Book Reviews

‘Breaking India 1.0 was aimed at poor people in the villages and trying to convert them, make them fight the system, etc. Breaking India 2.0, in sharp contrast, targets the children of the elites and brainwashes them,’ says Rajiv Malhotra

When Rajiv Malhotra, with Aravindan Neelakandan, wrote Breaking India in 2011, he premised his argument around how India’s integrity was being undermined by three global networks with their well-entrenched bases inside and outside the country: Islamic radicalism pushed and promoted by Pakistan; Maoism implicitly supported by China and their Nepali intermediaries; and, Dravidian and Dalit identity separatism fostered by the West in the guise of human rights. The battles were intensely fought among the poor in villages and areas that were geographically, development-wise as well as civilisationally on the periphery.

Eleven years later, in September-October 2022, Malhotra (this time he has teamed up with Vijaya Viswanathan) is ready with the second part of the Breaking India series — Snakes in the Ganga. Sitting leisurely at a hotel in Delhi’s Janpath over a cup of tea, I ask him how the modus operandi of Breaking India 2.0 is different from the first part. What has changed over the decade, if at all?

Screenshot from Amazon.in

“Breaking India 1.0 was aimed at poor people in the villages and trying to convert them, make them fight the system, etc. Breaking India 2.0, in sharp contrast, targets the children of the elites and brainwashes them. This is far more dangerous as it has more leverage; these kids, after all, would someday become top politicians, industry leaders and influential babus; they would also become the judges of the Supreme Court (smiles). The entire country is threatened to be taken over without a single bullet being fired,” says Malhotra.

Another change is, in these 10-11 years, a lot of technology is being used, like Big Data, through which algorithms can control the minds of people. “If you can make people buy products you want, you can one day make them vote for the person you want, convert into the religion you desire, or push them towards an idea or ideology, however subversive it might be. It’s not for no reason that social media is available for free; it makes money by changing your behavior pattern,” he adds.

The Breaking India modus operandi may have changed over the decade, but the objective remains the same: Dismantling of Hinduism, though the term Hindutva would be invoked publicly, by waging war against India’s government, educational institutions, society, culture, and even industry. And the ground zero of these anti-India forces, according to Malhotra, is Harvard University, which has an army of scholars, activists, journalists and even artists, many of them Indians, willing to play by the “anti-India rules”. No wonder, it’s now fashionable to equate caste with race; meritocracy, a big reason why the West has made big strides economically as well as technologically, is being projected as “Brahmanical patriarchy”; and, atrocity literature is being produced at a mass level.

Malhotra elaborates, “In the British era it was the Oxford that would not just create the India narrative but also train the officers who would rule over Indians. Today, that position has been appropriated by Harvard. It had a $50 billion endowment, which is in excess of the GDP of more than 100 nations. It influences the politics and economy of so many countries through the Harvard Kennedy School that trains so many government, business and corporate leaders. Harvard is also behind the much influential World Economic Forum.”

What’s ironic is despite Harvard’s alleged anti-India activities, the institution is being generously endowed by Indians. Not just rich private individuals (some of the top industrialists and entrepreneurs are its donors), but also the Government of India can be accused of being generous to a fault. In 2008, the Manmohan Singh government awarded $4.5 million of Indian taxpayers’ money to Harvard in honour of economist Amartya Sen.

“I had funded Harvard, long before the billionaires came to the party. But I realised they were biased. They would take your money and still denigrate you and your culture. On a personal level, they would flatter you but continue to say nasty things about India and Indians. I was not okay with this arrangement,” states Malhotra, who in 1994 established the Infinity Foundation, Princeton (USA), precisely to challenge the anti-India narratives coming from Harvard-like institutions.

What should have alerted India is the close connection Harvard has with China’s military. (The arrest of a few Harvard professors with Chinese links suggests the threats about which even the Americans seem to be waking up now.) A recent NBC News report has exposed this dangerous nexus. Then, there is another report that claims that at least $88 million linked to the Chinese military has made its way to American colleges “through a convoluted pipeline of partnerships”.

Still, many powerful Indians sponsor Harvard. “I have met a few of them. They are nice people. Maybe they are lazy enough not to fully comprehend the dirty work Harvard is doing. Maybe they want to be in the good book of these powerful people in the West. Maybe they think their donations would make them honorary whites,” explains Malhotra.

