Book review

This is a scholarly book from the keyboard of Mr. Rajiv Malhotra. Malhotra has had an unusually rich and influential career: With a background in science and after a very successful business venture, he turned his interests to culture, history, and the power of knowledge manipulation in the politics of the world. In less than a decade and a half he has risen to prominence among Hindu intellectuals, Indian thinkers, and Western commentators on India. An activist-scholar, he has fought successfully against the distortions, intentional or inadvertent, of Hindu worldviews in English-based schools, colleges writings, and media beyond the shores of India. The internet has contributed immensely to the propagation of his name and fame. Thanks to his relentless dedication, authors in the West have begun to take greater care in what and how they write about Hindu history and culture. No small achievement for a self-made scholar. This is because Malhotra is a passionate writer, original thinker, and powerful propagator of perspectives. He articulates his views fearlessly and with clarity.

In this substantial work Malhotra explores a variety of topics inherent to Indic culture and worldviews. He reflects on many aspects of the Hindu world. His goal is not only to dismantle misconceptions, but also to formulate a new paradigm for intercultural discourse. He presents Indic concepts often, if not always, in contrast to Western modes.
The themes that are ably and persuasively explored in the volume are the following:

1. It is a naïve and mistaken view to regard, as some well-meaning Hindu liberals do, that all cultures and religions as saying the same truths. No, religions and cultures are fundamentally different. Moreover it is far more important to be consciously aware of these differences than to trumpet their commonalty to tackle the confusions in this world.
2. India with her rich and ancient culture has been subdued and manipulated by Western intruders, to the point that even Hindu thinkers are unconsciously adopting Western paradigms in the evaluation and critique of their own culture. Worse still, many so-called educated Hindus treat their own culture with indifference or disrespect, and whole-heartedly embrace all that is Western. As a result, there is not a level playing field when India and the rest of the world (mainly the West) are engaged in debates and discussions.
3. The hegemonic Christian West has been marginalizing and diminishing the wisdom and worth of Indic visions for many centuries now, not only out of ignorance of the deeper meanings of Indic terms, symbols and practices, but also in scheming ways to achieve its sinister ends.
4. The so-called universalism of European Enlightenment which has been a dominant and aggressive global force in recent centuries must be challenged and halted. The book argues with reason that the West has no business, let alone the moral authority or the legal right, to impose its worldviews and values on the rest of the world. Indeed, on this issue,
5. Finally, and most importantly, Malhotra’s goal is to provide a dhármic framework for handing social, religious, and political problems, based on Indic views and worldviews, which will be more fruitful, more tolerant, and more meaningful in today’s world.

The book is an erudite elaboration of these points.

Malhotra begins by referring to a number of his own personal encounters with Western scholars and individuals in conferences and elsewhere to let the reader know how, through means subtle and overt, Christianity and the West have been intruding into the sacredness and integrity of Indic culture. Not that many Indians are not aware of this, but this book gives it all raw and ruthless exposure. It unveils aspects of what it sees as Western hegemonic intercultural ruses that may not be as obvious to superficial observers. These revelations are sure to jolt both unwitting Indians who may have held Western civilization in high regard, as well as scheming Westerners who may feel awkward being caught.

The chapter entitled Yoga: freedom from history is one of the best and most informative. Here one finds interesting discussions of ithihasa, adhyatma-vidya, and what the author calls embodied knowing which is contrasted with the history-centrism of Western thought.. The compartmentalized contrast between the dhármic and the Judeo-Christian visions that are presented throughout the book, can be very useful in courses on comparative religion.

In the next chapter, the book explores further the deep conceptual and doctrinal divide between the dhármic and the Abrahamic views on the relationship between the human and the Divine. The notion of integral unity is explained in this context, as also its compatibility with some of the findings of modern physics. In this context one recalls the relevant quotes from Schrödinger et al. to show the Vedantic inspirations for quantum mechanics.

In this chapter we also find an etic (outsider’s perspective) analysis of the birth and growth of Western civilization: perhaps the first of its kind by a Hindu scholar. A great many Western scholars have delved deeply into and analyzed freely countless dimensions of Non-Western cultures in legitimate and in illegitimate ways. Perhaps for the first time, a Hindu scholar has reciprocated that gesture. This chapter alone deserves to be regarded as a weighty contribution to the literature, and will most likely be appreciated by many enlightened Western scholars as well.

