The Wall Street Journal’s recent editorial has the bold title: “Public Schools Should Teach the Bible: Westerners cannot be considered literate without a basic knowledge of this foundational text”.While I certainly support the idea that students should be better informed about world religions, I vehemently oppose giving special preference to the Bible over other faiths.

The WSJ op-ed’s argument is that America is a Western nation with the Bible as its foundation. This is a racist assumption which ignores that for most of its 10,000 year history America was unknown to Europeans and was inhabited by the Native Americans, originally from Asia. OK, I agree that today we are where we are, and must deal with the practical reality that Europeans dominated this land for the past few centuries after “emptying” it of the natives — a euphemism for getting rid of them by various means. But the very same pragmatic view also suggests that by 2050, whites (i.e. people of European or “Western” descent) will be less than half the population of America. Going forward, we are not going to be a Eurocentric nation, but a microcosm of the world’s diverse peoples. The premise of being a Western nation must be re-examined.

The majority of the world’s population is neither European nor Christian. In a global society, our future generations must be better equipped to deal with the diverse religions and cultures of all nations abroad and of all citizens at home. Inevitably, a white kid in the next generation will have “non-Westerners” in her life — as classmates, doctors, colleagues at work, bosses, business suppliers, customers, or even as spouse. “Western” chauvinism is rapidly becoming obsolete, being often a politically correct substitute for “white Christian” supremacy.

A better idea is to teach the world’s great classics that ought to be selected for their value as sources of ideas and inspiration. Why not also teach Patanjali’s yoga text, Buddha’s and Gandhi’s philosophies, the world’s first and still most comprehensive grammar (of Sanskrit) written by Panini prior to the time of Jesus, and a whole library of such great non-Western texts. Aryabhatta’s famous mathematics and astronomy influenced later European developments. Kautilya’s political thought anticipated Machiavelli and other Europeans by more than a millennium. Bharata’s multi-volume natya-shastra must be appreciated alongside the Greek writings on aesthetics.

T.S. Eliot, one of America’s foremost thinkers, was a Sanskrit scholar all his life, and remarked that compared to the Sanskrit classics the greatest Western philosophers “look like schoolboys.” Indeed, the library of major works from India alone is far greater than the Greek and Roman classics combined, and one must add to this the classics of other civilizations such as China. My point is that we must raise kids to be world citizens with a broad foundation of the greatest ideas from every corner.

The WSJ op-ed is also plain wrong in citing that the movie Star Wars was inspired by the Bible. In fact, Infinity Foundation sponsored a research book in the 1990s that traced Ramayana (a Hindu text) as the source which had inspired George Lucas. Lucas acknowledges that he got his ideas from Joseph Campbell who had interpreted Indian narratives as a student of Sanskrit and Hinduism. The book that came out of this project, titled, The Jedi in the Lotus, gives details of how various characters and stories from Ramayana were incorporated into Star Wars.

The authors of the WSJ op-ed want to play the game: “XYZ would not have existed in America without the influence of the Bible.” But by the same token, I would point out that Christopher Columbus would not have found America had he not been sent by Queen Isabella of Spain to look for a sea route to India. India and China were known as the centers of world manufacturing and as the source of goods that were highly sought after in Europe. But once the Ottoman Empire captured the land routes from Asia to Europe, these Asian goods became very scarce in Europe. Queen Isabella invested in a risky venture with a huge potential payoff – finding a sea route to import Indian goods and thereby bypassing the Ottomans. Thus, India is the reason for the existence of what later became the United States of America. Certainly, this bit of history should be taught in every American school.

Published: March 3, 2013

More than half a century ago, on March 10th, 1959, Tibetans revolted against the Chinese military occupation of Tibet that began in 1951. The revolt ended badly for the Tibetans, who suffered from a brutal Chinese crackdown. This caused the Dalai Lama, with the help of the CIA, to flee with his supporters to India. On March 31, 1959, after a grueling 15-day journey across the Himalayas on foot, the Dalai Lama escaped from the Chinese and crossed over to India along with 80,000 Tibetans. Ever since then, March 10th has been commemorated as Tibetan Uprising Day with worldwide protest marches to mobilize support for the Tibetan cause.

Even as desperate self-immolations among Tibetans still living in Tibet have increased in the past few years, there seem to be no signs whatsoever of China relenting on its cultural genocide there. At a time when movements like the Arab Spring get mainstream media attention, it is unfortunate that the struggle of the Tibetans seems to be slipping from public consciousness.

Unlike the hot spots of the Middle East, Tibet lacks a natural resource like oil that powerful nations would fight over. The peaceful nature of the Tibetan struggle, unlike agitations in the Islamic world, has certainly generated goodwill for the Tibetans. But since they do not pose a security threat to the rest of the world as exporters of terror or nukes, it seems safe to simply look the other way. China’s growing clout and persistence have gradually worn down the uprising, and Tibetans’ support base among Western leaders is muted. Tragically, today’s youth in the West seem generally less passionate about getting involved than the youth of the 60s.

One wonders what lies in store for this movement. With the Dalai Lama aging, the Chinese know that time is on their side and are willing to wait it out. Without a new Tibetan leader of comparable charisma, they hope to accentuate internal clashes among rival Tibetan groups, offer carrots to some ambitious leaders, and use classic divide-and-conquer tactics to finish off the movement. Meanwhile, in Tibet, the land and sacred geography are being rapidly turned into secular tourist attractions under the ultimate control of the communists, and repopulated by the ethnic Han Chinese. Tibetan culture is being transformed by China and is being “digested” into a Mandarin identity.

While this should be a concern for the entire world, India and the U.S. should worry the most. India’s mightiest rivers (Brahmaputra, Ganga and Indus) all originate in Tibet, and China has started an ambitious project of rapidly building at least 20 hydroelectric dams in Tibet, each with the potential to divert water away from India and into China. Quenching China’s thirst will come at the expense of India, where droughts will result in many areas. I had predicted this scenario many years ago, before it was fashionable to consider it, but only recently has this suddenly become a hot topic.

Tibet is also the military base for China’s nuclear arsenal aimed at India, giving China the ability to reach India within minutes of launch. Tibet is the route through which China-Pakistan links are transporting military and other goods through modern highways, railroads and pipelines. This enables China to gain access to the Indian Ocean ports that are located in Pakistan, and Pakistan gets instant assistance from China in any conflict with India. Indeed, if Tibet could be neutral, autonomous and demilitarized, the India/Pakistan security situation would have the potential to be more easily resolved as a bilateral rather than trilateral one.
For the United States, China is its main rival and competitor in all spheres, a fact known and understood by both. While China has never hidden its intentions, the U.S. has lacked a determined plan to address this. Tibet is China’s path for the critical trade routes of the Indian Ocean, the Central Asian oil and gas reserves, and the rich ASEAN countries to the south.

