Rajiv Malhotra

India is more than a nation state. It is also a unique civilisation with philosophies and cosmologies that are markedly distinct from the dominant culture of our times - the West. India's spiritual traditions spring from dharma which has no exact equivalent in Western frameworks. Unfortunately, in the rush to celebrate the growing popularity of India on the world stage, its civilisational matrix is being co-opted into Western universalism, thereby diluting its distinctiveness and potential. In BEING DIFFERENT: AN INDIAN CHALLENGE TO WESTERN UNIVERSALISM, thinker and philosopher Rajiv Malhotra addresses the challenge of a direct and honest engagement on differences, by reversing the gaze, repositioning India from being the observed to the observer and looking at the West from the dharmic point of view. In doing so, he challenges many hitherto unexamined beliefs that both sides hold about themselves and each other. He highlights that while unique historical revelations are the basis for Western religions, dharma emphasizes self-realization in the body here and now. He also points out the integral unity that underpins dharma's metaphysics and contrasts this with Western thought and history as a synthetic unity. Erudite and engaging, BEING DIFFERENT critiques fashionable reductive translations and analyses the West's anxiety over difference and fixation for order which contrast the creative role of chaos in dharma. It concludes with a rebuttal of Western claims of universalism, while recommending a multi-cultural worldview.

An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism

Being Different

Aravintan̲ Nīlakantan̲

Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines

Breaking India

There is a new awakening in India that is challenging the ongoing westernization of the discourse about India. The Battle for Sanskrit seeks to alert traditional scholars of Sanskrit and sanskriti - Indian civilization - concerning an important school of thought that has its base in the US and that has started to dominate the discourse on the cultural, social and political aspects of India. This academic field is called Indology or Sanskrit studies. From their analysis of Sanskrit texts, the scholars of this field are intervening in modern Indian society with the explicitly stated purpose of removing 'poisons' allegedly built into these texts. They hold that many Sanskrit texts are socially oppressive and serve as political weapons in the hands of the ruling elite; that the sacred aspects need to be refuted; and that Sanskrit has long been dead. The traditional Indian experts would outright reject or at least question these positions. The start of Rajiv Malhotra's feisty exploration of where the new thrust in Western Indology goes wrong, and his defence of what he considers the traditional, Indian approach, began with a project related to the Sringeri Sharada Peetham in Karnataka, one of the most sacred institutions for Hindus. There was, as he saw it, a serious risk of distortion of the teachings of the peetham, and of sanatana dharma more broadly. Whichever side of the fence one may be on, The Battle for Sanskrit offers a spirited debate marshalling new insights and research. It is a valuable addition to an important subject, and in a larger context, on two ways of looking. Is each view exclusive of the other, or can there be a bridge between them? Readers can judge for themselves.

The Battle for Sanskrit: Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred, Oppressive or Liberating, Dead or Alive?

Originating in the Atharva Veda, the concept of Indra's Net is a powerful metaphor for interconnectedness. It was transmitted via Buddhism's Avatamsaka Sutra into Western thought, where it now resides at the heart of post-modern discourse. According to this metaphor, nothing ultimately exists separately by itself and all boundaries can be deconstructed. This book invokes Indra's Net to articulate the open architecture, unity and continuity of Hinduism. Seen from this perspective, Hinduism defies pigeonholing into the traditional, modern and post-modern categories by which the West defines itself; rather, it becomes evident that Hinduism has always spanned all three categories simultaneously and without contradiction. It is fashionable among intellectuals to assert that dharma traditions lacked any semblance of unity before the British period, and that the contours of contemporary Hinduism were bequeathed to us by our colonial masters. Such arguments routinely target Swami Vivekananda, a key interlocutor who shattered many deeply rooted prejudices against Indian civilization. They accuse him of having camouflaged various alleged 'contradictions' within traditional Hinduism, and charge him with having appropriated the principles of Western religion to 'manufacture' a coherent and unified worldview and set of practices known today as Hinduism. Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity provides a foundation for theories that slander contemporary Hinduism as illegitimate, ascribing sinister motives to its existence, and characterizing its fabric as oppressive. Rajiv Malhotra offers a detailed, systematic rejoinder to such views, and articulates the multidimensional, holographic understanding of reality that grounds Hindu dharma. He also argues that Vivekananda's creative interpretations of Hindu dharma informed and influenced many Western intellectual movements of the post-modern era. Indeed, as he cites with many insightful examples, appropriations from Hinduism have provided a foundation for cutting-edge discoveries in several fields, including cognitive science and neuroscience.

Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity

Indra's Net

A Critique of Wendy Doniger's Erotic School of Indology

Academic Hinduphobia

Vijaya Viswanathan

"Intense warfare against India's integrity is the work of a well-orchestrated global machinery driven by a new ideology. Marxism has been reincarnated as Critical Race Theory in US academia and serves as the framework to address America's racism. This has been recklessly mapped on to India: Caste is equated with Race. Marginalized communities of India are considered as Blacks and Brahmins as the Whites of India. Groups claiming grievances (like Muslims and LGBTQ+) are artificially clubbed together. Popularly called the Woke movement, the mission is to dismantle Indian civilization and heritage by waging an uncompromising war against India's government, educational institutions, culture, industry, and society. Harvard University is Ground Zero of these social theories developed in collaboration with Indian scholars, activists, journalists and artists. This represents a clear and present danger to India's sovereignty and national security. Several Indian elites are hoisting Harvard as the Vishwa guru with their money and family names. Some private universities within India are importing Wokeism that has serious repercussions for India's stability. Indian corporates are bringing the latest Western rubric of Environmental, Social, and Governance ratings into their workplace. This is aligned with the global Social Justice movement. China has exploited this latest infrastructure as a passage to India. Wokeism has penetrated some of the Indian government's policies. For instance, the National Education Policy 2020 is propagating Harvard's liberal arts. An entire ecosystem of ideologies, institutions and young leaders is emerging for the recolonization of India." -- Publisher's website.