It is no secret that the Hindu spirit is more receptive to and generous towards Non-Hindu religious traditions than most other world systems. This fact is explained in the chapter on Order and Chaos. Here the reader will also find discussions on sacred stories, Biblical and Greek mythologies, as well as comments on ethics and aesthetics. It iffers fresh perspectives on time-honored doctrines.

The chapter on Non-translatable Sanskrit versus Digestion brings in two important ideas. First, that certain terms are culture-specific. English renderings of words like dharma, tapas, dukkha, and Kundalini can at best be approximate, at worst misleading. Moreover, the use of original Sanskrit terms not only preserves their original meaning, but also helps one in “resisting colonization and safeguarding dhármic knowledge.” This chapter contains some excellent information on Sanskrit.

The sixth and last chapter of the book, aside from the extensive and erudite notes at the end, is a dynamic call for a new worldview in the context of our current multicultural and multinational planetary predicament. That the West must not and should not be allowed to enforce its worldviews and values on others is a slow awakening that is occurring within the matrix of Western civilization also. This concluding essay is penetrating in its depth, thought-provoking as a thesis, and powerful in its arguments. The chapter marks Malhotra as a fearless thinker in the arena of culture, history, ideas and ideologies. His invocation of the Gita and the Mahabharata in this context makes him a legitimate heir to and a traditional spokesperson for the Hindu dhármic tradition: a true áryaputra, as one used to say. His homage to Gandhi is a welcome gesture at a time when Gandhiji is the target of invectives from a great many Neo-Hindus.

Prejudices and misinformation still persist in the West. The exclusivist and effective penetration of Christian missionaries, overt and subtle, into India does pose a threat to India’s Hindu cultural roots.

Malhotra’s book is profound and provocative, The tone of the book is necessary to shake up the long-persisting cultural asymmetries and injustices. But the great strength of this book lies in that it brings out, as few other books have done, the complex and sophisticated framework of Indic visions with ample historical allusions, intelligent commentaries, and incisive rebuttals. It is an appropriate and timely reflection on civilizations for the twenty first century.

This book is the work of a keen thinker whose profound reflections are bound to change the tenor of the intercultural debates of our times. Malhotra’s lucid and clarifying expositions of Indic culture are in themselves solid contributions to India studies. I am persuaded that this is a book of enormous import which will contribute to the construction of a world culture in which misunderstandings and convictions of superiority and mutual distrust and contempt will give place to greater understanding, harmony, and peace.
The world of scholarship and the voices of cultural affirmation must be grateful to Mr. Malhotra for presenting us with this most interesting book. I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in understanding in some depth the rich traditions and religions of India, and also in becoming aware of the global tensions that characterize our multicultural world.

Please click the link below to read a review of Being Different by Subashish Chattopadhyay, Assistant Professor of English, Government College, Vishnupur featured in the June 2013 issue of Prabuddha Bharata.

Subashish Chattopadhyay Review

Review of the Book ‘Being Different’ For “Sanskrit Vimarsh”, journal of RSk S, New Delhi
Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism– Rajiv Malhotra, Harper Collins Publishers India, ISBN: 9789350291900,Hardback,Pages: 488, Price: Rs.599

‘Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism’ by Rajiv Malhotra is a path breaking book filled with profound original insights on various subjects related to Indian religious, spiritual, cultural and historical traditions. It is a research-oriental reference volume for the intellectuals, philosophers, researchers, and general readers who are curious to know Indian thought and Identity. The book reverses the gaze to look at the West, repositioning dharmic civilization from being the observed to being the observer. Rajiv Malhotra, the author of famous book ‘Breaking India’ is an Indian-American researcher and thinker, writing and speaking on current affairs as they relate to civilizations, cross-cultural encounters, religion and science. He has done anextensive study of Indian culture and history, Western civilization and religion, and comparative philosophy and faith. He has been churning a wide range of issues and ideas related to his thesis from different sources for the past two decades, and to show this, his book’s cover has an attractive picture of the churning of the ocean by Devas and Asuras. ‘Being Different’ is the result of deep research on Indian and Western philosophical systems and histories, with especialfocus on how India essentially differs from the West, in cultural, spiritual matrix and in world outlook.

