FOUR CATEGORIES OF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS OF INDIA

[Guest guest]

Since there is interest, let me go a further step. The universe of TKS' is

larger than my previous post mentioned, as only the first category was

discussed.

 

CATEGORY A: ECONOMIC SYSTEMS. These had/have economic value and are the

basis for the level of materialistic prosperity achieved by a society. The

TKS' I already described all fit within this category. A conference series

is being planned starting winter 2002 (in India).

 

CATEGORY B: RATIONAL PURE SCIENCES. These include: mathematics, logic,

linguistics, philosophy, astronomy, etc.

 

CATEGORY C: ARTS. This includes music, dance, theater, sculpture, painting,

etc.

 

CATEGORY D: INNER SCIENCES. This is a vast field and deserves separate

elaboration later. We are planning a 10-year series of world conferences on

the Inner Sciences of India, starting with one at Columbia in July 2002.The

first will be a colloquium of 40 scholars, and this will then grow.

Subsequent ones will alternate between India and the US. In fact, much of

our work over the past few years has focused on this. All of psychology,

consciousness sciences, yoga, meditation, tantra, mnemonics, and many other

inner sciences are included here. We will soon have a web site dedicated

just to this conference series.

 

COMMENTS:

 

'A' was a threat to Britain's Industrial Revolution. Its systematic

dismantlement and relocation to Britain turned India from a nation of

exporters into a nation of importers, its citizens reduced from world class

producers into poor consumers, a people taxed of their economic surplus for

centuries by foreign colonialists into a debtor nation obliged to beg for

massive loans and capital.

 

'B' was a threat to the theory of colonization that was conceived as the

White Man's Burden to civilize the world. An honest treatment of 'B' would

show a picture of Indian civilization that is quite the opposite of what was

constructed and persists today. Indians were rational, critical thinkers,

deeply into intellectual debates amongst vibrant traditions, competitive,

innovative and on the move rather than frozen into 'essences'. They reformed

society from within, time and time again in their history. But the negation

of 'B' has been necessary to sustain the myth of the 'Miracle of European

Modernity', which is still the starting point of most education about the

modern world. As Said, Inden, Daud Ali, Blaut and many others have written,

the 'Other' was necessary to be constructed a certain way so as to be able

to construct Europe's own self-image. This otherworldly, world negating,

essentialized, poor, helpless India is needed - if it did not exist, one

might have to be created!

 

'C' was the least threatening among TKS' to the colonial rulers. It was left

alone and even encouraged as culture for the masses, who were reduced to

laborers for the colonialists and into consumers for their goods. Genociding

them would be a bad investment decision, unlike in the case of Native

Americans whose gold and land were precious but whose wealth was not

industrially based the way India's was. Hence, Cortez' and the other

Conquistadors' logic was not applicable to India, where labor had to be kept

alive and productive so as to keep the golden goose producing. (Ironically,

'C' is far more religious than they suspected. But luckily for India's

artists, this subtlety has escaped attention until today.)

 

'D' was mistaken to be 'religion' - an entirely Abrahamic category - and

hence demonized. Lately, these inner science of India have resurfaced in the

west, but often as plagiarized into psychology and/or new age and/or

'liberal' Judeo-Christian extrapolations.

 

I am at the Mahabharata conference in Montreal till next week, so I cannot

provide more details until then. But we are building a team of interested

parties especially in category 'A' right now. We expect that each of the 8

topics on my previous list will be at least one volume in a series of books

on category 'A'. D.P. Agarwal's new book just came out and he is sending me

a copy - it's by an Indian publisher, so not on Amazon. He also has a few

others in the pipeline with British publishers. We have also 'discovered'

leading scholars and revival programs in water harvesting and forest

management using indigenous methods that require very little capital and are

eco-friendly. In fact, there exists a nucleus of experts in almost every

major topic within 'A', so it's a matter of bringing them together to give

encouragement, focus and momentum. We want good Indian and western skeptical

scholars from various disciplines to do critical reviews, so as to get the

highest levels of quality before anything gets published.

 

Category 'A' is a great opportunity for 'Applied Indology', because it would

also have practical ramifications in people's lives. There are 4 billion

poor people in the world. The top-down development methods require more

capital than the total capital existing in the world. It's simply not

practical, nor could the ecosystem sustain such a lot of western style

development. The funding sources in the west, both private and government,

know that the promise of development for the poor is a mirage, just to keep

things from falling apart and to feel less guilty. This compels one to look

for alternative lifestyles as an option - why must the goal be to make

everyone like a westerner? Hence, economists and funding agencies need to

learn more about these TKS' from ALL traditions. India has the richest set

still recoverable. Indology has the expertise.

 

Please note that occasionally some junior Macaulay sepoy gets dispatched by

a chowkidar to create gadar, to hamper the study of TKS. We must simply

ignore them. We must be on to something threatening to the agenda makers.

 

Rajiv Malhotra

The Infinity Foundation

53 White Oak Drive

Princeton, NJ 08540

www.infinityfoundation.com

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[Guest guest]

>"Rajiv Malhotra" <rajiv.malhotra@a...> wrote:

>There are 4 billion poor people in the world. The top-down

>development methods require more capital than the total capital

>existing in the world. ... Hence, economists and funding >agencies

need to learn more about these TKS' from ALL traditions. >India has

the richest set still recoverable. Indology has the >expertise.

 

Here is one expose from world class economists re: IMF. The "soft"

dollar loans given to poor countries have to be paid back in dollars

only! Let us say $1 million given in 1995 has to be paid back in 2005

at 1% rate of interest. But if productivity in US goes up in 10 years

due to use of internet and other productivity tools which are not

even accessible to poor countries, the dollar will simply go up and

hit the roof. The poor country actually ends up paying 50-100% more

in its own local currency just to pay back the $1 million + 1%

interest! So much for soft loan. Poor countries need a local fund to

finance themselves.

 

Regards

Bhadraiah