted on selecting their own choice, despite Doshi's complaints and threats to litigate. The small print gave them that right. His "nice guy" contacts (God Cops) vanished, and let the "academic system" (of Bad Cops) decide as per it "own procedures". Here's the irony: THE DOSHI CHAIR OCCUPANT TODAY DOES NOT WANT TO EVEN SIT DOWN WITH MR DOSHI FOR A CUP OF TEA, DOES NOT RETURN HIS CALLS OR EMAILS. Doshi ji says there is no cooperation and the Chair occupant is a radical leftist who hates everything Doshi cherishes about Indian history. I feel sad for Navin Doshi, a kind man who meant well.
11. The single biggest problem I have is that DCF is empowering a Christian Seminary to run the discourse on Hinduism. I dont care who sits on that chair at least short term.
12. Analogy: Would you like the idea of outsourcing the job of purohit/acharya to the Vatican, if they came with a proposal to do a good, professional job? Believe me, I come across morons who say "Yes, why not, if they can do a good job". Would you outsource the Indian Army work to the Pak army if they came with a cost-effective proposal? I hope no Indian army official is foolish enough to say "yes".
13. The long-term issue is transfer of adhikar, transfer of prestige of learning centers from India over to Western controlled centers. Its like relocating Varanasi to the Vatican. Already Nalanda-like universities that attracted the brightest from all corners of Asia are now in the West in terms of global influence. Future generations of scholars from Indian ashrams would be sent to these seminary-controlled centers of learning as in the case of Berkeley, or leftist controlled as in the case of Columbia. Hinduism will become like a library of clip art for others to cut-paste and add to their own repertoire, and what unusable will sit in museums.
14. Next we might expect some announcement that another major guru has set up his chair in Saudi Arabia because some rich sheikhs promised good things and because they can do a great job for us.
15. How can people be so stupid, even after complaining so angrily that control of yoga has slipped away from Hindus over to Western institutions?
16. Why are such initiatives not first discussed in open hearings with Hindu intellectuals invited to voice issues, and debate in the true spirit of dharma? Why the hush hush until "it is a done deal" and then announced with a guru's blessings to make it beyond question?
17. Why is there no uproar comparable to what we saw against the Doniger matter?This sellout from within is far worse because it is sold in the name of helping Hinduism become mainstream.

You can join in this discussion here. Registration is free.

De-spiritualising tantra-chapter 8-part 1

Go to Chapter 7

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

This chapter concerns a scholarly book, Kiss of the Yogini: Tantric Sex in its South Asian Context. Its author, Prof. David Gordon White, a protégé of Wendy Doniger, received his PhD in the History of Religion from the University of Chicago in 1988. In an online discussion with Professor Jeffrey Lidke (a former student of White), Malhotra identified the book’s purpose as an effort to undermine the deep roots of Tantra’s inherent spirituality. This chapter is based on that online discussion that took place in May 2004.

White had previously authored The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India, a well-received book that helped him achieve the stature of a highly acclaimed scholar of Tantra and Hinduism Studies. His earlier book was based on original sources and his interpretations were broadly accepted by Tantric practitioners. This authenticity provided political and professional credibility for the author in the academy and the Hindu community. His new book caught many Indian scholars and practitioners of Tantra, and Hindus in general, by surprise. This is a good example of Malhotra’s U-Turn Theory, which describes how some Western scholars study Indic traditions respectfully, and then later repackage the subject to suit their own personal agendas or the needs of institutions, peer groups or the marketplace.

Malhotra’s review of the Kiss of the Yogini can be summarized as follows:

1. The book positions Tantra as a system of decadent South Asian sexuality. Furthermore, this decadence was seen as the result of the social suffering of Indian subaltern (lower caste) people in classical times.

2. Eminent Tantra scholars, such as Abhinavagupta, Kashmir Shaivism’s towering eleventh century figure, evidently did not know or did not want to know the ‘real’ Tantra the book purports to have uncovered. This is yet another example of how the natives, native scholars and actual practitioners are not trusted for their own interpretations, even including eminent thinkers whose works have been studied by Westerners and others, for centuries.

3. The bottom line, according to the Kiss of the Yogini, is that Tantra is not a legitimate spiritual process.

4. Doniger wrote a glowing review of the book, further extending its political import. She not only gives it the benefit of doubt without seriously challenging many of its presuppositions, but explicitly blames ‘Hindu chauvinists’ for repackaging Tantra as spirituality. She alleges that this was done to make Hinduism look good in the face of the British colonialists’ Victorian values. Hence, her thesis is designed to help postcolonial Indian scholars to undo colonialism by rejecting the spiritual purpose of Tantra.