As an example of its myopic foreign policy, the U.S. isolated Myanmar for many years on the grounds of human rights violations, which mostly hurt the poor people of Myanmar rather than the military junta. This played right into the hands of the Chinese. Had the improvement of human rights been the honest motive, the U.S. would have adopted similar measures against China, where the human rights violations have been on a far larger scale. Myanmar was simply an easy target to get rid of American guilt and to show muscle. Thus, China got a decade of monopoly in Myanmar, which it used to solidify long-term strategic control over Myanmar’s resources and privileged access routes to the Indian Ocean. Tibet is again strategically located to make this possible.

The Tibetans themselves can also do much more than they have. For one thing, they must urgently initiate the rise of a new face on the world stage under the mentoring of the Dalai Lama. The Karmapa is one such young, charismatic leader with a deep grounding in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and a sharp intellect. Unfortunately, he remains largely confined in India. According to some sources, the Indian government is unsure if he is a Chinese plant, like a Manchurian Candidate. This matter needs to be urgently resolved, rather than after the Dalai Lama is gone from the scene. It is best to let the next generation of leadership become active internationally and be tested in all respects while the Dalai Lama is able to mentor and watch over the transition.

We should not count on a change of heart among the next generation of Chinese. China has done a good job in its education system to indoctrinate its youth to view Tibet as an integral part of China, and to demonize the independence movement as a conspiracy by hostile foreign powers, with the top Tibetan leaders as co-conspirators.

The odds against Tibet are indeed heavy on such a loaded chessboard. But many other struggles also seemed hopeless in the past. I wish the Tibetan movement finds new champions among the youth of all countries.

Published: March 12, 2013

It is now recognized that western criteria are not the sole benchmark by which other cultural knowledge should be evaluated. While the term ‘traditional’ sometimes carries the connotation of ‘pre-modern’ in the sense of ‘primitive’ or ‘outdated’, many of the traditional sciences and technologies were in fact quite advanced even by western standards as well as better adapted to unique local conditions and needs than their later ‘modern’ substitutes. In countries with ancient cultural traditions, the folk and elite science were taken as part of the same unified legacy, without any hegemonic categorizations.

However, modernization has homogenized various solutions, and this loss of ideas is similar to the destruction of biodiversity. Colonizers systematically derogated, exterminated or undermined the local traditional science, technology and crafts of the lands and people they plundered, because of their intellectual arrogance, and also to control and appropriate the economic means of production and the social means of organization.

Modern societies created hegemonic categories of science verses magic, technology verses superstitions etc., which were arbitrary and contrived. But many anthropologists who have recently worked with so-called ‘primitive’ peoples have been surprised to learn of some of their highly evolved and sophisticated technologies. The term ‘Traditional Knowledge System’ was thus coined by anthropologists as a scientific system which has its own validity, in contradistinction to ‘modern’ science.

The United Nations University proposal defines ‘Traditional Knowledge Systems’ as follows:

“Traditional knowledge or ‘local knowledge’ is a record of human achievement in comprehending the complexities of life and survival in often unfriendly environments. Traditional knowledge, which may be technical, social, organizational, or cultural was obtained as part of the great human experiment of survival and development.”

Laura Nader describes the purpose of studying Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS): “The point is to open up people’s minds to other ways of looking and questioning, to change attitudes about knowledge, to reframe the organization of science — to formulate a way of thinking globally about traditions.”

Historical Background

Modern science can perhaps be dated to Newton’s times. But Traditional Knowledge Systems date from more than 2 million years, when Homo habilis started making his tools and interacting with nature. Since the dawn of history, different peoples have contributed to different branches of science and technology, often in a manner involving interactive contacts across cultures separated by large distances. This interactive influence is becoming clearer as the vast extent of global trade and cultural migration across large distances is being properly recognized by researchers.

However, one finds that generally the history of science as commonly taught is mostly Eurocentric. It typically consists of two phases: It starts with Greece, neglecting the influences of others upon Greece. Then it ‘fast forwards’ many centuries to the Enlightenment period around 1500, to claim modern science as an exclusively European triumph, by neglecting the influence of others, especially India, upon the European Renaissance and Enlightenment. The European Dark Ages is presumed to be dark worldwide, when in fact, the rest of the world thrived with innovation and prosperity while Europe was at the periphery until the conquest of America in 1492.

Thanks to especially the work of Joseph Needham, China’s contributions to global knowledge have recently become known to a wide range of scholars. Even more recently, thanks largely to Arab scholars, the important role of Islamic empires in the transmission of ideas into Europe has become better appreciated. However, in the latter case, many discoveries and innovations of India, as acknowledged by the Arab translators themselves, are often depicted as being of Arab origin, when in fact, the Arabs often retransmitted what they had learnt from India over to Europe.

Therefore, the vast and significant contributions made by the Indian sub-continent have been widely ignored. The British colonizers could never accept the fact that Indians were highly civilized even in the third millennium BC, when the British were still in a barbarian stage. Such acknowledgment would destroy the civilizing mission of Europe that was the intellectual premise for colonization.

British Indologists did not study TKS, except to quietly document them as systems competing with their own, and to facilitate the transfer of technology into Britain’s industrial revolution. What was found valuable was quickly appropriated (see examples below), and its Indian manufacturers were forced out of business, and this was in many instances justified as civilizing them. Meanwhile, a new history of India was fabricated to ensure that present and future generations of mentally colonized people would believe in the inherent inferiority of their own traditional knowledge and in the superiority of the colonizers’ ‘modern’ knowledge. This has been called Macaulayism, named after Lord Macaulay who successfully championed this strategy of Britain most emphatically starting in the 1830s.

Because it became difficult for Europeans to ignore the massive archaeological evidence of classical Indian science and technology, they propounded that the Indus civilization had to be a transplant from the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations. These constructions in historiography have tended to be cumulative rather than re-constructive, i.e. more layers were constructed without re-examining or correcting prior ones. Unfortunately, since Independence there has not been much improvement in such distortions of history, and this has continued to negatively impact the understanding and appreciation of TKS. Many in India’s intellectual elite continue to promote the notion that pre-colonial India was feudalistic, pre-rational, and by implication in need of being invaded for its own benefit.

This has created a climate in which entrenched prejudice against TKS still persists in contemporary society. For example, according to TKS activist Madhu Kishwar, India’s government today continues to make many TKS illegal or impossible to practice. Even after independence, many British laws against TKS have continued, even though their original intent was to destroy India’s massive domestic industry and foreign trade and to replace them with Britain’s industrial revolution. It is significant to note that today less than 10% of India’s labor works in the ‘organized sector’, namely as employees of a company. The remaining 90% are individual freelancers, contract laborers, private entrepreneurs, and so on, many of whom still practice their traditional trades.