Being the worst victim of coloniality, Indians may be the fiercest critics of the West, but deep down they have always looked for — and still seek — some form of Western recognition and legitimacy. Nirad C Chaudhuri mentioned this Indian trait in Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1964), as he wrote: “Nearly all our great men of the 19^th century were not able to gain recognition from their countrymen nor exert any influence over them until they were recognised in the West.” Chaudhuri believed that “if Bankim Chandra Chatterji is not as highly rated in his own country as Tagore and Gandhi it is largely because he received less European recognition than they”.

Swami Vivekananda too pointed at this Indian trait when he said: “I travelled 12 years all over India, finding no way to work for my countrymen, and that was why I went to America.” Vivekananda received a rousing welcome in India after he wowed the West with his thunderous Chicago speech.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that Oxford is being generously donated by Indians and yet the institution regularly comes up with narratives that are often unfavourable to India. We find ourselves being called names globally. Maybe Indian donors, including the Government of India, can take a cue from China. “Delhi should oversee India studies, just like Beijing controls China studies. Only then can it prevent being misinterpreted and having its own people weaponised against its interests. We have already seen how the decades of research on Indian knowledge systems by the West has distilled into outcomes demanding the dismantling of Hinduism itself,” Malhotra says.

He explains this phenomenon in detail in Snakes in the Ganga, in which he writes: “India’s narrative being outsourced to Harvard is doubly negative for India, not only because Harvard is in the business of producing atrocity literature on India but also because the Harvard brand name gives its output high credibility. It is leveraging this brand to bring on board Indian thought leaders and politicians and is certifying Indian corporate leaders and bureaucrats. As a result, it is politically difficult to oppose any major report produced by Harvard on India’s public health, human rights, minorities, caste, and women.”

Harvard’s relationship with China is different. With China, they don’t misbehave. In fact, they are often seen defending China and its role in the Covid-19 pandemic. “My research suggests that their funding promotes their interests. For example, the Chinese have funded the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. That school has never accused China of Covid-19,” Malhotra states, as he recalls how in 2021, Harvard invited Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), as distinguished speaker at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Ghebreyesus, who was instrumental in shielding China from blame during Covid-19, was hailed for “great insight and the political leadership” and called the right person “to restore trust in the WHO at a critical moment in its history”.

Harvard also has a School of Public Health funded by a prominent Indian business group. In sharp contrast to the Covid support provided to China by the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Indian-donated school talked about discriminations being meted out to Dalits and Muslims during the pandemic. “Maybe Indians are not too involved in how their money is used — or misused — to tarnish India and Indians abroad,” Malhotra says.

To understand why India has failed to control the Harvard narrative, while China has been more than successful in handling it, one must realise that before one can control anyone else’s narrative, one has to have a consensus among one’s own people. “First of all, the Government of India must convene a meeting of all concerned ministries — from the Education and Culture ministries to the Ministry of External Affairs — and formulate the fundamental narrative it wants to spread in the West, and then set broad red lines that should not be crossed. Thereafter, all top business leaders and prominent donors should be invited and told matter-of-factly about broad contours of the India narrative that should be built, and of course the red lines that should not be crossed.”

This, sadly, may not be as easy as it appears. The Modi dispensation, despite all the charges to the contrary, has been too liberal to challenge the entrenched Left ecosystem. Changes are there but mostly at the top, while the old infrastructure remains more or less intact. A meeting early this year with a top official of the country’s top research body was revealing. When asked about what the esteemed institution was doing, especially any pioneering research work, the gentlemen with a sagely smile and soft voice, said while handing me over a booklet: “Look at this UN body report. It has praised a couple of our research works.”

It was a moment of utter and rude epiphany. How will India set its own narrative when the country’s top research body still takes pride in being praised by a global body whose interests often — and invariably — clash with India’s? Maybe a research should have been done on Harvard’s role in setting an anti-India narrative? Or how wokeism in the West is attempting to dismantle the Indic civilisation and culture? But then such research won’t get global applause.

