Did Jeffrey Long 'Out' Rajiv Malhotra's new book before publication?

This post covers a controversy created by the actions of a Western scholar, who appears to have misused a pre-publication draft of the yet-to-be titled new book authored by Rajiv Malhotra, from whom he privately obtained the copy.

Jeffrey Long first showed up in this forum in Feb 2012 (#2270), where he was the subject of some positive feedback re Hinduism. Next, he appears in regards to the DHANAM conference, in November 2012 (#3373), where he was the steering committee member (despite which, there was room for just a single book discussion on BD).

July 2013
Please dont hijack my new book before it comes out
Rajiv Malhotra writes: Earlier this month, I shared with a small number of scholars the full draft of my new book that is a thorough refutation of the thesis of Neo-Hinduism started by Hacker and continued by others like Rambachan.  One of the very few scholars I trusted sharing my draft with is Jeffrey Long, who is a follower of RK Mission and whom I respect. It was done under strict confidentiality. He promised to write me his comments and suggestions, which I am still waiting for. Then I met Jeff at the recent Vedanta Congress, and we went to a private room to discuss his feedback to my draft....

Today, I see the following post written by him in the RISA List (where I am banned as are most scholars who do not "obey" the authority of Western hermeneutics.)

Clearly, Jeff is reflecting our conversation and my book thesis. Sadly, he chose the forum of his peer group to express this idea, while I had shared my book on the hope (and promise) to get useful feedback from him. I wonder why he could not wait for my book to come out first, and LET IT BE THE SOURCE OF THIS NEW DEBATE...

My disappointment is that he replaces all my work with other references, as though my hard work is to be ignored. Had I known this earlier, I would not have shared my draft with him. He was very keen to have my draft, as he said it would help him in his work, but I expected him to refer to it. (People often cite a work with the author's permission and say it is "forthcoming." So the means to do this attribution exists.)

Rajiv adds:
"...I wish to clarify that I do NOT accuse anyone here of plagiarism. However, if my ideas, which have been written and discussed in so much detail, "trigger" similar ideas in another scholar, it would be normal academic practice to cite me as a source. Even if one's ideas are independently derived, one cites others with similar ideas. Jeff certainly goes out of his way to cite academicians in this regard, but ignores me as if I do not exist. This is a double standard. Yet I see him as a friend and hope he will change this approach.

I am being treated like the "native informant" who has no voice, whose ideas "become valid" only when regurgitated by a "credentialed scholar". This asymmetric posture towards the native informants became the subject of so many of my writings over a decade ago. One sulekha article that summarized this was called "The asymmetric dialog of civilizations". There were many more I wrote on
this issue. That started a whole movement which has snowballed in many directions ever since.

The Europeans started this trend to appropriate the knowledge of pandits and publish it as their own. This is how "Sir" William Jones became established as the "discoverer" of Sanskrit in the eyes of the West - like Columbus being called the discoverer of America as though the natives who lived there for 10,000 years had not discovered it. In a massive wall carving in his honor at oxford, he is referred to as the man "who gave the Hindoos their laws".

To declare only those scholars with western credentials (and hence under their system of management) as being valid, is the worst form of colonization. By this criteria, none of our acharyas, gurus, and even the most advanced yogis would be legitimate. So Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Gandhi, Aurobindo, etc. - none of them and others like them qualify as voices of authority in their own right.

... You may disagree with many of Gandhi's positions (as I do myself). But what I found remarkable in his life was his courage to defy the colonial apparatus and set an example of resistance. We need scholars to be satyagrahis in this sense."

thepatrika adds: "....I am once again appalled  -- not surprised -- at the intellectual dishonesty among some of the Academicians in th US, even in fields which does not involve great amount of money. 

No wonder secrecy has become the hall mark of academic research in Science, Technology and Management, which the possibility of making a "killing" with patents, invention disclosures, or membership in national and int'l organizations, or corporate board memberships, even as they brag about academic freedom and "open" environment for enquiry in universities"

Surya wonders: "...I suspect that Jeffrey may already be engaged with other AAR members in dissecting the contents of the book. I would conjecture that Jeffrey will likely not offer any useful feedback to Rajivji but use the early access to direct his own research.

I hope Jeffrey has access to this forum and offers public response."

Shashi comments:
"...This is sad.

This emphasizes why the book "Invading the Sacred" commissioned by Rajivji is a must-read. Specially relevant is Yvette Rosser article. It exposes how RISA folks operate as a cartel. What is particularly sad in this case is betrayal at even person-to-person level trust.

