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The next Pope is vital not only to Catholics, but people of other faiths as well. It would help if he redefined the church’s approach to other religions

Given the power of the Vatican, the choice of a new pope will impact people of all faiths, not just Catholics. Whenever there is a change of national leadership in the USA, China, Russia or other large country, it gets discussed and debated by people of all countries because it impacts everyone.

Unfortunately, the discussions surrounding the change of the pope have been largely limited to the internal issues within the Catholic Church. I’d like to argue that this transition into a new papacy presents a historic opportunity to change the world in a significant way for the better. All of us, including non-Christians, are stakeholders in this conversation.

Specifically, it would be a watershed event if the new pope would reorient the Church’s policy towards other faiths, and implement this change in the structure and practice of the Church.

Thus far, the most generous official posture of the Vatican towards non-Christians has been laid down in the “Lumen Gentium,” a doctrinal statement emerging from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). This document, now part of the official teaching of the Church, makes a rather grudging and highly qualified concession to other faiths. It says that God is the Saviour who wills that all men be saved, and then it makes the following patronising statement: “Those also can attain to salvation who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.”

This statement has not improved interfaith relations on the ground, for three reasons. Firstly, Lumen Gentium does not recognise non-Abrahamic faiths such as Hinduism to be worthy of respect as equals; it merely recognises that all men as individuals do have conscience. Also, it presupposes the Christian view that the human condition requires “salvation.”

Secondly, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council suffered a big setback when Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) issued an updated doctrine called “Dominus Jesus.” This edict clarified that the “truth of other religions” was limited compared to Catholicism, and no others could be considered on par with it. This rejection of genuine pluralism implies that other faiths can help prepare a person up to a point only, while the Church alone can fully implement religious truth, its doctrines taking precedence over all others wherever there is discrepancy.

This posture allows many churchmen to speak from both sides of their mouths. It means that other faiths’ legitimacy depends on the extent to which they can be mapped onto Catholic dogma about the nature of the human problem (“sin”) and the nature of the solution (“salvation through Jesus”). (See my earlier blog, “Tolerance isn’t good enough.” )

Thirdly, there is no Church mandate or structure in place that would allow for such a significant change of attitude. Such a shift would have to entail, among other things, the denunciation of aggressive and manipulative missionising of the sort that tells people they are “going to hell” if they are not Christians. (According to many Catholic views, some of them still held, all one billion Hindus and Buddhists – yes, even Gandhi and the Buddha and all the dharmic saints and sadhus, parents, ancestors and children – have followed a “false” faith, the consequence of which is eternal damnation in hell’s inferno.) The new pope should reject the right and competence of any religious body to pass such sweeping judgment on other faiths.

The theological basis for the dramatic change I seek would lie in directly addressing the problem to which my work repeatedly calls attention: the “history centrism” which leads the Abrahamic religions to claim that we can resolve the human condition only by following the lineage of prophets arising from the Middle East. All other teachings and practices are required to get reconciled with this special and peculiar history. By contrast, the dharmic traditions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism – do not rely on history in the same absolutist and exclusive way. This dharmic flexibility has made a fundamental pluralism possible which cannot occur within the constraints of history centrism, at least as understood so far. (See my book, Being Different, for a detailed explanation and comparison of Abrahamic history centrism and dharmic approaches.)

While I recognise that the centrality of revelation through history is a core value in the Abrahamic faiths, I would point out that not only does it cause problems for non-Abrahamic faiths, but among the Abrahamic traditions as well. Their respective rival claims cannot be reconciled as long as they cling to a literal account of the Middle Eastern past, an insistence that this past is absolutely determinative of religious truth.

This is a very serious and complex conversation that needs to start in order to bring a new level of interfaith collaboration, one that moves beyond rivalry and platitudes. The new pope could champion such a conversation. What I would like to see is that the Catholic Church advance its ideas towards what may be considered as Vatican III, rather than regress backwards and retreat from the beginning that was made in Vatican II and slide into the doctrine of Dominus Jesus.

The next pope will need to have not only the skills of a corporate turnaround executive who can implement deep administrative reform, but also those of a “big thinker” – someone with theological vision, in-depth appreciation of other faiths, and the courage to re-examine long held attitudes in his Church.

In my view, such a person will not be identified on the basis of the identity politics and ethnicity issues that the media is currently promoting. As an Indian, I am by convention a “person of colour,” yet it matters not whether the new pope is black, brown, white, red or yellow of skin. What does matter is that he should undertake house cleaning on such issues as punishing sex abusers and corrupt churchmen, and bringing diversity of theological perspective more than diversity of ethnic identity.

Of course, I support the recent galvanisation of victims’ groups, concerned citizens and the legal community to demand accountability for the notoriously opaque Church governance. It is good that individuals with purportedly divinely ordained authority are finally being taken to task by ordinary humans seeking dignity and reason. But I am disappointed that the demands have focused on internal and administrative changes only.

If the Vatican would drop claims of exclusivity over religious truth, and reexamine dogmas such as the Nicene Creed, it would pressure other denominations of Christianity to follow suit. The Vatican, after all, is the single largest corporate institution of any religion in the world. The moral pressure on others would be huge if the Pope were to champion a new world order among all faiths in earnest, and not as a gimmick to increase his own flock. Once Christendom becomes genuinely pluralistic, Islam and other exclusivist religions would be under pressure to follow suit. The leader of the Catholic Church can thus change the world.

Being realistic, however, I do not expect to see a Gorbachev-like new pope who would challenge the Vatican as radically as Gorbachev challenged the Soviet empire. But let this historic opportunity not get lost. The conversation must begin.

If anyone questions the propriety of my raising this issue on the grounds that I am an outsider to the Catholic Church, let me simply say that as a world citizen I am a stakeholder in the outcome of this process. I do not think the Vatican can continue to operate with respect and legitimacy if it fails to attend to voices such as mine.

