Ignorant Hindu leaders invite Rambachan to represent Hinduism

Have they read Indra's Net?
March 2015

The attached invite:


for a May debate between Hinduism and Catholicism features Anantanand Rambachan representing the Hindus.

But he is the same person featured in my book Indra's Net as espousing the thesis of Neo-Hinduism, according to which modern Hinduism is:

• An artificial construction done by Vivekananda
• Is incompatible with vedanta. 
• Was done by Vivekananda because of his inferiority complex from the West. 
• This modern Hinduism is based on appropriating critical elements from Christianity. 
• Hence it is more properly called Neo-Hinduism. 

He is positioned as a leader in the academy spreading this Neo-Hinduism thesis. He is also the official (honorary) Hindu appointed by the Vatican. Can he speak for both sides?

For the record: He is probably a good human being on a personal level, and this is not any ad hominem against him personally. But his life work (from his PhD onwards) has been on this thesis that creates internal conflicts within Hinduism, especially between Shankara and Vivekananda.

I have said that such internal debates have always been there, but there is not in our best interest to go to vatican and educate them and other anti-Hindu academics on how to defeat Hinduism. Rambachan has supplied the arguments being used to undermine the legitimacy of modern hinduism.

The Washington DC Hindu leaders doing this are known to me and support my work. They ought to have organized a debate in which Hinduism is represented by someone else. Encouraging a scholar who speaks from both sides is a bad idea.

Rambachan also has said many great things about Hinduism. He criticizes evangelism, for instance. But many Jesuits also criticize proselytizing. The Good Cop face does not offset the damage done by the Bad Cop side of the same person.

These Hindu leaders are unaware of the strategy of the College of Catholic Bishops in having such "interfaith" events. The poster talkes of promoting "common interests" - but do you know what these are? It is the digestion of Hinduism.

I just want to put this on the record for people to ponder. I come across such half baked Hindu leadership all over India, USA, etc. Am I wasting my life?


Rajiv ji followed up after his India trip with this additional comment:

For an honest debate, there cannot be a conflict of interest between the debaters. Rambachan has worked for the Vatican's interfaith organization as their official Hindu face. How can he be "our" representative? Its like allowing the opposing cricket team to appoint our captain. He has been extremely cozy with Francis Clooney for decades, and now these two men will pretend they are really debating "against" each other?

Why cant the Vatican debate with me, for instance? What did Sant ji learn by watching my recent debate in Houston with a prominent Christian theologian? Was Rambachan selected based on any such prior experience in public?

Secondly, the debate Rambachan must be invited ought to be on his Neo-Hinduism thesis. Instead, this setup proposed in DC will hide that side of his work, and let his Neo-Hinduism go on. That would be a way to detract away from my Indra's Net book.

My sense is that this move is Vatican's way to protect their "Hindu asset". They want to restore his credibility among Hindus.

RISA's Token Hindus

This thread encapsulates the continuous attempts made by a section of the Western Academia to interpret, appropriate in ways that are convenient to them, ideas and developments that happen in the Hindu fold. They typically employ a reductive Western lens to analyze and 'deconstruct' events happening in the Dharmic world. Furthermore, they also act as gatekeepers, by not letting in the voices of practicing Hindus, and more importantly, any dissenting Dharmic. For example, the so-called 'RISA list' is barred to any practicing Dharmic who disagrees with this fabricated consensus, as Rajiv Malhotra does. Hence a person practicing dharma and coming from it is deprived of a seat at their own table where ostensibly, the freedom of speech is championed. On the other hand, we observe that token Hindus who are 'useful' for furthering this cause of western universalism are indeed welcomed at the table, and is one of the key talking points of this post.

A RISA list mail from Fred Smith was shared by Indrani:

Several people have asked me off list to compile the sources reported and to summarize the very preliminary findings from my question last week regarding an apparent convergence between followers of Vivekananda, even Gandhi, and the RSS.  I regarded these three as strangely matched bedfellows and wondered how to interpret it, if indeed my observations are valid at all. What I discovered is that Vivekananda, and even Gandhi, have been gradually appropriated into the culture of the RSS, and that this has been building for many decades. Also, however, mediate forces have emerged to both facilitate and transform this image. I was not aware, for example, that the well-known monument to Vivekananda found at the southern tip of India, at Kanyakumari, was constructed by the RSS in the late 1960s. (I visited it many decades ago and was not at that time aware of the politics involved in its construction.) For this and the activities of the Vivekananda Kendra regarding yoga, see Gwilym Beckerlegge, “Eknath Ranade, Gurus, and Jivanvratis: The Vivekananda Kendra’s Promotion of the “Yoga Way of Life,”in Mark Singleton Ellen Goldberg, Gurus of Modern Yoga, pp. 317-350 (OUP 2013). In addition to the citation in my original posting of the piece by Pralay Kanungo, seee his “Fusing the Ideals of the Math with the Ideology of the Sangh? Vivekananda Kendra, Ecumenical Hinduism, and Hindu Nationalism,” in Public Hinduisms, ed.  John Zavos, et al. pp. 119-140 (Sage, 2012). This excellent volume is worth our attention.

I am also struck by the way new but mediate ideologies are influencing the body politic and sectarian affiliations. An example is the influence of Lingayat gurus in Karnataka who seem to draw from both sides, from their own space in the middle, as well as from local political arrangements. For this, see Aya Ikegame, “The governing guru: Hindu mathas in liberalizing India,” in Jacob copeman and Aya Ikegame, The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, pp. 46-63 (Routledge 2012). Her work is well worth following. I suspect that local configurations and affiliations are present in many states in India that most of us are unaware of.

