Hinduphobia rampant among Western Indologists

Vishal writes into the group on Hinduphobia that is rampant in indology lists.

The rot is deep right at the top. The moderators of various 'S Asia', 'Indology', 'Asian History' lists are all a bunch of Racists, Hinduphobes, Gungadins or India bashers - Frank Colon, Christian Wedemeyer, Deepak Sarma, Steve Farmer, Dominik Wujastyk etc.

As long as their control is not replaced with empathetic scholars who do not have hatred the Hindus, this phenomenon will not go away.

A better solution is to create one's own parallel lists, publishing houses etc., and therefore creating a series parallel to and better than the Murty Clay Library is a step in the right direction.

For those who do not know, Narayan Murty is a self avowed Leftist. His son and craves the indulgence of Whites and therefore his flippant rejection of the 132 scholars who initiated the petition reminds me of Richard Crasta's book 'Impressing the Whites.'

So far, only 5-6 volumes of the series have come out. Let our scholars show where the flaws are. I have not purchased even one of them. A look at the authors of the volumes published so far (Hawley etc) is itself alarming. When I picked his Sursagar volume of the series at a bookstore, it was just an anthology. What is the point of just publishing an anthology, and not the whole work?

Related post: Prof. Ramasubramanian of IIT Bombay responds to critics 

The Battle for Sanskrit making waves in Indology lists

As expected, The Battle for Sanskrit has begun to elicit reactions from members of the purvapakshin's camp. Sheldon Pollock, Arvind Raghunathan Professor of South Asian Studies at Columbia University is the main purvapakshin of Rajiv Malhotra's latest book The Battle for Sanskrit (TBFS).

TBFS is gaining much traction among traditional scholars in India to whom it is mainly addressed. They have been exhorted to study Professor Pollock more critically when he advances theses on a civilization to which he is an outsider and they the insiders, the civilization in question being the Indian one. Rajiv has started the famed Indian tradition of purvapaksha by extensively analysing and studying Pollock's works.

The traditional side after reading TBFS, felt that there was a case to petition Shri. Narayanamurthy and his son Rohan Murthy who have pledged a huge donation to Pollock to translate 500 volumes from Sanskrit and various other Indian languages into English. This petition has been attracting a lot of signatories with almost 12000 people having signed this petition at the time of writing this.

Expectedly, the counter attack from the purvapakshin camp has begun. Ananya Vajpeyi, featured earlier also on this forum has been mentored by Professor Pollock. She writes thus in an Indology list group. A hard-hitting response is given by Dr. Nityanand Mishra.

Vishal shared Ananya's post:

Dear Colleagues,

As many on this list including Dominik Wujastyk, Matthew Kapstein, Madhav Deshpande and Tyler Williams, among others, have pointed out, the petition to remove Professor Pollock from the General Editorship of the Murty Classical Library of India suffers from either a deliberate or a genuine misreading of his writings and lectures. Moreover it is motivated not just by his vocal stand in favour of the freedom of expression and the right to dissent in India and elsewhere reiterated numerous times of late, but also by a desire on the part of the sponsors and writers of this petition to
generate some sliver of scholarly attention for Rajiv Malhotra's new book, The Battle for Sanskrit.

Apart from being a plagiarist, Malhotra is no scholar of anything, least of all Indology or Sanskrit. (I'm not even sure if any book by him can be accurately described as "new", given his record of plagiarism). His entire
strategy of calling attention to his publications, such as they are, is to make ad hominem attacks on bona fide scholars, especially Professor Pollock, and now almost exclusively him (though others of us have been
collateral damage in the past).

In my view, Malhotra's latest book deserves not one minute of our time, and is best left to rightwing propaganda publications like Swarajya, Niti Central and other blogs, newspapers etc. of that ilk to review (or not).
It's an echo chamber of Hindutva paranoia and self-congratulation, untouched by scholarship. Why spoil their party?

As for the 10,000 signatures on the petition, these things are easily managed by the cyber-machinery of the Sangh Parivar. Not for nothing are there entire dedicated cells of trolls and bots whose job it is to swell the numbers, as it were, merely the digital reflection of a larger ideology of majoritarianism at work.

I am assured by the concerned editors at Harvard University Press and by Professor Pollock himself that HUP and Harvard's legal and PR departments are well placed to handle this kind of -- well, whatever you want to call it -- provocation, irritation, distraction, or incitement. We really need not worry our heads engaging with these people as though they might actually know something about the classics, of any language, whether of
early or modern South Asia.

Goodness knows we all have enough on our plates, with JNU and other public universities and their students across India in dire need of our material and moral support at a moment of real political crisis.

In solidarity, and urging us all to #StandwithJNU,

Yours,

Ananya Vajpeyi.

*Ananya Vajpeyi, PhD *
*Associate Fellow*
*Centre for the Study of Developing Societies*

Obviously such an uncalled for ad hominem has got Rajiv's online satsang buzzing.