Breaking India 2.0

Snakes on the Ganga

Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji

Sanskrit Non-Translatables is a path-breaking and audacious attempt at Sanskritizing the English language and enriching it with powerful Sanskrit words. It continues the original and innovative idea of nontranslatability of Sanskrit, first introduced in the book, Being Different. For English readers, this should be the starting point of the movement to resist the digestion of Sanskrit into English, by introducing loanwords into their English vocabulary without translation. The book presents a thorough mechanism of the process of digestion and examines the loss of adhikara for Sanskrit because of translating its core ideas into English. The movement launched by this book will resist this and stop the programs that seek to turn Sanskrit into a dead language by translating all its treasures to render it redundant. It discusses fifty-four non-translatables across various genres that are being commonly mistranslated. It empowers English speakers with the knowledge and arguments to introduce these Sanskrit words into their daily speech with confidence. Every lover of India’s sanskriti will benefit from the book and become a cultural ambassador propagating it through routine communications.

The Importance of Sanskritizing English

Sanskrit Non-Translatables

Bharat Vikhandan is a book that speaks in favour of the latent potential within India and its diverse culture. It argues that the country's integrity is being diluted by three prominent Western cultures and discusses the resulting effects of the process. This book examines the origins of the famous Dravidian movement that shaped the vast culture of our nation, while also focusing on the Dalit Identity and its current situation. It has been also noted that the book predominantly concentrates on the subordination, surveillance and subversion of Independent India. Bharat Vikhandan makes for a powerful read while closely observing the changing trends in modern India and questioning the reasons behind its growth and eventual dilution. It makes for an eye-opener and is a wakeup call to the nation as whole, forcing to rethink our priorities and allegiances. It has been praised for its historiographical and confrontational content while refusing to shy away from hard truths that need to be discussed. This book was published by Harper Hindi in 2014 and is available in paperback. Key Features: This is the Hindi translation of the title Breaking India by the same author.

Bharat Vikhandan

A recurrent debate surrounding AI concerns the extent of human work that could be replaced by machines over the next twenty years when compared to new jobs created by AI. Numerous reports have addressed this issue, reaching a wide range of conclusions. Experts consider it a reasonable consensus that eventually a significant portion of blue- and white-collar jobs in most industries will become obsolete, or at least transformed, to such an extent that workers will need re-education to remain viable. This percentage of vulnerable jobs will continue to increase over time. The obsolescence will be far worse in developing countries where the standard of education is lower.

Artificial Intelligence and TheFuture of Power

Artificial Intelligence is only partially visible, just like an iceberg. To understand it fully, we must look beneath the surface. The positive side is that technology is making machines smarter. However, the deeper view explained in this book shows that AI is also making a growing number of people cognitively and psychologically dependent on digital networks. Whether you are a social media fanatic, a diehard AI aficionado, or a paranoid sceptic, it is impossible to escape the ubiquitous impact of AI. Artificial Intelligence is the brains bringing together quantum computing, nanotechnology, medical technology, brain-machine interface, robotics, aerospace, 5G, Internet of Things, and more. It is amplifying human ingenuity and disrupting the foundations of healthcare, military, entertainment, education, marketing and manufacturing. Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Power argues that this AI-driven revolution will have an unequal impact on different segments of humanity. There will be new winners and losers, new haves and have-nots, resulting in an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power. After analyzing society's vulnerabilities to the impending tsunami, the book raises troubling questions that provoke immediate debate: Is the world headed toward digital colonization by the USA and China? Will depopulation become eventually unavoidable? Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Power is a wakeup call to action, compelling public intellectuals to be better informed and more engaged. It educates the social segments most at risk and wants them to demand a seat at the table where policies on Artificial Intelligence are being formulated.

5 Battlegrounds

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power

'Rajiv Malhotra's insistence on preserving difference with mutual respect - not with mere "tolerance" - is even more pertinent today because the notion of a single universalism is being propounded. There can be no single universalism, even if it assimilates or, in the author's words, "digests", elements from other civilizations' - Kapila Vatsyayan In Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism, thinker and philosopher Rajiv Malhotra addresses the challenge of a direct and honest engagement on differences, by reversing the gaze, repositioning India from being the observed to the observer and looking at the West from the dharmic point of view. In doing so, he challenges many hitherto unexamined beliefs that both sides hold about themselves and each other. He highlights that while unique historical revelations are the basis for Western religions, dharma emphasizes self-realization in the body here and now. He also points out the integral unity that underpins dharma's metaphysics and contrasts this with Western thought and history as a synthetic unity. Erudite and engaging, Being Different critiques fashionable reductive translations and analyses the West's anxiety over difference and fixation for order which contrast the creative role of chaos in dharma. It concludes with a rebuttal of Western claims of universalism, while recommending a multi-civilizational worldview.

Rajiv Malhotra

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