John Cort reminded us of the posters and hoardings of a muscular macho Vivekananda in Gujarat as recently as this year, used as props by the BJP. Consistent with this, Adam Bowled noted, is a report in the Hindustan Times “that the BJP government in Haryana has appointed Dinanath Batra to guide a committee of educationists in Haryana. The accompanying photo shows Dinanath Batra in an (his?) office with a statue of Vivekananda in the foreground.” http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/rss-ideologue-dinanath-batra-to-guide-haryana-on-education/article1-1285430.aspx

Robert Zydenbos suggested we look at “an in-depth chapter on Vivekananda” in Hans-Joachim Klimkeit's _Der politische Hinduismus_ (Harrassowitz, 1981), which, Robert says, “is still the standard work in German on the subject.” Robert also suggests that Vivekananda’s appearance at the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893 has been overplayed by Hindu nationalists, at least from the European perspective. OK, go ahead, blame America :-)

I agree with Pankaj Jain and everyone else that it’s not a good idea for scholars to reduce Gandhi or Vivekananda to any political agenda. Jeff Long emphasizes this point: “We need to be careful to distinguish between these uses and the self-understandings of these figures in their respective contexts.” Nevertheless, such noble aspirations have not prevented these appropriations from becoming a regular feature of political practice in India. I agree that the search for a new indigenous hermeneutic and epistemology is a worthy endeavor, but the primary thrust of the efforts I have encountered are preoccupied with rejectionist discourse coupled with the use of highly selective evidence with which to build their theories, compounded with insufficient deep knowledge of both texts and the history of intellectual debate in India (for the latter, see the vigorous and readable work of Larry McCrea).

Several people on and off-list brought to my attention Jyotimaya Sharma’s recent book A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism (Yale University Press, 2013). but James Madaio does not believe that Sharma has adequately addressed how the right has “diachronically appropriated figures like Vivekananda into their rhetoric and 'mediascapes',” even as he demythologizes Vivekananda and neo-Vedantic inclusivism. Madaio notes, perceptively: “It does not seem a coincidence that the (often impassioned) issue of who Vivekananda was is anachronistically caught up in the right's (selective) appropriation of him and, in turn, the left's intellectual critique.”

Jon Keune mentioned the common ground between Gandhi and Hindutva. For this, see Arundhati Roy's introduction to the annotated edition of Ambedkar's annihilation of caste:

http://www.amazon.com/Annihilation-Caste-Annotated-B-R-Ambedkar/dp/1781688311/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415811796&sr=1-1&keywords=arundhati+roy+ambedkar

Also: http://www.outlookindia.com/article/We-Need-AmbedkarNow-Urgently/289691

Amod Lele refers us to his master's thesis on the rise of state-sponsored Hindutva with Singapore's Confucian experiments:https://bu.digication.com/amod_lele/International_development

and his article, "State Hindutva and Singapore Confucianism as responses to the decline of the welfare state,” in Asian Studies Review 28 (2004): 267-82.

Other sources that list members noted were:

Joe Alter’s Gandhi’s Body and his many works on yoga and Indian masculinity;

chapters 3 4 of Peter van der Veer’s Imperial Encounters, in which he discusses Vivekananda’s rejection of muscular Christianity even if muscular Hinduism developed later;

Arafaat Valiani’s work on Gandhi, masculinity, and performative politics in Gujarat, Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011);

Anup Kumar points out that in spite of the high profile of the hard edge of Hindu nationalism, most Hindus still identify with a softer, gentler Hinduism, and that “we are dealing with our own cognitive dissonance in face of the renewed focus on Gandhi by the BJP.” Similarly, Raymond Williams reminds us that in the early decades of Indian immigration to the U.S., Vivekananda was extolled as the Indian spiritual exemplar countering western materialism. How times have changed!!

Finally, and most recently, this from the NYTimes a few days ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/opinion/a-fighter-for-religious-tolerance.html?mabReward=RI%3A5&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine

Rajiv's reply to this was thus:

• Fred Smith is well known in Hinduism studies, and I have had many dealings with him and his students/cabal over 2 decades. I will give some background so readers have a context for what he says above. (This perspective I can offer is an example of "getting out of my comfort zone" numerous times.)
• His position above is what Indra's Net criticizes as the Neo-Hinduism theory of Hinduism - i.e. looking for evidence to depict modern Hinduism as a political fabrication by Vivekananda, Gandhi, etc. to unite Indians against Brits, which later fell into the hands of the Hindutva to use against Muslims minorities.
• If he were a good scholar, he would refer to my book and its counter arguments, and address my issues directly. But he cannot face that, so he simply ignores IN. He mentions various experts who I have already dealt with and criticized. So he gives a one sided view.
• Robert Zydenbos, Gwilym Beckerlegge, Mark Singleton, Ellen Goldberg, Amod Lele - these persons he cites are especially nasty anti-Hindu persons I have dealt with before.
• Pankaj Jain (named by him) was my follower/supporter for years; told me he got inspired by my work to leave IT and enter a career in Hinduism studies; got my help to enter Columhia U's MA program; got much mentoring my to understand the issues. But once he went for his PhD to Univ. of Iowa, where Fred Smith rules, he flipped sides completely - I was to be avoided in order to suck up to Smith cohorts. Upon entering the job market as a junior prof, he realized he was a nobody; so he started lobbying with the Hindu diaspora for support to boost his career. Many knew him from the earlier days, and stayed away, seeing him  as untrustworthy. But several went around campaigning for him seeing him as a goody-goody face to help us. Eventually most of these supporters also left him, and now he is sitting in a corner of the kurukshetra with nothing important to say. Neither here nor there - inconsequential.
• Pankaj and Jeff Long are cited by Smith to make it seem he has also mentioned the "Hindu side" and hence he is balanced. But neither is strong enough or creative enough, so they are "useful" to serve in this role.
• On Jeff Long, I refer you to three urls where we had prior discussions on him, right here:
• http://beingdifferentforum. blogspot.in/2013/08/did- jeffrey-long-out-rajiv- malhotras.html
• http://beingdifferentforum. blogspot.in/2014/04/the-role- of-prophets-in-judaism-and. html
• http://beingdifferentforum. blogspot.in/2013/09/bhagavad- gita-is-not-bible-of-india. html
• Another product of U of Iowa Fred Smith was Makarand Paranjape, a prof of English at JNU who likes to presents a pro-Hindu tilt. He has had to dance between working w me and appeasing his academic sponsor Fred Smith. He has agonized over this, at times telling me that his open association with me has cost his standing with them, and they stopped inviting him every summer to give lectures in USA like they used to. That's what this "intellectual freedom" amounts to. In any case, Makarand has been largely on the sidelines of important debates for the past decade, and writes relatively non-controversial stuff. This despite the fact that his mentor at JNU was Kapil Kapoor, a no-nonsense, fiery speaker solidly on our side.
• Fred Smith has crisscrossed both sides of Hinduism, presenting himself as insider or outsider depending on what best suits his interest in a given situation. He is now translating the last 5 vols of Mahabharata for the Univ of Chicago - this is planned to become the international standard on Mahabharata. (Its initial volumes defined the lens: [kshatriya] was translated as "feudal lord" and shudra as "slave". The editor James L. Fitzgerald said the text should be seen as "God's genocide". You get the picture. )

