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DE-NEGATING

INDIAN CIVILIZATION’S IMAGE

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Arial">Many Westerners still have a tough time believing that Asians could do original

science, although they could produce literature, speculative metaphysics,

mysticism, and even art. This stereotype has as a dual locus: for the secular

West, the assumption has been that

humans started with the Stone Age and have progressed linearly; for the

religious West the correspondence belief

is that all humans start as sinners and must advance by being saved. Against

this is the Indic assumption of things starting with the very advanced Vedic

age. Western lens therefore presume that India’s condition today reflects its

intrinsic civilization at its highest; hence, its poverty, social issues

and pollution are seen as unsolvable from within and in need of Westernization

as the cure. My thesis challenges the standard Western portrayal of India’s

civilization as irrational and ‘world negating’. The consequences of this

stereotype have been drastic, including:

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12.0pt;font-family:Arial">Many Western scholars have taken the U-Turn from the

East on this false assumption, because teaching or practicing world negating

ideas could be dangerous to a world affirming, progressive society. These

U-Turners included Jung, Teilhard, and perhaps even Wilber.

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12.0pt;font-family:Arial">Lord Macaulay and his successors superimposed this

‘Orientalist’ idea upon Indians since 1835, resulting in an inferior self-image

on the part of many modern Indians, and causing them to look up to the West for

all answers.

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Arial">My analysis of this Western hypothesis consists of seven parts,

summarized below.

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Arial">Ancient India made numerous rational contributions to the world’s

civilization. The analysis of ancient India’s contributions to world

civilization is detailed in a separate series of books being planned,

containing reprints of important peer-reviewed journal articles over the past

20 years. Unfortunately, such research has been ignored as it challenges the

Western superiority narrative. Scholars are now sure that: India originated much

of the world’s mathematics,

astronomy, philosophy, linguistics, and technology until 1000 C.E. – not bad

for a bunch of ‘world negators’!

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Arial">Examining the economic history of India since its earliest times, is my

second methodology. India was indeed extremely wealthy until the mid 1800’s by

every account of Europe’s own visitors and historians. Harvard University’s

Samuel Huntington writes in ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ that in 1750, India

had 25% of the world’s manufacturing output while Europe and America combined

had less than 18%. But in 1900, India had collapsed to less than 2% whereas

America and the West had 84% of the world’s share. He writes: ‘The

industrial revolution of the West was done at

the expense of de-industrialization of the colonies’. The material

wealth of India and its industries were legendary for millennia, and were the

very reason for the obsessions of the Europeans, Arabs and Persians to go to

India – they were not desperate to go there to save souls.

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Arial">Modern thinkers and many writers of textbooks have often failed to consider

the extent of the plunder and destruction of India for centuries, without which

its present situation cannot be understood properly. Will Durant summarizes the

Islamic invasions in his book ‘Our Oriental Heritage’ on page 459:

“The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the

bloodiest story in history. It is

a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious

thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at

any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying

within. The Hindus ……had failed to

organize their forces for the protection of their frontiers and their capitals,

their wealth and their freedom, from the hordes of Scythians, Huns, Afghans and

Turks hovering about India’s boundaries and waiting for national weakness to

let them in. For four hundred

years (600-1000 A.D.) India invited conquest; and at last it came….. The bitter

lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the

price of civilization. A nation

must love peace, but keep its powder dry.”

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Arial">After this came the colonial period, in which taxation of India’s wealth

funded Europe’s Industrial Revolution, and India provided much of the raw

material and market for the finished goods of Europe. Until this

de-industrialization of India, its exports in areas as diverse as steel and

textiles had been legendary throughout the world. In fact, India was the factor

that shaped so much of modern European history,

but this is hardly ever mentioned in textbooks, whereas in Indian history great emphasis is given to

show how Europe shaped India. Some of the most important aspects of modern

European history were the result of India’s influence, yet India remains the

blind spot for most Americans:

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12.0pt;font-family:Arial">Europe’s crucial trade with India drove exploration

of the New World, especially after the land routes to India got blocked.

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12.0pt;font-family:Arial">The rise of the Industrial Revolution was

enhanced by replacing India’s steel, textile and other industries from Europe,

was funded with India’s capital, and the largest market for the finished goods

became India – essentially turning the world largest producer into the largest

consumer until its wealth was drained out.

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12.0pt;font-family:Arial">European Indologists first hypothesized a

proto-Indo-European language to rationalize the linguistic similarities between

Sanskrit and Europe’s languages; second they changed the

‘arya’ adjective in Vedic texts (that means a

quality of nobility) into the ‘Aryan’ noun

describing Europeans as a superior race who claimed authorship of India’s

entire heritage; and finally, this “Aryanization” of German national identity

culminated in Nazism and World War II, the most significant event of the

past century.

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Arial">India was a heavy influence on the development of European and Asian languages

and linguistics. The entire field of linguistics in Europe was born when

Europeans discovered in India an advanced civilization with a rich language and

literature. Pannini’s grammar from 500 B.C. (with 4,000 precise rules) became

the inspiration and model for the entirely new fields of philology and

linguistics in the West. In East Asia and South East Asia, India exerted great

influence on literature. Furthermore, India’s influence on modern and

post-modern literature in the West has included the famous works of Emerson,

Thoreau, Whitman, Browning, Eliot, Isherwood, Huxley, Hesse, Ginsburg, Kerouac,

diPrima, among others. This influence, which was so enthusiastically celebrated

by these literary geniuses, is now being suppressed in curricula on American

literature, often by their own historians. Indic ideas have also profoundly

shaped modern philosophy, psychology, Western spirituality and the emerging

worldview, including its influence on thinkers such as Schopenhauer

(philosophy), Schrodinger (physics), Jung (psychology), Teilhard de Chardin

(Christianity), among others.

