| Reversing the gaze - example from Thailand
Willard posts: "A recent article in the Bangkok Post Feb 18, 2012 has the writer reversing the gaze on Western corporate ethics by citing the 4th century Indian king Chanakya...Quote from the article: But if you really were politically astute, you wouldn't be taking your tips from an Italian manual. A far more powerful treatise is available in the East which predates Machiavelli by at least 1,800 years: the Arthashastra (The Science of Material Success) by Chanakya, the genius behind the throne who masterminded the creation of the first Indian empire..." February 20
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Surya comments: "...History tells us that much of western scientific thought developed in opposition to Christianity. History-centrism is the main reason that science faced and still faces opposition by Christians. For example, The young earth creationists in Christianity believe that earth is not much older than 4000 BC. Some Christian [apologists] try to bridge this faith with fossil evidence by arguing that God created the Earth recently but with an earth with fossils that give the feel of being much older. In 1950s, Pope Pius XII agreed to the academic freedom to study the scientific implications of evolution, as long as Catholic dogma is not violated. You will notice such stubborn opposition to evidence in History-centric religions.
The reason for the Nicene creed is, in my opinion, two fold:
(1) to provide a common ground for different Christian divisions.
(2)
to define the core thought that cannot be compromised. What is outside
the core can be (grudgingly) compromised but not without a fight and
only if the evidence is unsurmountable. Thus, the Vatican recently
accepting Evolutionary biology is such a compromise....
Core,
incompatible, ideology is protected using history centric arguments.
Rest of it grows and adapts through inculturation, serving as a
protective layer to the core...."
Arun shares:
"...I find this article, "Beyond Western Hegemonies"
by Giovanni Arrighi, Iftikhar Ahmad & Miin-wen Shih to have an adequate explanation of how the West came to dominate Asia. It is not cultural or collective character defects of Indians. Quote: "The original and most enduring source of Western power in Asia has been the capacity of Western states to disrupt the complex organization that linked Asian societies to one another within and across jurisdictional and civilizational divides. This capacity has been rooted in Western advances in military technology on the one side, and in the vulnerability of Asian societies to the military disruption of their mutual trade on the other side.".."
Venkata adds:
"...Refusal to engage either out of fear or on account of certain smugness of self-aasurance, with inimical forces, is another reason for the intellectual, economic and military subjugation of Hindus. One can see this factor persisting even today--for example in the view of some well-meaning Hindus that Hindu intellectuals interested in protecting Dharma should not waste their time in debating things with "foreigners", "missionaries" etc..."
NS Rajaram responds:
"It is also a question of time. Many of us have a busy schedule and don't have the time needed to prepare and debate these people."
Rajiv's response:
Agreed. Which is why it should not be taken up by people
casually, inconsistently, without adequate commitment for the long run, without adequate training, experience, and the right depth of required knowledge. Once people appreciate that this is a specialty, not a casual hobby, only then can they respect others who specialize in this with commitment." Carpentier responds: "Engaging with Evangelicals or Born Again Christians tend to be fruitless since they have an agenda based on "blind" faith which is by definition not amenable to reasoning." Rajiv's response: I have said this many times here: If your goal is to change the mind of a debating opponent, you are wasting time in debate. But if your goal is to educate the large audience of undecided, confused, vacillating, persons then the above logic is irrelevant. Using your logic, one should not debate opponents in politics because one does not expect them to switch parties." Arun adds: I second Rajiv Malhotra's response. The point of a debate is not to change the opponent, but to change the audience. Rajiv's comment: The impact if any on the other side is irrelevant. The other side is merely to be used as a device to get one's own points out to the audience - not only those sitting in the hall but those who will watch it on YouTube later. If your impact on the audiences will be negative, then dont get involved. This could be the case if you are ill-prepared on purva paksha, inexperienced in debate, crude in communication skills, or if moderation will be biased against you. Most Hindu activists have suffered this fate. But I dont believe that I have suffered these conditions - my track record for a decade of taking on opponents is very public. Many new movements got inspired, many groups emerged, many writers taking the ideas I introduced and utilizing them. Yet, jealous "activists" want to stop my efforts of bringing new approaches to dharma into the mainstream. They need to understand my response below and Arun's comment above. If you failed, it does not follow that so will I. [this next thread seems to have gotten intertwined into the previous thread on Purva Paksha, and was initiated in December 2011..] Chapter 1 of 'Being Different' Kundan has a general overview of the book 'Being Different;:
"I have received my copy of “Being Different” and have
completed reading the first chapter. My first impression of the book from
yesterday’s reading:
I specifically liked Rajiv ji’s formulations on “Difference
Anxiety” both from above and below. The preliminary discussions in this chapter
on assimilation and digestion are extremely important because even for many of
us Indians, who have had an English medium education, it was much later in life
that we learned that Indian traditions have impacted the west in a major way in
the last five hundred years: And we learn this only after we take a specialized
study of humanities. This information is not readily available—not only that
very few books are available on this topic, many of you will be surprised to
know that Raymond Schwab’s important book “Oriental Renaissance” (as referenced
in “Breaking India”) is out of print. “The Oriental Enlightenment” by J.J.