5. Those who dare deny this thesis are assumed to be ‘Hindu nationalists’, ‘fascists’, ‘right-winger’ and so forth.

6. Doniger then cites Schweder’s popular new theory that native societies do not own their culture—a theory that Doniger asserts as true even though it is simply one point of view in an ongoing and controversial debate. Thus she accuses the Hindu diaspora and ‘Hindu right-wing chauvinists’ of claiming the right to interpret their culture and says that they have no such rights.

7. The implication is clear: No one can dare challenge the White-Wendy scholarship for fear of being branded a BJP chauvinist. And Indians have no special standing as insiders in their culture. What a tragedy for the academy that such a ploy works!

A long-time scholar of Kashmir Shaivism and a Tantra practitioner confided that he finds the book ‘disgusting’—in methodology, conclusion and its demeaning tone.

Ziauddin Sardar has attacked similar positions by illustrating how non-Western cultures are ‘for sale in the supermarket of postmodern nihilism’. Malhotra asserts that White is similarly introducing a ‘new product’ in the postmodern ‘bazaar of realities’. Doniger does a followup to reconfigure it into yet another derivative intellectual product:

Displaying her manipulative prowess, she claims that those who profess Tantra to be a spiritual process are somehow associated with a hardline right-wing political party in India. Thus the choice before Indians is between abandoning Tantra and facing disgrace as fascists—a pretty bleak either/or situation. The middle ground of spirituality without a political agenda is made unavailable as an option. Ironically, this apolitical middle ground has been the hallmark of Hinduism and is a distinguishing feature of considerable relevance in today’s world of exclusivist dogmas.

Doniger evades the implications of her political thesis when it’s applied to Tibetan Buddhism. The heart of Tibetan Buddhism is Tantra and there is a very intimate relationship and sharing of Tantra between Buddhism and Hinduism.

Using Credibility as Defense

Prof. Jeffrey S. Lidke, a former student of David White, and hence someone whom Doniger regards as a grandchild of her lineage, posted a response attempting to dismiss the critique by claiming that Malhotra ‘did not know the purva-paksha (i.e. opponent’s position)’, and that he had ‘misrepresented the White-Doniger position’. Lidke approached the debate as a knowledgeable scholar of Tantra who had spent several years reading White’s writings. Therefore, ‘with no small amount of confidence’ he could claim that the above synopsis of White’s thesis made two inaccurate claims: (For more on Lidke’s argument, please read page 76, chapter 8)

Lidke then resorted to a tired old comeback that RISA scholars often use, by claiming that criticism by outsiders is spurious because ‘obviously’ they didn’t read the book. The only defenses that Lidke offered were based on acclaim and association, not content and substance. Besides he claimed that White and Doniger had benign intentions even though their quotes may suggest otherwise. This line of argumentation denies the lay reader the same rights that the scholars themselves claim, i.e. freedom to interpret Indic texts according to contemporary sensibilities and theories, in whatever worlds of meaning they wish, and without reference to the author’s intent or vivaksha.

Analysis of White’s Position

Malhotra posted a three-part response online to argue that his assertions about White were well-founded. His posts are summarized below, followed by a brief criticism of White’s work by an Australia-based scholar of Tantra.

Tantra’s history, according to the White-Doniger thesis, went through two stages. In its early history, Tantra was a system of sexual magical acts that were not spiritual. Doniger explains, “In David Gordon White’s account, the distinguishing characteristic of South Asian Tantra in its earliest documented stage is a ritual in which bodily fluids—sexual or menstrual discharge—were swallowed as transformative ‘power substances’.” So Tantra was a system of practices to achieve magical powers by swallowing sexual fluids.

Then came stage two, according to White-Doniger, when, Abhinavagupta, the leading proponent of Tantra and Kashmir Shaivism, reconstructed Tantra into a spiritually contextualized system that was more suitable for Brahmin appropriation. Doniger says, “A significant reform took place in the eleventh century, when certain elite Brahmin Tantric practitioners, led by the great theologian Abhinavagupta in Kashmir, marginalized the ritual of fluid exchange and sublimated it into a wider body of ritual and meditative techniques.”

Doniger refers to Abhinavagupta’s system as ‘soft-core, or High Hindu’, whose purpose was to allow double-standards among Brahmins so that they could indulge in forbidden sexual acts and yet publicly not “threaten the purity regulations that were required for high-caste social constructions of the self in India”. Thus, Doniger maintains that hypocritical Brahmins allowed themselves to indulge in the ‘drinking of female menstrual discharge’ because they could depict it in philosophical language as ‘a programme of meditation mantras’.

