You were born in a Muslim family. Did you grow up in a Muslim society? How did you develop early doubts about religion and God?  

I spent the first 21 years of my life in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In my childhood, my recital of Quranic Surahs earned me praises from the teachers at the Madrassa where I was taught. When I grew up a bit and still in school, I was confused to reconcile the Quran with the world of reason. It was said that Allah causes rain through his angel Mikail depending on human needs. If so, I questioned, why don’t we ever see any rainfall in the Sahara desert? The scientific theory of the water cycle looks much more promising rather than the Quranic theory, isn’t it?

What was the reaction of your teachers?

The Maulanas could not answer these questions of mine but got furious and condemned me as Kaffir. I wasn’t  discouraged by it. It pushed me towards studying more deeply on these topics.

How did your parents and the society at large react to your scepticism?

I asked my mother flatly if she considered the Quranic description of her being a place of husband’s sowing of seed (the Quran 2:223) disrespectful. She was unhappy with me for questioning Allah.

Should God not reward good deeds like work of Mother Teresa for the downtrodden, instead of observing who is praying to Him and who is not? Why should He be bothered about such petty-minded notions? I did not restrict myself from these discussions at my workplace at Medina and was fast becoming persona non grata. I was not a complete disbeliever back then but merely a sceptic. When words were out in the air that I would be fired from my job, I even used to pray to Allah, “O Allah! Let me not get fired from my job. I am only asking for my just right of earning by my hard work.” How innocent was I back then!

Were you then fired? What happened to your skepticism after then?

I was fired within a few days. The rumours were correct. After being fired, the skeptic in me became firmly an unbeliever!

You are one of the famous atheist bloggers of Bangladesh ,consistently and systematically being targeted by the Muslim Fundamentalists. How did it start? What made you an activist of Atheism?

From Riyadh, I came back to Dhaka, Bangladesh and got married to my cousin. I was in my early twenties that time. By then, I completed my Bachelor’s degree in computer science. I also have my proficiency in graphics designing and making cartoons. On account of my skills, I found a coveted employment in Central Depository of Bangladesh Limited. I fathered a son a year after my marriage. I became a full-fledged family man. The life was, then, rather smooth for me.

I started posting couplets on different themes in social media and was becoming popular. One of my couplets was that Creator and a creative mind, both, love listening to own praises. Controversy erupted when Muslims challenged me on the Creator part of this couplet. I pointed out to the text of the namaz, that is the first Surah of Al-Fatiah from the Quran and it is no different than an explicit flattery of Allah. I also highlighted that it was made mandatory by Allah Himself for Muslims to recite this namaz five times daily.

My writing eventually appeared as a book entitled Nāstika which made me famous; though now I see that book rather amateurish. I also made an exhibition on graphical art on the theme Cogito ergo sum (I think; therefore I exist). In the newspaper called the Daily Star, the exhibition received critical acclamation. This was also not liked by the Muslim fundamentalists.

It was no less than a dare to publish this book Nāstika and also some other books under my real name and with my photo in Bangladesh. I was welcomed into the budding rationalist atheist movement of Bangladesh and got connected to intellectual luminaries like Asif Mohiuddin, Ahmed Rajib Haider, Avijit Roy and Prabir Ghosh. I was an organizer for the organization Science and Rationalist Association of Bangladesh, in short Sraban. We used to make fun of astrologers and miracle healers.  I developed deep friendship with persons like Niloy Neel and Tasib Hassan. Tassib is absconding right now from the Muslim fundamentalists. Niloy already left all of us…. 

What was the agenda for your activism? What was the main message you were highlighting to the people of Bangladesh?

The people of Bangladesh took a stand to assert their Bengali identity in 1971 during their War of Liberation against Pakistan and opposed the imperial imposition of Urdu. The Pakistani authorities were openly communal. Yahya khan, the then president of Pakistan, instructed his soldiers to rape the Bengali Hindu women to impregnate them all with Muslim children only. The inglorious organisation Jamaat–e–Islami Bangladesh and its leaders like Ghulam Azam and Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury were in cahoot with the Pakistani oppressors.

Yet, after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibar Rahman in 1975, the historical course took an unwarranted new turn. Ziaur Rahman as premier, offered succor to Jamaat–e–Islami Bangladesh, once again. The history was distorted in suppressing the role of Islamist Rājākārs and their anti-national acts during the Liberation War. Education was gradually taken over by the Muslim fundamentalists with increasing Arabisation of Bengali language and expulsion of Hindu authors from the school textbook. The sapling Ziaur planted, has grown into the poison tree over the last four decades. Now, Bangladeshis largely sympathise with Pakistan, their once oppressor, and mostly hate India, their liberator. It became a Muslim country falling from its secular ideals. I was becoming aware about the true history of my nation this time and also became aware of pervasive distortions regarding historical facts.

We were also participating in philanthropic activities and protesting the targeted heart-rending atrocities against the minorities (the Hindus) of Bangladesh. As a typical case, take a Hindu family consisting of a widowed mother and an adolescent daughter of 13 years old. Seven hooligans came at night—two were raping the mother and the other five together gang-raping the daughter. The mother, while being raped, was begging to those rapists to not rape her daughter all together but one by one as she is too young for such an assault. We highlighted these beastly atrocities which generally receive support from the Muslim fundamentalists.

How did such so-called religious people justify their barbarism?

The agenda of the Muslim fundamentalists is to define any opponent as Kaafir and then remove all such kaffirs from Bangladesh. Encouraging hooligans to persecute the Hindus is a strategy for them to create a kaffir-less Bangladesh. And, their strategy is winning as well. The falling population share of Hindus and Buddhists of Bangladesh over time, from close to 30% of the population to less than 10% today, is a fact.

You were associated with the now-legendary Shahbag movement. Was it this time when this movement was born? How was the movement born?

On the fifth day of February, 2013, we, more precisely only 26 of us, started a non-violent movement to highlight the issues with Rājākārs. I wrote and published a book that time exposing the Rājākārs, entitled Rājākārer Keertikalāp (“Glorious” Deeds of the Rajakars). We were using our artistic talents to attract public attention. In the first day, we were ridiculed and laughed at. But soon, we received considerable public attention. The Ekushey Book Fair on the occasion of Bangladesh’s Independence Day was taking place and when people were coming to that book fair, we highlighted to them about the persecution we Bengalis faced by the Rājākārs who not only evaded the law but also rose to prominent posts.

We collected signatures of scores of thousands of passers-by who were convinced of our cause of demanding capital punishment for these Rājākārs accused of heinous crimes. We submitted their signatures to the authorities. This movement was widely highlighted in the international media. At that juncture on 15 February 2013, one of us, Ahmed Rajib Haider who used to express his atheistic worldview under the pseudonym Thaba Baba, was hacked to death by the Islamists. Sword was used to silence the pen. Starting from the next day, attendance at our protest dropped significantly. We held the funereal of Rajib at Shahbag itself but the movement was losing stream after having suffered from political intrusion.

What happened then on the March 7, 2013 when you were severely wounded in an assassination attempt?

Within three weeks of Rajib’s death, I was coming back to my home after attending a programme in a public bus, two persons aged about 20 in Islamic attire started following me. Another person in similar attire came in front of me and on his gesture, these two persons from the back assaulted me with machetes. I suffered deep injuries in my head, shoulder and chest. I did not panic and ran in my bloodied state to take cover and reached a traffic police box. I am pretty sure, that run would have earned me a Gold Medal at the Olympics. (laughs)

The police promptly took me to the nearest hospital and after receiving first aid there, I was transferred to the Dhaka Medical College. I was admitted there for weeks and was healed with time although my left side was partially paralysed for many months.

Did you receive support from the society against these deadly attacks on you?

Not really. On the other hand, my attackers enjoyed support from the very top echelon of the society to all the way down. When I later registered the case of the assassination attempt on me with the police, the policeman present there was unhappy to know about my atheistic inclinations and wryly commented that I was the one who should first be arrested. Can you just imagine that!

Pressures were building upon my family—my wife and in-laws—to withdraw the case against the Islamist attackers, from all quarters including the police. My employer categorically told me that my atheistic assertion made my colleagues avoid my company. And, I was forced to resign from my job.

This continuous pressure from all quarters made my wife divorce me to avoid living a dangerous stressful life.

I became an ultimate social pariah. I was given nominal police protection but I was convinced that the threat to my life would persist as long as I remained in Bangladesh. Sympathetic police officers too told me privately that if a change in political power took place with a person with stronger connection to Muslim fundamentalists, then I might even be arrested.

We see. It was impossible for you then to go back to live your normal life after this murder attempt. How did you survive then?

I emigrated to Bahrain, a relatively secular country, in the Middle-east in November 2013 and took a job employing my skills in multimedia and creative work. I simply disappeared from the rest of the world and lived a dormant life.

But you could not remain long dormant, could you?      

I was shaken altogether again on 7 August 2015 when Neeloy Nil, my good friend, was hacked to death in Bangladesh because of his atheistic beliefs. I decided again to voice myself using social media against the intolerance of Islam. My activism earned me many admirers in the social media. This time I was cautious and did not reveal my real location to anyone.

I used to be the only executive in my office when I used to post things in the social media. All others in my office were manual workers, although from Bangladesh. I did not see this coming that some of them reported to my employer regarding my atheistic outlook and activities. A conspiracy was hatched against me. One day they had tactfully secured their official secrets from me. When I reached home that evening, I was fired over a telephone call. Gradually I came to know that a case of blasphemy has been registered against my name that would translate into a prison sentence of 15 years for me. I found myself alone cornered in a foreign land with even my passport in possession of my erstwhile employer who had turned hostile.

So your employer took exception of your atheism, really harshly. Did you get a chance to explain your case to him?

I had to surrender to my employer even after he had fired me most unethically and also deprived me from my due benefits as an employee. He categorically told me to leave Bahrain same day. My repeated pleadings to him fell into deaf ears. He was adamant and he did not even care about the precarious state of my life in Bangladesh if I had been made to land in there. Immediately I was boarded by him on a flight to Dhaka.

Again at Bangladesh! You escaped to Bahrain from Bangladesh to secure your living and freedom of expression. How did you respond in such a difficult time of your life?

I managed to call my mother over phone from the airport and told her to purchase a ticket to Kathmandu, Nepal for me. I landed in Dhaka airport and did not even set foot outside the airport. She came over as visitor inside the airport and handed me the ticket. Next day from Kathmandu, I took an enormous journey to India for about 18 hours. I crossed the border to India taking help from one of my contacts—it was a quite simple affair at the end.