In his introduction Rajiv Malhotra mentions hisintention of thecurrent research. To quote here in his own words ‘I am simply using the dharmic perspective to reverse the analytical gaze which normally goes from West to East and unconsciously privileges the former’. On the reason of the study he says, ‘ this reversal evaluates Western problems in a unique way, sheds light on some of its blind spots, and shows how dharmic cultures can help alleviate and resolve some of the problems facing the world today’.

Rajiv Malhotra instigate a debate through this literary work on the following propositions: (1) Western claims of universalism are based on its own myth of history, as opposed to the multicivilizational worldview needed today. (2) Historical revelations are the foundations of western religions, as opposed to dharma‘s emphasis on individual self-realization in the body here and now. (3) The synthetic unity of western thought and history is in contrast with the integral unity that underpins dharma’s worldview.(4) The West’s anxiety over difference and need for order is unlike the dharmic embrace of the creative role of chaos. (5) Common translations of many Sanskrit words are seriously misleading because these words are non-translatable for sound and meaning.

In the Introduction the author explains that this book is about how India differs from the West. He challenges certain cherished notions, such as the assumptions that Western paradigms are universal and that the dharmic traditions teach ‘the same thing’ as Jewish and Christian ones. For while the Vedas say, ‘truth is one, paths are many’, the differences among those paths are not inconsequential. He argues that that the dharmic traditions, while not perfect, offer perspectives and techniques for a genuinely pluralistic social order and a full integration of many different faiths, including atheism and science. They also offer models for environmental sustainability and education for the whole being that are invaluable to our emerging world.

The author states that the term Dharma is not easy to define because it has several dimensions, and its oft-used translations as ‘religion’, ‘path’, ‘law’, ‘ethics’ all fall short in substantial ways. In the book ‘Dharma’ is used to indicate a family of spiritual traditions originating in India which today are manifested as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. On page 5 he explains that ‘the dharma family has developed an extensive range of inner sciences and experiential technologies called ‘adhya
tma-vidya’ to access divinity and higher states of consciousness. Adhya
tma-vidya is a body of wisdom and techniques culled from centuries of first-person empirical inquiry into the nature of consciousness and under taken by advanced practitioners. India’s spiritual traditions spring from dharma which has no exact equivalent in Western frameworks.

The first chapter entitled ‘the audacity of difference’ begins with the statement that ‘the cultural and spiritual matrix of dharma civilizations is distinct from that of the west. This distinctiveness is under siege, not only from unsustainable and inequitable development but also from some thing more insidious: the widespread dismantling, rearrangement and digestion of dharmic culture into Western frameworks, disingenuously characterized as ‘universal’ (p.12).
Posting his comments online on ‘Being Different’ Prof. Don Wiebe, of Trinity College in the University of Toronto has said that “Malhotra espouses an ‘audacity of difference’ in any such enterprise that defends both the distinctiveness and the spiritual value of Indian thought and that effectively reveals the cultural chauvinism of much western thought in its encounters with other cultures”.

The chapter 2 deals with‘Yoga: freedom from history’ and talks about two ways of knowing the divine. All civilizations ask existential questions such as: Who are we? Why are we here? What happens when we die? Can we transcend death and if so, how? What is the ultimate reality or truth, and how can we reach it? The approaches to these questions and the answers offered by the two civilizations differ profoundly. In the Judeo-Christian traditions, revelation comes ‘from above’, and its content is strictly God-given (p. 55). But according to the dharmic traditions, man is not born into original sin, though he is burdened by his past conditioning, which makes him unaware of his true nature. Fortunately, he has the innate capacity to transcend this condition and achieve sat-chit-ananda in this life. Since the ultimate truth is attained experientially,and passed from practitioner to practitioner, it follows that knowledge of the divine is varied and that more than one lineage may be true. Author quotes Sri Aurobindo to explain several ideas; and talks about Itihasa, Pura
na, Ra
ma
yana and Maha
bha
rata to present the Indian outlook on history, myth and knowledge etc. and thus gives authenticity to his propositions.