Ranjith writes:

(...) The real thrust of her message is that she has Harward University Press on our side and so she does not have to bother. This divulges the secret as to who their handlers are - i.e. foreign nexuses. How long can they continue this without confessing?

If she can really afford to ignore Rajiv ji, she would have not even bothered to send a long email asking for NOT to waste even a minute. The fact is that they CANNOT IGNORE RAJIV JI ANY MORE. Height of hypocrisy.


Rakesh adds:

This is a very standard response from a stooge with a bogus Ph.D. For what ever reasons if Moorthy family does not change there decisions the insiders should start a parallel project do the similar translation. I am sure I am not the first one thinking along the same lines. I would like to hear from Insider tradition side how the synergies and resources can be put together to make it happen with leadership from Sri Rajivji.

Srinath chips in:

first thing came to my mind upon reading her immature reply - "jobless"
sad commentary on the kind of pathetic people who have filled the humanities void in JNU and elsewhere - trying to further their empty lives with imaginary problems, plus of course the obligatory servitude towards western masters.

still, without responding to this low level of so called "scholarship" on few blogs at least - cannot ramble on (to be fair)!

Sneha on the issue:
Another useful idiot SEPOY for anti Hindu army.

Anubhav adds:
I think we should be tactical and translate all available Sanskrit texts into Hindi and other regional languages and English. It could also be translated into Hindi first and then into regional languages. Sanskrit scholars can be roped in with financial incentives, Sewa or collective action to help the initial translation to Hindi. May be Sanskrit Bharti can help. Once translated it could reach Indians. Currently we are unaware of its legacy, greatness, practical application in various fields of life such as Medicine, Mathematics, Astronomy, Political Science and so forth.

Rohit comes in:
(...) Ananya says she would not read a word of Rajivji, yet she does not hesitate to comment on his work. Hmmm ... Speaks of your scholarship and methods at work Ananya.

To hear that sociology departments in JNU and other public universities wait in dire need for the likes of her to feed them what-ever says volumes about what "scholarship" is housed in these departments in India. (...)

Srikrishnan adds:
As Rajiv Ji expected and warned several times -- this kind of non sense is expected from LEFT/so called Self Proclaimed experts on Everything/ They Don't debate the Issues, digress, distort, attack the personality...spin it and our slave media will give a Political color.

Kunar writes:
(...) But to say such negative things about a very courageous man in such efforts appears to be as shutting down a strong voice for our causes. Unless you are pro-Harvard pseudo seculars who are spewing venoms in the disguise of intellects against India's integrety and hurting or religious process /faith (lime Shanatan Dharma)!! Why not allow us to tell everyone from our lense on issues that are being advertised by none other then Harvard Univ.
If you believe in "freedom of speech" and "freedom of response", then yu should not hurl such negative comments about Rajivji.

Dr. Nithyanand responded to Ananya on the indologist list thus.

Dear list,

While Niti Central (which recently shut down) and Swarajya are certainly pro-right/conservative magazines (just like The Hindu is left-leaning/liberal), but to describe them as ‘propaganda’ would be an exaggeration, just like calling The Hindu as ‘communist’ or ‘Chinese mouthpiece’ would be (in fact, the Friends of Tibet society actually calls The Hindu ‘a mouthpiece of the Chinese communist party’, this was covered by Pradip Ninan Thomas in his book ‘Negotiating Communication Rights: Case Studies from India’). In a recent article, the Financial Times described the Swarajya magazine as ‘conservative’.[1] Even Sreenivasan Jain, a journalist with the NDTV (whose political leaning are no secret), described the Niti Central as a ‘right-wing site’ in an article in 2013.[2] 

As for Mr. Rajiv Malhotra’s latest book, it has already received attention in India, in both the academic sphere and outside, way beyond websites like Niti Central and Swarajya. I shared a link to the review of the book by Bibek Debroy in the moderate/centrist OPEN Magazine. The book carries a quote by Prof. Arvind Sharma (Birks Professor of Comparative Religion, McGill University) on its front cover. 

It has earned praise from Mahamahopadhyay Dayananda Bhargava (renowned Sanskrit scholar), S. R. Bhatt (Chairman of ICPR), K. Ramasubramanian (Sanskrit scholar and signatory #1 on the MCLI petition), Roddam Narasimha (aerospace scientist), and Dilip Chakrabarti (Professor Emeritus, Cambridge) among others. Some leading educational institutes in India which have hosted Mr Malhotra since January include the JNU, Ramakrishna Mission (Chennai), Vedic Gurukulam (Bidadi), Art of Living Ashram (Bangalore), Chinmaya Mission, IIT Bombay, TISS, IIT Madras, and Karnataka Sanskrit University. 

As for attention outside the world of scholars, Mr. Malhotra's book was launched by very well-known personalities: Subhash Chandra (Chairman of the pro-right Zee Media) in Mumbai, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (eminent spiritual leader and humanitarian) in Bengaluru, and Dr. Najma Akbarali Heptulla (Minority Affairs Minister, Government of India) in Delhi. Prominent journalists and authors who have discussed his book include Madhu Kishwar (pro-right academic and author), Amish Tripathi (best-selling author), and T. V. Mohandas Pai (Chairman, Manipal Global Education). 