Why did you choose India?

Through social media, I have a long list of friends in India. I was helped by some of them to get a temporary legal stay in India.

What is the difference in cultural attitude between Bangladesh and India from an atheist’s viewpoint?

In Bangladesh, my life is at stake for my atheism, but lakhs of people, actually persons in influential positions, are atheists in West Bengal. They can express their opinion freely and fairly. People from both West Bengal and Bangladesh are Bengalis and from the very same culture. The only reason that I cannot express myself freely in Bangladesh is that it is a Muslim majority country while West Bengal is still not one. And, I know for sure that the day West Bengal becomes Muslim majority, I would lose my freedom of speech.

In fact, many Bengali intellectuals in West Bengal look for a Hindu-Muslim unity across the border, between West Bengal and Bangladesh. Your take?

 Often people quote the line written by great poet Kazi Nazrul Islam:

            We are two budding flowers together, the Hindu man and the Muslim man. 

I retort back:

            Oh Dear! Oh Dear! Then why did you break India and create Pakistan?

Riyadh to Dhaka to Bahrain to India—your long journey was more of a mental development. Of developing better and better understanding about the world around you. What is your identity now? 

Biologically I was a human being when I was born like I am now. I, today, say with pride that culturally I am a sanatani—the follower of the eternal tradition, the Sanatan Dharma. Had some Muhammad Ghori or some Ikhtiyar al-Din Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji not converted my ancestor on the point of sword to Islam, I would have grown up chanting a hymn in my own language rather than uttering prayer in a foreign language. 

What is your attitude towards Hinduism?

Because of my background, my knowledge of Hinduism is limited. I am always against the oppressor and with the persecuted. I found my voice in the following verse of the Gita (4: 7-8):

Yada yada hi dharmasya glanirbhavati bharata

Abhythanamadharmasya tadatmanam srijamyaham;

Paritranaya sadhunang vinashay cha dushkritam.

Dharmasangsthapanarthaya sambhabami yuge yuge.

This verse clearly says that the oppressor will be defeated and the persecuted will receive the final justice. Can any word of the world be sweeter than this couplet?

Do I believe in everything of Hinduism? Hell No! But I know something for sure: Hinduism can be changed, it can be reformed. Two hundred years ago, Sati (immolation of wife in husband’s pyre) was part of the Hindu tradition; today not a single Hindu even considers its reintroduction.

You are a victim of Islamism and like in Bangladesh, Islamism has become a recurrent problem in many Muslim societies across the world. However, most Muslims are good persons irrespective of the theology of Islam. Atheists like Sam Harris feel that the attack should be against the Islamic Theology which is at the source of the Islamism problem. On the other hand, people like Maajid Nawaz or Ayaan Hirsi Ali feel that taking a direct hit at Islam will mean a terrible bloodshed as innocent Muslims will be in a dilemma. The best thing to tackle Islamism is to reform Islam.

What do you think about it? What is the most humane solution to this problem?

Yes, it is definitely true that most people in a Muslim society are peaceful. If there are a hundred violent muslims, more than a lakh of the peaceful moderate muslims remain in the same society. The only problem is that these moderate muslims act as apologists for the violent muslims. What we require is to bring out the truth about Islam to all Muslims. Let them study Quran and understand if we need this Quranic Law for the civilised human society of today. Why the attack happened against me? A clear possibility is that I could match the Islamists to discuss the Quran with my knowledge of Arabic, which they could not digest.

At the same time, Madrassas must be closed and modern education should be imparted to all the Muslims without exception. Vigilance must ensure that funds and operational facilities remain outside the reach of the Jihadi Muslims.

Do you have any final word to offer to the readers of this article?         

My final submission to the Hindus and to the atheists: If you do not read the Quran being a Hindu or being an atheist today then you will have to read it tomorrow being a Muslim. 

The post A Sanatani Atheist: In Search of My Freedom of Expression appeared first on Dharma Today.

The conference got off to a great start with an inaugural function graced by the presence of the Union Minister for Law and Justice and Information Technology, Sri. Ravi Shankar Prasad and Rajya Sabha MP and BJP stalwart Sri. Subramanian Swamy. 

This edition of the Conference series was much larger in scope than the first one and had three parallel tracks. Continuing on the theme of critiquing the Neo-Orientalist School of thought led by Prof. Sheldon Pollock, this edition saw 10 theses put forward by Pollock countered.

Member of Parliament, Ravishankar Prasad speaking on Global Perceptions of Indian Heritage

There were 35 paper presentations on topics ranging from Rasa, Mimamsa, Chronology, Desacralisation with the maximum number of presentations being made on the topic of Rasa.

Apart from these paper presentations, there was the robust refutation from the traditional scholars. The format is called Vakyartha Sadas and it was something that used to be conducted amongst traditional scholars in their own groupings but has now gone out of the larger public discourse. We were able to bring back this ancient tradition centre stage with a huge success. The continuous engagement with these scholars will enable to make their voice heard in the larger mainstream discourse. Vakyartha Sadas, the traditional form of Purvapaksha and Uttarapaksha debate is slowly but gradually being revived and restored to its rightful position as a scientific and rigorous form of debate that has been the cornerstone of our intellectual tradition.

The conference signed off with a valedictory function in which, awards for the best papers and two monographs (the outcome from SI-1). These were sponsored and given away by FICS (Foundation for Indian Civilisation Studies) run by Sri. Mohandas Pai.

The papers which won prizes were:

1. Prof. K Gopinath for his paper on Rasa titled “A computational Theory for Rasa”
2. Megh Kalyanasundaram and Manogna Sastry for their paper on Chronology titled “Purvapaksha of Sheldon Pollock’s use of Chronology”
3. Nilesh Oak for his paper on Chronology titled “A cririque of Pollock’s “self-evident claims” for the chronology of Mahabharata and Ramayana AND Assertion for the dating of Mahabharata and Ramayana events based on the internal astronomy evidence”
4. Dr. Shrinivas Tilak for his paper on Mimamsa titled “Professor Sheldon Pollock on History in India: A critique from the perspective of Mimamsa”
5. Sowmya Krishnapur for her paper in Sanskrit titled “Sheldon Pollock Pratipaditasya Vyakarana Sastra – Prabhutvayoha Sambandhasya Yuktiyuktatva Pariksha”
6. Subhodeep Mukhopadhyay for his paper on Sastra titled “Practice versus Theory: Ganita Sastra and Western Mathematics”
7. Sudarshan Therani for his paper on Philology titled “The Science of Meaning”

Swadeshi Indology Scholars

In addition to the above papers, awards were also given for the two papers from the first edition of the conference series that were turned into monographs. These monographs were released at the conference in their draft form. It is a moment of pride for the movement that  it has created a significant body of work in such a short span of time. A draft version of the selected papers from SI-1 was also released at the conference. 

The monograph details are as follows:

1. Manjushree Hegde is the author of the monograph titled “Politics of Sanskrit Studies: A Critical Appraisal of Sheldon Pollock’s Ramayana”
2. T M Narendran is the author of the monograph titled “A Pariksa of Sheldon Pollock’s Three Dimensional Philology”

The post Swadeshi Indology Conference II – Conference Report appeared first on Dharma Today.

In a candid chat with Jay Pandya, he shares some of the critical issues with Hinduism from an academic and social view-point and the role of Chanakya in reviving the culture of ‘Intellectual Tradition.’

What is your inspiration and motivation behind not just the name but whole concept of Chanakya which you have taken up?

I have worked in the corporate world, run businesses and of course now I am in academics and teaching. However, I’ve always had a strong thought in my mind since childhood – India as a Nation has always been knowledge-driven culture and so I would differentiate this with a ritual-driven culture. Thanks to my parents, the whole study of scriptures like Bhagavad Gita, Ramayan and Mahabharata were part of my upbringing, being connected to a spiritual organization, the Chinmaya Mission.

I learnt that India has created so much of literature and so much in field of arts, science, technology, philosophy, spirituality. And specifically that our traditions and values are driven by knowledge and not merely sentiments. The thinkers of Vedic times were known as rishis. They were the social, political, economic and spiritual thinkers. They created a culture which is based on thinking and Knowledge. Therefore India is called as Bharata – as in Sanskrit word means Bh (Bhaskara) – Knowledge and Rata – One who is revered in Knowledge. The two broader definitions of types of knowledge are Paramatmika, the Spiritual knowledge, and Vyavaharika, transactional knowledge for worldly dealings.

Today the Indian culture is more dominated by the Adhyatmika part, (spiritual and its associated rituals), which is the most important part, but we have also forgotten that our culture is very strong in the Vyavaharika (social, worldy) part too. That’s what drove me towards studying Chanakya. So when I discovered it, I was amazed! I  felt that here is a knowledge of how our society should operate. It talks about economics, warfare strategy, crime and control, law and Order, gemology, Ayurveda, management, leadership and more than 180 total topics. The more I studied, the more I was mesmerised at the practical insights by that great person. And Kautilya Arthashatra has got 6000 sutras in Sanskrit. I went to Kerala and then learnt under a great scholar and a teacher called Dr. Gangadhar Naik. He taught me all 6000 sutras one to one. At that particular time He was a Dean of Adi Shankaracharya Sanskrit University.

Now this part has been totally neglected. India lacks the Vyavharika strength due to its own neglect and ignorance of its own knowledge. This is how I began to work on it.

Which business you were running?

I have a company called as AtmaDarshan which is into spiritual tourism. In my youth days I travelled across the country in a sales job. I also visited temples, ashrams, and spiritual organizations meeting mahatmas. And I found that this is great country with lot of spiritual wealth but never has been showcased. Then I realised here is an opportunity where I can showcase my country in an Indian spiritual way that is better.

It was a great inspiration from within. My heart was riddled with conflict in the begining. Was I trying to sell India or showcase India in a better and honest way? Then I decided not to commercialise business but to spiritualize commerce. Although I began with western methodologies of business, I thought that if my company, which is centred in India, and deals with heritage and culture then it must also have an Indian thought process.  

I came across this book called ‘Kautilya Arthashastra’. It was an epitome of and great book on good governance explaining how we trained Chandragupta Maurya, how we made whole kingdom come together, etc. But nobody debates on Chanakya as he is historical character. Not an imaginary character. There are still debates whether Ram existed or not but that debate does not exist with Chanakya. So I have found Chanakya’s works in Germany in German languages. Academic and intellectual communities across the globe accept that he was a historical character.