Rajiv's response:
Thanks, Shashi ji.
I want people to know that Shashi drove from out of state just to attend my talk at the Vedanta Congress. He can verify that I spoke on this thesis in my forthcoming book. 

Ashish comments:
"...I am a dalit residing in India. And I am very very impressed by your work. Have read both of your books. Even though I am dalit I still love my country INDIA. India has given me opportunity to rise above the poverty in which I was born. I am a s/w engineer in a multinational firm in India..."

Madhu adds:
"... it is equally true that most westerners do look at us through a lens of superiority even if some manage to hide it, that is just the social conditioning they got via history, culture, church, society. There is nothing racial about this. There is still some time to go before these attitudes change. Until then there is no harm in being pragmatic about it."

Rajiv's response: 
"...   It has to do with the ego's mixed up loyalties and projects. I once reprimanded Sarah Caldwell who was simultaneously (1) a practicing Hindu in the academy and
very active in organizing Hinduism related events, and yet (2) more loyal to her academic peers than to dharma, and hence compromising 1 to benefit 2.

There are similar instances I encounter daily among Indian Hindus - conflict between their private domain of Hindu practice and their public domain of career or "reputation" or business interest, etc. "

Rahul thinks:
"... even as the new book is launched with an attempt to steal the limelight with an attitude that might go like "RM is treading a path that has already been examined critiqued  and debunked". They are likely going to launch a propaganda war with a head start having had time to read the transcript and formulate the approach to attack the new book (or RM)." 

Karigar provides additional context on Jeffrey Long:
"... I've had some personal interaction with him in the past. He's definitely a very nice guy, but -

I've no hesitating in completely agreeing with Rajiv's nuanced critique of his actions. Also, during last year's AAR (where a separate Panel featured Being Different) I recall some behind-the-scenes controversy at another panel where Jeff Long was involved. There his semi-public comments were an interesting study in virtually ignoring Rajiv, while off handedly (back handedly?) agreeing that the points made were serious enough to warrant a high level discussion/response.

I'd like to add just one point to what Rajiv has already said. It seems that he is a symptom of the Social Sciences scholar mentality, where one gets one's authority/credibility by subjective means, mostly by how "impressive" one sound/writes, etc. This just won't fly in the hard-sciences, technology or business, as one's capability can be very easily evaluated. 

For a religion scholar, to stay above the glass ceiling (& be called a scholar) it appears one has to ignore non-academia people's work as long as one can afford to get away with it. Jeff Long seems to be following this standard-operating-procedure. Of course it doesn't say much for his personal behavior & sense of judgement, when he does this to Rajiv.

Firstly, Rajiv has pretty much broken thru this 'glass ceiling' a long time ago; and secondly, he seems to be using private discussion material from Rajiv's work to preempt it's impact when it's published, even if he claims it was not intentional."

Jeffrey Long is welcome to respond at the 'Being Different Forum'.


Update: October 19
Jeffrey Long responded in the comments section below, as well as the forum (link here) defending his position, and Rajiv provided a counter response. After some followups, this thread was closed. I've summarized the final comments of Rajiv Malhotra below (emphasis mine):
"... I had made a remark on Jeff's writing many weeks ago, and he exercised his right to respond, and this started a brief back and forth discussion. I am glad he and I have agreed to cooperate as friends sharing our passions as Hindus. It is good when such episodes lead to solidarity and clarity going forward. So no point in further discussion as the [matter] is happily resolved. I look forward to Jeff's participation on this forum."
 

Three mathematical notes on Rajiv Malhotra's lecture at IIT Mumbai

April 20
3 mathematical notes on your lecture at Mumbai
Harsha shares three critical notes on a recent lecture by Rajiv Malhotra at IIT Bombay:
"....
1. When you say, that the digits of pi were calculated using adhyatmic vidya. But, if you actually look at how the Kerala school did it, they do it by using the Taylor series for the sin and cos function. This is an impressive achievement, and predates the European school, by a couple of centuries. Adhyatmic vidya is itself much more important. But in this case, we shouldn't conflate the two.

2. On your comment on the speed of light, I think it is very important for you to say in your speech that this is speculative. Even Subash Kak, the original researcher does not definitively state this in his article. He presents some evidence, but leaves it to the reader at the end. Personally, I think there is nowhere near adequate evidence..

3. On vedic maths, it is important to note that what is presented is not special by today's standards. Most of the calculation rules would be considered elementary today. On the other hand, if there was evidence that these were in
the vedas, it would be interesting. But the  Shankaracharya's verses do not refer to the Vedas. Here is Prof Dani's take on it, who also makes these points.