However, given the perpetuation of colonial laws that render much of their work illegal, they are highly vulnerable to all sorts of exploitation, corruption, and abuse. The descendents of India’s traditional knowledge workers, who built massive cities, technologies, and dominated world trade for centuries, are today de-legitimized in their own country under a democratic government. Many of today’s poor jatis, such as textile, masonry, and metal workers, were at one time the guilds that supplied the world with so many and varied industrial items.

It is important to note that amongst all the conquered and colonized civilizations of the Old World, India is unique in the following respect: Its wealth was industrial and created by its workers’ ingenuity and labor. In all other instances, such as the Native Americans, the plunder by the colonizers was mainly of land, gold and other natural assets. But in India’s case, the colonizers had a windfall of extraordinary profit margins from control of India’s exports, taxation of India’s economic production, and eventually the transfer of technology and production to the colonizer’s home. This comprised the immense transfer of wealth out of India.

From being the world’s major exporting economy (along with China), India was reduced to an importer of goods; from being the source of much of the economic capital that funded Britain’s industrial revolution, it became one of the biggest debtor nations; from its envied status as the wealthiest nation, it became a land synonymous with poverty; and from the nation with a large number of prestigious centers of higher education that attracted the cream of foreign students from Eurasia, it became the land with the highest number of illiterate persons. This remains a major untold story. The education system’s subversion of India’s TKS in its history and social studies curricula is a major factor for the stereotyping about India. Even when told of these things, few westerners and elitist Indians are willing to believe them, as the prejudices about India are too deeply entrenched.

The Global Problem Today

The present day globalizing economy with its mass media glorification of the western lifestyle is resulting in the homogenization of human ‘wants’ and in unachievable expectations. Conventional western technology by itself cannot deliver or sustain this false promise to the world, for several reasons:

Westernized living is unachievable by billions of poor humans, because the capital required simply does not exist in the world, and the trickle down effect is too slow to reach the bottom tier where most of humanity lives.

Western civilization depends upon inequality — there must be cheap labor ‘somewhere else’, and cheap natural resources purchasable from somewhere, without regard to the big picture of world society or global ecology. This practical necessity of the present-day global capitalist system conflicts with the equal rights of states and persons long theorized and promoted. All sorts of reasons are offered against such drastic proposals as opening all borders and allowing free competition among all available laborers, contradicting the ‘freedom’ position so popular in theory.

The western economic development model demands ‘growth’ to sustain valuations in the stock markets, and growth cannot be indefinite. A steady state economy in zero growth equilibrium would devastate the wealth of the west, since the financial models are predicated on growth.

Even if the above obstacles could be overcome and the world’s six billion persons were to achieve western lifestyle, it would be unsustainable for the planet’s natural resources to sustain.

When Gandhi was asked whether he would like India to develop a lifestyle similar to England’s, his reply may be paraphrased as follows: The British had to plunder the Earth to achieve their lifestyle. Given India’s much larger population, it would require the plunder of many planets to achieve the same.

If the idealized lifestyle is unavailable to all humanity, then on what basis (morally, intellectually, and in terms of practical enforcement) do a few countries hope to sustain their superiority over others so as to maintain such a lifestyle? The point is that employing TKS is an imperative for humanity at large, while reducing global dependence on inequitable and resource draining ‘advanced’ knowledge systems.

We have to study, preserve, and revive the Traditional Knowledge Systems for the economic betterment of the world in a holistic manner, as these technologies are eco-friendly and allow sustainable growth without harming the environment. India’s scientific heritage needs to be brought to the attention of the educated world, so that we can replace the Eurocentric history of science and technology with an honest globalization of ideas. This goal requires generations of new research in these fields, compilation of existing data, and dissemination through books, seminars, websites, articles, films, etc.

Indian Contributions to Global Science

Civil Engineering: The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization was the world’s first to build planned towns, with underground drainage, civil sanitation, hydraulic engineering, and air-cooling architecture. Oven baked bricks were invented in India in approximately 4,000 BC. From complex Harappan towns to Delhi’s Qutub Minar and other large projects, India’s indigenous technologies were very sophisticated in design, planning, water supply, traffic flow, natural air conditioning, complex stonework, and construction engineering.

Metal Technologies: They pioneered many tools for construction, including the needle with hole at the pointed end, hollow drill, and true saw. Many of these important tools were subsequently used in the rest of the world, centuries later during Roman times. India was the first to produce rust-free iron. In the mid-first millennium BC, the Indian wootz steel was very popular in the Persian courts for making swords. The British sent teams to India to analyze the metallurgical processes that were later appropriated by Britain. Making India’s metal works illegal was motivated partly by the goal to industrialize Britain, but also because of the risk of gun manufacturing by potential nationalists. India’s exporting steel industry was systematically dismantled and relocated to Britain.

Textiles: India’s textile exports were legendary. Roman archives contain official complaints about massive cash drainage because of imports of fine Indian textiles. One of the earliest industries relocated from India to Britain was in textiles, and it became the first major success of the Industrial Revolution, with Britain replacing India as the world’s leading textile exporter. Many of the machines built by Britain used Indian designs that had been improved over long periods. Meanwhile, India’s textile manufacturers were de-licensed, even tortured in some cases, over-taxed, regulated, etc., to ‘civilize’ them into virtual extinction.

Shipping and Ship Building: India participated in the earliest known ocean based trading systems. Regarding more recent centuries, it is known to scholars but not to the general public that Vasco da Gama’s ships were captained by a Gujarati sailor, and much of Europe’s ‘discovery’ of navigation was in fact an appropriation of pre-existing navigation in the Indian Ocean, that had been a thriving trade system for centuries before Europeans ‘discovered’ it. Some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated ships were built in India and China. The compass and other navigation tools were already in use at the time. (‘Nav’ is the Sanskrit word for boat, and is the root word in ‘navigation’, and in ‘navy’, although etymology is not a reliable proof of origin.)

Water Harvesting Systems: Scientists estimate that there were 1.3 million man-made water lakes and ponds across India, some as large as 250 square miles. These are now being rediscovered using satellite imagery. These enabled most of the rain water to be harvested and used for irrigation, drinking, etc. till the following year’s rainfall. Village organizations managed these resources, but this decentralized management was dismantled during the colonial period, when tax collection, cash expropriation, and legal enforcements became the primary function of the new governance appointed by the British. Recently, thousands of these ‘talabs’ have been restored, and this has resulted in a re-emergence of abundant water year round in many places. (This is a very different approach compared to the massive modern dams built in the name of progress, that have devastated the lives of millions.)

Forest Management: Many interesting findings have recently come out about the way forests and trees were managed by each village and a careful method applied to harvest medicines, firewood, and building material in accordance with natural renewal rates. There is now a database being built of these ‘sacred groves’ across India. Again, it’s a story of an economic asset falling into disuse and abuse because of dismantling the local governance and uprooting respect for traditional systems in general. Massive logging by the British to export India’s timber to fund the two world wars and other civilizing programs of the empire are never mentioned when scholars try to explain India’s current ecological disasters. The local populations had been quite sophisticated in managing their ecology until they were disempowered.