He is accepted in western countries but how is he received by all sections of Indian intellectuals?

Yes, they all accept him. I have been teaching this for the last 18 years. I am here as a Deputy Director of a University that is unbiased and non-religious. You will be surprised to know that even the Pakistan armed forces are taught Chanakya!

Really! How is it so?

Of course yes. Because it is not about religion but strategy. And now we are waking up. Chanakya strategy is beyond religion, colour, race, generation. Chanakya is very mysterious person. Everybody knows he is very different kind of a sadhu. He is someone whom everyone would want to decode and understand his thinking pattern. If you look at it there are very popular things about Chanakya such as Sama-Dama-Danda-Bheda, enemy’s enemy is a friend etc. All this is there in Indian culture but nobody is knows a depth of it.

Can you tell me how the Arthashastra helped your economic growth? I’m intrigued.

(Smilingly) Before I went to Kerala to study Arthashastra my turnover was 20 lakhs a year. After my study it became 2 crores the very next year! It works. Its not like some old story of a bygone generation.

That’s phenomenal! How did it spread socially?

So friends started calling me to have a discussion, which later made sense to them. They invited me in their companies to give seminars. I delivered around 100 lectures. All course free of cost. Not as a professional. Just sharing of my knowledge. I wrote a research paper called “Management Fundamentals and Kautilya’s Arthashastra.” It became very popular online. Times of India Group read it and asked me to be a columnist. In the Mumbai Mirror, I wrote more than 170+ articles for 4.5 years. That’s how many people came to know about me. Then Jaico, my publishers, said that you speak well on Chanakya, can you write a book for us? I wrote a book ‘Corporate Chanakya’ for them. I have written 6 books on Chanakya and I am writing 18 more books.

18 books in writing along with University responsibilities – how do you get the time?

I enjoy the flow so currently I am doing many projects in parallel. This is Chanakya Kripa (laughs), Gurukripa. The first thing what I did is applied Chanakya’s teaching in my own life. When you teach, you have to make it a part of your life first and then only you can lead by example. Otherwise I have seen so many so called motivational speakers, who have talked a lot and the moment they are out of their speech, you will find the conflict in their personality. They go, they drink and get wild. As Swami Vivekananda quoted, “In the west a tailor makes a gentlemen, in India character makes a gentlemen.”

The best part is I feel the journey has only begun.

That’s an amazing experience when one is doing what suits his svabhav, isn’t it ?

Absolutely! Sometimes you find the way, sometimes the way finds you! In a way I am on a journey that I never planned.

Can you explain the role of this department you are serving in Mumbai University?

I am serving here as a Deputy Director of the newest department of Mumbai University this year. We have set a benchmark globally and we are the first university in the world offering a two year’s Masters full time programme dealing with Leadership as a science which includes Chanakya’s principles. I have designed the program with my Ph.D guide, Dr. Shubhada Joshi.

After studying one personality for over two decades is there anything still intriguing and mysterious, that you haven’t been able to discover or you are mystified by?

Yes. His study of Jyotish shastra. It’s very interesting because Chanakya was a strategist and he did not have a single failure. As one scholar put it nicely, ‘If you understand Chanakya, you will not understand what failure is’. So this is what is intriguing. Traditionally, in India, strategy was not built on western models of permutation and combination of data. I am involved in research on this.

I have started realizing that there is a human mind and there is something called as a universal mind. So through Jyotish, Chanakya is connecting to some higher sources that becomes the part of his strategy. So Chanakya had very deep understanding of forces that work – the seen and the unseen. And that’s mysterious. When you say mysterious, it not something we can’t understand. It’s a science.

The story that all we know is only one part of it. Chanakya found Chandragupta Maurya and he trained him. But why only found Chandragupta Maurya? He was a teacher of political science in Takshashila University and had many students. Some of them became Kings of smaller kingdoms, some of them became ministers, some of them became bureaucrats. Since you cannot invest all your knowledge in a wrong person, he did the calculations and trained Chandragupta Maurya. A farmer makes sure that the seed is right. This is why Chanakya doesn’t fail. I am decoding certain subtle aspects of Chanakya in a scientific way so that we can apply and get benefit in this generation. For me Chanakya is an ongoing mystery!

Would it morally be right to use Chanakya’s strategies in a generation where the entire economics and governance is greed driven? I personally feel that it would be a defeat of the personality of Chanakya. Could Chanakya be relevant today?

Wealth based on spiritual values is what chanakya preached. He says that it is important to make your society wealthy, within and without. You can be ambitious as an industrialist. You can be a wealth creator yet the concept can be of service. Artha shashtras also speak of concept of a world conqueror but not with the method of killing or defeating. It can be with dharmic values too.

Chanakya recommends getting success from outside and inside and yet not getting attached. We talk about Janak Maharaj who was a scholar and also a leader in his own space. Ravana was very successful outside, scientifically, technologically well-developed at that point of time but not developed inside. So the concept by Chanakya for success is a person who balances materialism and spirituality together.

Why do you think that India with such a great tradition has neglected such great personalities in schools?

Some may say that Britishers destroyed us but now its 70 years after britishers left. We too must accept some responsibility for neglecting and thereby destroying Indianism in Indian education system. We must see that every society is responsible for success or failure. Not just outsiders.

It begins with language. I have seen parents of this generation are not even teaching their own children their Matru Bhasha (mother tongue). Their Rashtra Bhasha (national language) forget Deva bhasha (Sanskrit). So I think every child in the education system, but starting from home, should begin the education in four languages including English.

We have to integrate Chanakya, Mahabharat and Ramayana in schools and colleges. Government must incorporate it in its mechanisms. IDSA (Institute of Defence Studies & Analysis) in Delhi is now consulting as to how Artha shastra could be used in war. There are some models here and there in some colleges and schools but it will take a while to spread it.

What role do you see for spiritual organizations in this revival?

I think spiritual organizations currently are in the mode of catering to demand supply of the society. That’s not exactly what they are meant to be.

We see a lot of hero worship, mass hysteria in India. Its ok sometimes for the cultural part of it. But there are different philosophies: the bhakti traditions, intellectual traditions, the karma yoga traditions and there are yogic traditions also. When the followers are in the hysteria and hero worship mode it causes exclusivity. We need to understand the need for each other.

Unfortunately today questioning the Guru, who is supposed to be a teacher, is considered something bad. This is not the true spirit of a Parampara or tradition. A debate and a discussion for the betterment must always take place. This culture is compromised and that is a cause of many problems. However some spiritual organizations are doing lot of work like bringing out great publications, holding seminars and lot of intellectual discussions, debating and all those things. Ideal combination is bhakti and intellect.

That is the difference between shraddha and faith. Shraddha allows you to debate and disagree and present your points, whereas the faith systems do not allow that.

Yes. I may not agree with what my teacher says but that does not mean I am disrespecting him or her. And if you look all Upanishads they are discussions, debates right?

Even Gita is Samvaad. It’s not a katha, story.

Exactly. We need good teachers and teachers require good students. I always tell in my class, ‘Don’t come to my class to listen to me. First do your research, understand and learn and then come to my class for a healthy discussion. I will give you insights. I can’t read the book for you, you have to read it, you need to question it. Question every answer that I give. And then you have to go back and see if it makes sense.’

In today’s time, many spiritual discussions are becoming prophetic rather than being inspirational or logic driven. Becoming Islamized, Christianised in essence. That’s how abrahamic traditions function. Lord said so…Ram said so… Krishna said so… or our Guru said so…so just close all doors of discrimination. What are your views on this?. 

That’s a huge concern. There are commandments in Sanatan Dharma but they are logic driven. ‘Acharya devo Bhava, Atithi devo Bhava, Matru devo Bhava, Pitru devo Bhava’. But you don’t get stuck to commandments only. You look at intellectual growth. Some people have to be given rituals.  Some people have to be given to-do list. And as you evolve higher & higher, you mature saying that it stepping stone which is required but there are things beyond that.

So my challenge has been or rather every teacher’s challenge has been to give knowledge to student in the right amount. So if your level of growth is intellectual, I should be able to give you intellectually convincing questions. I should not cheat you. Sanatan Dharma parampara says that, ‘If you think that your questions are not answered by me, Please go to the next teacher. I’ll recommend you to the next teacher.’ If we don’t like our students going to search, investigate beyond ourselves we are trying to create a cult.

It is always more comfortable to be cultish than to be spiritual. Spirituality takes a lot of courage. In following a cult an individual has no or very little responsibility. Its all about following and not evolving.

We cannot write off the rituals else there will be no traditions. And a tradition must not become a cult. So I think spiritual organizations will also have to evolve. We have started with basic levels but I have seen that to survive 100-500 years you have to adapt to the questions of the intellectual crowd else you will get wiped off. If you have to mature an institution from a school level, to a college level, to a university, then you also have to evolve. Ultimate goal of any spiritual organization is not to create devotees for themselves but to create more knowledgeable people for the society.

The post Reviving the Intellectual Tradition – An Interview with ‘Chanakya’ Pillai appeared first on Dharma Today.

A successful entrepreneur at the peak of his career, while owning 20 companies in several countries, taking an early retirement at age 44 to pursue philanthropy, research and public service is something unheard of. Meet an internationally acclaimed author, Rajiv Malhotra, an Indian–American researcher, writer, speaker and public intellectual on current affairs as they relate to civilizations, cross-cultural encounters, religion and science. He established Infinity Foundation for this purpose in 1994 and has given more than 400 grants for research, education and community work at Harvard University, Rutgers University, University of Hawaii, Columbia University, University of California, University of Pennsylvania, etc.

In an candid chat with Palak Shah,  Rajiv Malhotra  gives insights in and around his latest book “The Battle for Sanskrit.”

After your deeply researched and stunning book, Breaking India and and the philosophical masterpieces Being Different and Indra’s Net, you have now written, The Battle for Sanskrit. Why this book and why now?

My themes are broad – defending: India, Bhartiya Sanskriti, Dharma and Vedic culture, among others. The forces opposing these important aspects, each having a certain focus, are unified under the broad umbrella of wanting to destroy Dharma. Somebody is attacking Gurus and Deities, someone else philosophy, others unified Hinduism and yet others Sanskrit. Each of my books tackles one of those big forces individually and refutes their charges and philosophies.