India needs to come out of its colonial hangover. Till then it will be a lopsided battle with India scoring more misses than hits on the narrative setting parameters. The entrenched Western agenda won’t face any serious, unified Indian challenge, except from solitary individuals like Rajiv Malhotra. The country still has a long and arduous battle at hand. A battle that would decide the fate of civilisational India and its billion-plus people.

The author is Opinion Editor, Firstpost and News18. He tweets from @Utpal_Kumar1. Views express

Black Lives Matter has become a global movement, and for good reason, because it expresses anger against the historical injustices suffered by the Blacks in America. It has echoed in India in a different way, as the solidarity between Dalits and American Blacks, something I couldn’t fully comprehend. Then I came across this really interesting book called Snakes In the Ganga by Rajiv Malhotra and Vijaya Viswanathan.

The book gives a detailed account of how India’s Dalits got pulled into the vortex of the Black/White debate on global racism. Those familiar with Malhotra’s famous book Breaking India may remember that it referred to the Afro-Dalit movement. Back then (12 years ago), it was described as a ‘US-operated and financed project’ framing ‘inter-jati/varna interactions and the Dalit movement using American cultural and historical lenses’.

It talked about Dalits being referred to as the Blacks of India and non-Dalits as India’s Whites. The implications of this false equivalence were not understood at the time. And this point in the old book was dismissed trivially rather than being taken seriously. As a result, Indians lost a decade of opportunity to build bridges with American Blacks and try to explain our heritage, and perhaps help them resurrect theirs. Meanwhile, the Breaking India forces worked hard to turn Blacks against India and its civilization.

The Afro-Dalit solidarity movement has now acquired a powerful life of its own, with a very
charismatic, well-known Black author called Isabel Wilkerson adding her voice through her book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Her book has succeeded in ‘fabricating a new identity’ that unifies Dalits and Africans and projects them ‘as the epicenter of victimhood’.
There were previous attempts to equate caste with race. But these were different because
caste was considered one of many types of racism found in the world. Wilkerson’s approach is entirely different. She blames all racism worldwide on caste. According to her, caste, which she attributes to ancient Vedic sources, is not independent of racism, but the source of all racism. According to her account, the British picked it up from India and took it to America and that resulted in racism against Blacks. The influence also spread to Germany and inspired the Nazis to do their holocaust of the Jews.

In other words, Wilkerson asserts that casteism is the framework or architecture on which all the world’s racism is built. More on the new book by Malhotra and Viswanathan is available at www.SnakesInTheGanga.com

The authors of Snakes in the Ganga disagree. They show how her premises are flawed and give a detailed point-by-point rebuttal. The following quote from Wilkerson shows the extent of her misconceptions:

‘Caste is the infrastructure of our divisions. It is the architecture of human
hierarchy, the subconscious code of instructions for maintaining, in our
[American] case, a 400-year-old social order. Looking at caste is like holding a
country’s x-ray up to the light. A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed
and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one
group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry
and often immutable traits, traits that would be neutral in the abstract but
ascribe life and death meaning in a hierarchy favoring the dominant caste whose
forebears designed it. A caste system uses rigid, often arbitrary boundaries to
keep the ranked groupings apart, distinct from one another and in their assigned
places.’

Malhotra and Viswanathan express sympathy for the plight of Dalits and indeed all those facing injustices. But they reject the use of American racism as the lens for interpreting Indian society. Indian social history is far more complex, diverse and cannot be easily fit into the American framework of racism.

Wilkerson’s thesis is taught as established fact at Harvard and counter-arguments are not
entertained. Many corporations use this work in their diversity training initiatives. Wilkerson’s book has gained significant mileage in American media, being promoted by the New York Times and Oprah Winfrey through her book club. The Black Lives Matter movement also gave it a boost because Suraj Yengde, hoisted by Harvard as a fellow of the prestigious Kennedy School, jumped into the fray. He has been championing the Afro-Dalit identity, taking Wilkerson’s book into the mainstream. He leaves no stone unturned to project all injustices against Blacks onto the Dalits of India. He has also written books that provide ammunition to the movement. His message is to blame Hinduism for all of the world’s social evils.This new interpretation of caste as racism is a major reason the entire social justice movement has started targeting Hinduism. The genesis of all oppression is attributed to India.

Snakes in the Ganga is the first serious rebuttal to Wilkerson’s thesis. Most Indians are not even conscious of this serious debate. Malhotra and Viswanathan have stood up against an entire ecosystem that is bent on dismantling India.