Doniger explains that this ‘soft-core’ became a mask to cover up the ‘hard-core’ real Tantra which remained underground: “In this way the earlier, unreconstructed form of Tantra, the hard-core, persisted as a kind of underground river, flowing beneath the new, bowdlerized, dominant form”. Doniger’s and White’s terminology is meant to evoke a certain image which equates Tantra with current pathologies in America—hard core and soft core pornography that are a significant part of American society today. We find that Doniger and White equate esoteric techniques of Tantra with something familiar to most Americans in an anti-social sense. Thus it is not to be seen as a powerful and valid cultural and religious alternative to American norms, but something familiar, something dismissible as ‘been there, done that’, and, moreover, something that is ‘sexy, seedy and strange’.

White-Doniger claim that the transition from hard-core to softcore was a discontinuity—a ‘reform’ by ‘elite Brahmins’ that ‘sublimated’ the past practice of ‘sexual fluid exchange’. Obviously, this point-of-view is found not only in Doniger’s review and analysis, but it is the central thesis cited in White’s book:

In about the eleventh century, a scholasticizing trend in Kashmirian Hindu circles, led by the great systematic theologian Abhinavagupta, sought to aestheticize the sexual rituals of the Kaula. These theoreticians, whose intended audience was likely composed of conformist householder practitioners, sublimated the end and raison d’être of Kaula sexual practice—the production of powerful, transformative sexual fluids—into simple by-products of a higher goal: the cultivation of a divine state of higher consciousness . . . (p.xii.)

White claims that until the eleventh century the heart of Tantra practice had been the ‘oral consumption of sexual fluids as power substances’, and that it was never practiced for the spiritual expansion of consciousness. He alleges that Abhinavagupta re-packaged it as a ‘consumer  product’ for sale to Kashmiris whose ‘bobo profile’ could be compared to modern New Age seekers.

If such a thesis were true, there would be no spiritual legitimacy in the systems that flowed from Abhinavagupta onwards. Their origin would be merely the repackaging of superstition and sexual magic for a consumer market of ‘wily Brahmins’ who wanted to indulge secretly in wild sex while pretending it was a spiritual practice. This is quite a bombshell dropped on any serious spiritual practitioner of Kashmir Shaivism, Tantra and many other Hindu-Buddhist systems.

The following counter arguments by Malhotra challenge the primary thesis of White and Doniger:

1. Hinduism was never enforced by centralized institutional authorities—very different from the Abrahamic religions. There is no historical evidence of any such political movement across all of South Asia that dramatically imposed a ‘soft-core’ system upon the previous ‘hard-core’ system. The mere emergence of scholarly texts does not necessarily bring any social revolution in the case of Hinduism given the absence of a centralized and authoritarian Church in the mode of the Christian one.

2. Tantra was exported from India to other parts of Asia (such as Tibet) where it was seen by the receiving Asian cultures as a spiritual tradition. Therefore, the Indian Brahmins’ sociopolitical exploitation that White-Doniger allege would also have to be proven in the case of all other Asian societies that imported Tantra. Since the domicile of Tantra practice has extended well beyond the geography of India, and especially since it has extended into territories where Brahmin social influence was not operative—such as Tibet, among others—the thesis of White-Doniger remains unproven until they examine Tantra outside of India and outside

the scope of Hinduism.

3. Such scholarship arbitrarily classifies as ‘Hindu’ certain ‘secular’ practices and some obscure texts cited may even have never been practised (and certainly not ‘enforced’). There may also have been many entirely unrelated multiple spiritual traditions from which the scholar indulges in a cut-and-paste exercise to fit his thesis.

One of the readers of this online debate was Prof. Jayant Bapat, (incidentally, also a Tantra practitioner) at Monash University, Australia. He found White’s arguments both unconvincing and reductionist: (For more on Prof. Bapat’s views, please read page 79 and 80, chapter 8)

Malhotra cited four specific examples from Doniger’s School that could be seen as assault on a whole spiritual tradition:

1. Assault on mantras: Because the Tantrics were not elitist Brahmins and lacked access to complex Sanskrit mantras, Doniger notes that they “derived their mantras of nonsense syllables from the inarticulate moans that the Goddess made during intercourse . . .” (For more on this please read page 81, chapter 8)

2. Assault on bindi: White’s explanation of the meaning of the bindi (the sacred mark worn by most Hindu women today) is that “the image of a drop (bindu) that recurs, across the entire gamut of Tantric theory and practice” was originally referring to a physical drop of menstrual blood, but was later explained using the language of mantras and yantras so as to be seen as abstract symbolism about speech and divine consciousness.