To join the discussion, please sign up on the yahoogroups site and follow the thread here.

Now on the subject of Swami Vivekananda who is the subject of much study as shown above, here's a paper by Rajiv Malhotra which was published in the official RK Mission book commemorating his 150th anniversary and released by the President of India.

There are multiple posts in the Rajiv Malhotra yahoogroups forum where practicing Hindus share relevant  and useful points of view on Swami Vivekananda's message from a dharmic perspective.

Transcript: Arun Shourie's Lecture on 'Indra's Net'

Credits

Sankhadip Das for coming up with the idea of transcribing Arun Shourie's main talk, writing the first draft, and sharing it with the forum. Others in the forum and then the HHG team have reviewed the material, which has gone through additional hours of editing. There remain tiny sections where the audio is unclear. We have highlighted certain key passages. The Youtube video is embedded at the end of this post. If a keen ear can spot key missing words, please add a comment and we will update the post.
[March 5: minor transcription updates]

Introduction

Arun Shourie delivered a thought-provoking and witty lecture on January 29, 2014 at the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF-India) meet in New Delhi, while releasing Rajiv Malhotra's new book 'Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity'. The written word is powerful and often remains embedded in our memory longer than the same information received by listening to a lecture. We hope this transcript will complement and amplify the experience of listening to Arun Shourie ji's video lecture on 'Indra's Net'.

[begin transcription]

Dear Friends, Mr. Rajiv Malhotra:

Just few days ago, I got a telephone call saying that “I would like to speak to Mr.Arun Shourie and I am Rajiv Malhotra speaking.” I said “How can I recognize you? You have to say I am The Rajiv Malhotra speaking.” [applause and laughter in the audience]

As in his earlier books, the three books, so also in this one, Rajiv has given us a pair of spectacles, a new pair of spectacles through which to understand, through which to see our own religions and our own tradition. He has done this with meticulous scholarship and with as much force, he has smashed the distorted lenses which were fabricated by so called scholars abroad and here and through which to our shame we had been seeing our religion and our tradition. So, it is a dual contribution he has made. And of course the book is full of facts, the book is full of documentation, but even more so it is suffused with very important argumentation. It is not citation mongering, just quotations from here and there or just alleging conspiracy theories. It is an argument that he gives us as to why it is that certain propositions which you and I may have taken innocently as just the findings of a scholar, why that proposition is being advanced.

For instance, why is it that the church is afraid of the notion of immanence. Most of us would not have thought about it, but he gives us a deep reason as to why this is like this.

Second is his plain speaking, because many scholars say things in convoluted ways. Very often they say it in such a soft way because they are still looking for careers or acclaim in the very circles that need to be exposed. Rajiv told me that his formulae, his attitude in this matter was, that what we do must be, to use this word ‘unignorable’. It is a wonderful word. But that does not mean abuse, that does not mean just a sort of torrent of strong words. It means that the kind of scholarship and documentation which he has provided.

And, third point about him before I get to the book, is why he is an example to us; that he is truly independent. He is not dependent on any institution, he is not dependent on acclaim from an audience. So, that true independence of an individual scholar is an example which we should always bear in mind because too often in India I found, as I had occasion to mention here, earlier on this very thing, and the last time you were kind enough to call me, [that] too many of us look for institutional purchase from which to do some work. But great work has been done, has been done by individual scholars working absolutely alone, unaided often unrecognized; on both sides. If you see [Kosambi]’s work on one side or if you see [P. V. Kane]'s work on the other side. So, we should take heart and follow the example of a person like him who labouring alone has been able to…

I know from scholars in the West that they are apprehensive if he walks into a room, in a conference on philosophy or religion or on Indic studies in the West. So, this book shows how tendentious his scholarship has been. 

Mr. Doval was just recounting some of these things but really he… if I may use the word, he shows that the scholars have really been sort of missionaries in mufti and how they have been insinuating certain notions in us, sowing the seed of that tree which will keep changing, but their tree also keeps changing in this way. And he documents the lengths to which they will go, if I may just read one passage. One of the chapters is devoted to a very famous scholar from whom,… who is very well cited in India by Indian scholars, Paul Hacker, and Rajiv tells us that when his collected writings were being published to mark his 65^th birthday. These were most... many of his writings were on India, Indian religion, Hinduism and so on. I’m quoting he says that “acting on Hacker’s wishes, the editor of his collected works excluded the author’s polemical Christian writings from the compilation”. I have found the same thing in the case of Max Muller. If we see the four volumes of his letters…It’s called Sparks from the Smithy's or something [like that], those writings are just not known in India, but they set out a clear agenda and their hope in Brahmo Samaj as how it will be the lever by which India would be converted and their great disappointment when the very person on whom they were relying, went to Shri Ramakrishna Ji, and Ramakrishnaji changed him and he became a follower of Ramakrishnaji.