Farming Techniques: India’s agricultural production was historically large and sustained a huge population compared to other parts of the world. Surpluses were stored for use in a drought year. But the British turned this industry into a cash cow, exporting massive amounts of harvests even during shortages, so as to maximize the cash expropriation. This caused tens of millions to die of starvation while at the same time India’s food production was exported at unprecedented rates to generate cash. Also, traditional non-chemical based pesticides have been recently revived in India with excellent results, replacing Union Carbide’s products in certain markets.

Traditional Medicine: This is now a well-known and respected field. Much re-legitimizing of Indian medicine has already been done, thanks to many western labs and scientists. Many multinationals no longer denigrate traditional medicine and have in fact been trying to secure patents on Indian medicine without acknowledging the source.

Mathematics, Logic and Linguistics: Besides other sciences, Indians developed advanced math, including the concept of zero, the base-ten decimal system now in use worldwide, and many important trigonometry and algebra formulae. They made several astronomical discoveries. Diverse schools of logic and philosophy proliferated. India’s Panini is acknowledged as the founder of linguistics, and his Sanskrit grammar is still the most complete and sophisticated of any language in the world.

There were numerous other indigenous Indian industries. India’s manufactured goods were highly prized around the world. We must evaluate the historical importance of these TKS based on their economic value for their time, when their importance could be compared to today’s high tech industry. India’s own English educated elite should be made aware of this to shed their Macaulayite inferiority complexes. Furthermore, the development, refinement and extension of TKS offer potential benefits capable of resolving or diminishing some of the inequities in modern societies worldwide.

Folk Science

Besides the above examples of Indian contributions to the very foundations of so-called ‘western’ science, another category of Traditional Knowledge Systems is non-literate folk science. Western science as a whole has condemned and ignored anything that it did not either appropriate or develop, as being magic and superstition. However, in countries such as India that have cultural continuity, ancient traditions survive with a rich legacy of folk science.

In North America and Australia, where original populations have been more than decimated, such continuity of folk tradition was disrupted. In Western nations with large colonies in the Old and New Worlds, such knowledge systems were looked down upon. It is this prejudice that subverts the importance of folk science, and ridicules it as superstition. The process of contrasting western science with folk knowledge systems extends to the demarcation of knowledge systems in different categories of science versus religion, rational versus magical, and so on. But we need to insist that these western imposed hegemonic categories are contrived and artificial.

Western science seldom realizes that non-literate folk science preserves the wisdom gained through millennia of experience, direct observation, and has been transmitted by word of mouth. Development projects based solely on new technologies are pushing the Traditional Knowledge Systems towards extinction. This traditional wisdom of humankind needs to be preserved and used for our survival.

Westernized ‘experts’ go to non-literate cultures assuming them to be ‘knowledge blanks’ which need to be programmed with modern science and technology. Ramkrishnan, the renowned ecologist, humbly admitted that the ecological management practiced today by the tribes of the northeastern states of India is far superior to anything he could teach them. A good example in this regard is the alder (Alnus nepalensis), which has been cultivated in the jhum (shifting cultivation) fields by the Khonoma farmers in Nagaland for centuries. It has multiple usages for the farmers, since it is a nitrogen-fixing tree and helps to retain the soil fertility. Its leaves are used as fodder and fertilizer, and it is also utilized as timber. One could cite numerous such examples. Unfortunately, many plants which the tribes traditionally cultivated for specific benefits have now disappeared in the name of progress.

The vast majority of modern medicines patented by western pharmaceutical firms are based on tropical plants. The most common method to select candidates for detailed testing has been for western firms to scout tropical societies, seek out established ‘folk’ remedies, and to subject these to ‘western scientific legitimizing’. In many cases, patents owned by multinationals are largely for isolating the active ingredients in a lab, and going through rigorous protocols of testing and patent filing.

While this is an important and expensive task, and deserves credit, these are seldom independent discoveries from scratch. Never has the society that has truly discovered it through centuries of empirical testing and trial and error received any recognition, much less any share of royalty. India’s recent fights in international courts, over western patents of its traditional intellectual property in agriculture and medicine, have brought much needed publicity for this arena.

Colin Scott writes: “With the upsurge of multidisciplinary interest in ‘traditional ecological knowledge’, models explicitly held by indigenous people in areas as diverse as forestry, fisheries, and physical geography are being paid increasing attention by western science specialists, who have in some cases established extremely productive long-term dialogues with local experts. The idea that local experts are often better informed than their western peers is at last receiving significant acknowledgment beyond the boundaries of anthropology.”

But in too many cases, western scholars reduce India’s experts to ‘native informants’ destined to live below the glass ceiling: the pandit as native informant to the western Sanskritist; the poor woman in Rajasthan as native informant to the western feminist seeking to cure her of her tradition; the herbal farmer as native informant to the western pharmaceutical firm appropriating medicines for patents; etc. Given their poverty in modern times, these ‘native informants’ dish out what the western scholar expects to hear in order to fit his/her model, because in return they receive gifts, rewards, compensation, recognition, and even trips and visas in many cases.

Rarely have western scholars acknowledged India’s knowledge bearers as fellow scientists and equal partners, as co-authors or as co-panelists. This competitive obsession to make ‘original’ discoveries and to put one’s name on publications has exacerbated the tendency to appropriate with one hand, while denigrating the source with other hand so as to hide the plagiarism. We have referred to this as ‘academic arson’.

Rituals as Knowledge Transmitters

Villagers in remote areas like Uttaranchal have events called ‘Jagars’, in which the Jagaria sends theDangaria into a sort of trance. The Dangaria then helps sort out problems, provides remedies for ailments, resolves social conflicts of the village society etc. One could dismiss this as superstition; but this is also considered a traditional method of reaching the unconscious. Does the Jagaria use his spiritual powers to reach and tap the unconscious region of the mind of the Dangaria? Or, as propounded by Vaclav Havel, did these rituals represent the attempts of ancient humans to come to terms with the unknown, the non-rational, and the unconscious parts of our beings? Were these devices useful to invoke lost memories of the ancient past?

We are, therefore, not willing to dismiss Jagar as some mumbo-jumbo, but a phenomenon worth scientific investigation. This should be an important scientific research connecting Traditional Knowledge Systems to Inner Sciences. Ironically, from Jung onwards, many westerners have studied and appropriated these traditional ‘inner sciences’, renamed and repackaged them. Meanwhile, the original discoverers and practitioners have been dismissed as primitive societies awaiting cure by westernization.