3. Assault on mudra: Doniger explains the meaning of the word mudra in the texts: “White argues that mudra . . . refers to ‘the technique of urethral suction by means of which the Tantric yogin, having ejaculated into his partner, draws his semen together with her sexual emission back into his penis’ (the so-called fountain-pen effect)”. In this interpretation mudra signifies the practitioner’s/consort’s vulva, and, by extension, the fluids from the vulva.

4. Assault on Srividya: White culminates his arguments showing that many popular contemporary Hindu systems of symbolism emerged out of this ‘intellectual whitewash’ done by Abhinavagupta. The Srividya tradition as practised widely today was just that—whitewashed pornography and wild sex practices. It gave a spiritual gloss to hard-core practices by making them seem intellectual and spiritual.

Read chapter 8 part 1 from page 73 to 81

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

Go to chapter 8-part 2

Can the Yogic experience be replicated using psychedelics?

Commentators debate this interesting question. The answer is a 'no' from every commentator, but each offers slightly different reasons. What do you think?
 
November 2013
Spiritual experience due to psychedelics
Vijaya comments:
"there was a discussion in this forum (why mantra cannot be performed by a machine) regarding the attempt to replace living pandits with devices like Ipod to chant sanskrit mantras. Similarly, isn't there a possibility to reduce the spiritual experience gained through meditation/Yoga to the experience due to psychedelics and eventually replace meditation/sadhana with psychedelics?
Sam Harris in his Huffpost blog seem to equate the experience due to the ingestion of psychedelics like LSD and spiritual experience gained through meditation, although he is cautious about the former.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-_b_891014.html)
"...it cannot be denied that psychedelics are a uniquely potent means of altering consciousness. If a person learns to meditate, pray, chant, do yoga, etc., there is no guarantee that anything will happen. Depending on his aptitude, interest, etc., boredom could be the only reward for his efforts. If, however, a person ingests 100 micrograms of LSD, what will happen next will depend on a variety of factors, but there is absolutely no question that something will happen. And boredom is simply not in the cards. ...It is, however, a difference that brings with it certain liabilities."
This approach presupposes the material nature of our consciousness as opposed to the dharmic position of many layers of reality. Also, it separates the metaphysics of objective outer cosmos and the subjective inner consciousness, which is antithetical to integral unity."

Maria responds:
"Very interesting post, specially your conclusion. Many of these western scientifics, whose scientific knowledge I don´t doubt, but have a very limited vision influenced by subtle abrahamic ideas like only one life. Their potential as researchers is very much limited, provided that they cannot help but associating mind to the brain, and the end of everything with the death. If they could go further, see the implications into the world of samskaras and vasanas brought from life to life, how would they explain it? There would be a revolution in their own minds. Like they cannot afford going further, they end up relating every spiritual experience as provided by the brain. As a material effect of a material cause, that´s all. Instead of seeing that the brain could be a material tool in the hands of an spiritual consciousness. I think that is why many western scientific become atheists..."

Prasad responds to the previous two posts:
"... the dharmic position of many layers of reality is nothing more than another "unfalsifiable presupposition" from a scientific point of view. I am not aware of any evidence through neuroscience which requires any neuroscientist to consider a Dharmic view of many layers of reality as a scientific theory or position. Thus, there is no reason also for scientists to presuppose anything of the sort of a divide between what is the cosmos and what is inner consciousness. The duality between mind and body(brain) is not a chief concern for neuroscience as far as I know, since there is no scientific evidence as such for any mind separate from a body.

...Guys like Sam Harris have spent a llllong time trying to study Dharmic positions like those in Buddhism and also Advaita Vedanta. It is not their influence by subtle abrahamic ideas that they stick they to their claims. Please try to understand the methodology of science before commenting on scientists and their "biased" worldviews. Science does not proceed by handwaving or by unfalsifiable theories. It proceeds by rigorous evidence. So in order for a neuroscientist to seriously consider the dualistic claim (i.e. there is a body separate from a mind), an experiment has to be first described which can show whether the claim is true or not. In other words, see what Harris says - 

..

- So I would opine that the scientific community (which now includes almost all of humanity) would not be doing science by assuming a duality between a body and mind and then working from such an assumption to discover truths about the mind.

Now let me come to how a response can still be made in the lines of Rajivji's ideas of "being different".