So, Rajiv documents their tendentious scholarship and the lengths to which they will go. He documents so well the echo effect that they create.

Woh kuch likhenge, yahan quote hoga, kyunki ab Indians bhi wohi kehe rahe hai, ya Hindu scholars bhi wohi kehe rahe hain, to woh Hindu scholar ko quote kar kar apni cheez ko aur bhi reinforce kar lete hain.

And much of it turns on definitions. They will define a religion as something and thereby say, as Doval was, sort of reminding us, that Hinduism is not a religion as it has no central authority, no book, no prophet.

Hamhari khasiyat hi yehi hai ki yey nehi hai. Kumbh mela hai, kisne start kiya hai, kaun uske piche hota hai. Pata nahin kitne 3 crores sey 10 crores log aa jate hain [Sabarimala mein 3 million go] or these kavadiyars.

Nobody knows who has started the yatra, nobody knows who organizes it and yet it continues and nobody has been able to erase it. Now for somebody to define a religion as one that must have central authority, director, an authority sort of Supreme Court, which can pronounce something is right or not right, then you say that this is not a religion. But then you are surprised that it continues. Then you have to say, no but it does not continue, it is not there, it is something new, which is being created. This used to be the same thing till even the 1970s, that India was actually not a nation. The nation was also being defined in same way that which is one race or one language or one religion or a contiguous territory and then it turned out that none of those things helped many other countries at all. So, Rajiv does this.

They can not comprehend and if I may quote a Western scholar whom Rajiv talks so well and about whom also I am sure he would have many things to educate us with . But Diane Eck in her wonderful work on ‘Pilgrimages of India’, she uses a sentence which is incomprehensible to many of the scholars. She says that India has been defined not by the writs and edicts of its Kings but by the foot falls of its pilgrims. Basically India was never united. Itne kingdoms the [Hindi], but, have you ever heard of a pilgrims procession being stopped at any border within it and those who are inside the tradition? Gandhiji, Ramakrishna Paramahansa soch bhi nahi sakte they ki aisa question [koi] puchega. Gandhiji ko dekh lijiye, Vinobha ko dekh lijiye unko – those who are steeped in the tradition, Vivekananda, they could see the essential unity and it is just the outsider who sees only the difference and in this Rajiv so well documents their double standards. You see the animosities among Christians sects, these Shias and Sunnis are killing each other. But Christianity, remains a religion, Islam, remains a religion, magar hamare yahan (in our case), when there is difference of opinion on things which are essentially unknowable, say between different ‘Sampradayas’ or between a ritual then, aise dekha nahin, ek religion hi nahi (this is not religion).

Achha ek taraf hai ki ek religion nahi hai, there is nothing like Hinduism magar agar ek inscription apko mil geyi jismey ki aap infer kar sakte ho jo inscription mein nahin likha kyunki kisine kise local sect nay, kisi local jain temple ko appropriate kar diya toh aapne to dekha nehi.

Hinduism is so intolerant that it took away the temples of the Jains; a religion which did not exist till just now! [laughter in the audience]. I’ve documented this in the case of many of these Marxist historians. Similarly Rajiv so correctly points out, this whole notion that of boundaries, boundaries between religions: that. these in our case are permeable. I mention here an example from a survey in Japan, in 1985. Writers have written, there is a book on this. People were asked what is your religion. So, 95% of them said we are Shinto, 76% of them said we are Buddhists. It couldn't be: because it was no different for them. It was completely Judaic, Christian, Islamic notion that you can either belong to this or to that. We are Hindus, many of the people, persons like me, all my reading is Buddhist, many of my practices would be from teaching of the Buddha but nobody would say that I am less of a Hindu or more of a Buddhist or vice versa and actually this notion was fomented in India and the first time this happened is in the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee Act. In that Act, ‘Who is a Sikh’ is defined. ‘Who is a Sikh’ – He who believes in the Granth Saheb, He who believes in the Ten Gurus. Most of us could be Sikhs from that point of view, therefore a new clause was added "..and who does not belong to any other religion". You and I may think it is just an administrative thing, but that seed is sown in 1925 and you see it in the agitations of Bhindranwale and others much later... as to what happens when these seeds come into being. And as Doval was just saying one of the essential things about that scholarship was that and…Rajiv does a wonderful job of documenting this that we can not do anything right. You see if we remain as we were, let us say we keep sacrificing animals, then we are fossilized. Hinduism is uncreative. If people come along and say no,no, sacrifice does not mean sacrifice of animals, it does not even mean sacrifice of your material assets alone, it means the sacrifice of your ego. That is Gandhiji’s Anashakti Yoga. Then…Neo Hinduism! This was never there. [laughter in the audience]. And as Rajiv points out that every Christian theology has actually been inventing a Neo Christianity, but nobody says that. So, if Vivekananda reformulates things so that it is relevant to the time, then he is just inventing. If they do something it is creative, it is renaissance, it is reformation.

Doval saheb, burah nehi manenge, hamare senior log, burah nehi manenge, mera ek bihari dost ney muje ek muhawara unka bataya. woh kehte hai ki – ‘woh kare to chamatkar aur hum kare to balatkar’. yeh joh cheezein hay ~ not fair. [huge laughter in the audience]
 