4. As a strategy, mentioning these more speculative things in your speeches, isn't helpful to your cause. For someone who is not an expert, it would be just as impressive to mention the more established contributions which haven't been popularized (like the Taylor infinite series for sin an cos anticipating calculus) as mentioning the not more shaky claims.

... Already, the field is inundated with a lot of claims like proof of Goldbach conjecture (an open problem even today) using Vedic mathematics.

Also, someone one who is not sympathetic to your project would disproportionately emphasize these weaker claims. See this for instance, Rajnath Singh isn't correct, but Mr. Bal is chosing a particularly weak opponent, someone who cant accurately portray the known contributions...."
 
Rajiv comment: 
1) I agree with him on the value of pi calculated as a series - but I disagree with him that it should be called "Taylor" series. Agreed that we cannot show any DIRECT role for adhyatma-vidya in this. However, the practice of sadhana was part of the training, and hence at least indirectly part of the methodology of discovery.

2) Regarding the speed of light, I must disagree with him. Unlike value of pi which can be calculated strictly theoretically without use of measuring instruments, the velocity of light is not a theoretical derivation. Yet (and
this is the point I wanted to make), there is no evidence of measuring instruments available to get such a value in those times. So how did they "guess" such a value? My thesis is given in pages 221-234 of BD. Sanskrit mantra
theory is based on integral unity that can be "seen" (not in the normal sense of the word) in the rishi-state. A few examples are given in that chapter of BD where ancient texts indicate physical properties of objects that are remarkably accurate, but there is no evidence of physical measurement being carried out. Had the rishi discoverers used lab instruments, they would be writing about them
and teaching it to students. But they never mention what we today consider to be instruments. Except one instrument - the mind in higher state of consciousness.
So it is my "speculation" that velocity of light was an example of such discoveries. It might surprise many of you that modern Western neuroscience is now (re)discovering many facts about the mind using advanced yogis and tibetan buddhist meditators. This is going to be the subject of some volumes I have been working on that I hope to complete. The use of adhyatma-vidya as methodology of
discovery is not to be dismissed just because it does not fit the criteria of "science" as known today.

3) On Vedic maths: I do not think of the math being promoted as something directly based on vedas. But the man who promoted it starting a century ago claimed that he was "inspired" by vedas. So it could be an indirect influence of vedas. Similarly, the great modern mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan attributed
his genius discoveries to Goddess Lakshmi, who he insisted had brought these breakthroughs to him in visions. His biographers failed to pursue this aspect
adequately, presumably out of fear of being branded as unscientific. But how does one explain such a scientific mind making a claim that seems so unscientific? I would not dismiss it out of hand. Modern science knows very
little about the mind, especially the potentials beyond "normal" states.

On the general point of not mixing more credible claims with less credible ones, I am in full agreement. I judge each context based on the audience and what would motivate them... I would like this to be the first place in India where serious scientists take up R&D on adhyatma-vidya. Why let western institutes have a monopoly on researching our tradition's methodologies?]

Narayana comments:
"...This is with reference to Rajivji's third point, regarding 'being inspired' by the Vedas. The discovery of Benzene ring by visualising the structure in a dream. Not only that but Kekule was believed to have come up with the tetravalent nature of carbon by visualising it in a dream. Western 'scientists' and their Indian acolytes (whom Rajivji refers to as ideological sepoys) dismiss visions of Indian sages and Vedic science but readily believe such 'stories'
when put out by, well, 'Western scientists'!
Read VOXINDICA 

Rajiv comment: yes. Thats what Uturn is.

Ashok asks:
"...the 18th chaupai of Sri Hanumaan Chalisa, where the distance of the Sun from the Earth has been described clearly. Yug (12000) Sahastra (1000) yogan (8 miles) par bhanu. Comes to 96,000,000 miles, which I understand is reasonably close. Of course the earth's orbit is elliptical, so the distance will vary during different parts of the year..." 

Partha responds:
"...Sant Tulsidas whom many of us consider a reincarnation of Valmiki, lived in the 16th century, by which time information about the Sun's distance from the earth could be claimed to have been communicated worldwide, from wherever it was first learnt by whatever means. That the Sant wrote his Ram Charit Manas entirely without biblio-aids and that he practically visualized whatever he wrote should be used as an important rider, when we talk of this scientifically near-accurate astronomical data being given by him in his Hanuman Chalisa. He has also used units from olden times (Yojana, Yug etc)..."