Afro-Americans realised that the end of slavery did not end racism. Indian Americans must similarly realise that they cannot gain acceptance in modern-day US by trying to become more white

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 long-standing 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 colour 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 colour 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 in all the years of his active career. In one trip he spent six months in India prior to the Civil Rights Movement in the US.

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 become established successfully 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 that was 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, and 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 and this dulled the impetus to appreciate the benefits of a strong collective identity.

The long list of successful Indian Americans is impressive indeed, but it has made many too self-centered 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 own board of directors to defend him as one of their own. In fact, none of the board members was close enough to him to even give a hint that he was about to get fired. When he arrived at the fateful board meeting, he had no clue of what was in store for him.

Moreover, this shocking episode went unscrutinised 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, but 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 organisations 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 organisations 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.

It was after this experience that 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 organisations 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, easily booted out. Or, as I wrote in my blog last week , there will be more Bobby Jindals willing to whitewash their ethnicity in order to get ahead. African Americans provide the experience we need for building 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.”

The kind of people now congregating under the AAP’s umbrella suggests that this is the new big tent under which the Congress party’s voter base and the elite can find shelter after the failure of Sonia Gandhi’s party

Delhi’s recent watershed event has far greater significance than the experts have suggested.  The rise of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) should be seen as the beginning of a new nationwide phenomena, not limited to Delhi. One may think of AAP as Congress 2.0 – having the same base of popular as well as elite supporters, minus only the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

For the past century, certain communities used to combine their political voices under the umbrella of the Congress, until Congress started to meltdown as a revolt against the dynasty. For a while, these ‘homeless’ communities of voters wandered in different directions, experimentally and opportunistically supporting different parties, including the BJP. These forces – which I have termed ‘fragments’ – have now found a new home in AAP. Hence, the Congress has been reinvented into a new legal body called AAP.

Kejriwal wears a Gandhi cap. In the eyes of his support base, he projects a Mohandas Gandhi-type of simple lifestyle, humility and dharmic values. His integrity has been accepted by an immensely broad base in Delhi, and it may be expected to spread elsewhere. It brings together caste groups and minorities by providing them a shared umbrella. It attracts many well-educated and wealthy supporters who prefer this choice on idealistic grounds.

All this actually resembles the old Congress before Sonia Gandhi killed it. The collapse of Congress due to Sonia Gandhi’s misrule and too much family domination is what its support base has rejected, not the ‘big tent’ ideals it once had.

The Congress’s formal structure resisted getting rid of the dynasty and the ethos of corruption it tolerated. So the only way to give a rebirth to the Congress was to migrate its ideological and human assets to a new legal entity – and leave the family behind, holding an empty shell.

Under such a scenario, the BJP’s rise could be a temporary phenomenon resulting from a one-time dividend. There was a time-lag between the two events, and this window became the “BJP era”. The collapse of the old did not instantly give rise to a new entity. During this interim period, the BJP was able to attract many communities and leaders into its fold. It enjoyed success because there was no competing structure with broad appeal.

The implication is that BJP should not imagine that it has a secure, robust base with a long term loyalty to its ideals or leadership. By no means do I suggest that BJP’s domination is over. What I do propose is that a new era of two-party competition might be emerging in which AAP will play a role similar to that once played by Congress.

In the light of this, BJP would need a radical rethinking. It should introspect its own narrative, and whether this (as perceived by the public) is viable in the long run on a national level. I have many specific points in this regard which I shall not share in this brief comment. BJP needs to conduct a detailed re-evaluation of the manner in which it has run the NDA government during the past nine months. Trivialising the Delhi debacle would be another blunder it cannot afford. It would be well advised to honestly and courageously make some major mid-course changes.

The purpose of the manual is to provoke young scholars in the West to launch attacks against anyone who dares to criticise the high and mighty academician

The organisers of the recent ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ conference have now initiated a new movement to attack those who have dared to criticise their work. I am named their principal target, the culprit number one. They have announced a ‘Field Manual’ containing a timeline of what they call the “harassment of academic scholars” by Hindus like me. This manual presents a list of the main opponents of Western academic scholarship. The purpose is to provoke their young scholars to launch attacks against anyone who dares to criticise the high and mighty academicians.

In one sense, this is flattering because I am being hoisted as the most important Hindu scholar that their entire cabal should attack. One way or another, by hook or crook, lies and deceit, the desperate goal seems to be to intimidate me, discredit me, and somehow stop my work from further damaging the reputations of these emperors who find themselves with no clothes.

I want to use this opportunity to make a few points. First, their latest move highlights an inability to face criticism, especially since my critiques have always been presented in a systematic and scholarly manner, free of personal or ad hominem attacks. My record is open for anyone to examine and judge for themselves. I have published many books that became bestsellers. I also have nearly 1,300 video lectures freely available online for the public to evaluate whether my criticism is authentic and scholarly or deserves to be characterised as “harassment”.

I can categorically say that my work is research-based and is not about making personal attacks. Of course, I cannot be held responsible for other people’s conduct. I can only be held accountable for my own utterances, which have been entirely scholarly. The difference between a scholar and an activist is precisely that the activist can turn emotional and start a mudslinging fight, something I do not relish.

The above-mentioned movement to hound me shows how shallow the claim of academic freedom really is. Academicians operate in cartels of like-minded teams that build on each other’s work. Only a measured amount of criticism is acceptable among themselves.

Also Read: Dismantling Global Hindutva

But I am an outsider to the cabal, not trained by them or at their mercy for professional, financial, or other needs. They are not accustomed to a well-informed Indian who speaks on behalf of the Indian tradition very assertively, with rigour, authenticity and clarity, and invites opponents to debate his research and argumentation. I am especially dangerous because I have developed alternative frameworks for thinking. My work does not consist of isolated criticisms here and there but offers a completely different framework. Such a person is intolerable to the academic community because he is not their typical “native informant” from another culture, nor available as a coolie or sepoy to work under them. Therefore, he must be condemned as a harasser.

