Rajiv Malhotra's [RM] messages were
summarized in a
previous blog a few weeks ago. These messages were aimed
at a deeper level in that it enumerated the prerequisites (according to RM)
that are required to become an Intellectual Kshatriya (IK). One might ask what
is the need for an IK? This too was answered to some degree in that blog. To restate
the answer in brief - RM's work exposes the deep prejudices prevalent against
Dharmic traditions and India within academic and political circles at a global
scale.
One of the consequences of such
prejudices is that Hinduism does not have a seat at the table when the Indic/Hindu
traditions are discussed and deliberated upon at power circles which give
directions to geopolitics. The end result is the propagation of a distorted
view of these age old traditions seriously undermining India's integral unity
and thereby India’s role in the world. To counter such unfair prejudices
and give the Dharmic traditions their rightful place requires providing correct
interpretations of the traditions by virtue of originating from the traditions
themselves. This therefore is naturally a battle of the minds. Intellectual Kshatriyas
are required.
A cursory glance at India's pre-colonial history
will reveal the advances India made, and indeed has contributed, in the field of mind
sciences, medicine, mathematics, etc. And yet, India's current image in
the world-stage is 'caste, cow and curry - the latest additions being Bollywood
and India as a repository of trinkets, which can be bought to adorn one's
living space'. How many of the readers have this image of India, while
completely oblivious to India's contributions to the world? RM's crusade has
been to bring this issue to the fore. Not only that, an even more serious issue
is the appropriation of the Indian ideas (on medicine and mind sciences in
particular) and peddled as being of non-Indian origin.
RM has essentially worked to expose these prejudices. Please read the
previous blog to get a glimpse of RM's journey in
the past 25 years. For those not aware of RM’s works, he has written three
books “Breaking India”, “Being Different”, “Indra’s Net” and the main
protagonist of a fourth called “Invading the Sacred”. His latest book "The Battle for Sanskrit" is due to come out in Jan.'16. Recently, Aditi Banerjee, a noted
professional journalist, described RM's work succinctly -
"
Rajiv Malhotra has been a
ground-breaking thinker and writer on matters related to Hinduism and Indian
civilization for decades now. He has single-handedly and courageously
challenged a coterie of Western Indologists and associated forces bent on
denigrating Indic traditions and [who are] denying the national and
civilizational unity of India and Hinduism".
Apart from his books, his excellent
scholarship on the forces trying to destabilize India has earned him plenary
(invited) talks at conferences both in India and, indeed, mostly abroad. He has
also debated with top researchers and religious men
(
Dr. Christian A. Eberhart:
Professor of Religious Studies @ University of Houston),
Prof. Francis X. Clooney (Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts), media personnel (
Mark Tully: Ex-
Bureau Chief of BBC, New Delhi),
and shared
the dais with policy makers (
Arun Shourie), as well as traditional gurus
(yoga guru:
Baba Ramdev). A simple keyword search with his name
results in numerous hits on Youtube (including the ones listed above). His
works have prompted articles to be published in journals such as the International
Journal of Hindu Studies. It is abundantly clear that his scholarship is
excellent which has forced people to think about the arguments he presents.
I have watched most of RM's
lectures on Youtube and have read parts of two of his books. While his lectures
are lucid and points easily understood, I must caution the uninitiated that his
books are not amusement readings! Recently, one of the Discussion group members
(Sriram) initiated an interesting discussion topic – “How have you benefited
from Rajivji’s works?” To anyone who has been exposed to RM’s works, or perhaps
even not exposed to his works, Sriram has asked a very pertinent question. For
me, the answer has been an extended awareness of “how the geo-political
situation of the world is aligned”. For instance, I can now understand the
nuances when a professor of Engineering (as opposed to a Professor in
social-sciences/history/Indology) who also happens to be non-Asian, engages me in
a discussion about Brahmins and the caste system. I recently read an
article about the numbers-game that Evangelicals are involved in. I can now
understand their obsession with the target number of conversions they have to
achieve in a certain time frame. Rajiv's works have given me a new lens to see
the world with. And the more I see the world with this new found lens, the more
robust RM’s thesis seems to be.
But what about the
others? What have they gleaned from RM’s scholarship? This short article
summarizes the responses from other group members.
To begin with, the audience, at least the ones
who have responded to Sriram’s question, come from a diverse background –
engineers, current and prospective students, working professionals – the full
range, and as diverse a country as Australia to India to South Africa to the
USA. The responses had a sense of excitement and they all seem to agree that
RM’s work was a revelation and that his work has been an inspiration. Some said
they have devoted themselves to becoming an IK, others said they understand
what purva-paksha means and its importance, some have
started local reading groups to discuss Rajiv's works, and yet others said they
now understand the complexities of the problems faced by India.
Reading through their responses, it
appears that there are some profound insights developed in whoever has come
across RM's works. These insights can be categorized into the following three
sets of keywords: Hinduism and its differences with the Abrahamic religions,
the attack on India/Hinduism and its traditions, and the ability to engage in
Hinduism related debates. Let us briefly unpack these categories.
Hinduism and its differences
with the Abrahamic religions:
First and foremost, there is a
clearer understanding of what Hinduism is amongst those who have been exposed
to RM's works. There is now an understanding that Hinduism is a Dharmic
tradition with integral unity with other Dharmic traditions such as Buddhism,
Sikhism, and Jainism. Integral unity means that the fundamental basis of all
these traditions is the same. The unifying factors being that all of these
traditions agree upon the idea of dharma,
the need for individual karma (actions)
in the present time for an individual’s liberation (as opposed to the idea that
an individual's salvation is dependent upon the birth and actions of one
figure who appeared in the distant historical past) and the idea of
reincarnation. For example, Buddha taught about a Dharmic way of life
which is very similar to the ‘yama’ practices found in the yoga philosophy of
Hinduism (compare Panchsheela in
Buddhism to the five yamas in
Patanjali's yoga sutra). More importantly, none of these traditions are based on
history-centrism. The implication of non-history-centricism is that even if
Buddha/Prince Gautam did not come into being, the principles of Dharma that he
eventually taught (i.e. after his enlightenment), would still remain intact. ”Buddha
did not teach Buddhism”, said my yoga teacher! I understood what he meant.
