India/western Sociology

[acharya]

Rajiv Malhotra
rajivmalhotra.sulekha.com


http://rajivmalhotra.sulekha.com/blog/post...-background.htm

The Westernized side of my background
THE WESTERNIZED SIDE OF MY BACKGROUND:

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On the other hand, the west has invested serious resources to study Indian culture and thought rather than ignoring it. RISA is merely one example to prove my point. This started with the Jesuit College about 500 years ago that translated Sanskrit works into Latin (including many in science/mathematics still not declassified by the Vatican). Later it became more sophisticated Indology in 19th century: EVERY major European university had Sanskrit text studies as a large department. Today this is done not by the British Empire but mainly by the US Government, the churches, and various US private foundations funded by MNCs wealth. Today’s South Asian Studies replaces colonial Indology as the west’s purva-paksha of Indian thought and culture.

This means the west has extracted knowledge from Indic sources and developed sophisticated positions about us. In many cases, the most qualified scholar available in a university about some Indian text or tradition is a westerner. That most swamis and their followers do not even know this state of affairs shows how out of touch they are with world.

So rather than attacking me for my background, one might also see in it a rare ability to do purva-paksha of the west from the Indian perspective: I have invested most of my time since the mid 1990s to study all three strains of western thought from works of serious thinkers. Rather than this being a handicap, it is what enables me to debate the ‘other’ with authority and confidence.

Just as a team needs specialists of many kinds and not all members with the same specialty, the Indian Enlightenment Project needs both the St. Stephens graduate and the DAV graduate, not either/or. So why is Platonist so insecure with a sense of inferiority complex? Is it his lack of knowledge of his own tradition that makes him fear that he will be swept off by the winds of western influences?

Furthermore, how is his mentality different than that of fundamentalist Islamists? His comments are evidence that Hindu fundamentalism does exist as a serious menace today.

What this narrow mentality has produced is 800 Hindu temples in North America at a cost of about $2 billion, but lacking in intellectual content in most of them. They come across to the NRI youth as voodoo centers, doing some exotic ritual with no meaning. The pandits are ill-trained for 21st century discourse, many cannot communicate for nuts. Any sincere visitor who wants to appreciate Hinduism would be well advised to stay away from them, and instead to spend quality time with someone knowledge in discussions first. Hindu temples have failed to project Hindu culture to mainstream society. Proof: in all these controversies we have been engaged here on Sulekha, the temple-wallahs are lost, disinterested, and ignorant. They have failed to educate our own youth in ways that would equip them to face the issues with confidence and not to run from Hindu identity as being shameful.

They have failed because of the mentality exemplified by Platonist and others like him.

Many swamis told me point blank that they are disinterested in teaching about the sociopolitical realm as they find it irrelevant or even un-Hindu-like. While I respect that (especially since my sadhana is adhyatmika), I point out to them that Krishna’s teachings were in the kshetra (i.e. theater) and not in the clouds. The Avatar enters the theater of mundane life to teach how to live in the mundane kshetra.

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