Myths and Legends:

Myths and legends sometimes represent the attempts of our ancestors to explain the scientific observations that they made about the world around them and transmitted to the future. They chose different models to interpret the observations, but the observations were empirical. Let us compare some of the old legends with modern scientific observations about the geological history of the Indian subcontinent. We will discuss three examples, and each could be seen as fiction or hard fact or some combination of both:

1) The geology of Kashmir (India) has been studied for more than 150 years now. As a result of these studies, it is now known that due to the rise of the Pir Panjal range around 4 million years ago, a vast lake formed, blocking the drainage from the Himalayas. Subsequently, the river Jhelum emerged as a result of the opening of a fault near Baramula, draining out the lake about 85,000 years ago. This is accepted as the geological history of the Kashmir valley.

Now let us compare this to the old legend: In Kashmir there is a very old tradition which describes a vast lake, called Satisara, in the valley in very ancient times. Kalhana, a poet chronicler, wrote his bookRajatarangini, or ‘The River of Kings’, in 1150 AD. In this book, he mentions an ancient lake (Satisara) giving a reference from a still earlier text, Nilamata Purana.

Aurel Stein (1961), who translated Rajatarangini, describes the legend of Satisara in these words: “This legend is mentioned by Kalhana in the Introduction of his Chronicle and is related at great length inNilamata… The demon Jalodbhava who resided in this lake was invisible in his own element and refused to come out of the lake. Vishnu thereupon called upon his brother Balabhadra to drain the lake…” Ignoring the mythical struggles between gods and demons, the legend does depict an account resembling the draining out of the primeval lake.

2) The sea level on the West Coast of India, as elsewhere during the Ice Ages, was about 100 meters lower than today and started rising only after 16,000 years ago. This is the accepted eustatic history.

The related legend says that when Parasurama donated all his land to the Brahmins, the latter asked him how he could live on the land that he had already donated away. Parasurama went to the cliff on the seashore and threw his Parasu (hatchet) into the sea and the sea receded, and then he occupied the land that thus emerged. This is possibly a reference to the regression of the sea and the newly emerged land.

3) The third example is of the river Satluj, a tributary of the Indus today. In finding its new course, the Sarasvati braided into several channels. This is the accepted geology.

The relevant legend says that the holy sage Vashista wanted to commit suicide by jumping into the Sarasvati, but the river wouldn’t allow such a sage to drown himself, and broke up into hundreds of shallow channels, hence its ancient name Satadru. Unless the early author of such a legend observed the braiding process of the Satluj, he could not have imagined such a legend. This is another instance of legends coinciding with a modern geological observation.

Theorizing the possible role of myths, Scott says: “The complementarity of the literal and the figurative help us to realize that the distinction between myth and science is not structural, but procedural… Myths in a broader, paradigmatic sense are condensed expressions of root metaphors that reflect the genius of particular knowledge traditions… Numerous studies have found that the “anthropomorphic” paradigms of egalitarian hunters and horticulturalists not only generate practical knowledge consistent with the insights of scientific ecology, but simultaneously cultivate an ethic of environmental responsibility that for western societies has proven elusive.”

The Israelis have been very successful in rediscovering many lost technologies relevant to their environment and culture by investigating their ancient myths and traditions. Through this, they have become pioneers in many processes of economic value that conventional European technology lacks.

The Goal

India’s intellectual resources are not limited to (though they are limited by) its ‘Indi-genius’ doubting intellectual elite. Today, there are Indian economists, social developers, and scholars who are working hard to revitalize many TKS. Resources for research and teaching of India’s Traditional Knowledge Systems should be made available for the following reasons:

India has amongst the best cases for successful revival of TKS: It has a rich heritage still intact in this area. It has the largest documented ancient literature relevant to TKS. It has the intellectual resources to appreciate this and to implement this revival, provided the Macaulayite mental blocks could be shaken up through re-education of its governing elite. It has dire needs to diversify beyond dependence solely upon the new panacea of globalization and westernization.

India’s scientific heritage, besides its philosophical and cultural legacy, needs to be properly understood. The aim is not inspired by chauvinism, but to understand the genius of Indian civilization better. This would overhaul the current assessment of India’s potential.

To correct the portrayal of the history of science, the history of ideas, mainstream accounts of world history, anthropology and culture. This entails emphasizing to scholars and educators that TKS should be included, especially India’s achievements and contributions to world science that have been very significant but unappreciated.

To include Traditional Knowledge Systems in economic planning, because they are eco-friendly, sustainable, labor rather than capital intensive, and more available to the masses. This should be done in parallel with the top down ‘modern’ scientific development using westernized ‘globalization’, as the two should co-exist and each should be used based on its merits.

TKS and Inner Sciences, History, and Society Today

Inner Sciences: The Inner Sciences of India have been on the one hand appropriated by the west, and on the hand have been depicted as being in conflict with the progressive, rational, and materialistic west. In fact, inner and outer realms are often viewed as opposites, that can at best be balanced because one contradicts the other. This assumes that Inner Sciences make a person and society less productive, creative, and competitive in the outer realm. However, India’s TKS are empirical evidence to demonstrate that Inner Sciences and outer development did co-exist in a mutually symbiotic relationship. This is a major reason to properly study India’s TKS.

Without removing this tension between inner and outer, it would be difficult to seriously motivate the modern world to advance in the Inner Sciences in a major way. Inner progress without the outer would be a world negating worldview, which India’s TKS record shows not to be the case in classical India. Outer progress without inner cultivation results in societies that are too materialistic, too selfish to the point of genocides and holocausts, eco-unfriendly, and dependent upon force and control for social harmony.

History: Until the 1800s, TKS generated large scale economic productivity for Indians. It was the TKS based thriving Indian economy that attracted so many waves of invaders, culminating with the British. Traditionally, India was one of the richest regions in the world, and most Indians were neither ‘backward’ nor uneducated nor poor. Some historians have recently begun to come out with this side of the story, demonstrating that it was massive economic drainage, oppression, social re-engineering, and so forth at the hands of colonizers that made millions of ‘new poor’ over the past few centuries. This explanation yields a radically different reading of poverty in India today. Upon acknowledging India’s traditional knowledge systems, one is forced to discard accounts of its history that essentialize its poverty and the accompanying social evils. The reality of TKS contradicts notions such as:

India was less rational and scientific than the west.

India was world negating in its outlook (which is a misreading of the Inner Sciences), and hence did not advance itself from within.

India’s civilization was mainly imported via invaders, except for its problems such as caste that were its own ‘essences’.

Indian society was socially backward (to the point of being seen as lacking in morality); hence it depends upon westernization to reform its current problems.

Society Today: Is India a ‘developing’ society, or is it a ‘re-developing’ society? Without appreciating the TKS of a people, how could anthropologists and sociologists interpret the current condition of a society? Were they always poor, always living in polluted and socially problematic conditions as today, in which case these problems are essences? Or is there a history behind the present condition? This history should not, however, excuse the failures of fifty years of independence to deal properly with the economic and social problems that persist.