Not only that you see, there are contemporary accounts. We have one of the best people I know, knowledgeable on Islam and Islamic history or history of Islamic rule. Islamic historians, contemporary historians, court historians, writing accounts contemporary with the events are full of slaughter, of destruction of temples and so on. So, how is that to be explained? The word that has been used, I was quite surprised. They say that this proves that this was not being done. The accounts claiming that all this has been done by our great king, is because he was not doing this [laughter in the audience]. Why then did you write it? Because it was trying to table verbal virtue for him. But if that one inscription shows that after losing a wager, the Jains had to vacate a particular temple for the local Shaivites then it will be Hinduism will be intolerant and the ridiculous lengths to which people will go… Rajiv documents this in Swami Vivekananda’s case or in the case of other when they make ANUBHAV, direct personal experience as the criterion or as the mode, then that we are only trying to ape the West and ape Western Science. He asked was Patanjali aping Western Science or West? Was Ramakrishna Paramhansha aping the West or Western Science or Ramana Maharshi? So, in every one of these things I could go on with the details. It’s a book which is a must for every Indian. We must see our tradition through the spectacles that persons and specially Rajiv Malhotra has constructed for us. And it was a particular education for me because I had focused only on the Marxist historians and felt that they were regurgitating, sort of swallowing and vomiting what had been written by some Soviet historians. But I then now realize after reading Rajiv’s books that they were actually swallowing and vomiting what many of these so called Western scholars in America and in Austria, or Germany had written with a purposive agenda. The main lessons from this book, I’ll spell out three and I’ll sit down after that.

One is, there is reason we should look to the future with confidence even in the religious sphere because in the case of Christianity, Rajiv points out, attendance is falling by the hour not even by the date. In places like Belgium, it has almost completely disappeared, the attendance in churches. Islam is tearing the Muslim world apart and even more important, it is a very important and a point of great insight which Rajiv has made that out of the religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, Indic religions are the closest to the spirit and substance of science. Just as the goal of science is the understanding of outer reality, its method is experimentation and peer review, its means is the laboratory, so also Indic religions are the science of the inner world. Their means is personal, direct experience and their peer review is unending and that is how the religion keep evolving and its method is entirely the scientific method of empirical verification through direct personal experience and the means… just that the means for those persons are laboratories and observations through instruments,... here a very good phrase Rajiv uses that the means, ours, was the living laboratories of these sages. They looked inside their own mind and came up with great formulations and great insights. So, time is on our side and we should do and we should work on these matters and practice our religion with great confidence. If something requires reformulation, we should reformulate it and say yes, we have reformulated it. Because this is the new formulation, this is what is required for the time. If we need to endow old words with new meaning we should do that with confidence. We must have and I am sure you will have after reading Rajiv’s book, a little contempt for these tendentious scholars. 
 

mujhe yaad hai, yahan Chandni [?] auditorium mein ek music festival chal raha tha. Siddheswari Devi ji gaane ke liye baithi thi. Taanpura tune ho raha tha, tabla tune ho raha hain, light dim ho gaye hai. Somebody got up from the audience, Siddeshwari Devi ji, nahin, nahin, raag yeh wala gayiye. She sang what she had planned to sing. Khatam ho gaya, log taliya baja raha hain. aab dushre gane keliye tune ho rahe hain. light phir sey dim ho gaye. wohi shaks phir sey utha, Siddheswari ji who to bahut accha tha, magar aap yeh gaayiye, She again sang what she wanted to sing. 3^rd time he got up and Siddheswariji told arre yeh hai kaun. Toh hamhe bhi yehi attitude hona chahiye – ki Yeh Hai Kaun? [applause and laughter in the audience]

And the main thing to do is to succeed. Even in intellectual things nothing succeed like success. Not one of these scholars will fabricate and propagate the type of nonsense that he does about India, he will never do it about China [audience concurs]. Because China has become strong and the scholars know if they write things about China they will lose their livelihood because they will lose their access to their sources. So, the important thing is to succeed and then everything will follow and one reason, final reason for being confident is that because of the work of Ram Swarup, Sitaram Goel, Koenraad Elst, David Frawley, Rajiv Malhotra – because of the work of these persons, the corpus is now reaching a critical mass. So that we can think that within few years we will have two [series]

One, A library for India, and a library of India. We should aim for those but the prerequisite is that we should be like Rajiv Malhotra, we should know our tradition, we should know our religion. The reason on account of which this kind of fabrication has prevailed for so long is that we have not known our tradition, not known our religion and we have known these only through the eye, we have seen through the distorted lenses which were fabricated by these tendentious scholars, these missionaries in mufti.

So, Rajiv, certainly on my behalf, and I’m sure on the behalf of every one, and on behalf of all of your readers Thank You.


[prolonged applause. The main lecture ends here. Arun Shourie then has some interesting observations on how Indians misinterpret "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" (the whole world is one family). The HHG team has transcribed this portion for the sake of completeness and also because this segment has a very important message for the millions of gullible Indians wallowing in the myth of sameness].

It is not anti-christianity, anti-Islam or anything like that. It is, the book is, it's a wonderful thing both about cosmos and life, this metaphor of Indra's Jaal and also about Hinduism. Every part reflecting every jewel all other jewels. Therefore if anything is changed [or disturbed], it is reflected all over, etc.  But he also makes a very important point in the end. Which illustrates... Rajiv illustrates both his style and forcefulness of his argument. It [is an illustration of what he was] telling us in the end. In our anxiety to be liked. we keep repeating words without understanding their implications. Humne Sabse pehle kaha 'Vasudhiva Kutumbakam' [comment on India's tolerance] .... Sari duniya to humne ek mana. So I will read to you where actually says where this word comes from [reading from pages 295-296 of Indra's Net].