Characterising my work as harassment would have been justified if I had criticised scholars for some trivial reason or tried to suppress their freedom of speech. But I thrive on public debate. Every time I have published a book, I have called on the academic community to have open debates. It is their side that has refused to engage as they cannot face their bias being exposed. They have always ignored my open invitations and decided to claim to be victims being harassed. This ploy no longer works because there is a large community of awakened people who have followed my work and are voicing their views audaciously.

Ironically, my critics have made me important. This latest development shows that they find me non-ignorable even though they do not like to show publicly that they read my books closely and secretly adjust their work to cover themselves. Numerous friends who work within the academic system keep informing me that my books are systematically taught in many universities, and students are asked to develop rejoinders.

Unfortunately, our supporters and Indian think tanks have done nothing to promote our serious work, though they borrow from my writings all the time. I seem to be more famous among my opponents than with my supporters. It is a badge of honour that academic scholars are studying my work over the past three decades because they find it important to counter.

China has been using artificial intelligence as its strategic weapon to leapfrog ahead of the United States and achieve global domination

Artificial intelligence amplifies human mind and ingenuity in amazing ways across virtually every domain. It is the engine driving the latest technological disruption that is shaking the foundations of society. My use of the term includes the entire ecosystem of technologies that AI propels forward, such as quantum computing, semiconductors, nanotechnology, medical technology, brain-machine interface, robotics, aerospace, 5G, and much more.

On the one hand, AI is the holy grail of technology; the advance that people hope will solve problems across virtually every domain of our lives. On the other, it is disrupting several delicate equilibriums and creating conflicts on a variety of fronts. I discuss the impact of this game-changing technology in my book, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power.

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

The percentage of vulnerable jobs will continue to increase over time. The obsolescence will be far worse in developing countries where the standard of education is poor.

The routine assurance given to these reasonable concerns is that when AI eliminates certain jobs, those employees forced out will move up the value chain to higher-value tasks. This simplistic and misleading answer overlooks the fact that the training and education required to advance people is not happening nearly at the same feverish rate as the adoption of AI.

Those that promise the solution of re-education have not thus far put their money where their mouth is. The gap of employee qualifications will inevitably widen.

Business owners and labour have competing interests, with the former looking to optimise profits and the latter concerned about wages and employment. Artificial Intelligence disrupts this precarious balance because it suddenly kills old jobs; it also creates new jobs, but the most lucrative new ones will be concentrated in communities with high levels of education and availability of capital.

More broadly, AI will worsen the divide between the rich and poor, the haves and the have-nots, and this could precipitate social instability. Especially for countries like India, where a large percentage of the population lacks the education that is vital to survive a technological tsunami. Civic leaders, politicians, public intellectuals, and media cannot continue to ignore the evolution of AI.

China has been using AI as its strategic weapon to leapfrog ahead of the United States and achieve global domination. Both these superpowers recognise AI as the prized summit to conquer in their race for leadership in economic, political and military affairs. While aerospace, semiconductors, biotech, and other technologies are crucial in this race, AI brings them together and catapults them to new levels.

Both these countries are heavily invested in AI, and between them they control the vast majority of AI-related intellectual property, investments, market share and key resources.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Chinese military are among those developing AI systems that multiply a single fighter plane into a squadron or mini air force of drones at the push of a button. Similarly, artificial foot soldiers will be adept at negotiating potholes, rocks, landmines, shrubs — any natural or artificial land features that create significant obstacles for the average soldier.

Robotic warriors will eventually perform more effectively than human soldiers in tough terrain and climatic conditions. Both China and the US are upgrading their weapons systems to fight wars with smart autonomous weapons, and the strategic and tactical decision-making will be supported by AI-based systems capable of analysing complex situations and taking independent action.

Besides competing directly against each other, the US and China will also compete for control over satellite nations and new colonies. This results from the fact that the disruptive technology will weaken many sovereign states and destabilise fragile political equilibriums. There is a realistic scenario for the re-colonisation of the world as digital colonies.

China’s rise to power in this century must be compared with Britain’s emergence as the world power in the 1700s. Britain achieved dominance through the Industrial Revolution, and China aspires to achieve it through the AI revolution. China has successfully catapulted itself from a poor country to an imperial power, asserting its influence over Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia.

China has gambled its entire nation-building strategy and is taking huge risks and making bold long-term investments. No other country has bet so much of its future on AI. Given its form of government, China can gather data about its population better than other countries. In fact, its citizens are accustomed to the loss of privacy and have become convinced of the benefits to the collective good. There is no serious resistance to surveillance in China.

China is projecting its technology and financial capital to colonise other countries, most notably Pakistan and developing countries in Africa. Colonisation secures the strategic trade routes, the sources of raw materials, and the captive markets for its industrial goods. In some places China has already started using AI facial recognition to monitor populations on behalf of totalitarian regimes. Such applications are a new kind of colonisation facilitated by AI.

A key contributor to the consolidation of AI-based global power is the harvesting of big data from poor countries where it is easy to take advantage of ignorant and corrupt leaders. Private companies controlling this technology could become more powerful than many countries, just as the British East India Company — a private joint-stock company — became more powerful than any country of its time. What does this portend for India today?

Overpopulation, unemployment and poor education make India especially vulnerable. Many of its industries are technologically obsolete and dependent on imported technologies. India currently has a disappointing level of AI development and it needs to embark on a rapid programme to catch up. India is home to one of the largest talent pools of young brains, yet the short-sighted policies of its leaders continue to sell them out as cheap labour to make quick profits from wage arbitrage.