First of all, it is simply a narrow view to treat mind-altering drugs and meditation (which I will now call dhyAnA, identifying it as a step in Patanjali's ashtAnga yoga scheme) on the same lines, i.e., as a means to effect changes in the mental states (I am purposefully not calling these "states of consciousness" because of my Advaitic leaning that the mind is different from the Atman, which is the Original Consciousness). Sam Harris' claim is that both can effect changes in the mental states. According to my understanding, in Yoga/VedAntA and other indian darshaNAs, the purpose of dhyAnA is not just about altering your mind-states during the time of meditation. Instead, the main purpose of dhyAna is to effect the triumph of one's will over the constantly drifting/changing mind...

In the same way, a yogi who practises dhyAna according to the Indian traditional darshana's need not have all the kinds of experiences or mental states that Harris is talking about. However, over time, he/she will gain the strength of mental will to concentrate on any particular object. This one-pointedness of mind which one gains is called "chitta-ekAgrata" in some traditions. The supporting factors to doing proper dhyAna and achieving its intended results include living a life of ethical and moral values and having devotional mindset (roughly, yamA and niyamA - the first two steps of ashtAnga yogA), sitting for dhyAna in correct physical posture (Asana - 3rd stage), prANAyamA (the 4th stage, learning to breathe properly prior to dhyAnA), restricting one's diet to saatvic food and restricting one's mental diet to saatvic imagery/sounds/ etc (pratyAhArA). Only after all these stages can dhyAnA be done properly and will bear the appropriate fruit. This is what the Indian Yogic traditions say, as far as I know. This is why the so-called meditation does NOT work for everyone and anyone. It is like taking a medicine without observing the appropriate dietary restrictions for it to work, and then claiming that the medicine doesn't work!..."

 

Vijaya responds:

"...My point is that science has a reductive approach to consciousness as BD explains (Page 104),

"...the Western scientific tradition has been reductionist rather than integral. Reductionism attempts to explain wholes in terms of their parts. This works, to a large extent, in ways that are practical, and hence modern science has made major contribtions to our lives using this principle.

The unity assumed in most of the dharmic traditions is a unity of consciousness. Western scientists and philosophers often ask how consciousness can arise from the chemistry of the brain. In the Indian tradition, we find the reverse problem. Absolute consciousness is understood to be the source of everything. The challenge is to understand the ordinary world of multiplicity."
Even your definition of dhyana "to effect the triumph of one's will over the constantly drifting/changing mind",  is also another mental state with a different/dynamic biochemical composition, according to neuroscience. So why to do all the tough sadhanas? We can put our efforts in producing drugs that will give an 'enlightened state' and distribute them to all?
This is not philosophically possible from the viewpoint of vedanta. The 'turiya' state which is the self and the pure consciousness is not a state of mind but is the whole essence of other three states, waking (jågrat), dream (svapna) and deep sleep (susupti). So the self transcends the other three states. The knowledge of neuroscience(and even the world) which is in realm of the waking state is limited and it cant find ways to reach a state that transcends it.

Another important point neuroscientists like Sam Harris make is that such altered mental states of mind do not represents reality by any means. This is in line with the basic axiom of science, the objective existence of the universe.
A Sadhaka in dharma religions does not need to start with such an axiom. That's why realised sages from Ashtavakra to Ramana maharishi describe enlightenment with analogy of 'waking up from the dream'. So a sage indeed perceives a different reality. That's why I mentioned different layers of reality.
Finally, there is more to dharma than the reductionist scientific methods. Dharma traditions take a nuanced approach to one of the pramana (epistemic tool), Sabda, the verbal testimony. The words of a realised Yogi which becomes smriti, is accepted and followed if it agrees with Sruti. This is why we have guru sishya traditions which help seekers in their spiritual quest. "  

 

This discussion is not over. If you have addition insights on this topic to share, please join the discussion group and contribute.

 

 

 

RMF Summary: Week of December 28 - January 3, 2013

December 28
8 yrs old Traumatized for drawing Hindu Swastik by a Teacher in America
Poonam asks: How do we deal with this? This keeps happening. A lot more needs to be done by us than the small victory in California. Apparently, the correction of facts in...

Rajiv Malhotra adds: 
Before you read this important news item below, please read the positions [see RM's response following the news item] I took on this very issue many years.
 

(pictures link source flickr: farm9.staticflickr.com)

8 yrs old Traumatized for drawing Hindu Swastik by a Teacher in America

A formal complaint is pending since Dec. 9, 2012 against the Principle, Counselor and the teacher Aid with the appropriate authorities. It is our sincere appeal to the community that they should send their support for the 8 yrs old via e-mail under the heading .....