"In one story in the Hitopadesa, a cunning jackal, trying to create a place for himself in the home of a naive deer says ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ in his appeal to the deer. The deer ignores warnings from other animals, who caution that it is unwise to trust someone at face value without first ascertaining his history, nature and intent. Upon deceitfully acquiring the deer’s trust and moving in his home, the opportunistic jackal later tries to get the deer killed. Indeed, the moral of this story is that one should watch out for cunning subversives . Blindly trusting those who preach ‘universal brotherhood’ can lead to self-destruction. 
[a brief comment here before continuing] 
The Panchatantra encodes this same message in a different story. In this version, the man who utters ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ is described as a murkha (‘idiot’). He is determined to bring a dead lion back to life, and disregards a wise man’s warning about the dangerous consequences of such an act. The idiot and his accomplices feel moved to resurrect the lion after citing this sentiment of universal brotherhood among all living things, and hence end up being eaten by the lion they help. The wise man lives to tell the tale.  Clearly, the lesson taught in these stories is not one of blind adherence to a policy of unilateral disarmament." [appreciative applause]

...Bahasa is a creation of the Indonesian freedom movement in the 1930-40s. Mother country Italy ke bare me baat kar le [laughter in the audience]. Modern Italian is [Anderson] says modern Italian is a creation of the television age. But we are on the defensive ki saab, Instead of celebrating the fact, that yes, we have so many languages, we get defensive, and that's how this book is so invaluable. It takes us to the root of our defensiveness and that is ignorance about [our own systems]. Aur isi liye, bahut important hai ki Poison pill bhi fabricate karni chahiye, magar jo poison, jo dusron ki pills humne swallow kar li hai, aur repeat karte rehte hai Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, uska bhi meaning asli mein dekhna chahiye!

[end of transcription]

Original Youtube Video Sources

Summary of the Neo-Hindu thesis

February 2014

A senior forum commentator recently provided a summary of the thesis of the neo-Hindu cabal that is analyzed in the 'Purva Paksha' section of Rajiv Malhotra's new book 'Indra's Net'. The book is available at http://indrasnetbook.com, flipkart, Amazon (including Kindle e-format). This blog is published here so that all Indra'sNet audiences around the world can use this excellent summary as a reference resource while reading. Comments welcome.

Surya wrote:
This summary only provides the context but facilitates reading and understanding the book.  

Thesis of neo-Hindu camp:

(1) Hinduism as a modern construct: Hinduism is 'an orchid bred by European scholarship ... In nature, it does not exist.' (Page 50). Hinduism is no more than a collection of amorphous religions that co-exist in the same region and have some commonalities, but these commonalities are far outweighed by divisions and mutual antagonisms.(Page 67).  It is primarily not a religious concept but one of geographic origin.  (Page 94).  Before 19th century, there was no Hindu religious identity that transcended narrow sectarian boundaries.(Page 50).  Before 'Hinduism' came into use, the natives of India referred only to sampradayas (lineages of traditions), which were orthodox and narrowly defined. (Page 94). Instead of seeing Hinduism as a religious system, it would perhaps be more accurate to view it as a multidimensional socio-religious process which has undergone radical transformations over the last hundred years and continued to change. (Page 94). Hinduism then is a joint construct of Britain and India, Christians and Hindus, who devised 'something that the later 19th century would take for granted: a coherent, pan-Indian Hinduism.' (Page 134)

(2)  Neo-Hinduism as a modern variation of Hinduism under Christian and Western Secular Influences: In 1800s, Indian leaders suffered a deep inferiority complex about the weakness of India compared with Europe, and attributed this weakness to Hinduism's inability to adapt to modern times. (Page 68) 1800s was a time when Protestant and Catholic missionaries constantly denigrated and criticized the Hindu scriptures.  Their attacks were troubling to Hindu reformers of the Brahmo Samaj.  Under these conditions, Western Unitarians arrived in India as a welcome relief, for they interpreted Hindu theology as being open, rational, experiential, and science-friendly.  Sensing a good-fit, Brahmo Samaj sent its bright youth to Unitarian Seminaries in England for training.  Following this, Brahmo Samaj started to adapt the framework of Unitarian Christianity in order to identify alternative sources of authority within Hinduism that would support this kind universal and scientific ideology based on experience. This is the advent of neo-Hinduism (as distinct to and discontinuous from native traditions). (Page 53).  The neo-Hindu dogma of equality of all religions emerged originally in the 19th century from the ideology of European Enlightenment. The neo-Hindu concept of Dharma was clearly prompted by the philosophy of Saint Augustus and Philosopher John Stuart Mill but expressed completely in Indian terms. (Page 70).  

(3) Swami Vivekananda as a key architect of Neo-Hinduism and his political interests: Swami Vivekananda, who was familiar with and influenced by Brahmo Samaj and Unitarian Church, introduced Western scientific inquiry and direct experience in order to bring Hinduism on par with Western thought. (Page 53)  Vivekananda's call for unity and inner resolution of tensions were clearly ideas of nationalism and the driving force behind the neo-Hindu concept of unity. (Page 68)  

(4) Swami Vivekananda brings Western Thought into neo-Hinduism: Swami Vivekananda's innovation of 'Practical Vedanta' was meant to address the needs of his time using Vedanta Principles.  One such practical application was in the realm of social ethics. Such social ethics were not in alignment with traditional Vedanta. (Page 74).  Christian missionaries inspired the new definition of karma:  'Under the influence of Christian missionaries, the idea that karma = seva (understood as social duty and service to others) was articulated in the 19th century.' (Page 91).  

(5) Neo-Hinduism deviates from tradition:  Per traditional Advaita, moksha is brought about by merely a 'cognitive shift' and this cannot be caused by any action, be it devotion or work.  This means that actions such as meditation, bhakti, social service, and so on, are unable to cause moksha (Page 100).  Lack of intellectual depth in contemporary Hindu scholarship is due to the popularity of views on the primacy of yogic experience, and secondary status to Sruti. (Page 117).  Additionally, Vivekananda chose to reconcile and unify various schools of Vedanta (Page 117) bringing hierarchical relativism to Hinduism.