I need not add that the book is selling well (it is a category bestseller on Amazon India) and Harper Collins would be happy with their investment. 

I doubt if all this attention can be ‘staged’ or ‘managed’. There is an elephant in the room. Love him or hate him, Mr. Malhotra is becoming too notable to ignore. 

Regards, Nityanand 

[1] Amy Kazmim (February 21 2016) India divided over right to political freedom. Financial Times. [2] Sreenivasan Jain (June 29 2016). Response to Niti Central article on NDTV's Ishrat Jahan report. NDTV.

This is a thread which is likely to see many more responses and this post will be updated as the responses keep adding up.



Dr. Nityanand Mishra replies to Ananya Vajpayee on TBFS, Pollock 

Avoiding 5 common mistakes when defending Hinduism

The primary background to this thread can be found in this storify exchange between Rajiv Malhotra and Tavleen Singh and in this thread which captures the whole plagiarism issue which was raised with Sanjeev Sanyal and which has since been resolved amicably..

Rajiv summarizes five mistakes that need to be avoided when defending Hinduism. He says:

Mistake 1: Dont criticize someone who is a "fellow Indian". 

This was cited by a supporter of Sanjeev Sanyal recently. However, Maoists are also fellow Indians, are they not? The kauravs/pandavs were fellow brothers, right? So how does defending dharma have anything to do with giving a free pass just because someone is a fellow Indian. Conversely, being a non-Indian does not make a person our enemy or a problem. Defending Hinduism is not about race. Hinduism is not racism.

Mistake 2: As long as the person is anti-evangelists and pro-Hinduism we must accept whatever he says..

According to this logic, Moron Smriti and other leadership issues facing Hindus should not be discussed. After all, all morons and incompetent leaders do lash out against evangelists, and they do take pro-Hindu stands. I find many Hindu  forums only capable of discussing "positive" topics and want to stay away from genuine problem-solving.

Such a policy tolerates incompetence. It is precisely why we face such a leadership crisis - lack of quality controls on leadership. By far the largest part of my Kshatriyata workshops is on the epidemic of internal leadership rot, and not on external problems caused by others. Hindus have stopped challenging the incompetence of other Hindus, and tend to go long with whosoever leads them, as long as the person says a few standard "positive" things that make us "feel good". We run the risk of becoming a tradition of the morons, by the morons, for the morons.

Mistake 3: Better to be ignorable, dont rock the boat; dont confront problems.

My entire writing career has focused precisely on issues where our own leaders are misinformed, or not informed at all. But there is resistance when one tries to educate Hindus about a serious problem they did not know. 

Example: Wendy Doniger was completely unknown to Hindu leaders when I started my criticisms of her cabal in the late 1990s. I heard all sorts of nonsense from Hindus who were disinterested in my work, or even asking me to stop it, like:

• They are unimportant, so lets not waste time; truth will triumph anyway; we know the truth in our hearts; all path will ultimately lead the person to the same final goal;
• Let us not stir things up, since we are doing so well in our personal careers; if we highlight such problems we will attract attention and spoil our image, maybe even get in trouble. (i.e. policy to remain ignorable.)

Same thing happened when I raised the Breaking India issues. In fact, the late B. Raman, who used to be head of counter-terrorism at RAW, had initially agreed to write the foreword to Breaking India. We knew each other and exchanged emails. He asked me to send him the draft when ready. But when he saw the draft he changed his mind. He also refused to attend the book launch. In fact, the publisher was informed at the last minute to remove his name from the program. Why? because BI was considered too sensational by him. Imagine such a top intelligence official being afraid to face the problems. I tried to convince him that he was free to be on the panel and disagree with my book. But he did not want to be linked to it at all. Almost as if Big Brother is watching us.

The slave APP downloaded in many Indians, triggers the desire to be non-confrontational, seeking the path of least resistance to deal with situations.

Mistake 4: Distributing whatever limited knowledge we have is all important; serious R&D to discover and develop newknowledge is unimportant.

This means my type of work can suffer, but let the plagiarists not be discouraged because they are "spreading positive ideas". We need them no matter what. Such a posture shows lack of appreciation for the critical need to encourage fresh thinking. 

This mentality encourages leaders to be rewarded based on "hustling" and "networking" and "showing off". In my workshops, I give numerous examples of this syndrome. Most such leaders are ill informed of the major issues we face. Their subject matter expertise is abysmal, often to the point of causing us harm when they speak. They can at best copy-paste the latest statements that some serious thinker has made, and use it in their next speech or blog as their own idea. Fools leading bigger fools does not comprise a kshatriya army.

Mistake 5: Support even those who might deeply undermine Hinduism by their intellectual positions, as long as on the surface they "say positive things about us", and make us "feel good".

People who facilitate digestion tend to say good things about what they are digesting. (You dont hate the food you want to eat.) Many of our leaders cannot recognize digestion and see it as a form of praise/support. The digesters have studied us well and learned to exploit these vulnerabilities.