Clarke is available, if you want to further learn about India’s
impact on Europe during the times of Enlightenment.
...
Regarding “Purva Paksha,” I want to add that there is
another book available which will complement “Being Different” very well. It is
Sri Aurobindo’s “Renaissance in India
with a Defence of Indian Culture.” An English journalist by the name of William
Archer wrote a scathing book that represented the colonial view on Indian
culture and its traditions. Sri Aurobindo in that book does a “purva paksha,” “khandana,”
and goes on to discuss the Indian tradition from the perspective or “siddhanta”
of his Integral philosophy. A pdf copy of the book is available on the
following website:
If you want to purchase a copy of the book, you can do so
from their online shop"
Wadhwa adds:
"..plea to add "Renaissance in India with a Defence of
Indian Culture", a book doing purva-paksha, by Sri Aurobindo which will
complement 'Being Different' is a good suggestion. Adding to this, I
would also suggest the works of Maharishi Dayananda(1824-83) especially
Satyartha Prakash. His magnum opus containing extensive use of purva
paksha style debates is basically written for spreading the message of
truth without evincing personal hatred. Sri Aurobindo acknowledged his
legacy and in a chapter on Dayananda - The Man and His Work which is
part of his publication 'Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda' (pub.by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 1st Ed.1940,6th Ed.2006) he writes "In
Dayananda's life we see always the puissant jet of his spiritual
practicality. A spontaneous power and decisiveness is stamped
everywhere on his work."(page 49). At page 51 Sri Aurobindo
says "Truth seems a simple thing and is yet most difficult. Truth was
the master word of the Vedic teaching, truth in the soul, truth in
vision, truth in the intention, truth in the act. Practical truth, arjava,
an inner candour and a strong sincerity, clearness and open honour in
the word and deed, was the temperament of the old Aryan morals. It is
the secret of pure unspoilt energy, the sign that a man has not
travelled far from Nature. It is the bar dexter of the son of Heaven,
Divasputra. This was the stamp that Dayananda left behind him and it should be the mark and effigy of himself by which the parentage of his work can be recognised." .."
Arjunshakti responds:
Swami Dayananda maybe have done his critiques on islam and Christianity but he also reinvented through his interpretation the Vedas as being monotheist and anti idolatry ect.He used the very same Abrahamic templates he was attacking to become the Vedic world view which only opens the doors to the likes of Dr Zakir naiks on a common platform of 'monotheism' ..The Arya Samajis even have their equivalent to the 10 commandments.. Often I see present day Arya Samajis attacking other Hindus as 'puranics' and believes in multiple gods giving more ammunition to the anti hindus to attack Hinduism with.. Rajiv's response: Agreed. Both he and Ram Mohan Roy while doing their purva paksha of the west got "modified" themselves in the process. Rakesh asks: "Even Ramakrishna math got modified ? swami vivekananda while he remined steadfastly hindu had to make hinduism palatable to the west and had to make Christ an avatara as well. Rajiv response: While agreeing with the above, I want to differentiate between Jesus and Christianity. Indians need to understand that Christianity was not started by Jesus or proposed by him, but invented by Roman conquerors as a system of theocracy and mind control. The 4th century construction of the New Testament in Nicea (in modern day Turkey) is well accepted by Christian theologians and has never been doubted by mainstream churches. One can take Jesus' own words (such as Sermon on the Mount) and find great similarities with Vedanta. But Jesus was not history-centric - which is the problem with christianity, that if removed from it would de-fang it. In fact, the church would dissolve, and there would be a reverse digestion, i.e. Jesus would get digested into dharma while Christianity would disappear. Despite this position which I have worked out in detail, I dont advocate people promoting "Jesus lived in India" type of scenarios, because the ground is not ready to make such a massive onslaught on the edifice of the christian fortress. Such thinking today amounts to sameness, and is leading to Hinduism getting digested into christianity, not the other way around. .... The purpose of BD is to define what non-compromising positions of dharma must sustain in this encounter between cosmologies. In each of the differences identified, the two sides' positions are shown to be mutually incompatible, and the side that compromises gets digested into the other. Once you are secure in this knowledge and experienced in its deployment then by all means you should engage in interfaith dialogues and propose: "lets be the same, but on our terms". But first step is to get a solid grip of what "our terms" amounts to." Mukul asks: "Can you show the exact quote? I think Swamiji's [Vivekananda] position on Christ was not of an Avatar. He even challenged the historicity of Christ at one place" Nimesh comments: ...[Vivekananda] never challenged the history of jesus. he was just explaining the difference between a religion that is founded by one person [i.e. history-centric] vs the one that has evolved. [also,] it was one of the greatest experiment of his guru - ... Neeraj adds: We are starting here with an assumption that there WAS a 'Jesus Christ', which has not been proven by the most sincere of Christian historians (as per Sita Ram Goel's 'Jesus Christ: An artifice for aggression'). Do we have to accept Jesus to be a historical figure?... Rajiv's response: Whether jesus existed in history is irrelevant to my point (as is whether Shiva was a historical person). There are many states of consciousness in dharma and these may or may not be historical - they can also be ahistorical. My criticism in BD is (for strategic reasons) ONLY limited to history-centrism - this criticism has implications against the church which i want to separate from Jesus. Desh comments: "....The fight between Dharma and Abrahamic dispensations is a classic fight between Inclusivity and Exclusivity. All that Exclusivist desires is to sit on the same pedestal as the Inclusivist. That is MORE than enough for him. Enough to about the agenda of "I am X, and SO you are Y, and that is why I hate you". The Inclusivist helps him by saying "I don't know who I am, but we are all one".