In contrast, the negation of the
history of Jesus with a birth from a virgin mother would result in the entire
religion of Christianity to fall down. Same with the Islamic faith, albeit with
the history of Prophet Mohammad in their case. Holding on to the story of
Jesus’ birth steadfastly is central to the Christian faith i.e. Christianity is
history-centric. Same with the Islamic faith, albeit with the story of Prophet
Mohammad in their case. There are other core differences as well,
for e.g. the nature of time in the Dharmic traditions is completely different
to the idea of time in the Abrahamic religions.
Attack on India/Hinduism and its
traditions:
Perhaps one of the biggest revelations
from RM's work is that there is a constant attack on India via Hinduism. Much
has been written by RM and indeed others, which need not be repeated here.
Pertinent examples will suffice to bring out the relevant points. Here is one.
In his recent visit to India, US President Barack Obama, in a tone of
complaint, remarked that India's success depends upon India safeguarding the
interests of it's religious minorities. Now consider this. Immediately
after the India visit, the US President went on a State visit to Saudi Arabia, accompanied
with his wife. The strife between Shia and Sunni denominations of Islam in
Saudi Arabia (and indeed the Islamic states in general) is well known. And yet,
not a word was, or has been, spoken by Mr Obama on the rights of religious
minorities in Saudi Arabia. Besides, the reader will recall the massive outcry
in Saudi Arabia on Mrs Obama's headscarf, or lack thereof, during this same
visit. Indeed, Mr Obama had no comments to make on this incident as well. To
put things in perspective, regarding the state of religious minorities in India
– Jews, certainly a religious minority in India in terms of absolute numbers,
settled in India in distant past going back several centuries. As it turns out,
India is one country where the Jews have not been persecuted - not once in
their long history of being in India. Note that Britain, Spain or France
doesn't have bragging rights on their treatment of Jews in their respective
countries in the relatively more recent past.
It would not be
remiss here to recount RM's debate experiences with representatives (some of
them being at very high positions in their respective faith organizations) of
the Abrahamic religions at various platforms over the years. He has espoused
the notion of replacing the use of 'religious tolerance', which is a marginalizing
idea, with the all-encompassing idea of 'mutual respect'. Needless to say, his
attempts have been futile so far. It is noteworthy that representatives of
Dharmic traditions have found the idea of 'mutual respect' to be easily
acceptable. And yet, President Obama found it appropriate to make a comment on
India on its religious affairs! Such is the prevalent geopolitical scenario.
The point here is
that the intellectually alert must ponder, and if possible, seek the answers to
such questions as - what made Mr Obama comment on India about its religious
minorities but not a word on Saudi Arabia? Why are the Abrahamic religions persistent
on using the word ‘religious tolerance’?
The attack on
Hinduism is on another front – subtle, and yet an equally dangerous process of
digestion. Here the useful things/ideas of a given culture is slowly
appropriated and disembodied from the original culture by the digesters. The modus operandi is that while one hand is pointing
fingers at all that is bad in a given culture, the other hand is gladly
appropriating the traditional knowledge systems from the very culture that the
former hand is criticizing. William Jones' motif at Oxford is a glaring example
(see here). It’s a generic phenomenon which
has been repeated in history several times and Hinduism/India is not the only one to suffer.
Accelerated attempts at
appropriation-digestion of Yoga is one such example that India would do well to
take steps to counter. RM gives the example of Christian Yoga where 'Sun
salutation (
surya-namaskar)' has been changed to 'Son salutation' i.e.
Salutation to the Son of God = Jesus, with no mention of the Indian philosophy behind
the word
‘surya-namaskar’. The irony
of this episode is that one of the five
yamas mentioned earlier is called
astaya, which means
non-stealing! The original true philosophy of yoga has been well and truly stripped
off.
Ability to engage in Hinduism
related debates:
Readers, armed with a better
understanding, can now engage in intellectual debates on Dharmic tradition vs
Abrahamic religions. They have also acquired a new vocabulary, a significant
part of which RM calls, the “Sanskrit non-translatables”. Atman, Shradhdha, Dharma are some examples of
non-translatables. For instance, ‘Atman’ is not the same as ‘Soul’ and therefore
Atman cannot, and should not be translated as 'Soul'. As currently defined, 'Soul'
is something that a human being possesses. By extension to non-human forms of
life, the claim is that the animals/trees don’t have 'Souls'. Thus, 'Soul'
is akin to an object that only a human being can possess, which leaves the body
when the physical body perishes (a New Age lingo often heard). Atman, on the
other hand, is immanent in everything, both living and inanimate objects
and therefore, is present everywhere and at all times. Thus it cannot
‘leave’ from one object to another or from one place to another or from one
time to another. Thus 'Atman'
and 'Soul' describe two very different philosophies. 'Atman' is non-translatable.
In the final analysis, a veil
has been lifted from the reader's eyes and they can now clearly see what is at
stake. The readers draw inspiration from RM and his works, have a new
found confidence, and they are eager to devote their time to learning -
not only from RM's monumental work, but also from other sources. RM’s works
coaxes us to do so.