In this way, India has squandered its software lead. While aspiring to become a world-class manufacturing base, most of India’s workforce is likely to remain immured in low-wage and low-skill tasks relative to better educated countries. India’s education system is uncompetitive to produce workers for the industries of the future.

India is lagging behind China in AI by at least a decade, and it also routinely gives away its unique data assets to foreign countries because of the ignorance of its leaders. Given its lack of effective strategic planning on AI and big data, plus its dependence on American digital platforms and Chinese hardware, India might slip further towards digital colonisation.

We must question and openly debate why India lags at least a decade behind China in AI and related technologies, despite India having been recently proclaimed as the world leader in software. How vulnerable is India to becoming a digital colony of the West and China? How do Indian industries, military, and other sectors stack up in addressing the AI-based technological revolution?

India’s security involves combating internal insurgencies as well as protecting long borders with hostile neighbours; this requires considerable manpower that consumes the bulk of the military budget. Insufficient funds remain for indigenous R&D and technology related modernisation. India is dependent on imported weapons to defend itself.

It is impossible to escape the ubiquitous impact of AI technologies, as an individual, a society and a country. Asking these tough and incisive questions and raising the level of national discourse is now necessary more than ever.

Indians were once upon a time (during the days of Nalanda, Taxashila and other world-class universities) the preeminent producers and exporters of knowledge, ideas and values to the rest of Asia. Now we are consumers of what the Western institutions teach us. We are stuck in a system of dependency so serious that our elites feel they must get certified by the West in order to be credible back home in India. But I will explain that a window of opportunity has opened up and we cannot afford to miss this chance to take back our leadership role as knowledge producer and exporter. This window is due to the disruptions caused by the internet.

One of the latest trends in US universities is the growing role of foreigners, including Indians, in the affairs of these universities. First this role was only in the form of foreign students bringing in billions of dollars. Many US academic institutions are financially dependent on foreign students because they cannot meet their expenses through domestic student tuitions alone. An effect of this has been that a large number of Indian elites (both in USA and those returning to India) have been influenced by American values and principles, both good and bad. From the US side, this is not only a great source of tuition fees but also a way to spread its intellectual influence.

A more recent trend is for wealthy Indians to invest in US universities for personal brand building. (See an interesting article, titled, ‘Harvard is a hedge fund with a university attached.’) This is shortsighted and dangerous. Indians are giving grants and endowments to US universities without adequately evaluating the subject matter being produced by the scholars. It’s about wealthy Indians seeking a seat at the high table of prestige in American society. They see their family name on a building or attached to an academic chair as their next step in climbing the social ladder. Few donors get sufficiently involved in the details of the subject matter and the impact that is being created by their donation.

A major contrast between India and China in this regard is that China retains strict control over the disciplines pertaining to its civilization, values, domestic politics and culture. They readily buy (or use unscrupulous means to acquire) Western science, technology and business knowhow. But they do not want to brainwash their youth with Western prejudices in areas of the humanities that are considered sensitive to the interest of national unity and security. India has not been able to appreciate this strategic point even now.

Against this backdrop, I want to explain how some tectonic trends that are taking place in US higher education are rapidly making brick and mortar university campuses obsolete. I wish to advise those giving donations to US academic institutions to step back and rethink their strategies with future trends in mind. Most donations being given are wasteful because they fund obsolete models at a time when they should be funding the incubation of new models.

The single most important trend that is revolutionizing education is information technology, especially the internet. Teaching platforms like the Khan Academy are the wave of the future, not the physical classroom in a brick and mortar building. The old-fashioned teacher is being squeezed out along with the physical classroom. The total cost of higher education in the US is estimated to exceed $500 billion annually, using old delivery models. Many administrators in major universities are worried that their institutions are becoming like the dinosaurs. A disruption is long overdue and we should see this as an opportunity for creative entrepreneurship. This may be seen as a part of the wider trend in dis-intermediation (bypassing of the middleman) taking place in various industries.

• The new cloud-based teaching methods are rapidly threatening the old school systems in many ways, such as the following:
• Huge campuses are becoming obsolete. In the future, the buildings required will be mostly those with laboratories and high-tech infrastructure that cannot become virtual. The ordinary classroom will become almost extinct.
• Old teaching materials are already obsolete. The teacher’s class notes that were once written on the board or handed out in class are now a waste of time because all that is readily available online. With video conferencing, considerable interaction is also available without physical meetings.
• This trend will lower tuitions significantly because it is not necessary to hire full-time faculty.
• This also changes the demand side of university professors and impacts the future of academicians as a profession. Many subject matter experts who are not formally classified as professors will be teaching part-time and sharing their knowledge and practical experience. The old style professor with limited real world experience will be replaced by learned persons who will also bring their lived experience to teach.
• All this means an end to the ivory tower academic snobbery of the past, in which there was great prestige associated with being a professor disconnected from mundane life. Now the floodgates are opening for teaching that is brought by knowledgeable individuals who are embedded within communities and who also speak as voices of the community.
• Higher education will be a lifelong pursuit and not limited to a few years of college/university. Most workers will take online courses as a regular part of staying current with the trends in their field. Education will be seen as something you do all your life and for which you do not need necessarily to take several years off.

While the above list of changes pertains to the teaching side of higher education, there are equally revolutionary changes expected in the research side, especially in the humanities. Let us discuss religious studies in the US academy, as an example.

Twenty-five years ago, when I first started monitoring and intervening in the American academic research on Hinduism, the academic fortress was a formidable center of power. To make any impact, it was crucial to get inside the system one way or another. But today, an increasing amount of high quality scholarly works are being published by scholars and practitioners outside the walls of the academic fortress. Many guru movements have their own writings and publishing houses. The new works produced by Hindu movements are not only about standard topics like Bhagavad Gita, but also pertain to issues of society, politics, family, health, etc. Many other groups started by civic society now nurture non-academic research and publishing. These new suppliers are seen as threats to the turf traditionally controlled by the academicians. The academic empire is fighting back, but it is a losing battle. (I am an example of someone seen as a threat to the officially credentialed producers of knowledge about my culture.)