Something of great import happened at the Columbia University, which required me to write this book.  An Indologist named Professor Sheldon Pollock was on the verge of signing an agreement with the Sringeri Mutt, which is one of the major traditional centers of learning started by Adi Shankara some thirteen centuries ago. Columbia University was to create a Chair for Adi Shankara Studies of Religion and Philosophy and Sheldon Pollock was to head the Committee to select the Chair and determine the content. Now, Sheldon Pollock is basically a strong leftist, who approaches Hinduism from a Marxist, secularist and atheistic point of view.

People representing the traditional Indian side and Sringeri Mutt constituted the Advisory Committee that had no adhikara – authority.  The Advisory Committee had to direct their requests to the Academic Committee, which had veto power.

I know of many people being paid millions of dollars upfront, to be part of the Advisory Committee. The glamour of getting their pictures taken with the Chancellor, Dean or President of the University; getting their name and pictures in the newspaper with local Senators; the fame and prestige of being an Advisory Committee Member enamors people. They make announcements and are in a hurry to get this done because they are getting money. Everybody will be tweeting about this and social media will praise them. However, being totally uneducated about the intellectual Kurukshetra they don’t know what the issues are and the red flags to look out for.

What happens is as that once they’ve got the money and as time goes by, they decide who the professor will be and invariably it would be a student of Sheldon Pollock or Wendy Doniger or one of those kind of people. They’re grooming their own army of such people. The irony is that they are using Indian money and Sringeri Mutt to lend their actions legitimacy. They will also sing songs in praise of Adi Shankara, honor the Sankaracharya of today, tell you great things about the Math, garland any visiting Hindu dignitary, put him on stage and make him look very important. But all this is Public Relations strategies -niceties to make the Hindu side feel honored and proud!

But ultimately, what matters is the substance of the scholarship which they are promoting in the text books and teaching in class.  All this is too detailed for most Indians to understand. So nobody bothers to try to understand those details until somebody like me points it out. But by then it’s too late. The dye is cast. I have been through all of this for 25 years in many places. 

There was a sense of urgency to publish this book because I wanted the devotees of Sringeri Mutt and the followers of Adi Shankara to look at both sides before they decide. I’m not demonizing the other side. All I’m saying is that their scholarship runs counter to the philosophy of Adi Shankara. That is what I am proving in this book. Their scholarship runs counter to the Bhakti and Devi traditions, the Vedas and the traditional understanding of Ramayana and Mahabharat. I have cited many examples to support this. It very clearly says that Vedic hymns, chants and mantras are Brahmin and a conspiracy to oppress people, which is not true. There is a great error in transferring adhikara and control to people who do not have shraddha.

Even though I am not formally initiated or a devotee of Sringeri Math I am more broad based with allegiance to several denominations and lineages.  Unfortunately, the people who were enthusiastically supporting and raising funds for this chair and passionately arguing against me are hopelessly ignorant about Adi Shankara’s philosophy and hence don’t understand that these academics are saying the exact opposite.

My concern is that this being done with so much smoothness and sophistication at very high levels of our people, that even well-intended people cannot see through it. People are fooled by these nice, generous Western scholars who come to India, speak Sanskrit and do puja. So somebody has to go beneath the surface of that facade and tell people like it really is. That is why I decided to write this book.

Today for many reasons Sanskrit has at best a marginal place in the education of majority of Indians. How is Sanskrit relevant to Indians generally and to the practice of Hinduism today? Why write a book on the issue of Sanskrit?

My book is called The Battle for Sanskrit but actually it is a battle for ‘sanskriti’ – civilization/ culture, because Sanskrit texts are being attacked. The book exposes how they are misinterpreting Vedic texts. The initial chapters concentrate on the reasons Sanskrit is important to our culture.

Sanskrit vibrations and sounds are not man-made, but are part of the cosmic rhythm. They are part of the fabric of creation and existence. Mantras takes you from the intellectual level to the emotional, channeling deeper and deeper psychological states. You keep chanting a mantra it becomes part of your unconscious, without you even realizing it! That is your bridge to a deeper existence/ level of Divinity.

Sanskrit has been the medium of intellectual discourse and philosophy. One important uniqueness of Sanskrit is that you cannot get the same effect if you replace the Sanskrit mantra with something in English that means the same. English terminologies do not have the philosophical sophistication that Sanskrit does. Sanskrit is non-translatable as it is built on non-translatable root sounds.   So some of the terms we use in Sanskrit do not have an equivalent in any other language. If you translate atman as soul, it doesn’t mean the same thing in the Christian/ Biblical sense because souls exist in humans, not animals and plants and don’t reincarnate. 

In the Medieval era the church concluded that Africans don’t have a soul and perpetuated all kinds of stupid stuff.

Sanskrit is unique because it is the DNA of all Indian languages. It is the template and substratum upon which the Indian languages have evolved.  Because of the sophisticated grammar there is rigor in the way knowledge is presented, transmitted and communicated. It’s an important source of integration because the architecture of Sanskrit permeates the architecture of other languages, the physical design of temples and buildings and also dance and music.  

Knowledge of Sanskrit is essential to perfectly understand the Vedas and perform yajnas. The Mahabharata and Ramayana explain Vedic ideas in a simplified manner for the general public of Kali Yuga. It’s been presented in different levels of complexity for different yugas. Hence, the same knowledge moving through different epochs, kinds and levels of society is presented differently. So I would say that Sanskrit and Vedic unity is the substratum from which all of this other stuff emerged. If people want to go beyond their particular lineage into a deeper spiritual understanding, then they need deep knowledge of Sanskrit and the Vedas. 

You just described how important Sanskrit and sanskriti are to our tradition and India, across many dimensions. What are the dangers India faces if Sanskrit and sanskriti are lost and forgotten and how far have we already fallen in this direction?

A good question! Take for example of Translations of Sanskrit works. Robert Goldman and Sheldon Pollock, among others, know Sanskrit well, but they do not have Shraddha. When they study Sanskrit literature, they are not looking for sanctity but for oppression in order to create political divisiveness. They have secured funding worth millions of dollars from Indians, to translate knowledge in Sanskrit into English.  Most of the chosen translators are either Westerners or Indians trained by Westerners. They are not people trained in tradition.

Their goal is to carpet bomb Indian literature in English and sell such books cheaply. Our next generation will know Indian culture only through these “Made in USA, English libraries”. That is a tragedy because it makes English, currently the language for elite discussion, conversation, business and government, the more important language. But English is not the language for transacting your bhakti, doing a yajna or puja.  Can you imagine in the future people will chant English hymns to Ram or Krishna!

Here is my key message: Letting non-practitioners (people who were never invested in or have loyalty to tradition) control the translation, interpretation and dissemination of sacred texts is very dangerous.  Adhikara has been shifted from people who were raised within the tradition to non-practitioners, who have personal agendas.

Rapid translation projects are doing a big disservice because they are not being done by right kind of people or with the right attitude.  The right way of translating would be to educate readers about Sanskrit non-translatables, with explanations of how it is different from the English equivalent in a way that preserves traditional sacredness and retains the sraddha for the text.   But that is not how things are being done. So I feel that Sanskrit is losing out in the deeper institutional mechanism in India.

One of your phrases piqued my interest – this idea of carpet bombing Sanskrit translations across India. Which particular narratives do you think general public read and out of those which ones worries you the most?

I think that Ramayana has been abused a lot in recent times. Ramayana has been depicted as an oppressive narrative where it is masculinity ill-treating Sita. Such adverse conclusions are being drawn by these modern scholars.

Sheldon Pollock has said that traditionalists project Ram as a divine king; Ravana as raksasha – demon, meant to depict Muslims.    Therefore, rather than viewing Ramayana as a sacred text which you can learn from, it is positioned as target practice of secularists who want to bring it down.  That’s my concern.

In the translation of a “critical edition” of Mahabharata by the University of Chicago they translated Shudra as slave and Kshatriya as war lord or feudal king, imposing European medieval history categories that are non-existent in Indian history.

Another exaggerated and serious narrative they manufactured is the big divide between Buddhist and Vedic systems.  They say that Vedic tradition was corrupted by the Brahmins, who were exploiting people and reserving exclusive rights to sacred texts. Then Buddha came and rescued Indians from their own bad culture and tradition.  So (according to them) Buddhism is a sort of reformation of Hinduism, as Vedic tradition is full of problems which Buddhist traditions are trying to solve! 

They will shower praise on the literature, conduct sessions with show of bhakti and then go ahead and translate/ interpret things the way they seem fit. This is disturbing.

This creates a lot of divisiveness and is fodder for modern politics. According to them, Buddha an outsider to Vedic tradition intervened and now it is for Westerners to continue /complete that process. So, in my concluding chapter I have listed 18 major topics that need to be popularized, debated and resolved.   

Now shifting gears … let’s assume the revival of Sanskrit and protection of India’s cultural and spiritual traditions are solely up to the general public. What are the key steps to revive Sanskrit as a living, embodied language at the grass roots level?

Well qualified home teams and institutions must be developed. Ideas will live and spread only through human containers and transmitters. Let’s take a look at Indians today: 

Ultra-orthodox, ultra-traditional Hindu gurus who are ill-equipped to understand what the opposition is doing as they have not done the required purva-paksha – building a deep familiarity with the opponent’s point of view before criticizing it. Their adhikara has been taken away using language that is alien and confounding to traditionalists.

Orthodox and traditional Hindus, who superficially know what is being written. However, they have been bought off (with trips to the US, royal treatment, positions in committees and organizations and large doses of limelight on the world stage) to support Westerners.  What they don’t realize is that their credibility has been usurped, they’ve been reduced to being token mascots; and really thorough and deep interpretation of scriptures is no longer their prerogative.  

There is a huge segment of people who seriously and regularly practice spirituality, but have absolved themselves of their responsibility to tradition. Either they are too busy, don’t care or find this too controversial. But you know their heart is at right place, because privately they will tell you, ‘Yes you are doing a good job,’ and yet refuse to take onus and do something about it.   

Ultra-modern and self-alienated Indians active in social media and talk shows; glittery stars in literary festivals, hardly ever constructively contribute to tradition.

Politicians are mostly interested in political power will pander to any segment who will help them achieve their goals and retain them!

So having shown how the some constituents of Indian society cannot be relied upon to take on this onerous task, I have decided to align the various Hindu institutions and denominations, intellectuals and equivalent people in other denominations; empower them with knowledge and then disseminate this information.   Modern Hindus can assimilate this change. 