Pollock represents a different sub-category. He is NOT wanting to digest. He is undermining Sanskrit in the deepest way that I have seen anyone do. Yet on the surface he is championing the revival of sanskrit studies, etc. My job is to first thoroughly understand his works, and then to simplify for my readers the arguments he makes, and my response to it. 

My biggest challenge here is to get people's attention span. All they care about is that he wears a dhoti with tilak on his forehead, quotes some sanskrit verses, says what a great language it is, and so forth. Applause! Awards! Funding!

Indians being starved for self respect, cannot hold back their love and enthusiasm when they hear this. Notice the huge success he has had in winning the hearts and pocketbooks of top tier Indian elites. Its their way to "feel proud" and remove the guilt they carry for betraying their dharma. He fills a unique void in their psychology.

Such Indians/Hindus see me as someone on the wrong side. They see me creating an embarrassment by criticizing their hero. Notice the reaction from Tavleen Singh, despite the fact that she and Ajit Gulabchand were extremely appreciative of Invading the Sacred. She wrote a great editorial on it after interviewing me. He was on stage when it was launched and gave a major speech.

My own policies:

• Stick to the issues and ignore the personalities involved. If the substance of someone's work is wrong, it must be criticized regardless of what kind of person they are.
• Look at the deeper layers and not the surface of a situation.
• Do serious problem-solving, and do not see the work as a "feel good" psychotropic drug.
• Be non-ignorable, audacious, willing to take the heat. (But only after doing a lot of homework to make sure I am on a solid foundation which I can defend.)
• Reject offers of help that are likely to let me down somewhere along the way.
• Most important, be rooted in sadhana, and let the prerna flow and be the driving force.

To be a part of this thread and participate in the discussion please join up on the yahoo discussion forum and follow the thread here.

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.

Is Narayana Murthy a good ambassador for brand India?

April 19
Is Narayana Murthy a good ambassador for brand India?

Rajiv Malhotra posts: In my recent IIT Mumbai talk, I criticized Mr. Murthy by contrasting him to the way the late chairman of Sony projected Japanese culture.

This generated an angry response by one man who says he is close to Murthy. He stopped watching my Youtube when he heard me say this. His defense of Murthy is not based on citing any facts on Murthy's intellectual positions regarding Indian civilization - such  as Aryan/Dravidian issues, dalit divides, foreign nexuses in India, etc. rather it is entirely of a personal kind.

But my critique of Murthy is not personal. Nor do I doubt that he knows his IT/CEO profession well. I am referring to his lack of competence in Indian history and culture to be able to select grant recipients in a manner that benefits Indian civilization.

I have summarized prior messages in this egroup pertaining to this issue, as fyi to refresh memory:

Sheldon Pollock (author of "The Death of Sanskrit") got the Padma Bhushan award by the GOI, and named head of the project funded by Narayana Murthy ($10+ million initial funds) to bring out translations of Indian classics. Many Indian institutions have been digested by westerners and used as a winter home. Pollock is a left-wing Sanskritist who claims that the old "Brahamanical Sanskrit" is long dead; and he is reviving the "real" Sanskrit that belongs to subalterns like dalits, women, etc. whose voices have been oppressed. Narayan Murthy's private foundation funded him to select and translate Indian classical works. He is selecting certain works and focusing on translations that fragment Indian civilization into mutually conflicting segments - languages, authors, interpretations used to show no unity at all except by evil nationalists. He gets to translate and INTERPRET various classical Indian texts - including supporting Aryan/Dravidian divides, dalit/non-Dalit divides, and so forth.

The article, "Columbia U. Professor Broadens Access to Sanskrit, Ancient Language of the Elite", appeared in Chronicle of Higher Education:

The big picture one must know is as follows: The pseudo-sec scholars have thus far been criticized for lack of Sanskrit knowledge and are therefore vulnerable to being considered eurocentric. To remedy this a whole battalion of well indoctrinated young scholars from places like JNU have been sponsored to get their PhDs under him, so these next-gen sanskrit scholars will combine pseudo-sec ideology with knowledge of sanskrit. Imagine a large group of academic professors who are well educated in Sanskrit but opposed to dharma - as casteist, abusive of women, anti-Muslim, chauvinistic, etc. - in other words the standard "caste, cows, curry" stuff. Imagine a sanskrit speaking Arundhati Roy and dozens like her.

This has been going on for a decade, first under Hawley at Columbia (who fluently speaks Vraj bhasha, sings Krishna bhajans, is seen doing "seva" in Vrindavan - much to the excitement of most Indians). Now it has been expanded and deepened under Pollock. ... Infosys has patronized people like Howard Gardener rather than the original sources of their reformulated ideas such as Sri Aurobindo.

Venkat posts:
A good overview of his thoughts is provided below which is a October 2002 Narayan Murthy gave a talk at IIT-d - Learning From The West".

