In ethics of proselytizing Rajeev Malhotra presents powerful and rather disturbing scenario in issues of scholarship and creation of academic disciplines – in context of of targeting different types of religions by the west.
- Rajeev argues that it is a national policy of India to devalue Indigenous knowledge.
For 50 years after its independence, India pursued socialist secularism as its national policy, in which indigenous heritage was devalued for the sake of ‘progressive’ (read ‘Marxist’) ideology. While it has been fashionable to learn European languages, Sanskrit was barely taught. Macaluayite Indians pride themselves in knowing the Greek classics, but few students are taught India’s own classics of Ramayana and Mahabharata for fear of violating secularism. There are NO DEPARTMENTS FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES, except one in Patiala University (which is a minor second tier university). Rather than pluralism, the system adopted secularism, in the very land that the rest of the world regards as the birthplace of so much spiritual richness and diversity.
It is understandable that the narrative on Indian description is substantially changed, some of them with the help of the state. While the state ensured that the ones reading Ramayana go hungry, it paid handsomely to the people who became familiar with rational of aryan and dravidian mechanics. It can be argued that , it is far far more difficult to understand Mahabharat than to be trained in the progressive history. The relational universe of Mahabharat is grand, the grandness of Khetra is but a small part of the relational context in huge texts such as Mahabharat. Mahabharat is in a cultural setting, here man could touch unseen heights even when fired upon by weapons directed at his material body. The genetically racial bodies of aryans invading racial dravidians – the setting in which historians operated is rather crude in comparison. In terms of care, engineers treat boiler plates with more care than the historical story has treated India.
Inspite of difficulties, The issue would be if India has taken a national task to repress itself – If Marxist ideology and destructive skull measurement practices are billed by the state machinery as scientific, inevitable and modern .
- A serious scenario Rajeev brings forth is if Scholarship at times is controlled by religious groups through organized attempts, a practice that has started since colonial days – ! He writes –
"Another strategic move has been for Christians to control the scholarship about Hinduism, whereas Hindus have seldom if ever been concerned about scholarly dissections of Christianity. Under this control, which began during colonial times, Hinduism was given the image of being polytheistic, which in turn is seen as neo-pagan and primitive. It is shown as full of meaningless superstitious rituals, when in fact there is not even a word in Sanskrit that means ‘superstition’. Kali and other scary images are deployed to indicate a negative and violent religion. Animal symbolism is interpreted to indicate animal worship. The whole enterprise has been to depict an unscientific tradition lacking rational contributions or tendencies, compared to European superiority. All this makes the missionary and the economic hegemony easier to morally justify and to execute."
People were respected as professors, in cases made vice chancellors. Many in the village considered such people as the ideal. Growing up, one observed, it is a fact that the biggest professors are hooked onto to petty theories…some times just because it was popular in west and conducive to their career. Is it being controlled by powerful organizations with native religious desecration in purpose ? Or it is just the cultural setting of racist analysis, which pervaded as logic in some European religions in colonial period ?
In any case, The "Kala" which is used with Neela is certain philosophical state, we bow to the lord when the Lord was in sayana in state of PraLaya. The western academics doesn’t have stories or framework in literature, therefore it can’t be speechless in description of the universal mother. However, such stupidity shouldn’t be supported by the Indian state. Otherwise, India may start to prosecute practitioners of indigenous philosophies.
- Rajeev discusses how Indian ideas have been appropriated . This is interesting, because Bharat has been races, violence and rather ignorant to modernity.
Some Hindu or Buddhist practices get renamed to appear more Christian friendly: Vipassana Meditation has become ‘mindfulness meditation’, trademarked by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga has been appropriated by Ken Wilber and renamed as Integral Psychology. Teilhard de Chardin’s extensive study and commentary on Vedanta during his trip to India, especially Ramanuja’s works, are suppressed by his modern followers, even though Teilhard used these ideas to develop what is now ‘liberal Christianity’. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science quoted Indic thought in the early editions of her books, but these references later got removed as Theosophy and she became competitors – one deploying Indic ideas openly in a perennial way and the other within strictly branded Christianity.
If Rajeev had references to Teilhard’s study of Vedanta ( the question of if is superfluous, for sake of argument), here is a sample narrative from wiki, the only line about Teilhard and India is matter of stones and Paleolithic civillization, not about life and vision which has been so influential – Teilhard participated in the 1935 Yale–Cambridge expedition in northern and central India with the geologist Helmut von Terra and Patterson, who verified their assumptions on Indian Paleolithic civilisations in Kashmir and the Salt Range Valley.
Nupura 