On ‘Integral unity versus synthetic unity’ an authentic discussion at length is done in the chapter 3 of the book. The various dharmicschools, despite some profound differences in theory and practice, all attempt to account for some form of unity. The resources for its realization are built into the various spiritual disciplines. Unity is inherent in existence, according to all dharma systems. This sense of an underlying unity is strong and allows for a great deal of inventiveness and play in understanding its manifestations. As a result, there tends to be a great diversity of paths and philosophical understandings without fear of chaos. Western worldviews, where religious or secular, begin with the opposite premise: the cosmos is inherently an agglomeration of parts or separate essences. The debates on this subject are not about how and why multiplicity emerges out of underlying unity, but about how unity can emerge out of multiplicity. Such a unity is not innate; it must be sought and justified again and again, and resulting synthesis is always unstable. The starting points and conclusions of Western religion and science are in even contradiction, which essentially makes Western civilization an uneasy and tentative synthesis of incompatible building blocks (p.7-8).

In the fourth Chapter author shows that ‘people from dharmic cultures tend to be more accepting of difference, unpredictability and uncertainty than westerners. The dharmic view is that socalled ‘chaos’ is natural and normal; it needs, of course, to be balanced by order, but there is no compelling need to control or eliminate it entirely nor to force cohesion from outside. The West, conversely, sees chaos as a profound threat that needs to be eradicated either by destruction or by complete assimilation(P.168). Rajiv Malhotra proclaims further (p.177) with pride and confidence that ‘Western scholars find it difficult to acknowledge fully the merits of Indian Systems of thought, even when the influence of these systems on West is irrefutable’.Chaos arises when one experiences phenomena which do not lie within one’s psychological and cultural comfort zones. In this reference the author narrates immense Indian creativity, adaptability, and ability to absorb what’s new.The example of Kumbha-mela is given to demonstrate selforganized diversity (p.179).The two opposite sides are needed for churning of the milky ocean in order to obtain nectar for eternal life(p.184).Thus classical Indian traditions are referred in the book to emphasis its conclusions and to find out the root causes of certain current problems.

The author eludes on several distortions in the western-mind created by their use of poor and faulty English equivalents of Sanskrit words, in the fifth chapter. Sanskrit is important for its profound creative potential. It unites the great and little traditions (p.240). The meanings of Sanskrit words are embedded in its cultural context and also in the history of how that word evolved over time. Malhotra is firm in his view that ‘the unique experiences of different cultures are not always interchangeable, and the words used to refer to those experiences must remain intact. Many cultural artifacts have no equivalent in other cultures, and to force such artifacts into the moulds that the West finds acceptable or  familiar – to appropriate them – is to distort them.This too is a form of colonization and cultural conquest’ (p.221).

This chapter contains some excellent information on Sanskrit language, and its structure. It is also explain in brief why Sanskrit words are not easily translatable. Generally Sanskrit texts and words need context for their proper interpretation. Meaning changes many times. If a meaning is not taken correctly, it is not possible to understand the concept hidden in that word. Highlighting the richness of Sanskrit, the author emphasizes that the ‘non-translatability of key Sanskrit words attests to the non-digestibility of many Indian traditions. Holding on to the Sanskrit terms and thereby preserving the complete range of their meanings becomes a way of resisting colonization and safeguarding dharmic knowledge’(p.249).

Many examples of popular Sanskrit translations into English, that are false or misleading, are mentioned in this context. The Sanskrit words Brahman, A
tman, Shiva, Vedas, Dharma, Ja
ti, Aum, Duhkha, Avata
ra, Sakti, Kundalini
, Guru, Devata
, Yajna, Karma, Moksa etc. are referred to and elaborated. Their common mis-translations are explained and criticized in detail. Great emphasis is given on the use of original Sanskrit terms for the preservation of their uniquesenseand understanding.

The Western claim of universalism is mainly refuted in the sixth and last chapter entitled ‘Contesting Western Universalism’. According to such claims, the West is both the driver of history and its goal, providing the template into which all other civilizations and cultures must fit. This chauvinism is virtually invisible from within the Western perspective itself (p. 308). Such a universalism fails to address human needs; the most it can achieve is a kind of synthetic unity of civilizations under the rubric of the West.This concluding chapter is thought-provoking, innovative, and powerful in its arguments and projects Malhotra as a bold thinker and writer in the field of culture, history, and ideology.The volume concludes with a negation of Western claims of universalism, while recommending a multi-cultural worldview.