Wow, amazing! You have addressed this particular question across a number of your responses. If you would summarize the key mistakes we are repeatedly making in sabotaging the revival?

We are not doing purva-paksa and the others are. We are trusting blindly. We fund Chairs, activities and projects not under our control and simply empower opponents. We should not call them enemies but opponents – more dignified – because they are entitled to their ideology even if it is not consistent with ours or something we would promote. Therefore, I would say that one of the most serious mistakes is that we are empowering the wrong people.

Second issue- too much into the selfish introversion. ‘I am doing my own job and I don’t have time for this. Somebody else may look after it.’ 

We have a large number of people calling themselves Hindu leaders to get something out of it, become somebody important quickly and differentiate themselves. They are not doing the seva needed, so I think there is this lack of sacrifice and tapasya.

The pettiness of rivalry and craving for political position are also issues.

There will be those who would point a finger and say you are not a Sanskrit scholar by training – on what basis did you choose to write The Battle for Sanskrit?

Of course, that’s a very valid question! The crux here is not about knowing Sanskrit, but knowing to critique, build an argument, a thesis, how you debate. It is imperative to understand Western thought, history, psychology and politics and also to recognize the Western ways of exploitation and colonization. What my critics don’t understand is that I have met with these “trained Sanskrit scholars”. Not one of them read Sheldon Pollock, Wendy Doniger, Jack Frawley, Western Indology or done the purva-paksha, which I am doing! So I am doing actually a job which I should not be doing.

When somebody asks me this question I say, ‘Ok, thank you so much. Now you take over this job. I want you to write a 500-page book – a critique of one or two very prominent schools of Western Indology in 12 months. Do a purva-paksha and read about 4000 pages of their work. Promise me that this is all you will do day and night, in the next year. If 5 people can promise me that, I promise I will retire tomorrow.”  There were no takers, so I started it myself. They simply don’t understand it.

That, by the way, is my favorite question!

There were attempts to sabotage the writing of The Battle for Sanskrit even before you began writing. Who attempted to do this? What was the ultimate result of their efforts?

The Crown Prince of Thailand hosts the World Sanskrit Congress Bangkok every 10 years. I was the keynote speaker with Murli Manohar Joshi in 2005.  I was invited again in 2015, when I informed the Crown Prince of my upcoming book and shared an outline with him. The Indians and Buddhists of Thailand loved it. The Crown Prince told the organizer that mine was the finest talk delivered there. Sushma Swaraj, Minister of External Affairs, was present and complimented me.

Now in 2005, the majority of participants were Western Sanskrit Indologists and local Thai people; maybe 10-15% were Indians and they were on the side of the Westerners. In 2015, more than 50% of the participants were traditional Indian scholars, Hindus and different kind of voices, 20% were Westerners and the rest were local Thai people.

The Westerners were very angry and resented the fact that they were not treated like gods anymore. Then a guy like me was given the prime slot of main speaker. There was much negotiation behind the scenes to throw me out of the event. Some Indians too were part of this. Within 24 hours of my successful talk, the firing started. The team appointed to go after me claimed that I am a rich man who is exploiting my power, I am against Shudras and Muslims, and all kinds of weird things! Incredible though it may sound Indians foolishly started re-tweeting these accusations. This is part of our internal problem.

This encouraged Richard Fox to petition that all my books be banned and the publisher withdraw them.  Stupidly, the whole Indian contingent of leftists, rightists – everybody – just believed that being a Princeton University professor, he was using academic standards. This was the perfect opportunity for Fox to came up with completely fabricated, idiotic charges and allegations about some grave violations in my work.   Nobody bothered to verify Fox’s credentials.  He actually has nothing to with Princeton University, but runs a Christian seminary. He is deeply involved in conversion activities especially in South India, Dalit Christian movement and Aryan Dravidian divide.

Sometimes you feel demoralized and beaten up and need someone to encourage you; otherwise you wonder why you are doing all this. Luckily, I have a few strong supporters who came to my rescue. I couldn’t have done it alone. We started a counter-petition publicizing the story and eventually they ran away because none of those points they made had merit.  They could not persist.

The mere fact we could get this book out is itself is a pretty amazing journey!

Rajiv, this was indeed a wonderful opportunity to get an insight into your innermost thoughts on a subject important not just for Indians but all of humanity!

Exactly what I feel!

The post The Battle for Sanskriti – An Interview with Rajiv Malhotra appeared first on Dharma Today.

Best-Seller author Rajiv Malhotra, a public intellectual on civilizations, cross-cultural encounters, religion and science, has raised concerns over the bias of western scholars in their study of Indian civilization.

R Ganesh is a Bangalore-based author in Sanskrit and Kannada. He is known for extempore composition of poetry. As practitioner of the art of Avadhana he has performed avadhanas in Kannada, Sanskrit, Telugu and Prakrit. He also gives public lectures on dance (natya sastra), music, art, culture, literature, poetics.

Ganesh’s scathing attack on The Battle For Sanskrit (TBFS) and against Malhotra’s competence came as a surprise to all practitioners of dharma who expected a rally instead of a controversy in the defense of our sanskriti. This divided some of the activists and it needed to be healed.

TBFS seeks to alert traditional scholars of the analysis of Indian texts made by Sheldon Pollock, a Sanskrit professor at Columbia University who is well-known for his writings on the intellectual and literary history of India. Pollock exclaims that Sanskrit texts are socially oppressive and serve as a political weapon of the ruling elite; that the sacred aspects need to be refuted or side lined; and that Sanskrit has long been dead. They intervene in modern India with the explicitly stated purpose of removing ‘poisons’ allegedly built into the sacred texts. Incidentally Pollock was the general editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library and is now the founding editor of the newly founded Murty Classical Library of India.

This following interview with Rajiv Malhotra discusses the critique made by R Ganesh on Rajiv’s latest book The Battle for Sanskrit that deals with the scholarship of American Indologist Sheldon Pollock.

This is a long but important interview, so for ease of reading I divided the issues into thematic categories:

1. The qualifications required to do Rajiv Malhotra’s work
2. Issues concerning methodology and Ganesh’s overall approach
3. Disagreements concerning the interpretation of our sanskriti
4. Who is being logical or illogical?
5. What should be the future course for our sanskriti?

Theme 1: The qualifications required to do Rajiv Malhotra’s work

Q: What was your first reaction to R. Ganesh’s review of your book, The Battle For Sanskrit?

I wish to thank Shri R. Ganesh for showing interest in my book by writing a lengthy critique. Any such critique has the effect to wake up traditional scholars and draw their attention to the prevailing intellectual battlefield.

However, there are many serious errors, misunderstandings and contradictions in Sri Ganesh’s article. I would like to point out a few of the statements that are irrelevant/pedantic or that misrepresent what is written in TBFS. I would also like to clarify my domains of expertise and repeat TBFSs call for traditional scholars to work in collaboration with me in ways that complement one another.

Q: Reading Ganesh’s review one could imply that he is poisoning the well by explicitly branding you incompetent. What is your response to charges that you are unqualified to do your work?

• On what basis can he conclude that I lack first-hand experience of sanskriti? He fails to define the scope of sanskriti and then show that I am deficient in it. This would require him to do detailed pariksha of my background, my sadhana, my guru, and so forth – something he has not done. This goes to show that Ganesh has a somewhat reductionist view of what our sanskriti is, and he makes sweeping judgments of others whom he hardly knows.

He mentions, “In The Battle for Sanskrit, Rajiv Malhotra is like an enthusiastic commander of a committed army whose strengths and weaknesses he himself is sadly unable to reconcile.” The commander of an army that he refers to is like a CEO, and must be evaluated as such. He is not supposed to be like a techie or a frog-in-the-well.

This CEO type of leadership is certainly not limited to bookish knowledge of one’s own systems. It demands an extensive experience in direct close combat with the best warriors of the opposing side. Such a leader must be psychologically strong like a Kshatriya, leaving one’s comfort zone of supporters, confidently walking directly into the line of enemy fire, even when surrounded by a hundred or more heavily armed opponents.

My movement requires me to be able to identify and define the immense variety of specialized battlefields we must engage. We must know the opposing side’s history, ideology, motives, strategic plans and tactical maneuvers. We must study the strengths/weaknesses of the main opponents we face, not only as individuals but also the workings of their institutional support apparatus. Any such leader must know how opponents have infiltrated and installed their own supporters among us, including many who serve them unconsciously and even imagine they are operating with good intentions for our civilization.

For my specialized area of work, the battlefield is situated globally, the gatekeepers are mostly hostile towards us, and we have a ragtag army to start with. I am sure Ganesh will agree with the importance of intellectual combat experience in the western battlefields, just as his avadhanas provide him the field-experience in his domain of expertise. I wish Ganesh knew enough of my background in this kind of battlefield over the past quarter century, to be able to justify his sweeping dismissal of my effectiveness.

I emphasize new knowledge acquired in several ways, including the following methods:

• Defining the “rishi-state” of higher consciousness as a method our exemplars have used to constantly refresh knowledge, and not get frozen in time;
• Studying a vast corpus of literature by our opponents pertaining to a broad spectrum of topics in the humanities and social sciences;
• Engaging opponents in debate as often as I can considering this is an important form of knowledge acquisition;
• Promote and participate in the use of modern scientific empiricism to study old knowledge with open minds, in order to benefit both the science and our improved insights about the tradition; and
• Advocate the adaptation and writing of new smritis for our times.

Ganesh’s pedantic tutorial on sanatana dharma has no relevance to Pollock’s work or my purva-paksha of Pollock.

Ironically, even though Hiriyanna is very well-known in his own right, Ganesh establishes Hiriyanna’s credentials by quoting that the Harvard professor Daniel Ingalls praised him as a “great scholar”. This inferiority complex that many Indians have compels them to cite a westerner’s pat on the back as the gold standard of legitimacy. Why should one of our great avadhana leaders need to cite Harvard’s Ingalls to prove the greatness of Hiriyanna?Furthermore, our tradition has always encouraged and even valorized innovative thinkers who seemed to lack formal training in some field, but who successfully challenged those with eminent “credentials”. His branding me right up front as unqualified is unscholarly and elitist. Ganesh says that “Malhotra’s understanding of Sanskrit and Sanskriti seems second hand since he puts a premium on form (rupa) as against content (svarupa) and uses pseudo-logic instead of non-qualified universal experiential wisdom to counter the enemies His argument about the distinction between rupa and svarupa is irrelevant. Yes, in metaphysical contexts, the aim is to transcend rupa into understanding of svarupa but that has nothing to do with the context of defending dharma socially and politically from hostile interpretations.