This is Benign Inclusivism. Benign Inclusivism or
Exclusivism may not be the only options. Dharmic Inclusivism is an alert
construct where Exclusivism has to be fought with correctness of
knowing.
That is why I am completely convinced that your
books will serve a much larger purpose than you may have intended. They
are as revolutionary historically as Vivekananda's speech in 1893. Such
contemporary and mainstream effort with solid knowledge of Dharma has
not happened in a century now..."
"Read the following speech by Vivekananda on Jesus. A very respectful speech. Vivekananda sees Vedantic thought in what Jesus says. ... In the speech, the closest he came to elevating Jesus to God is when he says:
If
I, as an Oriental, have to worship Jesus of Nazareth, there is only one
way left to me, that is, to worship him as God and nothing else. Have
we no right to worship him in that way, do you mean to say? If we bring
him down to our own level and simply pay him a little respect as a great
man, why should we worship at all? Our scriptures say, "These great
children of Light, who manifest the Light themselves, who are Light
themselves, they, being worshipped, become, as it were, one with us and
we become one with them."
....
Need To read this carefully to avoid being digested.First, there is the supposition "IF" in the beginning of the sentence.
Second,
he is saying that worshipping great men of light brings us close to
them and their teachings. That is same as "Guru sakshat parabrahma".
This is a core Hindu value - conferring very high respect to a teacher.
If
we agree with this, then we accept Jesus as a great teacher of Vedantic
thought and confer the respect we give to other religious teachers but
nothing more special. Jesus is not called exclusively by Vivekananda as
an Avatar or Son of God... "
Srinivasan comments: "That is exactly what the Swami Abhedananda who took over from Swami Vivekananda did when he was in America. His book"Why Hindu accepts Christ and rejects Churchianity" is a fine book which does the job of digesting Jesus into Dharma and rejecting the claim of Church andis printed by Ramakrishna Mutt.Swami Vivekananda rejected the idea of Sinner.His speech in Chicago echoes the thought well. "...the Hindu refuses to call you a sinner ...." Chandramauli comments: "If one goes by history, this stratagem of separating Jesus from Christianity has always ended up being albatross round the neck of Hindus. Example: "He (Raja RamMohan Roy) had demolished the most important Christian dogmas. But all along, he had kept Jesus on a high pedestal. Perhaps he was convinced that Jesus was a great moral teacher. Perhaps he was using Jesus only to beat the missionaries with their own stick. In any case, the Brahmo Samaj he founded had to pay a high price for his praise of Jesus. Keshub Chunder Sen who took over the Brahmo Samaj at a later stage, became infatuated with Jesus, so much so that he got alienated more or less completely from the Hindu society at large. Keshub's disciples tried to get Jesus endorsed by Sri Ramakrishna who knew nothing about the mischievous myth. And that, in due course, led to Ramakrishna Mission's antics of denying its Hindu ancestry." http://voiceofdharma.org/books/hhce/Ch8.htm Rajiv's response: I have had any number of arguments and debates with the RKM folks over this stand of sameness by them, including in public forums. In my uturn theory, i also include many other similar uturners - SRF, Brahma Kumaris, and so forth. A couple of years ago I had a big online fight with one Swami Bodhananda who has an ashram in Michigan supported by many NRIs, and the fight was specifically on his sameness nonsensical positions which he persisted in defending by avoiding the issues I raised. The discussion turned toxic once he tried to disqualify me on grounds that he had "adhikar" and I did not. So the whole uturn research is to understand this syndrome - both the role of the gurus/sampradaya side and from the side of the westerners who join such movements. The central question i started to focus on was: what would be non-digestible into Judeo-Christianity and yet inseparable from dharma? If these items of difference are clearly understood and planted firmly in every dharmic leader's public posture, then uturns would be prevented. My answer: attack history centrism. A focused target is easier than a wider one, such as a whole religion carte blanche. Many people who see themselves as christians join in attacks against history-centrism. THERE IS A WHOLE ANTI-CHURCH MOVEMENT WITHIN CHRISTIANITY ITSELF. A smart strategy knows the limitations in one's positions and does not try to fight a bigger battle than one can win. So all i hope to achieve through BD from westerners is to win over those who accept the problems caused by history centrism. Going beyond that is self defeating because you will get no supporters - not even the yoga/meditation types of westerners. (You should go out and try your various ideas as experiments to get real world empirical data first.) " February 25
[this thread below is summarized separately in two posts on 'American Veda', which you can find in the RMF archive. here is part-1] February 26
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