The last essay is in the form of conclusion which talks about pu
rva-paksa and the way forward. One needs to engage in purva paksha or ‘reversing the gaze’, to shed light on how this leads to the misapprehension and denigration of India and dharmic traditions. Pu
rva-paksa, the traditional technique of analysis encourages to become truly knowledgeable about alternative perspectives, and to approach the other side with respect. Using this ancient practice the author mentions the importance of ‘difference’, and thus criticizing the Western view of its own universalism as the only legitimate view. Rajiv Malhotra insists on preserving difference with mutual respect – not with mere ‘tolerance’. The book addresses the challenge on differences, and talks about unexamined beliefs that both sides hold about themselves and each other. As Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, renowned scholar of our times has rightly said about the book, ‘Through seven chapters Rajiv Malhotra pursues a central argument to highlight the imperative need to respect difference’.The learned author gives detailed endnotes and illustrative bibliography and two Appendices. His homage to Gandhi is admirable.

Finally, it can be said that ‘Being Different- an Indian Challenge to Western Universalism’ is a book that every Indian should read to understand his or her true identity in the world. Also the non-Indians should read to know what truly India and Indians are like. It gives an opportunity to westerners to see themselves through the lens of another worldview.It dismantles many myths of false claim of a single universalism that is in the west’s possession. It proves that India is distinct in its civilization and therefore, is able to manage intense differences on the planes of culture, philosophy, language, religion and thought. The book makes us proud of our great seers, thinkers and ancestors. It is a memorable book for critiquing Western systems of thought and highlighting Indian ideals of humanity. ‘Being different’ will certainly turn to be a milestone in the long intellectual corridor of the intercultural debates of our times.

BY – Dr.Shashi Tiwari, New Delhi

{ Former HoD , Sanskrit Deptt., Maitreyi college, University of Delhi, New Delhi-110021}

All Things Must Pass — so sung George Harrison on a megahit album of the same name. George was consciously echoing Krsna’s words in the Bhagavad-gita, which ring through centuries of proud civilizations that have risen, deemed themselves invincible, and inevitably passed.

What so fascinated George — and thousands of his generation — about Eastern culture and thought has remained an abiding and ever-growing passion in the West. Today literally millions of Westerners, dissatisfied with what they perceive as the parochialism and unnecessary aggressiveness of their own culture, have chosen to adopt diverse manifestations of oriental dharmic traditions, perceiving them as more peaceful, wise, and truly spiritual. The concepts of reincarnation and karma, and the practice of yoga and vegetarianism — all largely or exclusively imported from the East — are now commonplace in the occident.

And internationally, the West’s economic, political, and intellectual hegemony — which arose several centuries ago and until recently seemed invincible — is finally showing signs of passing.

Yet although the distinction between East and West is becoming increasingly blurred (sorry, Kipling), distinctly Western presuppositions and underlying modes of perception and conditioning remain as subtle but powerful influences upon both Western practitioners of dharmic traditions and Eastern people steeped in the myth of inherent Western superiority.

Being Different appears at this cultural crossroads. Without rejecting Western contributions to culture and thought, it pinpoints the dominating, yet often unnoticed or veneered, bias toward Western paradigms. It furthermore challenges those perspectives by interjecting perspectives from the dharma traditions (maintaining that they are at least equally valid) with which to view all aspects of being.

Everything must pass, Krsna teaches, but that which is real will remain (Bhagavad-gita 2.16). In a world clearly in need of a rethink, Being Different challenges the West to stop stereotyping older civilizations as inferior and to examine itself through the lens of a culture that has remained while countless others have fallen. Being Different is so different to any previous work, and so compellingly argued, that it promises to initiate transformational discourse in all areas of intellectual activity.

Many Indian spiritual leaders, lacking a profound knowledge of their own culture, and feeling inferior to the West, try to respond to the Western challenge by showing how Indian and western religions are the same. They chant “sarva-dharma-sama-bhava” (all religions are equal) out of context, causing much confusion. In the midst of this morass arises the ”lotus of Rajiv” (the word rajiv means a lotus in Sanskrit) in the form of his book, Being Different. Rajiv Malhotra’s work is a kind of yajna that reverses the gaze upon the West through the lens of Indian knowledge systems.  This process is traditionally called purva paksha, and in Rajiv’s work it is given a new mission and a new importance.

