Rajiv Malhotra Quotes

I began to see the beginnings of what was later to crystallize as my thesis that history-centrism is the key difference between Judeo-Christian and dharma traditions.

This book offers an introduction to the kind of work required for this preparation. Perhaps the best public framework for such an encounter is sapeksha-dharma. Sapekshata (the quality of sapeksha-dharma) itself, we remember, literally means engagement 'with reciprocity and mutual respect'. Such a framework is consistent with the principle of bandhuta in the sense of inter-subjectivity, solidarity and fraternity across paths and identities. It means unity in diversity to the extent of mutual cooperation, and even mutual dependency. This framework is the ethos of what might be called 'positive pluralism' rather than mere tolerance or indifference emanating from a position of assumed superiority. Sapekshata stems from a belief in integral unity, which is to say that in this view difference and underlying unity are not mutually contradictory. Its opposite, nirapekshata, is closer to what the West defines as secularism, which is only a palliative developed to prevent conflicts arising from a tentative and tenuous stalemate. Secularism does not foster pan-humanness across all boundaries beyond offering the promise of material equality, and not even that promise has ever been realized. Sometimes, secularism is even used to promulgate divisiveness. And yet it has attained a lofty place among intellectuals.
Sapekshata is not simply a negative principle, such as the US Constitution's statement that the state should not interfere with religious practice. Rather, it is a principle of active support for spiritual practice in diverse forms . The pluralist character of the ancient Indian state has been attributed to dharma-sapekshata. For instance, the protection of minorities depends on the goodwill of the majority, and sapekshadharma is why India has an unparalleled track record of welcoming numerous kinds of communities from various parts of the world and offering them the support to prosper without any loss of identity or religious tradition.
The recent import of secularism from the West is based on substituting 'religion' for 'dharma' and adopting Western social and legal structures. This has led to divisive vote-bank politics in the name of secularism and to a counter-reaction by a segment of Hindu politicians wanting to create a Hindu 'religion' that is equally political. The chain reaction set in motion has been disastrous both for Hindus and minorities. This book, therefore, is also a contribution to the heated debate on the implications of secularism in India. In particular, it must be stressed that sapeksha-dharma does not demand adherence to Hinduism.

The reductionist prejudice that the West equals order and India equals chaos fails to explain how Indians are able to excel not only in various spiritual practices but also in the rational fields of science, business and engineering. Western scholars are caught off-guard when confronted with evidence of sophisticated cultural and scientific achievements in the pre-Western history of the subcontinent. Many of them deal with this confusion by arguing that the achievements of the Indian past and even the comprehensive philosophies of the present are somehow not really Indian ; hence, for instance, the view that the highly ordered and precise Indus–Sarasvati civilization is not Indian in its origins. If westerners do call something 'Indian', they try to show that it was somehow antithetical to Sanskrit-based civilization and accuse the latter of having destroyed it. Hence, too, the view that Hindu dharma did not exist prior to some conspiracy by Hindu nationalists to conjure it up during the past two hundred years. All these pronouncements are based on arguments that Hinduism lacks norms, order and central authority. As per this mindset, chaos cannot coexist with order.

If a scholar were to refute the very existence of Allah..... it would be called Islamophobia. .... An analogous situation exists in the way an attiutde gets classified as anti-Semitic. Hindus should be alarmed by the existence of a double standard in Western academics, because the same sensitivity and adhikara to speak for our tradition is not granted to Hindus. ..... We need to define a level playing field for characterizing a work as Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Hinduphobia, etc.

I looked at the various examples of religious tension that were listed in the paper and wondered whether it was perhaps too simplistic to identify the 'victims' and the 'culprits' as they had done. I noticed that Islam was listed as a victim in one country but not as an aggressor in others. The same was true of Christianity: its representatives had lodged complaints against other religious groups in places such as East Timor, but there was silence concerning Christianity's own aggressive campaigns elsewhere. Later I realized that such asymmetrical representations are not uncommon in the academy, so I proposed to Prof. Law that we do some pre-conference preparation and research the deep-rooted causes of religious violence. My feeling was that all religious ideologies, without exception, should be open to serious investigation.
My foundation offered to fund a one-year research project in which graduate students at Cornell representing every major religion would closely scan the major books of every religion. They would highlight every line or statement that expressed contempt, intolerance or hatred against non-believers as well as other excluded and marginalized groups such as slaves, women, foreigners, and so on. Since religious violence often gains steam from such hateful speech contained in the very texts believers revere, the conference would endeavour to enumerate these offensive and questionable teachings and call for a resolution against them. In Hindu scriptures, for instance, all statements that are disparaging of 'lower' castes were to be placed on the list. Throughout the process, each religious delegation would have sufficient opportunity to make comments and resolve disagreements on specifics. I felt it would be a watershed event in the cessation of violence if the various religions agreed to discontinue such offensive teachings.
Prof. Law herself supported my proposal but was unsure about how the religious groups would feel; so she set about calling them to gauge their reactions. Some weeks later, she told me that merely raising my suggestion with certain religious heads (whom she did not name) had elicited considerable anger. They could not 'tolerate' the idea of outsiders meddling with their religious texts. These texts, after all, could never be altered nor declared invalid in any manner as they contained the words of God.