(6) Contemporary Hinduism = Neo-Hinduism as an incoherent amalgam: Unlike Abrahamic religions which are wary of epistemological relativism out of the fear of relativizing the World of God revealed in the Bible or the Koran, Brahminical Hinduism (and Hindu nationalism) thrives on a hierarchical relativism to evade all challenges to its idealistic metaphysics and mystical ways of knowing.  (Page 142). Therefore, the idea of a unified Hindu religion is counter both to religious practices and to the theological doctrines of India (Pages 50, 51). Unified Hinduism is counter to tradition and serves nationalistic interests and calling for unity for political expedience.  Hinduism then is an instance of Pizza Effect i.e., Indians adopting Western concepts but giving them Sanskrit names.  These are true neologisms, invented by Western Indologists and then copied and re-marketed by Indian scholars who displaced the old pandits with this newly minted coinage that is now in vogue in the Indian literature, media, and educational institutions. (Page 82)

Sarah Caldwell - Reinterpreting Hindu Goddess as a symbol of sex and violence-chapter 4

Go to Chapter 3

Sarah Caldwell, another member of RISA, won the prestigious Robert Stoller Award for her scholarship on the Hindu Goddess. Below is a long excerpt from her research paper, ‘The Bloodthirsty Tongue and the Self-Feeding Breast: Homosexual Fellatio Fantasy in a South Indian Ritual Tradition’, for which she was given an award by her largely Western peers.

This essay demonstrates that in Kerala, symbolism of the fierce goddess [Kali] does not represent abreactions of the primal scene fantasies of a Kleinian ‘phallic mother’ or introjection of the father’s penis; rather, we will show that themes of eroticism and aggression in the mythology are male transsexual fantasies reflecting intense preoedipal fixation on the mother’s body and expressing conflicts over primary feminine identity.

The essential rituals of the Bhagavati cult all point to the aggressive and fatal erotic drinking of the male by the female, the infamous orgy of blood sacrifice of male ‘cocks’ at the Kodungallur Bhagavati temple; the male veliccappatu’s cutting of his head in a symbolic act of self castration . . . [Kali] is herself, first of all, a phallic being, the mother with a penis . . . she is the bloodied image of the castrating and menstruating (thus castrating) female . . . In this type of analysis the phallic abilities of the goddess disguise castration anxieties ultimately directed toward the father as well as homosexual desire for the father’s penis. Following Freud, such analyses stress the father-son polarity of the oedipal conflict as the central trauma seeking expression.

As Alter and O’Flaherty amply demonstrate, milk and breastfeeding are also symbolically transformed in the male imagination into semen and phallus . . . The ascetic male who retains the semen becomes like a pregnant female with breasts and swollen belly; the

semen rises like cream to his head and produces extraordinary psychic powers . . . Not only are the fluids of milk and semen, symbolic equivalents, but the act of ‘milking’ or breastfeeding becomes a symbolic equivalent to the draining of semen from the phallus in intercourse. [Emphasis added]

Caldwell uses the English word ‘cock’ for the rooster, so as to link the ritual with the phallus. Since the Keralites were not mentally imagining this English word with its double meaning for both rooster and penis during their ritual, this translation by Caldwell is a clear example of how her psychological predispositions enter into a supposedly ‘scholarly’ interpretation. She goes so far as to put quotation marks around the word ‘cock’ in order to emphasize the double meaning that she is aware of, but not the Keralites. In other words this is a projection of the scholar.

In the example cited above, the Goddess becomes shorn of all her numerous, traditionally accepted meanings and a new primary meaning is authoritatively adduced by the privileged Western scholar. Thus Kali becomes, without argument, “first of all, a phallic being, the mother

with a penis . . . she is the bloodied image of the castrating and menstruating (thus castrating) female.” [Emphasis added] This genre of essentializing, which precludes all other meanings, is a symptom of Wendy’s Child Syndrome as explained in a later chapter.

Fortunately, criticisms from within the scholarly community of the methods used by scholars such as Caldwell are not entirely lacking. But they do not go far enough in uncovering the problems that lie within these free-floating kinds of analyses. In 1999, Caldwell published another book, Oh Terrifying Mother: Sexuality, Violence and Worship of the Mother Kali.79 In her review of the book, Cynthia Humes wrote,

Caldwell documents numerous themes of sexuality, abuse, and vengeance in Keralite religion and culture. She concludes, ‘Mutiyettu actors who are particularly talented at playing the role of Kali might be traumatized individuals whose particular psychological propensities and histories compel them towards this form of performance’ I find this unconvincing. As she herself notes, Caldwell did not conduct a detailed study of or even collect the life histories of the individual Mutiyettu actors playing the role of Kali; so there is no direct evidence of even one individual fitting this typology. The implications she sees, while tantalizing and truly fascinating, are based on extended digging into and assembling a dispersed array of sensationalist and homoerotic mythological themes, combined with rumored sexual activity. The unlikelihood of the thesis is underscored by the fact that the role of Kali is only open to a handful of individuals, who must wait until the age of over fifty to even assume this coveted starring role, and further, they would need to evidence ‘particular talent’.

But how seriously does Caldwell have to take such criticism? Is such criticism serious enough to question the quality of the scholar’s work so as to insist that such work be simply disregarded? Or, in the absence of that, should at least some safeguards be put in place to ensure more rigorous quality control over work like this in the future? Unfortunately, Humes is not willing to go that far. In spite of her acknowledging the lack of evidence in Caldwell’s sweeping claims, Humes is still able to imagine how Keralite society is indeed highly charged with homosexuality, sexual trauma, and abuse, without citing any credible scholarship. In fact, later in her review, Humes agrees with certain aspects of Caldwell’s sexual interpretation of the ritual. She superimposes an entirely different sexual psychosis on the Keralites than does Caldwell, and thus the peer-review becomes merely an argument between different kinds of pathologies of Keralite Hindus.

It certainly gives the impression that criticism by RISA insiders is encouraged to remain within certain boundaries, in order to give this kind of lackluster analysis the appearance of peer reviewed integrity. On the other hand, as we shall see in later chapters, when Indians talk in a similar fashion about White scholars and their culture, they are denounced by the academic establishment as ‘attackers’. The right to criticize is a carefully protected privilege.