• His reference to my book’s pages 44-49 shows a lack of basic understanding of my book. In those pages I do not discuss the “enemies” at all, but rather our home team’s internal shortcomings. This is a standard SWOT analysis done to assess one’s competitiveness. It is based on numerous interviews I did over the years to assess the views and preparedness of various kinds of individuals who ought to be on our home team. Ganesh seems to be unfamiliar with such techniques, and dismisses it as “an elaborate but hazy diagnosis of the problem.” Its not a good idea to pass judgment on areas one is unfamiliar with.
• I wish to turn his argument back on him: The complaint he cites about pandits being ignorant of the latest knowledge from new sources is applicable to those traditional scholars who are not up to date in knowledge of Western Indology, which is the subject matter of our discussion.

Pollock also resorts to this kind of hubris many times. It reminds me of a corporate slogan: “If you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit!”

Q: What are your thoughts on Ganesh’s strengths and knowledge gaps?

Ganesh is a great scholar but I find him lacking knowledge of the specific meta-narrative in which Sheldon Pollock’s work is located. Without understanding this fully, it is useless and in fact misleading to attempt to do purva-paksha on isolated verses and statements made by Pollock. The following four-tier model explains the layers of knowledge one must bring to bear on such a purva-paksha.

1. Wide sweeping critique of western Indology. Cover lots of old Indologists, from Christian to secular, clubbing all of them under a simplistic profile as “western”. Most postcolonial scholarship has focused on this and some of it has been pretty useful. Few traditional Indian scholars have done serious work here, and most of them regurgitate bombastic, emotional and politicized criticisms. In any case, this is not where my focus lies in TBFS. We already have lots of such material from numerous writers over many decades. But this genre of ideology is not what we encounter today, because western Indologists like Pollock have moved on and other more sophisticated theories have superseded.
2. Present ecosystem of Western Indology and where the Pollock School fits in. This tier looks at prevailing infrastructure for knowledge production, such as: institutions, ideologies, agendas, distribution channels, etc. This research looks at not only western scholars but also their Indian collaborators and sepoys. What are their strategies at work? Who funds what? What is the purpose of all this work? To do this type of work, one must have expertise in industry analysis. I would say Breaking India is a book in this genre.
3. Deconstruction of Pollock school’s specific lens. Here one must look at this school’s meta-theories, narratives, key vocabulary, plans. What are the implications to dharma being studied in this way? How has this knowledge spread over the past 30+ years? Who is who in their army? This requires a multi-disciplinary approach, and knowledge of heavy English, Western thought and the ability to decode multilayered (including sly/deceptive) writing style that is typical of western scholars who want to look politically correct. I request the reader to please go through my article, The Challenges of Understanding Sheldon Pollock, available at: http://swarajyamag.com/culture/rajiv-malhotra-explains-the-challenges-of-understanding-sheldon-pollock
4. Text specific micro-analysis. This entails analysis of specific Indian texts as per Pollock school and as per our tradition. This supports our uttara-paksha. It requires serious knowledge of Sanskrit and also of texts in detail.

My interest is in tiers 2 & 3. I saw this huge gap in our home team’s work thus far. Most of them regurgitate tier 1 repeatedly. But that writing is too superficial to make any impact. It is also obsolete as even the westerners today have disowned it. Westerners have replaced this old Orientalism with their own new Orientalism.

In a nutshell, Ganesh and most Indian scholars miss tiers 2 and 3 entirely, and do not seem to realize this. Their ideas of western Indology are frozen in the old era of tier 1. They investigate specific issues (i.e. tier-4) in the context of tier-1. Because they miss the middle tiers, which is where Pollock’s original and creative theories and lenses belong, they miss out on what is special about Pollock.

Therefore, Ganesh and I are doing two different types of yajnas. They entail two distinct subject matter areas, with different kinds of opponents and issues. I am aware of my shortcomings, and explain in my book the necessity for more specialists like Ganesh to join as teams. But unfortunately, he sees his corner of the field as though it were the entire global kurukshetra. For some mysterious reason he is blind to his own limitations. Nevertheless, Ganesh and other traditional scholars need to undertake the important work based on the tier 2 and tier 3 analysis of Pollock.

Theme 2: Issues concerning methodology and Ganesh’s overall approach

Q: Ganesh dismisses your thesis of breaking India forces, calling it a “conspiracy theory”. What is your response?

Someone dismissing it as “conspiracy theory” is clearly out of touch with the real-world events that are taking place all around us. Our experts must be better informed about the world or else not opine so authoritatively. Ganesh complains that my notion of ‘western orientalists appropriating the Indian left’ sound like conspiracy theories. Had he written this before my books Breaking India and Being Different became extremely influential, that would be one thing. But in the past several years a large number of Indians in multiple disciplines have read and appreciated that thesis.

Q: Could you please explain Ganesh’s charge that your “meticulous analysis of the works of Sheldon Pollock”, is “also an indicator of Malhotra’s obsession with Western academia, to the extent that the reader gets the impression that Hinduism will not survive unless Western academia views it in a better light.”

Ganesh contradicts himself and cannot seem to make up his mind on whether such a systematic purva-paksha is a good thing or not. If he accepts Pollock’s importance and the principle of purva-paksha, then why should he find my “meticulous analysis” to be a sign of obsession? This is like someone complaining of the “obsession” of Shankara and other exemplars of purva-paksha to critique their opponents with rigor.

He also accuses me of “playing the blame game” and advocates that we must “counter Pollock with facts.” It is a ridiculous assumption/misrepresentation, given that I worked so hard to get into the “facts” of Pollock while Ganesh shows NO knowledge of Pollock apart from what he sees in TBFS.

He misrepresents me when he says that I want Western academia to view Hinduism in a better light. My fight is exactly in the opposite direction: I oppose funding western Indology chairs that hope to win over Western academia. I want Swadeshi Indology to become strong.  The Indian Grand Narrative must be home grown and only then can we export it. Others will not respect us until we respect ourselves with unity. Anyone who has read my works knows all this well.

Q: What is your response to Ganesh’s criticism that: “The first imperative step of establishing pramanas is missing in The Battle for Sanskrit.”

In the absence of common pramanas between Western Indology and our tradition, it is impossible to debate because we may be talking about rishi consciousness but Pollock being a Marxist, disregards that such a thing even exists, and he only cares about socioeconomic dimensions. TBFS is constantly showing that Pollock rejects the claims of sacredness, and hence automatically rejects Vedas and experience of higher states.

Right now, we live in a society governed by laws and processes that are not based on our pramanas. To enter the debating court, we are being required to fit within Western Universalism.

As a pragmatist I cannot limit myself to the old style of argumentation just to show off that I am knowledgeable in pramanas. Today’s research methodology must be ‘inter-disciplinary’.

Q: You mention that Ganesh is at times confused between your position and Pollock’s position that you criticize. Please give some examples.

I go through great pains to try and explain what Pollock says, and then I give my rebuttal, but Ganesh takes it as my position and starts to criticize it. For example, he says: “Why this divide between sacred and beautiful?” This divide is Pollock’s divide, not mine. Unbeknownst to Ganesh, what he says is in agreement with my views; we both oppose Pollock on the issue of sacred/beauty.

Another example is when Ganesh claims that I do not understand what shastra and kavya mean, but does not prove this allegation by citing my writings. Instead, he seems to refer to my paraphrasing of Pollock’s views; he misunderstands these as mine. Ganesh’s following statement is in alignment with what my book says:

“Any organized body of knowledge is sastra; it serves two purposes – to govern and to reveal. A system of grammar is a sastra. It tells us what is the right usage (governs) and shows us new connections (reveals). A sastra may or may not be connected to the Vedas. Any creative work that evokes rasa (art experience; aesthetic delight) is kavya.”

He also writes: “In general, yajña refers to an act of self-dedication or service above self.” But this has always been my view, and yet he claims that I do not understand yajna. Similarly, he gives well-known definitions of terms like darshana, etc. straight from elementary textbooks, without telling us why his quotes are relevant to my book.

Theme 3: Disagreements concerning the interpretation of our sanskriti

Q: He accuses you many times of not understanding the diversity of Indian traditions. Can you respond to the charges he makes?

This is one of the most glaring misrepresentations of my work. My earlier book, Being Different, which he cites, says the exact opposite: it contrasts Indian diversity with the Western focus on the normative and the Abrahamic emphasis upon “one truth”. A key highlight of Being Different is that it goes beyond the common platitudes we read about our diversity, and proposes a comprehensive theory on why there is diversity.

The contrast between what I call history-centrism and adhyatma-vidya are key building blocks I have formulated to explain not just the diversity in our traditions, but more importantly why this diversity exists. This insight as to the underlying causes of diversity in one civilization and monoculture in the other civilization is worked out in considerable detail in my work.

In my subsequent book, Indra’s Net, I develop this thesis further into what I call the open architecture of dharma systems. Not only do I explain the immense diversity, I also examine the profound underlying unity – hence there is no fear of chaos as in the case of the Abrahamic systems. There is no control-obsession in our culture in the sense that the West has. I explain why this unity-diversity is there, whereas most writers have been content merely praising it, without adequately asking what sustains it.

Given that this theory of our diversity has been one of my important areas of work, I find it disappointing that Ganesh misunderstands me. For instance, he does not understand the notion of integral unity as explained in detail in my writings.

By definition, an integral unity allows plurality within a shared architecture. Sometimes, blind orthodoxy blurs the appreciation of any novelty in articulating our heritage. One of the hallmarks of our tradition is its ability to evolve with the changing times.

Q: What do you think of Ganesh’s criticism of the categories “tradition” and “American Orientalism”?

He has not read chapter 2, one of the largest chapters in TBFS, which is devoted to explain this. I have explained that insiders/outsiders and traditionalists/Orientalists are clusters and not homogeneous categories. Pages 30-34 are entirely devoted specifically to define and nuance these terms. Pages 35-43 list nine separate ways in which the traditionalists differ from Orientalists, and give a brief overview of each difference to show its significance. I refer the reader to the tables on pages 24-25 and 76, along with the accompanying text, and invite him/her to assess whether my analysis of this matter deserves to be so flippantly dismissed. He does not understand the cluster nature of various dharma systems in their integral unity.

Q: You have made a core point in your book about Pollock’s removal of sacredness from Sanskrit texts. How does Ganesh see this?