There have been sporadic attempts at using dharmic categories to contest the Western gaze and gaze back, as it were, even though these were not quite purva paksha as I am defining it. For instance, in the 1990s, anthropologist McKim Marriott, in his anthology of academic conference papers, refers to the importance of developing and deploying Indian categories of social thought and analysis, not only to understand the subcontinent better but to refine, develop and render less parochial the study of various cultures in general. 38 Marriott emphasizes how distorting and limiting Western universalism can be, and goes on to note that common distinctions in the West, such as Marx's opposition between material base and superstructure, and Durkheim's separation between sacred and profane, cannot capture the fluid and complex realities one finds in dharmic civilizations. He also points out that the West's constant search for an elusive stability is based on the presupposition that all societies are prepared to accept European and American notions of order rather than other, more fluid categories of social and political identity.

While the inner sciences have a long history in countries such as India, Tibet and China, they have never rejected the outer sciences, and there has never been a conflict between dharma and science as there has been between Western religion and science.

Even the common perception that Wikipedia provides a level playing field on which humanity can freely share all its knowledge is a pretense. The reality is that while all such digital structures behave like free and unrestricted systems, they are in fact controlled by gamification algorithms at the hands of those who own and operate them. Very few people grasp the profound deception of the system.

The notion of individualism that has emerged in the West is a relatively recent development even though it is often claimed to be derived from classical antiquity and Abrahamic theological tenets. This revisionist claim of being the exclusive and defining feature of the West – in contradistinction to the putative Oriental lack of individuality – is the result of myth-making.

For example, Cambridge University established a prize named for an essay competition on the topic: 'The best means of civilizing the subjects of the British Empire in India, and of diffusing the light of the Christian religion throughout the eastern world.'

Postmodernism has made it fashionable to deconstruct what its adherents called the 'grand narratives' of history, seeing these as little more than the stories of the triumph of Western progress which was largely achieved by suppressing or violently overthrowing other groups. More problematically, postmodernists advocate that all identities be dismantled or blurred and view all positively distinctive cultures as being oppressive to weaker or less assertive ones.
This idea might at first seem reasonable, especially when viewed through a postcolonial or subaltern lens, but it opens the door to a pervasive cynicism and narrowness of vision with no workable criteria of value in aesthetics, politics or philosophy. The postmodern insistence on denying such identities as Indian and Western leaves non-Western cultures vulnerable to even further exploitation because they are denied the security of possessing a difference which is real and defensible. Postmodernism, then, tends to undermine the particular reality of the non-Western culture that might be in need of being affirmed, protected and developed. The type of Indian distinctiveness I shall propose is not affected by the problems posed by postmodernists, because (i) it is not based on historical exclusiveness or superiority, be it religious or otherwise, (ii) it makes no claims of finality of knowledge, and (iii) it has no mandate to impose on others.

This is why the mainstream Western academics does not teach Abhinavagupta, Aryabhata, Bharata, Bhartrihari, Shankara, Kalidasa, Kapila, Kautilya, Nagarjuna, Panini, Patanjali and Ramanuja, among many other Indian greats on par with the great Greek thinkers. This violates the principle that the classical thinkers of all civilizations ought to be incorporated into curricula based solely on their merit and current relevance.

In the Mahabharata, the ceremony for the oath of a new king includes the admonition: 'Be like a garland-maker, O king, and not like a charcoal burner.' The garland symbolizes social coherence; it is a metaphor for dharmic diversity in which flowers of many colors and forms are strung harmoniously for the most pleasing effect. In contrast, the charcoal burner is a metaphor for the brute-force reduction of diversity into homogeneity, where diverse living substances are transformed into uniformly lifeless ashes.

The Vedic concept of bandhu binds the underlying integral unity of the universe. The Vedic yajna (incorrectly translated as 'sacrifice', as discussed in Chapter 5) is the workshop where such bandhus are forged and is a metaphor for the link between life's myriad manifestations and their transcendent archetypes. Yajna, in a sense, represents the integration of chaos into order. Again, the epistemology of Vedic thought is nicely summed up in the Rig Veda (10:130.3): 'What was the archetype (rupas), what was the manifestation (pratirupas), and what was the connection (bandhuta) between them?' The Vedic quest for links between archetypes and their manifestations holds a key to understanding the relationship between order and chaos. The rituals of the creation yajna are a metaphor for transforming the chaotic unknown by re-categorizing it and making it function as a prototype for all subsequent texts, practices and institutions. Bandhus are the bonds of interdependence.

One of the activities funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the reduction of vaccine hesitancy in India and promotion of the Gates’ position on vaccines. By calling it ‘fatalism’, the Gates/Ashoka project is justifying changing the cultural attitudes of millions of unsuspecting Indians that believe in karma. This preying on innocent masses is unethical and could also undermine the civilizational ethos. And when people don’t know what to believe, they become vulnerable to influence from Naxals, Marxists, and missionaries. We are not taking any position on the subject but simply drawing attention to the fact that this is the way people like Bill Gates could use Ashoka to change the behavior of the masses.