Since Middlesex County is home to a large Hindu population; community must demand that all Educators in Middlesex County Schools must be educated about Hindu Religious Symbols keeping in mind that Hinduism is practiced by almost 1 Billion people around the world.

http://blogs.siliconindia.com/davemakkar/Corruption/8-yrs-old-Traumatized-for-drawing-Hindu-Swastik-by-a-Teacher-in-America-bid-zS86R4us10402948.html

.....

.....

Rajiv Malhotra responds:

1) Pages 40-41 of the report of the Hindu-Jewish Summit where I raised this issue for the first time before the apex Jewish group. See(pdf):  When the Hindu team was making preparations at the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam months earlier, I felt that none of the prepared speeches our side discussed had a single point that made any difference, because everyone was saying common, non-controversial things like "there is one God". I suggested to Swami Dayananada Saraswati that we must raise serious issues like the Aryan invasion theory, swastika, so-called "idol" worship, etc. Our goal should be to use the summit for setting the record straight straight officially in ways that could be useful. Everyone felt that such issues would be too controversial and risky. But swamiji supported my idea, and asked me to be forthright and make that point before the gathering. Hence, my speech at the historic event. Only a short summary of my talk is given on page 40 of the above document. After my talk, the Hindu side looked nervous about what the Jews might think of my statements. Most of them did not anticipate that I would say this. But the head of the Jewish delegation gave a very positive response to my talk. He said that this view of mine was new to them, and they appreciate knowing how Hindus felt on these topics. So both sides decided to organize a team of scholars to further study the issues I had raised....

2) The matter culminated a few years later at a subsequent Hindu-Jewish Summit that was held in Israel, at which a formal resolution was passed that contained the following statement: ‘The svastika is an ancient and auspicious symbol of the Hindu tradition. It is inscribed on Hindu temples, ritual altars, entrances, and even account books. A distorted version of this sacred symbol was misappropriated by the Third Reich in Germany, and abused as an emblem under which heinous crimes were perpetrated against humanity, particularly the Jewish people. The participants recognize that this symbol is, and has been for millennia, sacred to Hindus, long before its misappropriation.’

3) Read my blog on HuffPost on this matter...

WHAT SHOULD BOTHER US: What concerns me is that others have not taken up this issue further. After getting such a historical declaration from the highest Jewish authority, why is there no further activity by Hindus, especially the mouse-clicking activists who waste time on useless pursuits but have little organized effort to produce concrete results. By now, the output from the Hindu-Jewish Summit ought to have been sent to every school district in USA; every Hindu parent ought to be told to cite this declaration if such an issue is ever raised by anyone......

Suraj adds:

"I have known Pujya Swami Dayananda Saraswati since 1969 and I believe that he undoubtedly is the most ardent proponent of the Tenets, Beliefs and Practices of Sanatan Dharma presently. I am not a member of Arsha Vidya or HDAS or any other Organization to which he is affiliated. However, I have listened to many of his talks in Canada and I have done Pranaams to him many times. He is a living Mahatma. I also admire Shri Rajivji for his grit and determination in defense, propagation and promotion of Sanatan Dharma in the West as well as in India....

The Toronto District School Board(TDSB) in Canada  has a Document entitled 'Guidelines and Procedures for the Accommodation of Religious Requirements, Practices, and Observations'. I had the honour and privilege to be selected by the TDSB to write the section on Hinduism (Hindu Dharma) dealing with the religious accommodation of Hindus in the TDSB. This Document was published in 2000 and currently there is a 2nd Edition (2010). In the introduction it is stated that 'Hindus use a variety of sacred symbols during worship. Some of these are the OM, Swastika, Shivalingam ....'. Even though this document exists, there is still significant religious discrimination and lack of accommodation for Hindus within the TDSB and other Public Institutions in Canada...."

Poonam responds to Suraj ji:

"I am honored that you took the tme to respond to my message. Where can I find a copy of the guidelines you referred to? I believe it would be helpfu in guiding me to design my plan of action regarding this. I do intend to do some thing about it. & want to do it in 2 ways. One is by educating our own children & arming them with the information appropriate for their level..."