Come adds:
"...I must refer to a video lecture by Francois Asselineau, an economist and intellectual in France who is warning against the creeping destruction of European nations  being promoted by the EU ruling bureaucracies under the influence of the USA. The goal is to break up European countries into smaller provincial "independent" states of Europe, among which the sole common language would be American English and which would be governed by a centralised "transatlantic" Euro-American super-government..."

Gopal notes:
"I remember his speech in Banglore years back where he suggested to one of the event organizers not to sing the Indian National anthem because it can offend foreign students in the audience..."

jp claims:
"...Akshya Patra idea was supported by Narayan Murty. But later he hijacked the entire project in a very shrewd .. way..."

Ajay comments:
"To me it seems, Mr. Murthy doesn't know what exactly he is doing; inadvertently he is harming the very cause he wants to serve. He may not be aware of work of Rajiv ji. Someone who knows Mr. Murthy should present him 'Breaking India' book so that he can understand and realise what elements are working against India and how; should also present him 'Being Different' so that he can better handle the differences various cultures have and doesn't feel sorry or inferior about all this..."

Ananth shares some links:
"...Gail Omvedt embarrassed Narayana Murthy in an article that was published in the Hindu.  The article is available in Ref 1

(Digression: Ref 1 cites Ref 2 as the source.  I am not able to access Ref 2.  However, I was able to dig up Ref 3, which seems to be a reaction to Ref 2 End Digression)..."
  
Rajiv adds:
"...Rajiv comment: Some of my supporters went to Mrs. Murthy a decade back and presented a Powerpoint on many of the issues i have uncovered, i.e. the things we discuss here. They were told in polite words that it was Mrs. Murthy's decision how she would spend her money. ... Consider, for example, the discussions we had here on Dharma Civilization Foundation. Its chief founders spent over a decade closely following my work with great interest, and with loud expressions of support for me. Yet when it was time to write a donation check, who did they support? Gerry Larson - whose support for foreign Aryans and whose fight against the unity and coherence of Hinduism became the basis for attacking BD." 

Come adds:
"The global zeitgeist imposes a reverence for specialisation which makes people like Narayana Murthy,  who is not an academic scholar on Hinduism, defer to "recognized' authorities, especially if they are western and teach in major western universities. Independent researchers are held as amateurs and few major "Establishment" foundations would dare extend sponsorships or awards to them since they are afraid that this would discredit them in the eyes of the masters of universitary discourse." 

Akshay asks:
"...To understand Murthy, you gotta read Better India Better World. It show's his deep rooted ..."

Additionally, Mr. Narayana Murthy showed up in a few more old threads:
Houston Seminar on Breaking India: September 11, 2011 - Audience Q &
I am looking for a source for the quote from Narayana Murthy that Rajiv-ji mentions in the video.

Timeline: 8:53 to 9:05
<quote> According to Narayana Murthy, when he was asked why Indians were so good in IT, rather than explain that we have a whole learning tradition, he said"Thanks for the British for teaching us Maths and Science."
</quote>



Rajiv response: I heard this in his talk in 2003 at the Bangalore conference organized jointly organized by Templeton and Infinity Foundation. I felt he was impressing the western guests. The "scientific debt to colonialism" is a common theme amongst many leftists. Gyan Prakash of Princeton has written a book on
Indian science during the British period in which the direction of influence is onw-way from Europe to India as if the europeans learned nothing scientific from
Indians. (Mr. Murthy has said that he was rooted as a leftist in his younger days but that he later turned into a capitalist. That kind of rejection of the left is for its economic model only, but it does not automatically involve
embracing the dharma paradigm.) The key issue is: where lies the root of Indians' competence in science? The west claims to have invented the scientific method - a claim many Indians accept. Thats why I started the very ambitious project of doing 20 volumes on the History of Indian Science and Technology, of which 8 are published already. ...For the same amount of money, Mr. Murthy could have re-ignited a whole India based Sanskrit scholarship and translation under the guidance of pandits. Of course, its his hard earned money and we respect his
right to spend it howsoever he chooses. I am merely expressing my personal opinion on how I wish our tycoons would back their own civilization in the same manner as American tycoons helped build their civilizational foundations. The Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie philanthropy did not go to foreign scholars to write American history.




What do you think? Is Narayana Murthy a good brand ambassador for India? and why. 

RMF Summary: Week of October 3 - 9, 2011

October 4

BEING DIFFERENT: First public talk at California conference a succes Within a week we hope to upload the video from my talk at the conference last weekend, where I was keynote speaker and gave an overview of the new book, BEING...