The book argues that those aspects of India which appears different, strange, problematic and an exotic mishmash  to the Western eye are, indeed, the key to an underlying unity.  Being Different explains that there is a pristine, all-encompassing, Reality, both immanent and transcendent, that expresses itself as all the varieties, dualities and so-called chaos. There is order in chaos, birth in death, creation in destruction, and simplicity in complexity.

Rajiv Malhotra has devised the very interesting metaphor of digestion to pinpoint the destructive effect of what is usually masqueraded as the assimilation, globalization,  melting pot, or postmodern deconstruction of difference. The dharmic traditions have been a target for digestion into the belly of Western culture. Being Different challenges the legitimacy of such attempts with profound logic and examples. Its analysis of Abrahamic religions shows how they are history-centric. This fixation drives them into claims of exclusiveness and gives them anxiety over cultural differences which they seek to resolve through appropriation, assimilation, conversion – all forms of digestion that obliterate whatever seems challenging. The dharmic traditions are not driven by the same anxieties because of their vision of the integral unity of all existence.

Interestingly, the author has followed the traditional purva paksha style, a distinctive feature of exegesis in Sanskrit. The purva paksha accounts of past debates are no longer relevant in a practical sense, and new purva pakshas are needed for this era. Being Different breaks new ground in that direction. The result is a highly original and sincere attempt to compare the basic paradigms of Indian and Western thought. This book will open the eyes of any fair-minded reader regardless of worldview.

Since time immemorial, Indian spiritual exemplars had a strong tradition of studying competing schools of thoughts and debating them vigorously; but the recent leaders have ignored the need to analyze and debate Western religions and philosophical systems using Indian frameworks. This has allowed Western paradigms to dominate the discourse while Indian ones have become marginalized. In some ways, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan did “reverse the gaze” on the West, and this was vital to the formation of Indian identity in the colonial era. Now, for the 21st century, Rajiv Malhotra has launched the renaissance of this old tradition of purva-paksha, and his book Being Different examines the West as the “other” through the lens of dharma. Rather than positioning the dharma schools in tension with one other, its methodology is to contrast dharma from Western systems and thereby identify the signature principles of Indian civilization. This work should become a textbook and it can galvanize a new generation to start a thought revolution (vichar-kranti). I hope spiritual leaders will study Being Different in order to appreciate dharma’s place in the large canvas of inter-civilization debates, and thereby engage today’s intellectual kurukshetra from a position of strength.

In Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism Rajiv Malhotra has set for himself the challenging task of contesting the self-serving universalism that is readily apparent in the ‘grand narrative’ (whether secular or religious) produced by the West in which, argues Malhotra, the West saw itself as the agent or driver of the world’s historical unfolding and set the template for all nations and peoples of the world. Indeed, European colonial expansion to Africa, Asia, and Latin America was rationalized as an expression of divine plan and will that first became apparent (manifest) and inexorable (destiny) in Britain and the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century reaching the United States by the nineteenth century.

Universalism: Western and Christian
The leitmotif of Western universalism was crystallized in the British patriotic song “Rule, Britannia!” which provided a lasting expression of the colonialist conception of Britain and the British Empire that emerged in the eighteenth century. The phrase “The sun never set on the British Empire,” underscored the height of British Imperialism, when Britain had so many colonies under its control that no matter what time it was, somewhere in the Empire the sun was up. The ‘will to power’ and the ‘urge to dominate the world’ received a philosophical grounding in the hands of what I would call the “Gang of 4 Hs” (i.e. four philosophers of German extraction whose last names begin with the letter H: Georg F. W. Hegel, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Paul Hacker).

The hermeneutics of identity (subsuming the world within the orbit of the West and Christianity) that they proposed and practiced relegated Indian and other philosophies, cultures, and religions to some primitive forms that (as Hegel put it) must evolve toward the telos of One (read Western and Christian) philosophy, culture, and religion. European military conquests of Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the subsequent spin-off of socio-cultural and economic domination of the world led to what Husserl called ‘Europeanization of the Earth,’ i.e. ‘Westernization’ of the Earth since the West was construed as the universalistic claim of Europe (Mohanty 1997: 168).