The number of readers who receive their knowledge about religion from sources outside the academy far exceeds the number who are sitting in class to learn from their professor. The American academicians refused to accept this trend during the past two decades when I tried to explain it to them. They were too arrogant to be open to this new reality. The pride of being the exclusive source of knowledge had been instilled in them during their PhD, and was seen as their ticket to success that could never be taken away. This attitude of the senior professors has misguided the new generation of academicians, and made the academic system insular and vulnerable.

Today, most people get their knowledge about religions (their own and those of others) through television, online sources, personal travels to sacred and holy sites, teachings from their gurus and swamis, and reading materials published by non-academic writers. If someone wants to invest in spreading particular ideas about our traditions, the investment is better spent on such platforms and not on feeding the old system which is rapidly becoming obsolete. Instead, they should rethink the dynamics of this intellectual kurukshetra of civilizational discourse. Only then can they develop a more viable strategy for interventions.

Indians have in the past bought used technologies and obsolete models in certain industries, at a time when the Western countries exporting these were migrating to new paradigms. I feel many of us are being fooled into investing in what will become obsolete models of higher education.

Instead of funding American higher education’s pre-internet era system, India should develop the next generation platforms. And India should not be content with a back-office role in this emerging industry, but should develop and own the brands seen by the end users (i.e. the students). Besides developing the platforms and delivery systems, Indians should also lead in content development and educational methodology, especially in areas where traditional Indian systems would give us a competitive advantage.

India should formulate a totally pragmatic approach for dealing with Trump. This would be different than the typical ideological approaches Indians have tended to use in international affairs. In other words, do not pigeon hole Trump into Left/Right categories. Understand his top priorities as president, and make concrete deals that are free of lofty ideologies.

India’s most important diplomatic offensive should be on Baluchistan. Convince Trump that a game changer would be to free Baluchistan from Pakistan by supporting the Baluchi freedom movement. This will involve US military intervention. And it will change the map of the region forever. Afghanistan will get access to the sea via Baluchistan, and the US will no longer have to suck up to Pakistan for supplying its troops. Afghans will love this freedom from the Pakis. So will the other Central Asian “stan” countries that are presently landlocked. A potential new sea access for Russia will also be a negotiating card to deal with Putin. Pakistan will lose its geostrategic positioning, a card it has played very skillfully for too long.

For its part, India should offer military help in Afghanistan, but only if USA guarantee’s an independent Baluchistan. This will be a win-win deal of a kind that is right up Trump’s alley. Russia may decide to join. A clandestine or indirect role for Israel should also be discussed. As a side benefit, this might also open a new door in negotiating with Iran, given its strategic interests concerning Baluchistan.

Senior Indian military officials should lead strategic discussions with Trump. India should avoid sending the standard team of Indian diplomats because Americans appreciate clear-cut, no-nonsense dealmakers rather than woolly-headed poets or ideologues. This pragmatism will be even more applicable in dealing with Trump. India should also consider appointing some ex-military person as its ambassador to the USA. This US relationship should be a top priority for Ajit Doval.

The most important diplomatic defensive deal would be to convince Trump to end US governmental support for Christian evangelism in India. He was heavily backed by the evangelicals, and they are experienced in extracting foreign policy assistance from the US government. Trump needs to be convinced that a strong India is good for US interests. Weakening India by encouraging the breaking India forces would eventually play into the hands of Islam and China. In the long run, a fragmented India would not become a Christian country, but rather a battleground for the return of Mughalstan. It would be a worse nightmare for the USA than the entire Middle East is. My book, Breaking India, gives a detailed argument in its first and last chapters. This should become required reading for Indian officials involved in this discussion.

The above two-pronged strategy (offence and defence) combines carrots and sticks. India must present itself with a strong posture. It must not become available as an ally in desperate need to get saved.

Issues like H1B visa are important, no doubt. But corporate India and corporate America are already closely aligned on this. Trump will listen to corporate America. That is a good channel to use. The Indian government should lend support, but not dilute its attention from the two top priority opportunities mentioned above.

It is important that NRIs based in the USA should not leverage this event to get government appointments for friends and family. Unfortunately, that is what happened when Obama won – his Indian supporters instantly morphed into personal lobbyists for posts and prestige. They forgot their dharmic responsibility for India. There must be vigilance against this.

After a brief period of chaos on Wall Street, things will recover and stabilise. A more robust economic foundation will emerge in the USA. Trump does have a streak of anarchy like Arvind Kejriwal – the anti-establishment rhetoric. But the United States has a far more mature and robust network of institutions. This sense of chaos and lack of stability will be temporary.

This is also a watershed event in the global collapse of pseudo-liberalism. I use this term to mean liberalism that has become a mask of hypocrisy. Why is a soft stance on Islam considered a requirement for liberalism? Why are elitist individuals and groups having so much power in the guise of liberalism? Despite all its talk of human rights and other liberal agendas, the global movement has caused conflicts, uprooted traditions and promoted pseudo-secularism.

Brexit and now the Trump presidency will compel nations to re-negotiate the relationship between global and local. Trump will also experiment and evolve a new kind of conservatism in his way. The Republican Party must reinvent itself. The prevailing genre of conservative thinking was formulated by the brilliant William Buckley, Jr. I don’t agree with many of his thoughts, but I appreciate the huge imprint he made on the American conservative movement. The Trump era will generate similar fresh thinking just as Reagan inspired a new generation of conservatives for his time. The West’s conservative movement has gone through so many new developments since the second world war: from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher to William Buckley, and many others along the way. And now the temporary collapse of the myth of American Exceptionalism has become the crucible for developing a new national myth using conservative principles.