Autobiography as Scholarship

Cynthia Humes mentions that Caldwell’s work (like Kripal’s) is largely autobiographical in nature. In the end, they may only amount to creative psychodramas that expose personal pathologies, often hidden deep beneath wounds of past trauma. Humes writes,

I do not doubt the sincerity of Caldwell’s belief that the goddess was somehow ‘running my show’ or that her personal tragedies had ‘meaning and significance beyond my personal lusts, fears, neuroses, and confusions.’ Abundant examples of Caldwell’s lingering resentment are given free reign, deservedly in some ways toward her now ex-husband but less so toward her disapproving academic guide. This guide (despite his assistance in interviews, and arrangements to have one of his students aid her in settling in, and provision of some obviously helpful advice) she grills for his attempt to influence her research program. She further suspects him of avariciousness toward her grant and, ironically, belittles his suspicion of her possible infidelity (a suspicion that turns out to be justified). These become examples of Obeyesekere’s theories of ‘progressive orientation’, underscoring how Caldwell’s personal confession authorizes her broad psychoanalytic theories about a remarkably similar projected rage and resentment in the person of Bhadrakali. In so doing, Caldwell preserves and in important ways, I believe, even enlarges the power differential between author and reader that authorizes her participant-observer projections onto her subjects. [Emphasis added]

No single form of the Goddess represents all of her forms, and any view of the Goddess is incomplete if it is not seen as a part of a wider and more comprehensive portrayal of her. Therefore, the Westernized over-emphasis on her sensational, sexual and violent aspects is reductionism of the worst kind.

Scholars often contend that their works are meant exclusively for fellow residents of the Ivory Tower and therefore have few real-world implications for ‘outsiders’. However, such works filter into school textbooks, popular culture, media and journalism, thus becoming the accepted lenses through which many aspects of Indian culture are viewed.

Many of these scholars have an interesting love-hate relationship with India. They appropriate the practices, symbols, vocabulary and awareness that may make them seem distinct in their own culture. The enhancement of the scholar’s status is often done at the devastating expense of India’s native culture, which nurtured them and gave them dignified lives in their own vulnerable years. This raises ethical and moral questions about whether the scholars provide full disclosure to, and obtain informed consent from, their Indian subjects and collaborators about the potential negative stereotyping of their cultures in America.

Psychoanalyzing Popular Hindu Culture

Scholars build upon each other’s work, and often expand the intended scope of such works. Thus, Caldwell supported Kripal’s work on Sri Ramakrishna, and adds another intriguing dimension. She interprets all complaints from Hindus about Kripal as signs of psychological disorders within the Hindu community, and she strongly recommends psychoanalyzing Hindu society to find out its pathologies. (For more on this, please read page 46 and 47, chapter 4)

The kind of theorizing described on pages 46 and 47 has deeply troubling implications. Academic exercises to psychoanalyze a public culture could serve as a cover for ‘ethnic profiling’ of the Indian-American diaspora, and be used to foster campaigns of hatred against Indians.

One has to note that Caldwell in the theorizing separates out the ‘personal domain as is common in Europe and America,’ and offers Euro-Americans individuality and agency; whereas, on the other hand, she denies Indians, and especially Hindus, that same individual agency. In contrast to her approach towards the ‘good white people’, whom she grants a personal domain, in the case of Indians she suggests psychoanalyzing their culture to expose the ‘distorted masculinity’ of Hindus, and the ‘confused sexuality’ of the Hindu male, as symptoms of abusive social orientations and dangerous nationalism. She culminates with a warning regarding today’s Indian/Hindu male threat—invoking tragedy, trauma and fear of the ‘other’.

By reversing the gaze, one can look at the source of this genre of scholarship as emanating from individuals who are in psychological need of a ‘Hindu Other’. Malhotra surmises that their inner-directed psychological and cultural conditioning drives them to the following allegations:

1. Sexual ‘madness’ in Hindu saints and in the Goddess is common and expected.

2. To hide this pathology from the West, Vivekananda (who was Ramakrishna’s ‘passive homosexual object’) had to repackage Hinduism into a ‘presentable’ masculine image.

3. The alleged sexual deviance and hyper-masculinity applies not only to particular Hindu individuals but also to the social culture of Hinduism in general.

4. Hence, there is urgency to study contemporary Hindu culture in a sexually explicit, psychopathological fashion. This approach is particularly ‘timely and essential’ because it enables US foreign policy the option to intervene against such ‘human rights abuses’ inherent in the ‘other’. This ties in well to the demented religious paranoia calls for fundamentalist Christian thought to drive US International Relations.

Hindus sometimes find the conclusions of psychoanalysis . . . offensive to their own self-perceptions and cultural understandings; given the psychoanalytical attempt to crack the codes of the social and intra-psychic censors and its explicit desire to reveal secrets and uncover hidden truths, it would be very surprising indeed if they reacted in any other way. In short, psychoanalysis is a method that expects to be rejected. Psychoanalysis, then, goes well beyond the anthropologist’s field study and the Sanskritist’s text and the historian of religions’ phenomenological study to answer questions that no interview, text, or phenomenological study is willing to ask, much less answer.

Thus Kripal paints his critics as being emotionally and intellectually incapable of self-reflection, thereby evading the real issues that they have raised. The primary reason Hindu intellectuals question psychoanalysis is not because they fear the codes it may crack, but because the basic building blocks and suppositions of psychoanalysis are incongruent with the foundational concepts of dharma. Aurobindo isn’t the only Indian intellectual who found psychoanalysis to be infantile. In The Analyst and the Mystic: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Religion and Mysticism, Sudhir Kakar reflected on the inapplicability of psychoanalysis in interpreting Hindu ethos, writing about ‘the existence of a deep gulf between psychoanalysis and the Indian mystical tradition’. (For more on what Sudhir Kakar states and how this explains Kripal’s statements, please read pages 49 and 50, chapter 4)

(Please read the poignant comic strips on pages 51 and 52, chapter 4)

Read the entire chapter from page 42 to 52

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

Go to chapter 5