It is to Malhotra’s credit that he has exposed with consummate skill how and why the ‘will to power and to dominate the world’ is inseparable from and inherent in the very nature of European representational, calculating thought. Not surprisingly, Jacques Derrida adamantly and brazenly declared that only Christianity could produce a concept of universality that has been successfully elaborated into the form which today dominates both philosophy and law globally. Only Britain and the USA have had the potential and power to sustain the “World Order” to assure relative and precarious stability globally. When Derrida makes an allowance for the plurality of religions as ‘world religions’ or ‘religions of the world,’ it is only on the basis of the universalizing and “unifying horizon of paternal-fraternal sameness of religions implicit in Christianity (Derrida 2001: 74).

Being Different persuasively argues that contrary to what Western Christian universalists would want us believe, the Western model of modernity, characterized by the development of rationality and an atomistic individualism, is not the sole way of relating to the world and others. It might have gained currency in the West, but Malhotra is at pains to remind us that even in the West this is far from being the only form of sociality. The West can exist only as part of a multipolar world in equable relation to other political, cultural, and social entities such as exist, for instance, in the model grounded in dharma. Malhotra accordingly makes a fervent plea for instituting equilibrium among regional poles where the differing social, cultural, and religious models for promoting development, democracy, and modernity would be welcome.

Indology: hegemony and asymmetry
India’s military conquest by the British led to the emergence of the discipline of Indology wherein Indian society and culture were (and are today) studied using Western epistemology and social sciences rather than the traditional Indian cognitive categories. This is a sure sign of the socio-cultural hegemony of the West, of what Husserl called the ‘Europeanization of the Earth.’ Indology is also cast in asymmetry—for the West is not studied, expounded, and criticized from the point of view of Indian thought.

Though many recognized the asymmetry of the encounter between the West and India and its outcome (deep cognitive dissonance between lived experience of the Indians and the theorizing about it), only a few academics have had the will to explore the actual feasibility of balancing the terms of the encounter and perhaps reverse the asymmetry of the dialogue. There were some feeble and half-hearted attempts in that direction (India through Hindu categories edited by McKim Marriott, 1989 for instance) but nothing much came out of them. Then, Professor Daya Krishna set up a series of meetings between the pundits and the Western trained Indologists on behalf of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research with a similar objective in mind (Krishna et al 1991). The outcome, however, was not very promising because the set up of the meetings was somewhat artificial and remained embedded in a Westernized context in the absence of prior experience of reaching out for Europe or the West, at least in the recent centuries. Historically, Indians simply have not been prepared for encounters of this type.

Commenting on Daya Krishna’s initiative, Wilhelm Halbfass observed that such experiments ought to be encouraged but any significant hermeneutical reversal cannot be expected from them. “For the time being,” he went on to say, “…there seems to be little choice but to continue the (admittedly asymmetrical) dialogue…” (Halbfass 1990: 229). In support, he cited the caution expressed by J. L. Mehta, the noted Indian philosopher, “…there is no other way open to us, in the East, but to go along with this Europeanization and to go through it…”(Wilhelm Halbfass 1990: 442). More recently, Dipesh Chakrabarty set out in search of a different, non-Western modernity but which ended in a ‘politics of despair’ after his realization that such a task was “impossible within the knowledge protocols of academic history, for the globality of academia is not independent of the globality that the European modern has created” (Chakrabarty 2000).

Malhotra regrets that the Indian academia and intelligentsia continue to accept and tolerate this asymmetry and hegemony as a historical contingency over which Indians did not (and as yet do not) hold any sway. Being Different courageously lays out a specific plan to get out of the Western orbit of knowledge protocols which, in the name of the universality of modernity and science, has trapped India (and the non-West in general) inside the cages of Oriental mysticism and the Asiatic mode of production.

Being Different also uncovers and explores major differences between India and the West that exist because of their markedly distinct philosophies and cosmologies. In this well documented, historical, and interpretive study, Malhotra employs the traditional hermeneutical strategy of purva paksha to examine the West from the Indic and dharmic civilizational points of view challenging many hitherto unexamined beliefs that each side holds about the other: the ‘One’ and many and how the two are related, God/s and creation, time and history, mind and world, identity in relation to difference, reality, and phenomenality. In the process he draws attention to the centrality of the fundamental question of metaphysics to all of them: difference.