However, I am concerned about India’s intellectual crisis and the present state of conservatism in India. The old dynasty politics and the old pseudo-secular intellectualism are marginalised. But disruption is only half the story. We also need construction of new ideas. Where are the new and vibrant thinkers of the calibre of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay? I am disappointed that Hindu intellectuals tend to idolise the 50-year old works of previous giants, but lack the institutional mechanisms to help us compete in the global intellectual Kurukshetra. The best way to respect our previous great thinkers is to continue their level of creativity and audacity.

The Hindu re-awakening movement must improve its game in the intellectual Kurukshetra. Unfortunately, we suffer from a deficiency of competent scholars and institutional mechanisms. Hindus are often being represented by substandard voices. Emotional bombast and political patronage are depleting prana and overshadowing vigour and originality. The paucity of internationally competitive fresh Hindu research has many causes. The chief one is the belief that “everything has already been written”. Such persons hide their laziness behind one-liner wisdom and cronyism, instead of pursuing merit and professionalism.

A typical example of this syndrome happened just a few days back. Two of my books (‘Breaking India’ and ‘Being Different’) were attacked by some middle-ranking Hindu leaders on a bizarre allegation: that fifty years ago some prominent Hindus had already written books that were “exactly same” as mine, thereby making all my work redundant and counterproductive. The critics failed to notice that ‘Breaking India’ focuses on exposing many present-day individuals and organisations that did not even exist fifty years ago. And the insights explained in ‘Being Different’ are fresh compared to the supposedly “same” books written in a bygone era. The critics were satisfied with superficial similarities without any interest (or ability) to look deeper. Such turf protection is a form of tribalism driven by personal insecurity and ambition. The best way to respect our past great thinkers is not by worshipping their old books, but by continuing their parampara with fresh research outputs in response to today’s Kurukshetra. The clash of civilisations is becoming ever more complex, and the playing field has certainly not been frozen for the past fifty years. Our tradition was built on very high standards of intellectual excellence. But today there is a cacophony of voices of individuals who barely read serious material – forget about original writing. I have also heard some senior Hindu leaders flippantly dismiss the need for fresh research and intellectualism. It amazes me that retrograde voices can climb up in some Hindu organisations.

Hindus must invest in serious investigative work. This includes the revival of the tradition of purva-paksha methods for debating opponents in a respectful manner. We must re-educate the so-called “educated class”, with the use of game-changing discourse. We must encourage self-critiques rather than wasting time at the “feel good” gatherings of “like-minded people”. Resource allocations and appointments should be merit based and not driven by loyalty to leaders. Anyone appointed to lead a “think tank” should have already excelled in thinking, which means having a track record of high impact publications. The new government is conspicuous by its absence in the theatre of civilisation discourse. The is no strategic coherence across its Byzantine maze of departments. Fortunately, the Indian Left is also in disarray. The new technology subverts their monopoly over Hinduphobic knowledge production and distribution. There is a growing display of Hindu emotional activity in social and mass media, as well as the emergence of many conclaves featuring some Hindu voices. This powerful emotion needs to be harnessed and redirected to create an intellectual ecosystem that is globally competitive.

Speaking to Manish Pant, Rajiv Malhotra deals with a series of issues ranging from Buddhism and its impact on Hindus, the Indian way of thinking, teaching Arthashastra and Sanskrit to youngsters, evangelical myth-making and a possible Indian Renaissance.

What were the main triggers behind your committing yourself to the study and propagation of dharma?

I was doing very well in the business world, making more money than I thought I deserved probably because a lot of people work very hard. I thought I was getting a windfall and I was feeling that life was more than just that. Going on accumulating more wealth is not such a good idea. I was in my early 40s and I thought I should do something else. And that was also when I was having a spiritual transformation with my guru, who is no longer in the body. So this made me come up with the idea that I should completely give it up and do something else with my life. They say you should take vanaprastha and all that sannyasa, but then when you are very old you are not in a fit state. My guru used to say, do these things early when you are still young, strong and healthy because these things take some strength and clarity of mind. So I decided that I am going to go for it. Initially, I was funding other scholars to do the work; those who are the official scholars with fancy degrees from fancy universities and so on. But I found, A, they were mediocre, B, they were stuck in old way of thinking they couldn’t get out of. The idea, quality, efficiency and originality just weren’t there. So gradually I got into it myself. Once I got into it, I discovered what are the issues which are not being addressed, but that can be game changing and where my natural abilities, my way of thinking could be brought in as a contribution. So it was a gradual process, evolving over time.

You talk about India being a different civilisation. What sets us apart?

Well, every civilisation is distinct. Arabs are a different civilisation. Chinese are a different civilisation. So it is not that only ours is different. Every civilisation has its own distinctiveness because it has its own geography, its own lifestyle, its own history and its own vichardhaara or way of thinking, which has evolved by itself. Our civilisation is different because in this great land for a long time we have had a continuous stream of thinkers and enlightened beings coming and new events happening. So the product of all that is our civilisation. And that’s why it is distinct. Now people may argue whether it is distinctly better or worse. That is a separate argument. But it is distinct. There is no doubt about it.

What in your view are the main causal factors behind the decline of Hindu India? Is the 1,300-year long process that began with the invasion of Sindh by Muhammed bin Qasim in 695AD responsible?