Come adds:
"..There are references to the Sun-Earth distance in other Indian scriptures, going back to the Vedas, at least according to ancient commentators. Some scientists including Rupert Sheldrake have shown that there are other methods to acquire knowledge about nature than the modern "scientific method", ..."

Rajiv comment: Rupert Sheldrake is a prominent UTurner and should not be cited as reference for saying things he has appropriated. We must stop acknowledging as source the person(s) who stole ideas and covered up. 

tvikhanas notes:
"...To add to Rajivji's point, a staggering and undeniable example of adhyatmic influence on science is Panini's grammar. The core of this grammar "Shiva sutras" is named so because it was revealed to Panini by Shiva himself. People have remarked how wonderful the grammar is and it keeps revealing amazing new facets when examined from modern viewpoints. A researcher recently found that
the certain choices made in constructing Shiva Sutras when cast as optimization problems turn out to be the best possible solutions (A Mathematical Analysis of Panini's Shivasutras by Wiebke Petersen).

If this seems some how less remarkable, then say a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem from 1500 BC, it's because we have also internalized western view that "linguistics" is an inferior and less fundamental science compared to maths or physics along with many other ill-founded ideas. Indian tradition in fact considers Vyakarana far more important than equivalents of mathematics, metallurgy etc which perhaps explains its survival against impossible odds.

As a side note, western view towards linguistics is also evolving, mainly due to study of Sanskrit and also due to advent of computers. It is interesting to note that technical study of Sanskrit grammar is picking up again in the West. There are "mathematical linguists" like Petersen quoted above, along with Computer Scientists like Gerard Huet who have initiated major projects on parsing Sanskrit. I recently learned that there is a whole area of assigning formal semantics to natural languages in which Gerard Huet with his Sanskrit project is an important member...." 

Romanization of Sanskrit

This thread is tied to the 'Sanskrit untranslateables' that is covered in the book "Being Different". Will the use of Roman script for Sanskrit somehow result in a loss in authenticity and meaning? Furthermore, Sanskrit is the language of Yoga. What impact will the Romanization have on the practice of Yoga?

April 9
Romanization of Sanskrit

Aditya shares: I came across a website learnsanskrit.org and was excited about what it has to offer. On the whole the idea of creating a learners guide for English speakers who would like to learn Sanskrit seems a noble Idea. However as I went through the website certain issues came to my attention which were not quite palatable to me.

Two primary issues I had were:-

1) The Introduction section which mentions the whole question of "Origin or Sanskrit" and other arguments without enough references thus making all kinds of now controversial claims about the so called "dravidian" people being pushed south etc.

2) A claim that Devanagari script can take a significant amount of time to learn so it starts off with IAST (Romanized transliteration) along with an apologetic statement "Western scholars of Sanskrit tend to prefer it to Devanagari, which is OK; after all, Sanskrit has never really had a script of its own, and the tradition of using Devanagari instead of other scripts is actually quite recent."...

Ajay comments:
"....Though Sanskrit teaching in other scripts might look good as it will become easier to teach initially. But long term result of not learning Devangari are
1) Losing the relationship between Sanskrit and Devnagari script. I can't imagine [losing] this relationship; like, the 'OM' word (symbol) in Devanagari looks majestic.
2) Not able to read original Sanskrit text as it is...." 
  
Royaldecor comments:
"...I differ with the views.Telugu which is a pali script, is widely used in south and east india  can convey the sanskrit sounds perfectly as it has 56 alphabets. All kirtans are in telugu script and in fact telugu is the largest
spoken language in india, if hindi dilects like maghi and bhojpuri are delinked from hindi..."  

Karthik adds:
"...IAST is a standard that has been devised to write sanskrit, and is derived from the latin alphabets, with addition of diacritics (ISO 15919 is a later standard for representing all Indian languages). This does not mean it is going to be written using conventions that are used for writing english or french of german. It means it is a different set of conventions to represent sanskrit. IAST can represent sanskrit without ambiguity..."

Aditya responds:
"..I came across another article which appeared in the Indian Express today with the title "‘Romanagari’ can form system for language learning".

This study of course seems silly to a layman like me but after all I am layman and the NBRC scientist have to do some research. The fact that they are doing such research shows to me a trend which I was alluding to earlier which is Romanization of Sanskrit/Indian languages. Do we need to use Roman alphabets to learn other Indian languages apart from our mother tongue? 