Shri Rajiv Malhotra spoke of his upcoming book Snakes in the Ganga: Breaking India 2.0 in his interview with Citti Media. The book is divided into three parts and explains how American Marxism is being exported into Bharat through individuals who support ideas and institutions that are dangerous to the country.

Rajiv Malhotra explaining the title of his book says the snake is a metaphor for danger and Ganga indicates the negativity that remains hidden. He highlighted that Harvard is the nest of snakes, the place where anti-India activists and ideas are incubated and bred. New threats have emerged that need to be identified and dealt with.

Americanisation of Marxism is a concept which adds races to the Marxist theory of economic classes. Germans who settled in America developed this theory. This is the seed of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and wokeism. Rajivji said Herbert Marques who came to California’s Berkley University developed the clash of races theory. He also pointed out that the CRT has been superimposed on India as the Critical Caste Theory (CCT).

Rajivji stated superimposing foreign history on India gives rise to concepts like CCT that have no connection with Bharat’s reality. Propagators of this theory falsely equate Brahmins with whites and ‘Dalits’ with blacks. The main intention is to project oppression of ‘Dalits’ like those faced by blacks. Shri Rajiv Malhotra further pointed out that even Muslims are presented as oppressed minorities.

Americanizing the social structure of another country is arrogance. Harvard is the breeding ground of anti-India propaganda. In this interview, Rajiv also highlighted the difference between India and China in terms of setting the agenda. Harvard houses anti-nationals from India and it is now training people on governance as policymakers are attending courses in the university. “It has unparalleled intellectual power to dismantle India,” noted Shri Rajiv.

The author spoke about two such persons from the cabal. Ajanta Subramaniam has written a book alleging that IITs are brahminical where ‘Dalits’ are oppressed. She says Brahmin supremacy is being exported when companies abroad employ them. She is being supported by the Harvard ecosystem.

Suraj Yengde is a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School who identifies as an Afro-Dalit. He wants ‘Dalits’ to identify as blacks. However, he has a flawed understanding of Buddhism, Hindu Dharma and Marxism. Rajivji also said that Suraj has weird ideas regarding caste and the Aryan invasion theory.

In his interview, the author also pointed out how Indian billionaires are sponsoring anti-India agenda through their association with Harvard. Anand Mahindra’s Mahindra Humanities Centre, Laxmi Mittal’s South Asia Institute and Piramal’s Public Health centre were some of the examples cited by him.

Explaining how American concepts are exported to Bharat, Shri Rajiv cited institutes such as Ashoka University, TISS, and Azim Premji University among others. These institutions propagate the ideas and concepts incubated at Harvard.

Social Science and liberal arts at Harvard aren’t based on Indian ideas. Shri Rajiv Malhotra says if Bharatiyas want to sponsor Harvard, then they should sponsor streams such as science, technology, engineering, and medicine. He pointed out how China doesn’t engage Harvard in social justice and human rights. China sets the agenda while Bharat follows the agenda set by Harvard.

Rajiv Malhotra said that while the left-liberals have a well-developed ecosystem, the pro-Bharat activists aren’t coordinated. The book would help the pro-Bharat activists to articulate and put forward their views in a better manner. The first part of the book deals with the discourse and who produces it, Harvard as the snake nest/incubator is the second part, and the final part explains how it reflects in India. The book will be released on September 26.

I have recently gone through a book called Snakes in the Ganga and the way I would describe it in a single word is “unputdownable”. Authors Rajiv Malhotra and Vijaya Viswanathan have gone into the most intricate of details about new threats to India even as it tries to shake off the humiliation of its colonization and present itself as a new economic, political and cultural force with a rich tradition of liberalism.

There are so many aspects to the story that it is impossible to describe in a few words. But then, that is the way most of Malhotra’s works are, you just keep unraveling more layers as you read on. Since I am quite familiar with some of his work and remember how his book Breaking India became such a big hit more than a decade ago, I can anticipate this one will have a similar readership.

I only hope that this time, we will take things more seriously, beyond mere showmanship to concrete actions. Because after all, this book discusses Breaking India 2.0 which is far more serious in its insidiousness, influence, funding, and resources, and its impact on the Indian civilization as a whole.