Going forward, Traditional Knowledge Systems are eco-friendly, symbiotic with the environment, and therefore can help provide a sustainable lifestyle. Since the benefits of heavy industries do not trickle down to the people below the poverty line or to so-called developing countries, a revival of traditional technologies and crafts must complement the modern ‘development’ schemes for eradication of poverty. In this regard, the distinction between elite and folk science was non-existent in ancient times: India’s advanced metallurgy and civil engineering was researched and practiced by artisan guilds.

Published: 2001

The terrorist-activist axis

In recent years, the Indian police and press have started to pay attention to certain groups with ‘peace,’ ‘civil liberties’ and ‘human rights’ identities.

Often, the scholars’/activists’ assistance is by legitimizing a radical group through endorsement, such as when the Communist Party of India, Marxist Leninist Liberation honored the kin of about 1,000 ‘comrade martyrs,’ i.e. terrorists, at an event graced by several prominent ‘social activists, environmentalists, and writers-turned-activists.’

There are various cross-ideological alliances for activism in India where separatists of various kinds, Islamists, Christian fundamentalists and Leftists converge for collaborations. They blame Indian culture and Hinduism in particular as the fabric that holds India together, and wish to see it dismantled.

US-based Indian intellectuals

What has not been adequately investigated is the role of US-based intellectuals. Often, such ‘activism’ to champion the ‘downtrodden’ brings together well-known South Asian Studies scholars from powerful institutions, journalists, and individuals linked to various Washington, DC, based groups. Numerous campus seminars and conferences promote the ‘human rights’ face of these alliances. The funding mechanisms are complex and tough to unravel because of the dual-purpose work of individuals and groups.

A well-established coterie of Indian-Americans has been actively filing one-sided complaints against India’s alleged human rights violations to US authorities, with varying degrees of authenticity. Such activism has led to the recent blacklisting of India by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. This Commission itself exists largely to protect the freedom of Christian evangelists to convert internationally. Rarely, if ever, has it condemned Christian countries over freedom of religion or investigated allegations against the proselytizers’ practices.

The US State Department declared in a recent report that India is a flawed democracy. Certain Indian Americans have played a pivotal role over the past decade in bringing about such condemnation, and they see this as the mere tip of the iceberg of what they wish to achieve in ‘exposing’ India and intellectually undermining it as a nation-state. Indeed, some of them insist that India is nothing more than an undesirable collection of conflicting groups.

In the reverse direction, these US-based scholars supply academic ‘theories’ and ‘strategies’ that feed the ground campaigns in India via Indian intellectuals and NGOs. Many of them are also members of political parties back in India, and hence, their work tends to be dual-purpose. Yet, the potential violations of US laws that prevent US citizens from funding foreign political parties have apparently not been looked into.

Ironically, many of these intellectuals are also aggressively raising millions of dollars from wealthy Indians in the USA and India for these South Asian Studies programmes.

Geopolitical consequences

In critical geopolitical moments, these Indian Americans against India have diluted the USA’s pressure against Pakistan, by making the average American hyphenate India and Pakistan as ‘equal and the same’ in socio-political respects. The recent Outlook article by Seema Sirohi gives a concrete example of how this is happening.

The Fellowship

The reason for the lack of introspection by those involved is that many ‘enlightened NGOs’ see themselves as a fellowship of different kinds of rings of the heroic, wise and powerful. This ‘association for a new humanity’ is today’s equivalent of mythical Arthurian roundtables, secret societies (such as Freemasons and esoteric groups) and councils of the wise. But these forged alliances, no matter how well-intended initially, tend to attract disparate tricksters who corrupt other minions into becoming ‘behind the scenes’ power mongers. The ethics of deceit and treachery become the collective shadow and feed ‘structural violence,’ i.e. destabilisation.

The real challenge facing the ‘save the world’ movement is recognising and dealing with the shadowy subversive ties of such fellowships.

Finally, every monopolistic fellowship develops both defensive and offensive strategies and tends to overreact when threatened in unanticipated ways: Hence, whistleblowers are often vilified, and their reputations and persons attacked to keep the wall of silence intact in the world of Human Rights Laundering.

Practical issues

I leave the reader to ponder the following questions:

1. Is there a need to investigate the potential existence of a transnational axis to undermine India, involving certain South Asian Studies scholar-activists in America, Indian NGOs and major US funding institutions, potentially with complicity or lack of knowledge of the full consequences?
2. Should there be a US Congressional hearing into the use of US taxpayer money to favor and spread one religion out of the many American religions in foreign lands?
3. Should there be a conflict-of-interest policy and code of ethics that will focus attention on ‘dual use’ human rights activities, and also prevent abuses of givers’ power over receivers? Should there be restrictions against co-mingling of funds, people or other resources between secular apolitical philanthropy on the one hand, and either religious activity or political activity on the other? As in the case of airport security and the case of policing money-laundering, the inconveniences caused by adopting transparency measures in human rights work would be outweighed by the benefits to society.
4. Should there be voluntary disclosure by all individuals and organisations in the human rights and charity fields, concerning their transnational funding and links, such that the public and other organisations have the information to evaluate?
5. Are the numerous instances of US-originated anti-Hinduism and anti-India scholarship merely random cases of the individual prejudices and personal bigotry of scholars, or are they a part of entrenched systemic biases?

Published: March 11, 2004

February is celebrated as America’s Black History Month, making it an opportune time to examine some important relationships between the Indian and black communities in this country. For one, there are longstanding ties between the two peoples that ought to be unearthed and rekindled. Mahatma Gandhi started his civil disobedience movement in South Africa, where he spent 21 years honing his political philosophy and leadership skills. The event that became the turning point in his life was when he was thrown off a train, because as a person of color he was not allowed to sit in first-class even though he had a first-class ticket. The indignity of this event, similar to that experienced by all people of color in South Africa at that time, launched him into a life of social and political activism. His movement culminated in the eventual overthrow of the British Empire and colonialism in general.

Gandhi’s non-violent struggle later inspired the young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who studied Gandhi’s civil disobedience approach known as satyagraha, and visited India in 1959 for a month. The details of this trip are memorably recounted in his essay, “My trip to the land of Gandhi”, published in Ebony magazine in 1959. Martin Luther King Jr. had this to say about the reception he received:

 “Since our pictures were in the newspapers very often it was not unusual for us to be recognized by crowds in public places and on public conveyances […] Virtually every door was open to us. We had hundreds of invitations that limited time did not allow us to accept. We were looked upon as brothers with the color of our skins as something of an asset. But the strongest bond of fraternity was the common cause of minority and colonial peoples in America, Africa and Asia struggling to throw off racialism and imperialism.” 

The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., too, has had recurring contact with India throughout his active career. On one trip, he spent six months in India prior to the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.

Recently, in 2008, on the occasion of Gandhi’s 60th death anniversary, he delivered the memorial lecture in New Delhi where he remarked, “One can argue that Mahatma Gandhi, known as Bapu (father) to his compatriots, was the spiritual godfather of these world-class figures (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela) who changed the world.”