Regarding IAST/Devnagari I fully understand that the number of people learning in Devanagari is always going to be more, but the question is which script is being used by influential people in academia and it seems that among western academia and also western laymen at least IAST has caught on at the expense of Devanagari.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary_talk:About_Sanskrit

What was objectionable to me was the justification in LearnSanskri.org about IAST that "Western scholars of Sanskrit tend to prefer it to Devanagari, which is OK; after all, Sanskrit has never really had a script of its own, and the tradition of using Devanagari instead of other scripts is actually quite recent." ..

 

... With respect to Devanagari rather than Romanized script my larger point of interest was in securing a debate on an Indic script which is popular for Sanskrit. But don't see  a reason why those who learn Sanskrit in India cannot learn more than one Indic scripts. After all most Indians speak and understand 3 or more languages. I wouldn't want this discussion to go into a language war within India. That in my view would be a wrong direction to take it to. "

RoyalDecor responds:
"....Please understand, there is never a language war on script of sanskrit in india.I am not propagating any language but stated the facts.Sanskrit is used for dual purposes.One for communication and second is for chanting hymns as expressed in vedas and other shastras for performing various rituals.The core hindu religion firmly stands on the pillars of CORRECTLY chanting the
hymns,which involves rigorous practice and training at the vedic schools.A visit to a vedic school as well as any balaji temple in US and interaction with the priest will shed more clarity on the subject.The writer of the post being a
north indian may not be aware that few alphabets are missing in tamil and malayalam and also bengali which may be the reason devnagiri and telugu  scripts were evolved to be compatable for chanting the hymns correctly..." 

arrk notes:
"...Roman script is quite unsuitable for Samskrutam. The foundational problem is with the loss of phonetics. The A is phonetically different from the first vowel of Devanaagari. What is the consequence of loss of phoneticity?
(1) The first victim will be Vaiyaakarna of Samskrutam. The Vaiyaakarna of Paanini is a human voice system based Vaiyaakarna. Many rules that appear natural in the human voice system (hence phonetics) and captured in Paanini will be entirely lost in non-phonetic script, and will look arbitrary rule to a learner and un-initiated. In the long run it will have serious consequences.

(2) Samskrutam is not only a communicational language. It is Yoga Bhaashya. In particular the Vaaca Yoga is completely steeped in these notions. Using Roman
alphabet will destroy the Vaac Yoga aspect and will be completely sidelined. The notion of Shabda Shareera and notion of Beeja Mantras will be adversly effected.

3) This will have consequences on the Mantra tradition of the tradition.

4) The Samskrutam phonetic sounds based speech has natural speech recognition aspects to it. I definitely know some who are working towards it. Replacement of Devanaagri will cause irreperable loss to that aspect.

To me this effort to use Roman script either arises out of ignorance of deeper aspects of Samskrutam or intentional plan to destroy the Dharma traditions. In both cases it must be rejected by Dharma tradition people.
Ravindra..." 
 

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 April 4 - 10, 2013

Going forward, each weekly summary will contain a brief synopsis of the content, which will highlight some of the key points and takeaways. Anybody interested in co-authoring and supporting this blog to keep it productive, and make it more relevant and useful, send me a tweet.
 
Synoposis
We share Rajiv ji's latest interview (below). A key takeaway for me from this interview is that Rajiv's focus is not as much on the 20% "staunch" Hindus or the 20% anti-Hindu, but the middle 60% who are confused. It appears that the efforts of many well-wishers of Hinduism are either in the form of preaching to those 20% who already cherish Dharma, or to the other 20% who couldn't care less. Reaching out to this middle 60% segment of the Indian population is critical to maintaining the integral unity of India.

The Hindi version of 'Being Different' will be out within a few months (Ati Uttam!). Then there are two articles relating to 'Breaking India':
1. activities in the House of Lords

2. Gospel mischief in India, and egroup members getting spammed by Evangelist group World Vision.

3. Finally, a new and interesting thread on the 'Romanization of Sanskrit' was posted, that appears to be an attempt to digest Sanskrit by doing away with Devanagiri altogether!


April 5
Rajiv Malhotra's interview on Sudarshan News channel (in Hindi)



Devendra comments:
The only way to make real impact is to work unwaveringly for a long period of time on a single goal. Many people dig small holes in many places in their lives,but never forcefully enough with single-minded effort and with a plan to be able to dig out water. Rajiv Malhotra Ji's work is a guiding lesson for Hindus who want to be a part of sustaining and strengthening Hindu culture.