TBFS argues against Pollock’s allegation that sacred Sanskrit texts are toxic and that they oppress Dalits and women. He espouses removing the sacredness and I oppose him vehemently on this. My concern is also that such a removal facilitates mischievous effort by the Left to accuse sacred Sanskrit texts of violating human rights. It is in this context that I state in my book that: “Traditionally, Hindus have read Sanskrit for the purpose of understanding the ideas of ultimate reality.” To me, this sentence makes perfect sense for the intended purpose and context.

However, Ganesh picks this very same sentence from my book and rejects it stating that it is immaterial if Sanskrit is used as a means to understand reality. While it is correct that learning Sanskrit is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for spiritual enlightenment on an individual basis, it is dangerous to dismiss the importance and criticality of Sanskrit to the transmission of the dharmic traditions at a societal level.  Sanskrit is the language in which the Vedas have been transmitted, and it is the language in which our mantras have been revealed; in the very sounds of the Sanskrit language lay pathways to the transcendental realms. Sanskrit mantras are important to many sacred practices, and reaching the ultimate reality does involve vyavaharika processes in certain practices. Once again, Ganesh is shadowboxing an imaginary position without understanding the context of what I am refuting in Pollock theses.

He speaks about the teachings of many poets and sages who were ‘unaware of Sanskrit?’ Of course, we all know that many poets wrote in other languages. But Sanskrit’s sacred usages do not imply that other languages are useless. When I say that an entity X has a property Y, I am not saying that other entities cannot have property Y as well.

Q: He criticizes your interpretation of mantras. Please comment.

The context in which I mention mantras in my book must be understood before one can evaluate what I say. The context is that I am refuting Pollock when he considers mantras (and other “non-secular” aspects) to be socially toxic and oppressive against Dalits and women.

Ganesh is arguing about the issue of healing in mantras, whereas my book is arguing on a different issue, namely, that mantras and other sacred elements do not cause social oppression. They produce effects. But TBFS does not go into any specific kinds of effects, and certainly makes no medical claims.

Q: Is Ganesh misinterpreting what you mean by transcendence?

Ganesh is bothered by my use of terms like “supersensory experiences,” “higher states of consciousness” and “‘rishi’ state of consciousness”. He dismisses all such statements as “arbitrary”, presumably because they do not fit the jargon he has learned. He is particularly troubled with my statement that: “The idea of selfhood that is transcending the ordinary ego is increasingly accepted in scientific inquiry.” The fact is that cognitive scientists and neuroscientists now discuss states where the subject does not experience a separated, isolated experience of self.

Rather than being inquisitive to pursue such new knowledge, Ganesh hastily tells us that this only weakens my argument since the debate is happening at the level of pratyaksa and anumana. He must appreciate that western cognitive science does not claim to have “measured” the higher states of consciousness, but claims to have discovered correlates to it that are measurable. This is a big difference to be appreciated. It is also a big breakthrough in modern science. I wish he would be more interested in reading the literature on recent studies, and join in the effort to show that the west is busy digesting our knowledge into their own paradigms.

Furthermore, Ganesh is missing a key point. It is not correct that this debate is happening at the level of pratyaksa and anumana. To concede this point would be to concede the battle to Pollock.  Pollock as a Marxist is by definition materialist and would dismiss the relevance of the levels of consciousness that deal with the para – those which can be experienced through aparoksha gyanam (direct experience) that is not reliant on sensory experience or intellect alone.  But Sanatana Dharma cannot be confined to a materialist understanding of the universe alone – therefore, any materialist interpretations like the Marxist ones and what Pollock champions inevitably distorts and warps the tradition.  To play into the lens Pollock uses would be to concede the battle before it is even fought.  Just because Pollock dismisses the higher levels of pramana we use in understanding our tradition does not mean that we should, too! The whole point of TBFS is to put forth our own interpretations of dharma to debunk his distortions.

Q: He does not like your term “beyond” to explain paramarthika. What is your response?

Again, Ganesh misinterprets my statement. He retorts that paramarthika is not just beyond but also within. He assumes that beyond means some spatially removed place out there in the sky, as in an Abrahamic notion of heaven. But I use “beyond” (which I put in quotes in my text for this nuance) as in beyond the ordinary state of consciousness, beyond what is ordinarily experienced by most of us. It is roughly equivalent to the prefix “para” (adopted from Sanskrit into English). To be clear, in the very same sentence I say that vyavaharika, by contrast, is “the ordinary reality around us.” A more technical way might be to say that “beyond” refers to what the six pramanas cannot reveal – these being Pratyaksha (Perception), Anumana (Inference), Upamana (Comparison), Arthapatti (Postulation), Anupalabdhi (Non-apprehension), and Sabda (Verbal Testimony).

Furthermore, Ganesh contradicts his own position in another part of his article when he writes “The ultimate reality is beyond form.” If his view on “beyond” above is valid, then this statement by him would also be falsified!

Ganesh is also concerned that I have not given a direct quote of Pollock rejecting the paramarthika. This shows Ganesh’s inability (or disinterest) in reading Pollock beyond surgical punch lines in isolation. If he has read Pollock’s magnum opus, “The language of gods …”, he ought to be able to track the references to it given in TBFS. He would easily discover Pollock’s reliance upon Vico throughout. TBFS mentions how Pollock translates parmarthika-sat and vyavaharika-sat to correspond to the Latin terms, verum and certum, respectively. Pollock’s arguments that follow based on this mapping lead to his sidelining of paramarthika. This level of understanding Pollock is a prerequisite before Ganesh can begin to write any non-trivial review.

Q: Ganesh says that your statement about four ‘levels’ of speech is incorrect, because according to him, there are four ‘stages’ in chronological sequence and not ‘levels’. Please respond.

This is an example of a very pedantic issue, as it would not make any difference to my thesis if I were to replace ‘levels’ with ‘stages’. The point TBFS is arguing is that Pollock is wrong in considering the oral tradition to be useless. My argument is that some of the pathways from external speech all the way to subtler forms and the ultimate para level are important, and if one has only text but no orality these would get sidelined. The real point here is that the four levels/stages are unavailable in text mode, but are available in oral practices. This point is unaffected whether these are stages or levels.

He is also wrong in his understanding of vac. For example, Sri Aurobindo discusses levels. The significance of levels is that they can exist simultaneously whereas stages are in a strict chronological order, one at a time. Advanced tantra and other yogic techniques take practitioners to higher states where they are simultaneously able to function in higher and lower levels. These are not always mutually exclusive.

Q: Are you troubled that Ganesh does not buy into your argument on the non-translatability of certain Sanskrit words?

He says: “In general, the defining feature of a technical work (pertaining to philosophy, or medicine, or science) is that it can be translated, since it has a precise language of its own (and is not bound to a particular language)” and goes on to argue that “anything that comes within universal experience can be translated.” My arguments on non-translatability have been made very extensively in Being Different, with a whole chapter devoted to this. The reader should go through that chapter and decide whether Ganesh is patently wrong in his views on whether certain Sanskrit words are non-translatable.

He then says something that is simply irrelevant to the issue at hand that in Sanskrit, the same word has different connotations in different subjects. Being Different already explains this fact with numerous examples, but this is an independent point unrelated to non-translatability.

Theme 4: Who is being logical or illogical?

Q: Ganesh questions your logical abilities and calls it “pseudo-logic”. You have pointed out illogical statements made by him. Please explain.

Ganesh is making some illogical statements!. I offer a few examples.

1. In some instances, he adopts my position and yet says I am wrong. For instance, he quotes me: “Dhyana (meditation) is available without the need for analysis since it is entirely experiential. (p. 98)” Then he disagrees with this, saying: “If this is the case, how do we account for the fact that dhyana has been analyzed extensively on the basis of experience?”

My statement that dhyana does not require analysis, is not refuted by his valid statement that some people have analyzed dhyana. That they have analyzed does not mean the analysis is mandatory for attaining the experience.

2. Ganesh’s failure to understand the context of my statement leads him to think it is incorrect. He quotes TBFS: “…Natya Shastra was a text developed to enable the theatrical performance of itihasas.” This statement is taken from the section on Integral Unity (pages 98-102) where I am arguing against Pollock’s claim to decouple paramarthika and vyavaharika. In order to refute Pollock’s claim, I cite numerous examples of their unity and one of them is that Vedas, itihasas and Natya Shastra are linked and cannot be decoupled into separate camps with mutual tension the way Pollock does.
3. Ganesh reaches an illogical conclusion in discussing my reference to the critical edition of the Ramayana that was compiled by MS University. He misinterprets my written words (page 322) when he asserts: “Malhotra opines that it was unwise of M S University, Baroda to have compiled a critical edition of the Ramayana and preparing an English translation (p. 322).” This is not at all what I wrote and I never blamed MS University’s project either. Rather, I blamed western scholars for taking advantage of this openness, and what we can learn from this experience. What I propose is to have some controls, and not passively give away our adhikara.
4. All I am pointing out is that just as China controls the way foreigners can access its intellectual resources, so also we could at least make some policies on when to allow Westerners unfettered access. For instance, we could consider having some scrutiny over their access and we must monitor their works to verify that they have not violated their obligations. Moreover, knowing their motive will help us do a thorough purva-paksha of their positions, and also help produce rejoinders (as uttara). This ensures a balance between freedom and control and firmly establishes the adhikara with our civilization.

As an analogy, I offer the following: The Kumbha Mela is very open (point X). But western scholars have used this openness to infiltrate it with nefarious designs that I have recently written about (point Y). Because we don’t like Y, the solution is not to stop X (i.e. we should not end our openness). One possible solution is to bring some mechanisms of monitoring, and taking corrective action when required. Simply abandoning the adhikara and letting outsiders have a free run is unwise.

5. Another example of an illogical analysis concerns my statement about popular culture. In my discussions with Kanchi Shankaracharya, he explicitly agreed with my view written in TBFS that “Kavya is literature that can be merely entertaining, or can also be a means for experiencing transcendence.” In fact, the Shankaracharya emphasized numerous times that we must develop a strategy to popularize our knowledge through visual entertainment such as film, TV and theater. He explained to me the importance of doing this today.

Yet, Ganesh quotes the above statement from my book, and classifies it under the heading: “Ignorance of Existing Literature and Divergent Views.” The factoid he cites has no bearing on the falsification or otherwise of my position. He uses the approach of muddying the issue by excessive citation of texts as if merely quoting proves anything by itself.