Nilesh shares:

"I am quoting from my book that was published in 2010 regarding Swastika and Nazis (Pages 66-67), I indicated the need of work to be done to reclaim Swastika for Hindus. Hope it adds one more voice to what has been a unique cause of Shri Rajiv Malhotra:

"Swastik and the Aryan Connection"
"Swastik is a `Good Luck' sign of Hindus. It was also used by the ancient Germanic tribes of pre-Christian era in Europe. With its identity considered as `Aryan' it had been adopted by the Nazi Germany in 20th century for rousing the patriotic-passion among Germans by Adolf Hitler. Due to its adoption by Nazis, this divine sign of Hindus is occasionally misunderstood even if applied in context of Hindus. For Hindus, this is purely a religious, non-political `good-luck' symbol. Rudyard Kipling (1835-1936), a Mumbai-born English writer and recipient of the 1907 Nobel Prize in literature, used to inscribe the Swastik and the picture of Hindu God Ganesh on his books. Even he had to take Swastik off his books lest he gets identified with Nazis.
... Arya and Aryan are Sanskrit words. Sanskrit is considered as the mother language of all the Indo-European languages and in it the word Arya is always used as an adjective signifying `cultured person' or a `noble man' and on many occasions.."

The thread below has generated a lot of comments and discussion and we will try to devote a single post  that summarizes this in depth. We excerpt the introductory post only below.

 

December 29

Sanskrit Dictionary : Amarakosha and MW dictionary Comparison
BVKS posts:

"This is in relation to the topics : Sanskrit Digestion, Techno- digestion of Sanskrit through Computational linguistics, Demand for a review of Monier Williams Sanskrit-English dictionary.
...
The issue: According to the 2012- Ph.D Award Thesis from University of Hyderabad, there is a whopping 45% error in Monier Williams Sanskrit Dictionary in marking the gender tag for Sanskrit words.

...  Reference : Doctoral thesis (March 2012) from Hyderabad University - Page .... available for free download at url: .....

The Question : How and Why Sanskrit Traditional schools all over the world, are tolerating and continuing to use Monier Williams Sanskrit dictionary,  which carries almost a whopping 45% error in providing correct gender tag for
Sanskrit words ? Why MW dictionary ( and with several of its clones floating on the web) with all its shortcomings and deviations from traditional Sanskrit dictionaries, especially Amarakosha are being used by Computational Sanskrit Linguists as an authentic resource ? Has any one assessed the impact of the inaccurate / inadequate Sanskrit dictionary as a study base in making translations of Sanskrit traditional resources? "

December 30

Ramanujan's theory proved right - almost 100 years after he died http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2254352/Deathbed-dream-puzzles-renowned-Indian-mathematician-Srinivasa-finally-solved--100-years-died.html...

December 30

Swastika Brochure - For Your Use Namaste, Two organizations, namely, IFCMW (Inter-Faith Conference of Metropolitan Washington DC) and AJC (American Jewish Committee) published the enclosed...

December 31 

Efficacy of the Gayatri Mantra Kaajal shares:

.

"A friend forwarded this to me. Speaks to the point made in BD regarding the non-translatability of various Sanskrit mantras & words

GAYATRI MANTRA THE BEST DIVINE PRAYER HYMN IN THE WORLD!
....
Dr.Howard Steingeril, an American scientist, collected Mantras, Hymns and invocations from all over the world and from all religions, tested their strength in his Physiology Laboratory. He concluded that the Hindus Vedic Gayatri Mantra is the most rewarding scientifically.
'
That the Gayathri Mantra produced 110,000 sound waves per second. This was the highest and found it to be the most powerful prayer hymn in the world..."

Rohit responds:
"Can anyone provide an independent media reference to this?  I searched and found it only on blogs, Facebook, yahoo groups etc., Couple of these referred to alien involvement. The origin could be the documentary series on the origin of religions based on alien invasion.

If the following note is true, it illustrates the importance of original Sanskrit words and their sounds."

December 31

Baskaran Pillai Center: digestion of Hinduism? Came to know about a Dr. Baskaran Pillai, who was described as a "great man with great ideas" his site describes him as : "Dr. Baskaran Pillai is an...

January 1

Some work plans for 2013 Someone asked me today what I am working on and how he could help. So here's what I wrote back: I am intensely busy finish a book on Swami Vivekananda that...

January 2 (continuing discussion)

Pt Ravi Shankar Interview
I found this interview with Pt Ravi Shankar from the 60s: http://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=9YdK2tB2gKM It is impressive how he stands up for the Indian tradition...