October 4

Christians launch political party in Tamilnadu (March 22, 2011) Christians in Tamil Nadu have launched a political party in the southern Indian state, where a legislative assembly poll is scheduled for...  October 4 Indian clergymen whistleblowers Prahalad: A couple of years ago, Sister Jesmi, a nun who retired as professor in a women’s college in... October 4 Ethanographic Intelligence - A possible tool for more divide & conve This link shows how Ethnographic intelligence, currently used as a counter terrorism mechanism can actually be used as an effective "divide and rule" strategy.... October 4 (This post received a lot of responses, involving a long discussion. We will try to summarize this in a separate post). Response to Indian dancer upset at my critique of Christian Bharatnatyam After the recent highly successful book event in Houston, the organizers received an email from a dancer in Houston about an upcoming performance by Leela...  followup thread Re: Response to Indian dancer upset at my critique of Christian Bhar [In response to Mukund Apte]: Let us not oversimplify, please. I don't know about Islam but prayers are chanted in Judaism, apart from other music...     October 4 Houston Seminar on Breaking India: September 11, 2011 - Audience Q & Sanjay: I am looking for a source for the quote from Narayana Murthy that Rajiv-ji mentions in the video. Ref. <quote> According to Narayana Murthy, when he was asked why Indians were so good in IT,rather than explain that we have a whole learning tradition, he said"Thanks for the British for teaching us Maths and Science." Rajiv responds: "I heard this in his talk in 2003 at the Bangalore conference organized jointly organized by Templeton and Infinity Foundation. I felt he was impressing the western guests. The "scientific debt to colonialism" is a common theme amongst many leftists. Gyan Prakash of Princeton has written a book on Indian science during the British period in which the direction of influence is onw-way from Europe to India as if the europeans learned nothing scientific from Indians. (Mr. Murthy has said that he was rooted as a leftist in his younger days but that he later turned into a capitalist. That kind of rejection of the left is for its economic model only, but it does not automatically involve embracing the dharma paradigm.) The key issue is: where lies the root of Indians' competence in science? The west claims to have invented the scientific method - a claim many Indians accept. Thats why I started the very ambitious project of doing 20 volumes on the History of Indian Science and Technology, of which 8 are published already. What is more troubling than a random remark is that Mr. Murthy's foundation has given a multi million dollar grant to bring out English translations of Indian classical works, and the editor in control is Sheldon Pollock. A brilliant Sanskritist no doubt, Pollock's interpretations have tilted towards things like: Aryan invasion theory, dalits being oppressed by sanskrit under brahmin control, etc. In some of the volumes of Indian classics which he did under a different series, such ideologies came through in various ways direct and indirect. For the same amount of money, Mr. Murthy could have re-ignited a whole India based Sanskrit scholarship and translation under the guidance of pandits. Of course, its his hard earned money and we respect his right to spend it howsoever he chooses. I am merely expressing my personal opinion on how I wish our tycoons would back their own civilization in the same manner as American tycoons helped build their civilizational foundations. The Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie philanthropy did not go to foreign scholars to write American history. " October 5 Ref: FHRS Digest No.2305 - Rajiv Malhotra's Breaking India - posted Ref: FHRS Digest No.2305 Rajiv Malhotra's Breaking India - posted by Achintya Nath Sexena Oct,2. With reference to the remarks of Mr.Achintya Nath Saxena that Dalit and Dravidian movements are home grown, I can only say that the author is simply under informed about the genesis of separatist trends.   It seems Mr.Sexena has   turned a blind eye to the historical facts relating to the colossal role played by the imperial Govt. in creating a wedge and fanning hatred amongst the people of India.  Further, Mr.Sexena remarks regarding Smritis and oppression of lower castes by upper castes for centuries are nothing short of monomania.  For people of any evolved civilization/progressive nation, inheriting such a precious patrimony i.e., the  Vedic texts including original Manusmriti(without interpolations) would have been a matter of great pride.    However, it is quite astonishing to note that  certain sections of our own countrymen,  instead of digging the gems of Vedic truths in their original form by purging the extraneous matter, simply engage themselves in negating and condemning them without going into their depth..." October 5 Critique and salient points of Breaking India - Blog Venkat posts: Here is an worwhile blog which well summarizes breaking india. It is worth reading thru it. ... October 5 Explaining purva paksha to Hindu activists Rajiv Malhotra posts: "One or two Hindu activists in India who have no clue what this book is about have expressed concern simply on the basis that it has been endorsed by a variety of persons who are non-hindu, including christians, scientists who are atheists, etc. Such a statement comes from a closed mind which parrots simplistic statements that are already well known, and hence speaks to those already on their wavelength. They need to understand the traditional method of purva paksha debate with opponents. BEING DIFFERENT opens a new type of interfaith engagement than has existed today. It seek to (a) clarify dharma for those inside dharma, (b) invite open introspection from those who are in the undecided/confused middle, and (c) challenge those with certain metaphysical beliefs opposed to dharma. To achieve this goal, it defines dharma categories in clear, strong terms (i.e. categories that comprise whats "different and distinct" about dharma) and invites debate on our terms. It reverses the gaze upon the west using the dharmic lens, making us the observer of the other. Till now the terms on which debates took place were set by western