The sad thing is that when these invasions started there was no unified response. Somehow we lacked this sense that the Kshatriyas have to come together. That for some reason, we don’t know why, but it wasn’t there so much. I also feel that Buddhism had an impact in making Hindus docile. There is a theory that the expansion of Buddhism had the effect that there wasn’t the fiery fighting spirit like the one there used to be at one time. So maybe we became kind of willing to put up with all kind of invasions. My feeling is we somehow lost the Arthashastratraining for some reason. We should find out why. And so the strategic thinking that the Arthashastra teaches wasn’t there in our young people. It could be a multitude of factors. My book The Battle for Sanskrit says we forgot the idea of doing purvapaksha on others. You become weak when you stop studying other people. When you are no longer keeping in touch with your competitors, on what are they up to, then you are gradually going to get weak. Somehow we stopped the purvapaksha tradition, which was very alive till the time of Adi Shankaracharya.

Now the strange thing is that from that time (seventh century) onwards, we have been busy debating with each other. Debating some Sankhya, Charvaka or Buddhist; one school of thought discussing with another school of thought. But why didn’t they study the Muslims as they were already there? Christians had arrived on the Kerala coast long ago. But there was no purvapaksha, no analysis that this is our view of these people: their church structure, their political thought, their economic thought, their metaphysics, their family life, all of that. We should have done an analysis. After all, we were highly educated people, we have a purvapaksha tradition, but it was not used in that way. So I think that the lack of purvapaksha of these foreign forces, was one of the many important factors in the decline of our culture.

How relevant is the study of Sanskrit in contemporary India? What is your take on the onslaught by a cabal of Western scholars to hijack it?

Sanskrit is many things as I have explained in The Battle for Sanskrit. At one level it is a language in which you can order a cup of chai or taxi. However, to me that’s not the most interesting thing. The language contains some non-translatable words. It contains words that you do not find in another language because our civilisation and our experiences are different. We have a word like yoga, which can’t be exercise, gymnastics or prayer. We have unique words in the Sanskrit language that ought to be preserved because they are very powerful and part of who we are. To me, that is one of the most important things. Another important thing is the mantra. The idea of going into a higher state of consciousness through this whole mantra practice is I think a very important part of who we are. Sanskrit is also the keeper of the unity of our languages because it has influenced, if not all, most of them to varying degrees. Even Tamil, but maybe not as much as other languages. It has been the kind of an architecture of language and grammar. Words from many languages and ideas and so on, have gradually made their way into Sanskrit and become formalised. Once they are formalised they are transported to different parts of India and put back into local languages. So it’s like a language highway where language X and language Y communicate through Sanskrit. This is a very interesting process. I think our Shastras are important in understanding as to who we are. And we should not translate them into English and do away with the Sanskrit originals. Or put them in a museum, which is what the Murty Classical Library wants to do. In a sense, kill Sanskrit and then say it was already dead. Writing a theory that Sanskrit died a 1,000 years ago, as if that would justify killing it now. And then you can say, “Oh, but it was already dead!” This business that we will write 200-page short introductions in English and sell them for Rs 100 each, flood the market, put them through the Ministry of Human Resource Development in schools, media and everywhere, and then the Sanskrit originals don’t need to be read, that’s like saying let’s put the pundits out of business. Let’s put all these pathshalas (schools) out of business as we don’t need them. Then in all these Anglicised schools we will teach you what you need to know. And, of course, it will be interpreted through someone who is on their side. That’s very dangerous. So we need to reconnect all that. We need to take over this thing.

But the same set of scholars who blame Sanskrit for being an oppressive idiom don’t have a problem with Persian, which was the court language during the Mughal period.

Or Arabic… Or Chinese…

Or English now.

Or English. Or Latin. Or you look at Greek. Plato, Aristotle and Socrates. Plato talked about genocide. Socrates had slaves. But we don’t complain about their classics. You look at Latin. The whole history of the Church is about spreading and abusing and killing people. All those genocides, slavery and all that, there is a Latin discourse on that. But we don’t say that it is a dead language because all of these things happened. And look at the oppression in the English language going on right now. If you wanted to go and blame all those guys you would be called intolerant, communal and so on. But the same standards don’t apply to them. This is our situation. But in China they will hit you back if you said your Mandarin led to all these bad things. If you go to some Arab country and start giving a lecture on the abusive discourse in Arabic at a university, they will kick you out. But in our country they welcome you. It’s our own inferiority complex.

While talking about one segment of insiders, in the epigraph to your latest work Academic Hinduphobia you write: “… the Indian Sepoy archetype, found in the Western academe and journalism, often does the dirty intellectual work. Their role on behalf of the dominant culture is to supply the myth of the “other” in a way that fits into the dominant culture grand narrative of itself.” How is this myth-making contrived?

Every civilisation builds myths about itself. Like a corporate entity it builds brands or propaganda. Civilisations too do it. That’s natural. Everything from their flag to their anthem has a lot of truth in it, lot of propaganda. The interesting thing is that those who are colonisers have mastered the ability to take the colonised people and make them feel they are part of this myth only. That’s how these modern sepoys, the high flyers who go to these literary festivals and all that, they are now made to feel that they are part of this Western myth. Aapko bhi membership mil gayi hei (You too are a member now)! Maybe it is at a junior level. Maybe it is temporary. Maybe it’s a few notches below the glass ceiling. But at least you have arrived. You are inside the door. This idea of making Indians feel part of the Western myth attracts a lot of our people into joining it. That’s what is going on. It’s a very sophisticated brainwashing mechanism. That is how the Western myth-making has expanded to include lots of Indians into it. Similarly, the Islamic myth-making has expanded in this country and then through Sufism a lot of people think, “Wow! I’ll also be a Sufi. What difference does it make?” But these are competing myths. The friendly soft part of the myth, is a front to get you in. But once you are in, you go through more cleaning up to get upgraded to higher versions. From version 1.0 to version 2.0, to 3.0 to 4.0. As you get more and more into that myth, you are asked to give up the earlier stuff that you knew about your own past. That is how it happens; there is a clash of myths.

Therefore, you often warn against Hinduism getting enculturated or digested by the dominant Western culture or other narratives. But can that also work the other way around where Hinduism ends up accommodating or enculturating the dominant Abrahamic faiths into its humungous pantheon?