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Arial">Interpretations of classical India’s philosophical texts, when properly

done by Indian philosophers, debunk this world-negating image that has been

popularized by a selective use of Indian texts, often out of context. There are

two worldviews within Indian philosophy:

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Arial">(A) The samsara (phenomenal) world seen as having its own intrinsic and

separate existence is how the conventional mind sees things, because this mind

is imprisoned in linguistic discourse, language consists of concepts, and each

concept is inherently within boundaries separating it from its opposing ‘other’

concepts.

Arial">(B) The world is experienced as Lila, divine play, Brahman’s form, or

Shiva’s dance, in a non-discursive and non-linguistic manner.

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Arial">‘Moksha’ or enlightenment means the negation of A and affirmation of B.

To appreciate Indian philosophy, one must understand that ‘moksha’ is not the

only prescribed way to live, as Kama (pleasure), Artha (material success) are

also approved as legitimate pursuits within the Indian texts provided they are

done in a dharmic manner. Just as every Westerner is not supposed to be a

rocket scientist, not every Indian was or is expected to pursue moksha. India’s

discovery of moksha was not its only scientific or technological discovery, nor

its only pursuit in the advancement of civilization.

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Arial">Furthermore, those who wish to pursue moksha have several paths to

choose from. Tantra, Shaivism, Goddess, are examples of B affirming paths,

whereas many Advaita Vedantin teachings do promote the negation of the A

worldview. In the B set of paths the primary technique is to affirm the real,

while in the A set of paths the primary methodology is to negate the false.

Even in such ‘negating’ A paths, it is one worldview being negated and

eventually replaced by another affirming experience - textually explained that

the snake is unreal but the rope mistaken for the snake is definitely real. So

it is the false view of the world (maya) that is to be negated.

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Arial">Since A is the worldview of the secular, materialistic and scientific

West and also of Judeo-Christian theology, it is the Western worldview that

these Indian paths negate; BUT they replace it with an affirmation of the world

seen as Brahman / Shiva. Western writers do not have enough experience to make

the radical condemnation of India as a ‘world negating civilization’. One could

just as easily build the case that since the West clings to A (false maya) and

negates B (the real), it has a world negating approach to life.

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Arial">I have also examined the modern scholars from a socio-psychological

point of view. There are numerous logical and methodological flaws in much of

the West’s scholarship about India, which places the blame for India’s social,

ecological and human conditions of today upon its indigenous religions and

civilization as opposed to the history of invasions and oppression. The focus

in social and religious studies is on anthropology – caste, cows, curry -

rather than on the ideas as seen in a sensible way. Many scholars have shallow

knowledge in India’s history, therefore are unable to work forward starting

from the heights of India’s civilization, and instead try to work backwards

from today’s poverty as their starting point. In their portrayal, they quite

openly dismiss ancient India’s scientific contributions, and consider yoga,

meditation, ayurveda, etc as outside the scope of their subject matter. This

reduces India into ethnocentric or Greco-Semitic religious categories that scarcely

do justice. Also, people confuse between anti-materialism and world negation,

the premise being that advancement must necessarily be selfish. This portrayal

has become a way to justify the Western case that

italic">globalization equals westernization, since the indigenous

cultures are positioned as inherently inferior.

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Arial">My final point in refuting the portrayal concerns contemporary Indians’

success in the materialistic world, based entirely on their own merit. This is

now very adequately documented, as even Germany, Britain, and Japan seek IT

technology transfers from India. This is

hardly the sign of people from a world negating, ‘mystical’, irrational, or

unprogressive civilization as often alleged. It is sad to note that Indian kids

in America (especially in colleges) regularly tell me of being embarrassed in

class when their heritage is portrayed in this demeaning manner. Many choose to

deny their identity, just as Jews did a century ago in Europe. What is ironic

is that these Indian kids often have high SAT scores and are majoring in

‘rational’ disciplines such as science, finance, law, medicine, business, while

the teacher of world religions in a typical college might not have had as good

an SAT score herself – so by the West’s own criteria, the teacher is wanting to

look down below the glass ceiling at these less rational people, when in fact

they have superior rationality. Furthermore, many such kids come from families

where their parents are highly educated and find it nonsensical to see their

heritage stereotyped in this manner.

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Arial">Might this be many scholars’ way to boost their own self-esteem, using

cultural membership to compare with poorer and lower others? Might this explain

why there seems to be an obsession on the part of so many Western scholars to

select precisely those issues about India which enable them to develop a

patronizingly sympathetic posture from above the glass ceiling, while filtering

out rational, progressive and superior elements under the excuse that these

would not represent the ‘real’ India? This is the ultimate glass ceiling that

Indians must now negotiate with, having already pierced through other glass

ceilings in scientific, technological, business, medicine, and many other

fields. Ironically, the academic Religious Studies being rooted in the

historical dogma methodologies of Judeo-Christianity, might be among the last

bastions where rational superiority is being vigorously defended over

indigenous cultures of the world.

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Arial">My challenge to the ‘world negating’ image is very consequential,

because it compels Western scholars to revisit Jung’s rejection of yoga - he

felt that yoga was dangerous for Westerners because it would make them

backward. But in defiance of Jung’s instructions, there are now over 10 million

Americans practicing yoga very openly, and this has not resulted in them

becoming world negating, regressive, unproductive or irrational as of yet.

Others who made similar U-Turns that must be re-evaluated include Teilhard de

Chardin, Steiner and other Westerners.

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