Curating Rajiv Malhotra's Works. Online Resource, Database, Crowd Sourcing, and Expert Feedback on Contemporary Hinduism, Dharmic India, and topics covered in 'Breaking India', 'Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism", 'Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity', 'The Battle For Sanskrit', and the newly released book 'Academic Hinduphobia'.
Are Sanskrit Studies in the West becoming a new Orientalism?
(in Hindi with some English)
By Rajiv Malhotra
Delivered at Sanskrit Department, Delhi University, January, 2015
I felt honored to be invited by Delhi University's Sanskrit Department to deliver their annual memorial lecture this year.
My topic pertains to my latest book scheduled to come out this year.
Many Indians feel proud whenever their heritage is the subject of study by the West, without bothering to first examine in detail the nature of that study. They fail to ask critical questions like:
Is the study fair or is it biased?
Are there Western assumptions being superimposed, intentionally or otherwise?
Are the conclusions undermining our own traditional understanding?
What are the implications and consequences of such conclusions - both in shaping the image of India outside, as well as within India where such Western conclusions often become adopted blindly?
Are Indians losing control over the discourse of their own tradition - becoming followers rather than leaders, consumers rather than producers, of the discourse about themselves?
There are many advantages to being studied by outsiders. In the past there were debates between opposing views, and both sides benefited.
But today, Indians tend to be in such awe of Westerners who study them (the inferiority complex craving "we have arrived on the world stage"), that there has been virtually no independent Indian response to some major works by Westerners.
I was recently shocked at the blindness with which wealthy Indians, traditional Hindu organizations and media, all lined up in support of what I felt was an interpretation of Sanskrit in serious conflict with tradition.
For instance, I found the following views pervading the works that are being celebrated by Indians, none of whom could acknowledge having read these Western works adequately. The conclusions I contest include the following:
That Sanskrit is inherently an abusive language
That Ramayana is a myth designed to oppress, and has anti-Muslim resources built into it.
That Sanskrit is a dead language, killed by Hindu kings long ago.
That Sanskrit was never a language of common usage, and never in use as a spoken language.
That Sanskrit's role as the lingua franca of India must now be replaced by English.
Hence Indian vernaculars must get Anglicized and de-Sanskritized.
Etc.
This lecture served to bring the issues to the attention of several hundreds of Sanskrit scholars present. None of them have engaged this scholarship, even though they acknowledged its huge influence in India today.
One problem is that such scholarship is written in very dense and high flown English (by mostly Americans and the Indian students trained by them), that hardly any Sanskrit scholar in India is able to figure out what is being said. Hence, there has been no response from the traditional side.
My forthcoming book hopes to change this. I want it to provoke a debate with both sides represented.
If you have interest in the discourse on Indian sanskriti and Sanskrit, and how these are increasingly controlled by Western scholars and institutions, please watch this video.
Vert successful book events in Coimbatore
We have had 3 events in this city. 1) Amrit university - run by
Amma, the famous hugging guru. There were 500 students and faculty and
the q&a was excellent....
This is a very interesting post. Too bad it did not get more attention (perhaps due to BD ideas still be understood by readers). It appears that Sardar Patel's idea of "secularism" was based on Dharmic Integral unity, whereas Nehru's was based on Western Synthetic Unity [and a foolish DU prof appears to celebrates this !!]. November 27
Secularism & Being Different Ravi shares:
"In interview excerpt attached below answer by DU prof Neerja Singh showcases the confusion in the modern Indian intellectual mind regarding secularism. Sardar Patels' inbuilt Dharmic unitive notion of secularism is being contrasted with the "imported but scientific" secularism of Nehru, and both are judged as equal.
To clarify this confusion, the Being Different book, in Ch3, clearly compares & contrasts the synthetic unity that Western philosophers cobble together, with the unity via first-principles that is built into the dharmic socio-religio-philosophic structure. (Western secularism is basically born out of contextual expediency where the Church's wings were clipped and it was removed from it's historical position of absolute power). See below excerpt:
BD:".. Integral unity means that ultimately only the whole exists; the parts that make up the whole have but a relative existence. (For a more technical discussion of this complex point, see Appendix A.) The metaphor that has been used to illustrate the nature of this unity is of a smile in relation to a face: A smile cannot exist separately from the face; it is dependent and contingent on the face. However, the face has an independent existence, whether it smiles or not. ...
Synthetic unity starts with parts that exist separately from one another. For example, the parts of an automobile exist separately until they are assembled into a single vehicle. Similarly, in classical physics the cosmos is viewed as an assemblage of separate elementary particles. The problem then becomes how to make them cohere by outside forces (rather than seeking a coherence that is inherent). Given this starting point, it is no accident that Judeo-Christian religious practices such as prayer or obedience are focused outside of the self, because the self, according to these traditions, is independent and separate from others. The way to overcome this essential separateness is to find ways to bond with the other..."
How would you describe their (Nehru & Patel's) ideas of secularism? Were there differences in perception of the idea of secularism too?
Patel was thoroughly secular, as secular as Nehru was. The difference was that Nehru believed in scientific secularism, that is, he did not give importance or preference to any one particular religion in secularism.
But for Patel the root of secularism lay in Indian traditions, in Bhakti tradition. Just like Kabir, who was also secular, right? Patel never disjointed religion out of secularism. His ideas, idioms, metaphors, and language, were all deeply rooted in the Indian tradition. But both were equally secular.
Nehru was able to articulate his views in a larger frame because of his worldly exposure; that was also his advantage he could put things in the perspective of world history. There was an aura of intellectualism attached to Nehru; he was multi-dimensional, whereas Patel was single mindedly focused on the consolidation of the princely states.
Patel's advantage was that he was very focused and was a realist. Nehru was never perceived to be identified by any one ethnic or religious group, caste; he was considered to be close to all social, religious, caste and cultural groups. Patel was identified closely with Gujarat.