That too could be dangerous if you are not strong enough. Let’s say you look at two corporate mergers. When corporate X acquires corporate Y, you might say Y is winning, they can also have the upper hand. But somebody is controlling the merger. They will decide who stays, who is fired, whose factories will continue, what products will live. In a corporate merger there is a dominant side. It always generally happens. Similarly, when civilisations say we will assimilate them, they are assimilating us. The point is that at the end of the day we will end up like the pagans. Pagans and Christianity had a similar marriage. But it was not equal. Christianity borrowed many things from Paganism. Enculturated many things from Paganism. And Pagans were led to believe that Paganism is alive and well and Jesus was added to their pantheon. Even now when Christian missionaries visit the tribal areas of Latin American and Africa, they tell them you keep worshipping your natural deities from your ancestors, but we will also put Jesus in a corner. But over years that corner becomes bigger and bigger.

Like what has happened in the North Eastern part of our country?

Exactly! So you see, because they have a strategy, we don’t; they have teamwork, we don’t; they have organisational skills, we don’t; they have funding, we don’t. They know how to do this as they have been doing this for a long time. It’s like you are playing a game with somebody who has played it very well and you don’t know what you are doing. Even if one individual knows what he is doing, he can’t get all the other people to be on his side. If we were to play this game, we would first have to build a team. We would have to have a very consistent grand narrative of who we are. What we will compromise on and what we will never compromise on. How we are going to play the game. We will have to be very clear that the other guys, our opponents, are trying to defeat us and we have to defeat them. Imagine a cricket team where half the players imagine there is not even an opposing team and they keep playing. Or say in soccer they kick the ball around randomly. It will be confusing. You will never be able to win if most of your players don’t even understand that we got to beat them as they are trying to beat us, and here is how the game is played. Our problem is that we don’t have our act together; we aren’t united. We don’t have leadership with enough clarity and enough strength to bring us together. That’s our problem. Until we can do that, we’d better not go around and say we can beat them. We have to first strengthen ourselves.

How is Hinduphobia so successful in academia, media and popular culture? What can be the best possible counter-strategy to it?

They have done lot of purvapaksha on us. We haven’t done that on them. They have studied the caste system. The Ford Foundation has invested in hundreds of NGOs on women’s issues, feminist issues and pollution issues. They are constantly studying what is weak and exploiting it. They have a very systematic long-term view of trying to do this to us. Therefore, they have come up with many Hinduphobic ideas about us. Our prestigious people still give them awards, thinking that I am some kind of a bad guy, who speaks nonsense. I would say a very large part of our problem is ignorance of our people and then being sold out because they have some business or political interests to be aligned with those guys. That is why the Hinduphobia has spread so much. And the resistance from our side is weak, with very few people doing that. They don’t have enough knowledge, passion and courage to resist. That’s our problem. So we have to reverse these things now. As a person, I am doing what I can by spreading awareness. As more people become aware, I want them to spread my books and videos to other people. It’s only going to go as a word-of-mouth game. But it is looking good as more people are looking interested than used to be the case earlier.

It is the time of great challenge that is also the time for new hope and beginnings. Are we on the cusp of the New Indian Renaissance?

The Indian Renaissance could happen. We would like it to happen. But it can happen when people who are the insiders with some authority are actually together and very clear. I am not sure whether we are there yet. We don’t want a renaissance where we are sold out. That could also happen. We are having a renaissance in yoga, but we have lost the whole system. Already people are saying the history of yoga is not from Hinduism but that the YMCA started yoga! There are best-selling authors in the academic world who have written in the history of yoga that it was the YMCA who brought exercise to India because we were a weak people who needed to become strong. The Hindus decided to call it yoga. And our people accept these things. Same people are brought here to give lectures. The media in India thinks of them as experts to be interviewed. So our problem is not just with outsiders but also with a lot of our own insiders.

Interestingly we find people from non-humanities background driving the nationalistic discourse. Is that the way forward in this new rediscovery of India?

Well you know, even in the struggle against the British Empire, Mahatma Gandhi was not a humanities person. Most of his contemporaries were not. Whether you look at the Congress, whether you look at the Hindutva side or whether you look at Bhagat Singh and Savarkar, none were officially trained people in this area. I mean, they were just smart people. If you are a smart person, you don’t need a degree to become a political or spiritual thinker. Most of the spiritual giants, Sri Ramakrishna, for instance, did not have a degree in religious studies. It doesn’t matter. He had something much greater. Formal education is just a way to mould people into a standard way of thinking. Original thinkers will not come about through the cookie cutter way of thinking as you will not produce great leaders like that. So I don’t think that humanities departments are going to create original or provocative thinkers in our country. It’s a colonial mechanism because these humanities and social sciences are Western siddhanta or theories that are taught here. Everyone is trying to impress each other by quoting such and such Western thinker. So they are alienating from themselves. That is what the exams expect. That is what the professors expect. I would be considered an unwelcome radical in most of these places because I am telling them that you guys are wrong. That is the serious problem we have. I would say that the people who have not been brainwashed in the social sciences, have a better chance because they can think for themselves. They haven’t had much of formal training, but they can be smart, work hard and think for themselves. That’s why I am finding that a large number of people who are good writers and scholars in this area are not formally trained in humanities.

So what would be a viable siddhanta for humanities as they are taught today in our universities?

I would say the Arthashastra should be taught. The Dharma Shastra should be taught. The values and ethics of environmentalism should be taught. The healing system, how you keep your own body healthy through yoga, meditation, Ayurveda, should be taught. All of this is core curriculum. There is no reason that these things should be put aside only for a few people who go to some ashram and learn. Meditation should be taught in our education system to make each person healthy, relaxed, clever and creative.