Today, as Indian Americans have successfully established themselves in their newly adopted country, it is easy to forget the importance of these bonds. We must remember that the 1965 Immigration & Nationality Act, which opened the door for large numbers of Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans, was enacted against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and the changes in attitude that it created. This reversed the previous system designed to maintain the European racial composition of the United States.

Immigrants from India tended to be well-educated, middle-class professionals seeking prosperity, and they hit the ground running to seize the opportunities. Because most Indian Americans arrived after the Civil Rights Act, they did not experience the indignities suffered by African Americans. Because they belonged to the post-Independence generation of India, they hadn’t experienced life under colonial rule either. Professional success came relatively quickly to many Indians, which dulled the impetus to appreciate the benefits of a strong collective identity.

The long list of successful Indian Americans is impressive, but it has made many too self-centred and single-minded in economic pursuits. Success has led to the myth that “becoming American” makes a collective identity irrelevant. Few Indian leaders have studied the history of immigration and identity formation of other minorities in America. They are confused about what the hyphenated identity as “Indian-Americans” means, and what their unique American journey and cultural background could contribute to the fabric of this country.

The recent unceremonious dismissal of Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, despite his stellar record, should cause Indian Americans to do some soul-searching. Sadly, Pandit found himself without allies on his board of directors to defend him as one of their own. None of the board members was close enough to him even to give a hint that he was about to get fired. When he arrived at the fateful board meeting, he had no clue what was in store for him.

Moreover, this shocking episode went unscrutinized by our community that feels uncomfortable addressing its vulnerability for being “different.” Individual success, based solely on merit, has surely taken us a long way in America. The playing field is level enough to advance up to a point. Still, without the anchor and security of a collective voice, high-achieving Indians will remain the solitary outsiders, easy to bring down.

What does all this have to do with African Americans, one might wonder? My response is that they have deep memory and understanding of building community organizations in America. Black churches have historically played a strategic role in building a positive selfhood and collective consciousness, and today there are numerous African-American civic organizations with depth and maturity to secure their position. Unlike the case of Indian immigrants, theirs has not been a quick success journey, but a long, hard one with many valuable lessons learned along the way.

The Reconstruction era, after the emancipation of slaves, had offered many lessons to African Americans. Ostensibly, it was to be a period when blacks and whites would together rebuild the South, share political power and rehabilitate the former slaves. Indeed, many blacks attained prominent positions, and two blacks were elected as senators. So they felt little need to build separate institutions, imagining that the American melting pot would suffice. The advances made during the Reconstruction, however, proved to be short-lived. Soon, there was a backlash against blacks, and the nation entered the era of Jim Crow laws and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Freedom from slavery did not mean that whites accepted blacks as true equals in jobs and power. Equality had its limits, especially at times when whites faced economic distress.

After this experience, a new kind of African-American leadership emerged with a focus on building a resilient, independent identity with its own institutions. Unified action was encouraged. This groundwork ultimately led to the American Civil Rights Act in the 1960s, just as Gandhi’s struggle took nearly half a century of strenuous work before culminating in India’s independence. The African-American experience shows us that there is no substitute for grassroots community building and activism, an endeavor that Indian Americans have barely begun. Whether African Americans, Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans or Muslim Americans, the importance of investing in robust civic organizations based on a solid definition of one’s distinct identity has been indispensable in America.

Without such bottom-up community building, we can expect to see more Vikram Pandits, which are easily booted out. Or, as I wrote in my blog last week, there will be more Bobby Jindals willing to whitewash their ethnicity to get ahead. African Americans provide the experience we need to build a distinct identity in this country. Dr. King said it best: “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”

Published: February 8, 2013

I was quite shocked when I discovered that Indian philosophy is not being addressed properly in American universities. In fact, only two American universities offer a doctorate in Indian philosophy. In general, Indian thought is not considered philosophy but is being taught by the departments of religion, and badly at that, or by the departments of anthropology. This results in a complete misappreciation if not misunderstanding of Indian thought and consequently, the values of India.

One reason is that Western scholars have been shaped by Greco-Semitic concepts (concepts arising from the Grecian civilization and Semitic religions), and often cannot grasp the richer complexity of Indian philosophical thought. Hinduism, for instance, is usually perceived as being polytheistic; in reality it is both monotheistic and polytheistic — believing in one God taking different forms of manifestation.

It was another shock when I discovered that quite a number of Western scholars appropriate Indian philosophical concepts without quoting the sources, as if they were the results of their own original thinking. And I learned that the situation at American high schools is no better: there is inadequate understanding of India and Indian thought, and the Hinduism portrayed is dominated by negative stereotypes.

There is one exception to this, namely Buddhism. The Buddhists have good scholars, themselves practicing Buddhists, who teach the Buddhist religion. This also has to do with the fact that the Dalai Lama told his followers to go out and teach the traditions to keep it alive. So Tibetans went out and got their degrees in Western universities, and now they are teaching all over the world. But Hinduism, Sikhism or Jainism are often being taught by Americans, who themselves believe in other religious systems!

This is even considered desirable in the name of ‘objectivity’, while the same arms-length rule does not apply to Christianity for instance, which is taught by Christians and even preachers.

Educational Council on Indic Traditions

To address these problems, the Educational Council on Indic Traditions was created. One of its first aims is to fund a survey by some nationally recognized opinion polling firms to find out what the prevalent American attitudes, opinions and beliefs are about Indic traditions. They will, for example, poll schoolteachers, college students, very committed churchgoers, etc., to find out what these different demographic segments of Americans think about Indian traditions. Such a survey has never been held before and its importance is immense.

For, based on the information gathered by this survey, the Council will identify the most common stereotypes about Indic traditions, and then challenge them. There are various ways to do so. One is to fund the creation of a library of materials on India and Indic thought. The slide show, The Genius of India, which was recently produced by Auroville Press, is an excellent example of the type of materials needed. Other such slide-shows or films are needed, in order, for example, to challenge certain in-baked assumptions that poverty in India is a result of its Hindu religion.

I would also like to see a whole series of works on The History of Ideas. This would show that many of the ideas that have come out of India (such as language, mathematics and logic) are not attributed as such. This process of non-attribution continues today, often quite accidentally. For instance, Carl Jung scrupulously documented his Indic sources; but his students tend to attribute the ideas about consciousness and the human psyche and so forth, to Jung himself.

Lastly, the results of the public survey will be used to show to the school boards and universities in America that there is an absolute need for them to change the way in which they portray Indic traditions. It is important to address these issues through the academia for the majority of Americans form their values and their beliefs in an academic setting.