Swami shares :

"I reproduce a part of an article by a very knowledgeable music critic late Raghava Menon that appeared in a supplement of THE HINDU sometime in the mid 1990s:

It was late Alain Danielou who told the then President S.Radhakrishnan when he was the Vice-Chancellor  of BHU " You cannot share Indian Classical Music the way you can share Western Classical Music. The Indian Classical music inheritance is wholly oral and too personal and ragas live momentarily coming to life only to die at once"

This seemed, even in those days, a profound observation in the particular context of sharing the art. For every one knows that this tradition of the raga has always been a solitary pursuit and was always meant to be so. This must be at least one among the many reasons why it has always been difficult to academise the art like the Julliard or the Santa Cecilia…………….. Ragas had always been timeless and without history. For there are no old ragas as there there are no old rivers. Always contemporary to the moment…..

Personally I am find it difficult to share RM's concern on the "digestion" of Indian musical instrument, much less the Indian classical systems. Western classical music will lose its bearings and identity once it attempts at the digestion process for the reason that notes and swaras are identical. This is almost impossible with the Carnatic idiom with its gamaka tradition. Late Jon Higgins remained an exception. Many enthusiasts who have been groomed in the Hindustani tradition too find it at odds with the flat swaras on which for them there cannot be aware of this. I think Ravi Shankar too was well aware of this predicament.

A sitar or any other Oriental instrument can become part of the Western musical ensemble, but I don't see any enthusiasm on that front... On the other hand we find many western instruments like violin – widely used in Carnatic idiom—clarinet, saxophone, mandolin, viola and of late guitar (though it is seldom used in Western classical forms) finding acceptance, particularly in south India.

It is believed that Baluswamy Deekshitar (great composer Muthuswamy Deekshitar's sibling) chanced to see a compact instrument with strings and bow ....."

January 2

Re: [media_monitor5] Swastika Brochure (American Jewish Committee, H Carpentier wonders:

I don't see why Hindus or anyone else would have to explain why they have the swastika as a sacred symbol (like many other civilisations) simply because Jews and some other communities had to suffer the political consequences of a particular modern European regime and ideology. Will people now have to apologise for using hammers and sickles in their profession in order to pacify the anti-communists?

Rajiv's comment:
The above comment seems to be of the following kind of proposition: 'Truth is with me, so why do I need to bother arguing about it with others?'... 

So, my response is: We must do this awareness work because we want to change peoples' thinking. Others with passion for their own causes also do the same. We cannot afford this lofty posture of "who cares?" Explaining one's history, philosophy, worldviews, positions, etc. is important for those who are world engaging (as opposed to world negating). If the above person really believed what he said, why would he be publisher of an international journal advocating certain policies?
As far as communist symbols are concerned, yes, IF THEIR SYMBOLS SUFFER REPUTATION THE WAY HINDU SYMBOLS DO, then one day they too would need to engage public opinion to try and explain them. The fact that they do not need to apologize, while we must explain ourselves, tells us that too many of our leaders have had the arrogant/lazy attitude of "do-nothing" on similar grounds as the above comment..."

January 2

FW: The Swastika controversy Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 09:51:18 -0800 From: mahakavius@... Subject: Fw: The Swastika controversy To: pcsi2000@... Vish:Here is the email I sent...

January 3
Swami Vivekananda becomes Masculine Nationalist
Venkat shares:
"The author is trying to connect recent sexual crimes to Hindu nationalism.

Taking the aggression out of masculinity
Sanjay Srivastava (Professor of Sociology and co-editor, Contributions to Indian Sociology , Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi.)

"CELEBRATING MANHOOD:Swami Vivekananda’s masculine photographic-pose is revealing of how Indian nationalism encouraged a deeply masculine notion of modernity; religious customs, such as Karva Chauth (right), openly propagate male-worship."

"Swami Vivekananda’s masculine photographic-pose was only one aspect of the cult of masculinity encouraged and tolerated by nationalism."

Rest of his gobbledygook"

January 3

History of India recommendation
Please suggest a one or maximum two volume history of India ( in English) for a Westerner who knows very little of India. Thanks in advance!... 

Babubhai:

Glimpses of Bharatiya History

Dr. Rajendra Singh Kushwaha

Publish: Ocean Books Ltd.

New Delhi - 110002 , India

ISBN.  81-88322 -40 -7

Ravindra:

Portraits of a Nation, History of Ancient India by Kamlesh KaPur would be good text covering both the southern and Northern India.

  

Rakesh:

R C Majumdar - History of the freedom movement of India ( 3 books)

As India had not (has not?) been free for a long time this set goes back to the Moghul invasions I think, so covers hundreds of years of history ( I have not worked my way through it yet...)

Unfortunately due to the hijacking of Indian history, there are limited books in English that I would trust...