metaphysical assumptions. Therefore, my project is to hold a series of debates, some live and some online as webinars, with various thinkers from diverse traditions. I already have serious interest from Hindu groups, some Christian theological centers, Buddhists, those in the scientific approach of religion without espousing any faith, etc. I want to expand this set of debates. The email from the critic who has not even seen the book says: "Why has the author sought and received endorsment from the evangelist Francis Clooney who is acitve in TN? Considering the previous book is about the church's agenda to break india I am surprised that Malhotra has sought Clooney's endorsement who has authored comparative religion books on mary worship and devi worship besides insidiously penetrating srivaishnava mathams seeking to be educated on srivaishnava philosophy. If the author wants endoirsements from evangelists then he diesnt need Hindus to read his book." I preciously started an online debate with Clooney challenging his view that Mary and devi worship can be interchanged. It did not go far because of his unavailability. With this book, I want and hope Clooney will organize a public event at Harvard (or somewhere) where my positions on how dharma DIFFERS from western religions can get a fair hearing. Therefore, his endorsement is a good sign and I appreciate his willingness to have such a conversations. Once a door is opened, one may have serious engagements in a tone of mutual respect and fairness. Of course, those Hindus who are insecure will not do this because they simply cannot do it. They have not done enough study and churning internally for a sufficient number of years, have not engaged in hundreds of serious intellectual encounters with opponents to be able to develop solid positions that they could confidently bring to the intellectual forums. They are secure only inside their small and relatively isolated cocoons and are afraid to speak in an open forum as equals. It is easier for them to shout than reason but this has only turned off many of our own youth and pushed them away. I am wanting to stick my neck out and face the "other" in the same spirit as our purva paksha tradition. Purva paksha REQUIRES the active participation of the opponent; otherwise it is a monologue and not a purva paksha. In the same fashion, if a Muslim scholar wants to debate me I am interested. All I ask for as a precondition is a fair forum and moderator. I intend to bring my own video camera to record so that nobody can edit a one-sided outcome. Most interfaith events I have seen have a pathetic Hindu presence. BEING DIFFERENT wants to shift the game by this very approach. It shocks and bothers many Hindus who get a drubbing in metaphysical debates, because their knowledge is limited go Hinduism only with a superficial knowledge of western religions and philosophies. BEING DIFFERENT gives extensive Hindu views on metaphysical issues concerning: Aristotle, Hegel, Christian ideas of original sin, redemption, salvation, Judaism's exclusiveness, misappropriations of Hindu dance/yoga and even Vedanta, the Hebraic/Hellenistic split, the science/religion split in the west, among several others. It is a delight to interact in the spirit of purva paksha on such matters with those in other faiths. I hope to educate more Hindus on how to do this without fear of getting a thrashing. The west has systematically studied Indian civilization for centuries (incl. debating hindu scholars) and have built armies of scholars who can debate any issue from their point of view. It is time we level the playing field by encouraging our folks to reverse the gaze - which is what BEING DIFFERENT does." October 6 Nick Sutton - oxford center for Hindu studies Please view the link below for a perfect example of a eurocentric academic who is holding forth on Hindus. He plays the game of giving all negative information... October 6 Ayudha Puja & Vidyarambham Inculturation Hindu or Christian, for Kerala Kids It's Vidyarambham http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=118169 Kasargod: Ayudha Puja Held at Our Lady of... October 6 Punjab overwhelmed by Christian missionaries - Jesus as Satguru, Chu ** I wonder what explanation the weak Hndus who glorify Christian yoga, bharatnatyam, karnatik music et al will now use for Christian satsang and Jesus as... October 7 A Shankaracharya on Islam Dear All,  Please see this video as an example of all that Malhotraji has been warning about October 8 Response to Vishal Mangalwadi's attack on "Breaking India" its princ Rajiv Malhotra [and Aravindan Neelakandan] share: In his review of the book `Breaking India', [see 1] Vishal Mangalwadi makes numerous attacks on book and on my personally. Being a prominent world class jet set evangelist serving the foreign nexuses, he gets extensive coverage in the book and it is not surprising that he would hit back through such a rant. My co-author and I are issuing the following rejoinder to Mangalwadi's review: Response to Vishal Mangalwadi's attack on 'Breaking India' and its principle author Mangalwadi eulogizes `Mosaic Ethnology' thus: "Mosaic Ethnology) assumes that our human race originated from one pair of parents. Initially everyone spoke the same language. Linguistic and racial divisions arose after Noah. The authors are right in saying that from the 17th to the early 20th century it was not secular rationalism but the Bible that inspired and directed Europe's intellectual vitality, including Indological studies. Hinduism and Islam had been in India for centuries but neither of those faiths stimulated their followers to study India, its languages, history, people, or natural resources as the Bible inspired Europeans." Mangalwadi perhaps did not read the book properly for he misses the point entirely. From the 17th to 20th century it was not the Biblical view alone that shaped European mindset but also colonial expansion, renaissance driven enlightenment which actually has its roots in the rediscovery of the pre-Christian pagan philosophical and scientific legacy and identity crisis driven by all these factors – which was forging the European worldview. What Mangalwadi boasts as `Europe's intellectual vitality' was actually responsible for the justification of the most cruel and most commercialized slavery establishment in the history of humanity namely trans-Atlantic slave trade.  