Hindi version of his books Being Different and Breaking India would be published this year. Hindi version of Being Different will be available in July...
People can write me off line to place their orders of Hindi version of Being Different

April 6
Breaking India work in progress in UK House of Lords
Ashok posts: Dear Rajiv I am attaching a transcript of discussion in British House of Lords last week. I have also attached my angry response as you predicted we always do....

Prakash adds:

Members may be interested in this comment in relation to developments on caste and the Equality Act in the UK: 

April 7
Criticism and debate on BD in another forum
... After reading the review, make sure to read the 100+ comments that debate the review. You might enjoy reading and participating there. Its informative for people to find out how the world of discourse is stacked up today...


[this clumsy review in Eurasiareview has been covered in a prior post a while back].

April 7
What is the indian language word for Evangelism? 
BVK asks: is there a technically correct indian language word - any one/ sanskrit or other languages / singular or constructed word to properly translate the church-word ' evangelism'?


April 9
Romanization of Sanskrit
Aditya shares: I came across a website learnsanskrit.org and was excited about what it has to offer. On the whole the idea of creating a learners guide for English speakers

who would like to learn Sanskrit seems a noble Idea. However as I went through the website certain issues came to my attention which were not quite palatable to me. Two primary issues I had were:- 1) The Introduction section which mentions the whole question of "Origin or Sanskrit" and other arguments without enough references thus making all kinds of now controversial claims about the so called "dravidian" people being pushed south etc. 2) A claim that Devanagari script can take a significant amount of time to learn so it starts off with IAST (Romanized transliteration) along with an apologetic statement "Western scholars of Sanskrit tend to prefer it to Devanagari, which is OK; after all, Sanskrit has never really had a script of its own, and the tradition of using Devanagari instead of other scripts is actually quite recent." Now the author of the lessons does make a statement initially that "Generally, all material after Starting Out will use Devanagari. For that reason, I strongly encourage you to learn Devanagari. The next unit includes Devanagari lessons, which you can use to learn and practice with the script." But lessons on Indic Devanagari script is relegated to the references section. ... What I found most interesting was that in the beta version of this site due to be launched as the next version, Devanagari script was relegated to an optional section with the statement "This material is optional and is not required to use the guide." I am quite aware that romanization of many language has been done as a sort of International Standard. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian have all been romanization. But these are to make it easy to introduce words from those langauges into english texts. I don't not know if any language is taught in the world without the need to learn its original script. Now it is true that sevaral Indic script have been used for Sanskrit not just Devnagari but then so have many scripts been used for Japanese. Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana are learned and used in Japanese. Japanese has consumed roman alphabets by including Romaji but to learn Japanese you cant use romanized transliterations you need to learn Japanese scripts. It is a hard job but it has to be done. So how can Sanskrit be learned usefully without learning the script(s) also; that is something to ponder.

Ajay responds:
"A few months back I had also gone to that site.  It's good you pointed out. Just to recall where I see the issue:

1) in History of Sanskrit.

2) at De-linking of Sanskrit from Devanagari script.

One more thing, even in India many books are there which teach Sanskrit but without teaching the Devnagari
script.

.... Though Sanskrit teaching in other scripts might look good as it will become easier to teach initially. But long term result of not learning Devangari are
1) Losing the relationship between Sanskrit and Devnagari script. I can't imagine to loose this relationship; like, the 'OM' word (symbol) in Devanagari looks majestic.
2) Not able to read original Sanskrit text as it is...."

April 9
From "Gospel for Asia"
Ravi shares: In 2008, I had circulated two online-newspaper articles (from "The Telegraph", an India-based newspaper and "The Peninsula", a Qatar-based newspaper) on a "DalitFreedomNetwork" google-group, drawing their members' attention to the two newspaper articles' details on the alleged financial finagling by Gospel For Asia's founder (K.P.Yohannan, who is Kerala-born-and-raised, but now settled in Dallas, TX, USA).

Within 24 hours of sending my email, I had received this detailed reply (email below) from GFA's COO (David Carrol,..... who is also based in Dallas, TX, USA. 

... the alacrity with which I got their beguiling response is interesting and points to the efficiency and tenacity of this global network.

And here's a quick look at the GFA's NGO registration details that shows how the Indian and Western destablisers brainstorm, synergise and work closely together at their eventual goal of Breaking India:

April 10
World Vision
I am not sure if this is sheer coincidence. But ever since I started posting messages in this discussion group, I have started to receive emails from "World Vision" ...
(yes, it seems many in the group have been spammed. even Rajiv ji :)