Theme 5: What should be the future course for our sanskriti?

Q: He seems to disagree with you on whether to encourage new knowledge production in Sanskrit. Can you respond?

Ganesh dismisses the idea that Sanskrit’s revival could include producing new knowledge. He cites, “Is this even practical given that scholars from many mainstream non-English languages (like Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, etc.) are finding it hard to make a name for themselves in the academic community, which is under the firm grip of English?”

He also disagrees with Chamu Krishna Shastry (quoted on page 297) that Sanskrit must once again become a language of innovation and change, absorbing new words from elsewhere, and inventing new ones internally, as and when the need arises. Ganesh retorts that “Innovation is not language-specific. Appropriating works (and words) into Sanskrit is not of practical value since the world is becoming a global village.”

I wish to point out that China and Japan are examples of government programs to produce new knowledge in their native languages. Mumbai based Shri Arnaal has developed software for machine translation of texts pertaining to specific subject matter, such that it would bring about a paradigm shift in the ability of non-English knowledge production. Machine translation is expected to usher in a new age of non-English languages becoming empowered in their own right.

Another concrete example is that Prof Bal Ram Singh (a biochemist) and Prof Girish Jha (a Sanskritist) have had productive collaborations where new scientific meanings and significance of Sanskrit terms are being discovered in sophisticated experiments in medicine. Old Sanskrit texts are the basis for their experiments today.

One can also examine how computational linguistics is thriving in the West as a field built on the study of Sanskrit grammar. It is at the cutting edge in computer science. Many persons (most notably BVK Sastry) have pointed out the loss of intellectual capital by the Indian side when this field is being de-Sanskritized by the west with the full collaboration of Indian scholars. This is what happens when we adopt the posture of not developing new knowledge on our own terms, and allow others to further enrich their intellectual platform at the cost of ours.

Finally, I want to point out that Ganesh’s position on new knowledge production in Sanskrit is aligned with what Pollock means by calling Sanskrit dead. Pollock rightfully says that a language cannot be alive by merely parroting old materials. This is precisely what happened to Greek/Latin and hence they became classical/dead languages whose only purpose is for rituals and occasional opera that very few understand and that serve for nostalgia only.

I expected Ganesh to champion Sanskrit as a living language for innovation, and not use it only for performances to entertain audiences.

Q: Explain Ganesh’s disagreement with your proposal that new smritis must be developed for today.

He attacks my suggestion that we must write new smritis and adapt old ones for this era, and that traditional scholars should play an important role in doing this. He writes:

“How is this practical? If someone were to compose a new constitution of India in Sanskrit, would s/he be taken seriously? For example, refer to the sastras and smritis composed by great scholars like Vasishta Ganapati Muni and Pullela Sriramachandrudu – what is the value given to their works by the laity and by the scholars? One can compose a smriti but what executive authority does s/he have? What are the kind of new texts can traditional scholars develop in Sanskrit? And what to make of compositions in Sanskrit hailing a tyrant like Lenin…”

We clearly disagree on how to interpret the notion of smritis for our time. And yes, the constitution does serve as a smriti whether we like it or not.

The issue of what authority such a new smriti would enjoy is a complex one. Many smritis written in the past did not necessarily become official state policy enforced on the public. They were in many cases a proposal or a particular individual’s view of society at a time and place. Some were merely descriptive (how things happen to be) and not necessarily prescriptive (how things ought to be). They were debated among experts in the marketplace of ideas. Others have the tone of formal authority.

Ganesh is blind to a very serious challenge we face: Today, the Indian Left led by Pollock’s team is in the process of developing new smritis very actively and very politically. They don’t explicitly call them smritis in order to not raise flags prematurely. But anyone who has properly read Pollock ought to know that his call to scholars to do what he terms “liberation philology” is precisely this kind of project of writing new policies for society today. There are plenty of doctrines about Dalit empowerment today that function like smritis in a pragmatic sense. Pollock’s “political philology” is the descriptive part and his “liberation philology” is the prescriptive part. The latter is what leads to calls for foreign interventions in India.

While our opponents have been busy formulating new positions, then turning these into formal policies, and finally using international agencies to make official international laws that can be imposed on India, most of our own brilliant traditional scholars seem clueless and disinterested in entering this battle of new policies. This is analogous to someone who claims to be leading an army, but who does not believe in any R&D for new weapons, even though the enemies all around have been upgrading their weapon systems. Smritis are like weapon systems in ideological warfare, and we cannot afford leaders who just don’t get this.

Q: Is Ganesh accurately representing your stance on Sanskrit as it relates to non-Indian languages?

I advocate against studying Sanskrit texts using the methods developed for the study of Greek/Latin classics, because those are dead languages and officially acknowledged as such. I cited Arabic, Mandarin and Persian as examples of old languages that are treated as living languages by their government and intellectuals. Ganesh misses my point completely. He says: “Malhotra wants Sanskrit to be bracketed with Arabic, Mandarin, and Persian instead of Greek and Latin (p. 377).” Bracketed in what sense?

He says that Sanskrit grammar has been static whereas the grammars of widely spoken languages like Arabic, Mandarin, and Persian have undergone changes over the years. This is true, but it does not impinge upon my suggestion that we should decouple from the methods of Western Indologists that are based on studying dead languages. Whether Sanskrit grammar should or should not evolve beyond Panini is an unrelated issue.

My concluding remarks

I do hope these responses by Rajiv Malhotra will reduce the tension caused by Ganesh’s rash statements, and that both sides will be able to work constructively together. Sanatana dharma needs this today. Many of us also feel that Ganesh might have been misled by some individuals with their own petty politics and agendas. However, given his stature, we hope he appreciates the big picture issues that are stake here.

The post Who owns the Shastric authority? appeared first on Dharma Today.

Organized by the Hindu Students Council and supported by over 35 organizations, the conference featured luminaries such as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of Art of Living, Swami Paripoornananda, the head of Sreepeetham in India, Dr. HR Nagendra, Chairman of the Indian Government’s Experts Committee for the International Day of Yoga, Fields Medalist Dr. Manjul Bhargava and many others. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar provided insights on how the principles of Dharma can help develop a conflict free society, while Dr. Nagendra discussed Indian Government’s efforts in making yoga available to millions of Indian people in order to appreciate its roots and medical benefits.

The Council also recognized Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will be visiting the US this month, along with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Dr. HR Nagendra, with the “Light of Yoga Award” for their pioneering contributions in making the International Day of Yoga a major success.

“The fact that some of the most renowned saints, a former NASA scientist, a Fields Medalist and 40 others came together on HSC’s platform is testament to the organization’s 25 year history and brand value,” added HSC Chairman and Conference Chair Nikunj Trivedi. “This conference is therefore a celebration of HSC’s legacy and an opportunity to map out the course for decades to come.”

The conference opened with HSC students chanting the sacred symbol “Om”, which was followed by a moment of silence for the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Dr. Bhargava, along with physicist Dr. GNR Tripathi, computer scientist Dr. Subhash Kak and Professor Alok Kumar, discussed the need to recognize the significant contributions of ancient Hindus in the field of science and mathematics. For example, Dr. Bhargava argued that the number system used today should be called “the Hindu Number System” rather than Arabic Number System and the Fibonacci Sequence (of integers) outlined in the 12th century, should be renamed “Hemchandra Numbers” after Jain scholar Acharya Hemchandra who developed them 900 years earlier.

In his keynote speech at the opening plenary session, Dr. David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri), founder of the American Institute of Vedic Studies and the winner of the prestigious Padma Bhushan award by the Government of India, said that yoga was a gift of the ancient Hindu sages and should be not cut-off from its roots and holistic benefits.

On a panel on women’s empowerment, female monk Swamini Svatmavidyananda, female yogi Shambhavi Chopra, and Dr. Indrani Rampersad challenged western feminism, which often does not take into account transnational and spiritual concerns, and proposed ways in which females can find strength in understandings of gender found within the Indic traditions. Another panel on Human Rights featured noted human rights activist Tapan Ghosh of Hindu Samhati and Dr. Ali Alyami, Executive Director and founder of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. Both spoke passionately about the persecution of Hindus around the world and implored the global community to take action to protect the rights of Hindus where they are minorities and are denied religious freedom.

An inter-faith panel, moderated by noted public intellectual and writer Rajiv Malhotra, discussed a framework for a pluralistic world order. It featured Rabbi Justus N. Baird, Dean of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, Pastor David Davis of the Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, Buddhist Monk Venerable Bhante Kondanna, Jain Monk Venerable Amrinder Muni, noted Sikh speaker Ratanjit Sondhe and Hindu leader Dr. Mahesh Mehta.

“What you see here is youth taking charge of Dharma and moving it forward in a bold and holistic way”, remarked Ravindra Jaishankar, HSC President and Conference Program Chair. “The conference, while epic in its scale, also marks a new beginning for the American Hindu youth and their engagement with the community and the greater society.”

Along with a weekend of intellectual and spiritual rejuvenation, the conference included an international concert emceed by former Miss America Nina Davuluri. It featured thrilling classical Indian

dances, a dramatic Balinese theatrical act based on the Hindu epic Ramayana as well as a mesmerizing musical performance by renowned Flautist Rakesh Chaurasia, Mandolin player U Rajesh, Ghatam (Indian clay pot) player Giridhar Udupa and Percussionist Rajeev Mahavir.

Allegra Lovejoy, a recent graduate of Princeton University, noted: “I was deeply inspired to see so many people – both presenters and attendees – who exhibited a humble and dedicated seva [selfless service]attitude. Many traditions and backgrounds were represented, and I learned something from each person I interacted with. Participating in this conference has motivated me to learn and practice dharmic spirituality much more seriously than before.”

As the conference came to a close, attendees appreciated the multiple applications of Dharma beyond religion as well as the need to preserve the holistic nature of yoga beyond exercises. The Council hopes that future conferences produce an even greater impact regarding Dharma’s potential to guide and support sustainable society throughout the world.

About HSC: Hindu Students Council (HSC) is an international forum providing opportunities to learn about Hindu heritage and culture. It is the largest Hindu youth organization in North America, with over 50 chapters across university campuses. Over 130,000 students and youth have participated in HSC activities since its inception in 1990. For more information, please visit www.hindustudentscouncil.org or email us at info@hindustudentscouncil.org. For more information about the conference, please visit www.dharmaconference.com.

(reposted from http://www.dharmaconference.com/index.php/news/202-saints-scientists-yogis-experts?showall=1&limitstart=)

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