Lack of Scholars in India

The Council’s work will only begin once the survey is finished. For, there is a severe lack of good scholars, with proper academic credentials, to teach Indic thought. I found that even Indian universities do not specialize in Indian philosophy but concentrate instead on Western philosophy! So even when I succeed in convincing American universities to endow a chair or program in a particular branch of Indian thought, there are no suitable candidates available to fill that post. That is a distressing state of affairs, and it needs to be addressed.

The Council will also have to put energy in to the Indian academic institutions. It is necessary that India produce scholars of international standing that can teach Indic thought in all its aspects. For example, Sri Aurobindo represents in its most modern form and concept, Indian philosophical thought as it has developed over thousands of years. Yet I cannot find a single university in India that can supply me with scholars having doctorate degrees in Sri Aurobindo’s thought.

If we could create a ‘Chair of Sri Aurobindo Studies’ in the philosophy or psychology departments of the main Indian universities, those who get a degree there would be able to fill academic positions elsewhere, e.g. in the US, and Indic thought would get recognition. The Council intends to fund such chairs, as well as the research and dissemination of Indic thought, so that a body of scholars in different Indic traditions with strong academic credentials will be created.

Another way is to bring academic people from America to India and let them see for themselves. I have two high school teachers with me on this trip. And this is an area in which Auroville could play a most important role. Auroville is unique: you have people here, steeped in Indian thought and of great sincerity and commitment, which can bridge the cultural gap. We need to make maximum use of the resources you have built. We could also collaborate on the production of educational materials.

More generally, I think Auroville needs to have a global outreach program. I don’t know if you are ready yet — maybe it’s too early. You are unknown to most of the world. But Auroville should be part of the movement in US variously called Consciousness Studies, Human Potential, post-Christian spirituality, etc. You should attend important conferences and have a presence there — as Auroville. You should present your story.

Published: 2001

As a “rebuttal” to President Obama’s inaugural address, Bobby Jindal, the Indian-American governor of Louisiana, delivered last week before the Republican National Committee what I consider a misleading and somewhat controversial address.

A likely presidential contender in 2016, Jindal played his card as a person of color. Referring to the string of offensive remarks and gaffes made by Republicans against women, minorities and the middle class, Jindal declared: “We’ve got to stop being the stupid party”. Neglecting people of color was a big reason for losing elections, he claimed, implicitly positioning himself as the solution. But does Jindal truly speak for any community of color, or is this just another round of creative political opportunism? Most Indian-Americans have been dismayed to see that he has done nothing for our community, while soliciting us for campaign funds. He had morphed at an early age into exactly the kind of candidate that the people of his southern, conservative state would elect.

When minorities in America break racial, ethnic or religious barriers, it is assumed that they pave the way for future generations. Their communities celebrate their victories, believing that they too will be the beneficiaries of those accomplishments. In the case of Jindal, however, it has dawned on our community that we are being “stupid” for supporting him. For one, Jindal never loses an opportunity to downplay and deny his Indian and Hindu roots, unlike African-Americans or Hispanics who, upon entering powerful positions, remain fully anchored to their respective communities, crediting those communities for the nurturing they provided. It is indeed amazing that many Indian-Americans continue to applaud and support Jindal, imagining that he opens doors for us.

My blog last week talked about the way many Indians in the West allay their “difference anxiety” (as minorities) by assuming a “whitewashed” identity where differences are minimized. America’s history is the story of new waves of immigrants struggling to enter whiteness, which denotes not race alone but the status of full-fledged insiders in the power structure. The definition of who is white has changed over time. The Irish, Poles, Greeks, Italians and Jews “became white” after much struggle.

Whiteness may have expanded in scope over time, but it rejects those, like Hindu-Americans, who fall outside the Judeo-Christian religious group. Can the Hindu-American remain a Hindu and “become white”? To address this question, Khyati Joshi’s book, “New roots in America’s Sacred Ground”, provides empirical data to prove that there is religious bias facing Indian-Americans on account of being Hindu. In other words, Hinduism is seen by most Americans as a marker of non-white ethnicity. This should be enough impetus for Indian-Americans (the vast majority of whom are Hindu) to claim a separate identity that is distinct, not white or black, not Judeo-Christian, and yet wholly American.

The example of Jindal demonstrates the pressure to capitulate for the sake of political ambition. Jindal couldn’t change his color, but he converted his religion to become less different from the dominant white Christians of his party. His personal narrative amplifies his conversion to Roman Catholicism, even though he was raised Hindu by immigrant parents who were very active leaders in the local Hindu temple in Louisiana. He feels no qualms in making statements hurtful to the sentiments of the community from which he derives his “minority” card. In a piece some years ago, he said when asked about his conversion: “the motivation behind my conversion, however, was my belief in one, objectively true faith (Christianity). If Christianity is merely one of many equally valid religions, then the sacrifices I made, including the loss of my family’s peace, were senseless”. Presumably, the conversion of his Hindu Punjabi wife to Roman Catholicism some years later occurred by her having coincidentally the exact same epiphany as he did.

To those of us Indian-Americans who are unwilling to obliterate our identity and get “digested” into the whitestream, Jindal is no trailblazer. He does not speak for us and merely uses his Indian-American status to gain leverage with Republicans who must now present a more inclusive face in order to remain relevant. His life underscores the fact that America has a long way to go before Indians and Hindus can project openly and without negative consequences the full range of their cultural and religious identity.

Carving a distinct non-white Indian identity is also hampered by the trajectory followed by many Indian-Americans in the humanities, who prove their competence by promoting mainly European epistemological categories which nowadays means “theories” of culture, textual analysis, etc. that have been accepted by the Anglo-American academy as a part of the “canon of theories” in use. The Hindu equivalent of such theories would be the vast and sophisticated range of “siddhantas”. But these are simply ignored in modern/postmodern studies, trivially dismissed, or mapped/co-opted into trendy new theories owned by Western experts or their whitened Indian followers. This new kind of colonization is being celebrated as “theory power.” I call it epistemic arrogance. Harvard University’s Homi Bhabha is a role model hoisted by the American establishment for young Indian-Americans in English Departments and Postcolonial Studies to emulate. He has proven himself as having the “white gaze”. This is the liberal path to becoming white, just as Christianizing was Bobby Jindal’s biblical path to whiteness. One may think of these paths as left-wing and right-wing whiteness, respectively.

At the height of the Jim Crow era, African-Americans saw in their midst the phenomenon of “passing”, where lighter-skinned blacks would assume a semi-white racial identity in order to avoid the restrictions and prejudices of a segregated South. “Passing” was viewed as offensive, an attempt by some blacks to take the shortcut to racial parity rather than pitch in and do the hard work of achieving equality for the entire community , including those unable and unwilling to “pass.” In 2013, Bobby Jindal didn’t need to scrub off his color. Converting his religion, accent, ideologies, and loyalties has sufficed. His brown skin merely positions him to take advantage of America’s changing demographics. Jindal shows that in America, Hindu-Americans continue to feel the pressure to pass.

Published: January 31, 2013