Chaos and order
I found particularly informative and instructive Malhotra’s discussion of the role that the notion of chaos plays in the Indic and dharmic world whereas the West absolutely abhors chaos. Hegel, for instance manifested a deep-rooted fear of chaos and uncertainty, privileging instead order in Western aesthetics, ethics, religions, society, and politics. He therefore sought to bring the chaotic diversity of (newly discovered) Oriental cultures, religions, and societies into manageable order by classifying them into ‘pantheism,’ ‘monotheism,’ and ‘polytheism’ as ‘world historical categories’ to provide an intuitive (!) comprehension of the meaning value of each culture. He next came up with a detailed scheme to bring different cultures into a system of equivalences in which relative meaning can be assigned to each culture. Hegel thereby fleshed out the contours of the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest,’ providing conceptual tools for epistemic subjugation of the rest of the world in the name of law and order. The dharmic worldview, on the other hand, has always seen chaos as a creative catalyst built into the cosmos to balance out order that could become stultifying, and hence it adopts a more relaxed attitude towards chaos.

In sum, Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism is a meticulously documented piece of work providing an original, constructive, and insightful interpretation of why the West and the rest of the world must recognize and respect the distinct identity of India and its civilization.

References
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 2001. “Above All, No Journalists!” In Religion and Media edited by Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Halbfass, Wilhelm. 1990. India and Europe: an essay in understanding. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.
Krishna, Daya et al, eds. 1991. Samvada. Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, in association with Motilal Banarasidass.
Marriott, McKim, ed. 1989. India through Hindu Categories. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1997. “Between Indology and Indian Philosophy.” In Beyond Orientalism: The Work of Wilhelm Halbfass and its Impact on Indian and Cross-Cultural Studies edited by Eli Franco and Karin Preisendanz, 163-170, Amsterdam-Atlanta,GA: Rodopi.

Being Different makes it astoundingly clear that the ‘global’ civilization today is actually nothing of the kind. It is not an integrative fusion of beneficial ideas and perspectives from every civilization across the globe. It is, instead, a swallowing up of all human endeavor and culture for the nourishment of a madly materialistic, ultimately unsustainable, wildly destructive credo of monolithic cultural, political and religious imperialism. Rajiv Malhotra maintains that this is nowhere more clearly manifest than in the case of the centuries-long Western appropriation, re-mapping, and eradication of the sources of the native traditions, sciences, and spiritual practices of India.

Being Different boldly deconstructs the ubiquitously lauded tenet of ‘religious tolerance,’ so widely celebrated by diverse groups, and reminds us that none of us would want to be merely tolerated in any other situation and that mutual respect is what we should be aiming at. But it is made clear that this is a very difficult proposition because mutual respect in the realm of religion entails the affirmation of other faiths and their modes of worship as equally valid spiritual paths. This would mean the complete overturning, at the deepest level, of foundational dogmas of strict exclusivism that underlie historically orthodox Western theologies (an occurrence that liberal theologians would applaud). The volume similarly unpacks the far more insidious dangers of the seemingly innocuous idea of ‘universalism’ and delineates the difference between ‘universalism’ in Dharma-based civilizations and in its Western iteration. It does so by clarifying how ‘universalism,’ from the perspective of Hindu or Buddhist Dharma (through their own respective doctrines), is supported by concepts that acknowledge unity through its manifestation as diversity. In contradistinction, Western concepts of universalism carry critical dangers for non-dominant cultures because it confuses Universalization with Westernization, the expansion of which has involved the digestion of ‘useable’ elements from alternate civilizations. The volume warns that when such a confusion of categories is imbibed by non-Western peoples, it turns them into prey for the ascendant culture. While the book focuses on India and its intellectual and spiritual traditions, the same warning holds for all existentially struggling civilizations.

In Being Different, Rajiv Malhotra unapologetically holds up a mirror to dominant models of Western secular and religious culture and, perhaps most importantly, provokes introspection for those whose spiritual heritage lies —whether by ancestry or adoption—in the vast and diverse civilizational spheres birthed in the pluralistic environment of the Dharma traditions.