It was the Hamitic Myth of the Bible that justified slave trade and all its cruelty. For example the nineteenth century American best seller `Slavery as its Relates to the Negro or the African Race' (1843)  elaborated on the Biblical scene of Noah cursing Ham's progeny into slavery and cursed the Blacks should remain as `both in times of peace and war a despised, degraded and oppressed race.'  As late as 1895 Biblical mythology was trumped up in defense of slavery as in the writings of Troup Taylor, a devout Christian who in a very popular track explained that the entire `Negro' race `was adapted to a destiny suited only to an inferior race.' The countless evidences can be multiplied and one can read some of them in a very detailed manner in the book (for example pp. 40-41). Mangalwadi exhibits his arrogant ignorance when he states that Hinduism and Islam never stimulated their followers to study India, its languages, history, people, or natural resources as the Bible inspired Europeans. In reality it was the Hindu mathematics which was transmitted to Europe by Islamic scholars which started the very European renaissance. And modern linguistics including computational linguistics owes its origin and development to Panini and Kerala mathematicians as well as logicians. The only additional input that Europeans added was the racial categorization which visited upon humanity some of its worst scourges in history in the form of Nazi holocaust and Rwandan genocide. And this distinctly European contribution, which Mangalwadi claims as having Biblical roots, is neither scientific nor very flattering to Christianity as a religion. Again Mangalwadi errs when he states that it was Bible through European colonialism that made India a nation-state in the modern sense. In fact the idea of Indian nation state defies the European idea of nation-state which was based on rigid monocultural identity. As B.R.Ambedkar the chief architect of Indian constitution has pointed out in an elaborate discussion that the integrity of India is based more on its spiritual culture rather than the colonial infrastructural frameworks that the British created for their own interest. From the beginning Indian unity has been based on its respect and acceptance of pluralism – something that the modern West including US is trying hard to come to terms with and which is resisted by fundamentalists like Pat Robertson and his ideological clone Mangalwadi. Mangalwadi claims that the "missionaries embraced, loved, and served the racially different "lower" castes and Dravidians." But documented evidence suggests that missionaries only saw the impoverished social conditions of the `lower' castes and the fabricated Dravidian race identity as opportunities for conversion rather than showing on them genuine love and respect for their culture. For example the book documents how Caldwell considered Dravidians as inherently endowed with `the density of their ignorance' which he laments is the `chief obstacle to their evangelization'. So much for love and respect that missionaries have for the fellow human being! He states that "The oppressed do hate their oppressors, but that privilege is not available to Christians..." How does he explain the centuries of Christian oppression - from the times of Roman imperialism, to the genocides of Native Americans, the slavery of Africans, and colonization of Asians? Even today, American civic society is highly divided along race lines. The churches are almost entirely segregated - Blacks, Hispanics, Koreans, Indians and Whites each have own separate churches. Before wagging the finger at others and exporting "solutions", US based evangelists like Mangalwadi should work on solving Christianity's internal problems at home..." Rajiv follows up: "Mangalwadi champions the missionaries are helping the labor class in India. Below is a counter example of the devastation they cause, this example sent to me by someone named Bharat Nair. It shows their role in plagiarizing India's manufacturing advantages in order to help the industrial revolution in Europe: For example, see Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber By Stephen Yafa p.30)  "As for the Indian methods of  "animalizing" cotton [i.e. giving cotton the texture similar to animal skins], they remained mysterious to most European printers until much later than might be expected - for seventy years after the arrival of chintz. Ironically, it was a man of the cloth, Jesuit Father Coeurdoux, who betrayed these fiercely guarded secrets. In 1742 the French cleric took advantage of his missionary posting on the Coromandel coast to gain the trust of Indian master dyers whom he had converted to Catholicism. They confided their secret pricess to him with an understanding that he would never reveal it. Coeurdoux immediately gave a detailed description in a step-by-step letter published in France. In a blink, three thousand years of clandestine artisan practice became public knowledge."     This is the same priest described in Ananda Ranga Pillai's description of the destruction of Vedapuri Iswaran temple in Pondicherry" October 8 "Ecstasy, possession, and spiritual realization: Yoga of Dance" Udaya shares: "....Christ repackaged for Hindus? Christ who is at heart only a Hindu? Hindu Christ for the whole world? Since its inception in 1988, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company has worked throughout the United Kingdom and internationally, producing and touring dance works by its artistic director and choreographer, Shobana Jeyasingh. Each year, the company engages with up to 30,000 people through performances and a range of education projects. Shobana Jeyasingh is acclaimed for her pioneering work in choreography. She deploys her South Asian roots to create work that is uniquely British. The dance itself is ground-breaking and contemporary in style but draws on many traditional forms and influences such as Ballet or Bharata Natyam, a centuries-old Asian classical dance form. This produces a language of movement with which people from all cultures can identify..." October 9 'BORNEO TRIBE PRACTICES ITS OWN KIND OF HINDUISM' - NYT Subject: "BORNEO TRIBE PRACTICES ITS OWN KIND OF HINDUISM" - NYT Date: Monday, September 26, 2011, 7:37 AM ...