As an after-effect of Malhotra’s earlier books, Breaking India and Being Different, the thoughtful amongst us have been questioning the extent of our own colonized conditioning. And we have been challenging this mindset when we encounter it in our fellow Indians. But colonization has taken on a different hue in the modern day, with open adulation of everything American. We would like to copy the way they dress, eat, entertain, work, and what have you.

This also means that we are opening up to American ideas, good or bad, which makes it easy for their social movements to get mirrored in India, even when they do not apply. The fact that these theories get spun in leading Ivy League universities like Harvard makes them all the more acceptable to many of us. And when there’s this huge, dedicated machinery consisting of people, networks, projects, and institutions that are dedicated to transferring these ideas to us, there’s no escape from the situation.

The book Breaking India was ahead of its time by over a decade.  India did not prepare itself well, even though it was fairly warned.  This time we hope the Snakes in the Ganga is taken seriously and the Ganga is cleaned up before it is too late for India.

The East India Company has returned to a new incarnation unbeknownst to many. This is the claim of the new book, Snakes in the Ganga, by Rajiv Malhotra and Vijaya Viswanathan.

Harvard University is shown to be at the helm in this new effort to recolonize India, taking the place of Oxford. In the days of the British Raj, discourse about India was controlled by Oxford University. Now it’s the Americans that have taken over this recolonization project, headed by its institutions led by Harvard. The speed and scale of these efforts are also inherently American. The book uncovers the vast ecosystem and funding network created by Harvard.

What is dramatically new about this syndrome is that the Indians themselves are funding it. Moreover, these ideas have entered Indian government organizations and businesses. The book shows that Indian billionaires are getting this work done. They are bringing Indian scholars and Indian students to conferences and seminars and giving them grants and funding to brainwash them and teach them all these theories to dismantle the fundamental structures of India. These students and scholars are sent back to India and planted into a whole ecosystem which is being created. Harvard uses India’s scholars, funding, and resources to train its new sepoy army of scholars that are Breaking India at an unprecedented scale.

The authors show that Marxism is the foundational bedrock of this new discourse which takes the form of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Most people know Critical Race Theory’s purpose is to combat American racism using race warfare. CRT is certainly important in that context. But Harvard scholars have mapped it upon Indian society, ancient history, and the modern nation-state. The book explains Critical Race theory and its origins at length and how CRT has morphed into Critical Caste Theory and Wokeism in India. Any disparity in any field is attributed to structural casteism that has been institutionalised and hence the foundations of these institutions need to be dismantled. Thus, Hinduism itself needs to be dismantled according to them.

Snakes in the Ganga explains the social theory behind Wokeism’s worldview which is through the Marxist lens of oppressors and oppressed. Marxism believes that all society is intentionally structured by the oppressors to oppress victims, resulting in unequal outcomes favoring the oppressors. CRT uses race as the marker for group identities while ignoring the individual. This gets converted to caste as the marker in the Indian context. The solution it proposes is to dismantle existing structures and institutions. In India’s case, this leads to a global call to dismantle Hinduism and all the structures and institutions based on it.

The most important contribution of the book is the way it meticulously explains how Wokeism is mapped onto India. The diversity of India is a fertile ground to apply Critical Race Theory because every kind of difference can be attributed to structural and systematic oppression. Harvard is doing this research of transforming CRT into Critical Caste Theory and applying it to India.

What we found most intriguing is how Critical Caste Theory is being used to attack Indian meritocracy by calling it a mask that hides privilege and structural oppression. Meritocracy is considered an outcome of Brahmanical patriarchy and thus produces unequal outcomes for certain groups. Harvard scholars are attacking meritocracy used in the IITs and consider it institutional and structural casteism. The other factors that affect outcomes like hard work and individual talent are totally ignored by these scholars. This is a direct attack on India’s institutions. Their solution is to dismantle the IITs in their current form.

Harvard has become the new Vishva Guru, from knowledge production to training of Indian academia in Western theories. From setting up new institutions in India to infiltrating existing institutions, Harvard seems to be the big powerhouse behind many initiatives to brainwash a whole generation of Indians. This is the direct result of importing the Western model of social sciences.

Details about this pathbreaking book are available here.