Halloween: The Silent Killer
An evidence based exploration of how harmful Halloween is to our environment as well as to the mental health of children, and why we must outright ban Halloween in India.
Reversing the Gaze
What if? Reversing the gaze on a newly appointed premier
Condescending, dismissive, lofty are a few words that come to mind from the Western media in its reference to India with a generous dose of Hindutva, Hindu Nationalism, Caste, Suppression, poverty, giving the impression that the Western governments are secular, with greater faith in science than with a jealous god. We look at the report on the appointment of a Premier of Catholic faith and elaborate with reciprocal narrative.
English: a tool for DeRacination: #EnglishNonUsables
Abbakka Prerana || श्री || Try to buy an alphabet book for Indian languages and you will come across books titled something like “My bilingual baby”. Westerners feel proud to make their children bilingual because most of them know only one language. On the other hand, most Indians know 3 …
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AI ethics: a dharmic perspective #Dharma_Is_Not_Optional
Author: Divya Nagaraj. Author Note: Rajiv Malhotra’s book AI and the Future of Power ,discusses many thought provoking issues posed by AI under the overarching guiding framework of Dharma. Ethics in AI is an extremely important area of research,study,policy which will not only affect the deployment of AI in myriad …
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#Drishti matters .. a “dramatic” case study .. #TKTSKK
Abbakka Prerana Author Note: Some readers could infer that this piece is justifying dowry or lynching. This is , as i see it , the effect of the binary thinking that western universalism forces – respecting one God leads to disrespecting other gods and vice versa. Non-westerners also imbibe the …
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“Charity”, #WesternUniversalism examined: ≠ Daana
Abbakka Prerana || श्री || When we hear the word “charity” what comes to our mind is helping the needy, magnanimity, selflessness, etc. But do you know about the different varieties of charity? Let me describe some versions of charity I have come across. The Selling Generation – Catching them …
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Is Science another form of Christianity ? #RoS
Abbakka Prerana Editorial Note: In a thought provoking article, reversing the gaze on Science from a layperson perspective, Abbakka raises some very important points about the nature of “Modern Science”, especially the influence of its roots and evolution. Just as adherents of Christianity claim it to be the Religion of …
Education vs Dharma ? #Dharma_Is_Not_Optional
Author: – Divya Nagaraj. The Goal of Education This can be answered in two ways, through the western (adharmic) lens and the dharmic lens. Let us first examine this question through the western lens. In the Western sense, put in most simplistic terms, the goal of education is to attain …
Indic Food Labeling – A Manthan
Author: Prof. K Gopinath. Editorial Note: Prof. Gopinath in an incisive piece (with illuminating Notes), highlights the issues that need to be considered. not just in terms of strategy but also calls out to activists and public intellectuals to be honest and true to India’s civilizational pedigree, when pursuing efforts …
American Exceptionalism and the Myth of the Frontiers- 5 : (Phase I) Theorizing the Savage in Early Expansion
In early America, Christianity played a key role in forming the identity of the settlers and in justifying the brutalities against Native Americans once they refused to convert. But upon Independence, the generation known as the Founding Fathers of America was…
American Exceptionalism and the Myth of the Frontiers – 4: Encounter with Native Americans
Encounter with Native Americans Christianity, Enlightenment ideas, and greed often colluded to produce a result that annihilated the natives and built up America into a super nation. These three forces are summarized below: Biblical Myths ● Lieven explains that the biblical myths…
American Exceptionalism and the Myth of the Frontiers – 3: Mutations of the Myth
Mutations of the Myth The Myth mutated from its Christian base to include an Enlightenment base over time. Between 1795 and 1830 the agrarian expansion was very successfully accomplished, and the Christian-eschatological substructure of the original Frontier Myth…
American Exceptionalism and the Myth of the Frontiers – 2: The City upon a Hill
Author: Rajiv Malhotra. Americans not only have a deep and positive sense of history but are particularly invested in their own special place in the world. There is no need for the national myth to be explicitly stated as such and, in fact, leaving it implicit or denying its very …
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American Exceptionalism and the Myth of the Frontiers – 1: Introduction
As part of the IK Masters Series, we re-publish a 2009 paper (book chapter) by Rajiv Malhotra on American Exceptionalism, published in the book,The Challenge of Eurocentrism: Global Perspectives, Policy, and Prospects. Given current events transpiring in 2020, this paper is all…
Order! Order!
As I was reading the chapter व्यवस्था और अव्यवस्था (Order and Chaos) of the book विभिन्नता (Being Different), it reminded me of the few years that I spent in the US. We frequently get to know of experiences of foreigners visiting India and their experiences with the Indian chaos. Here are some experiences of an Indian with the orderliness in the US. Before I begin, I would…
Mallelujah!
One of the biggest casualties of the current pandemic has been insaaniyat, which is often loosely translated as humanity. Strictly speaking such an equivalence will not be considered a halal interpretation by most purists. Even if we were to use an English equivalent, we should use the term humanism and not humanity. The loss of insaaniyat we are seeing all around today…
Is The USA a CPC ? The USCIRF Indicates So
The United States Commission on International Religions Freedom (USCIRF) is in the news and as guessed for all the wrong reasons. They have released their annual report for the year 2020 – in which India has been put under the Countries of Particular
The Stripping Of “Namaste”: An Abrahamic Justification
COVID19 has dramatically impacted the way we live. For the current millennial generation it will forever be their 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. All the things we have taken for granted- struck with a vicious blow in the form of a reality check. The way we shop, the…
The White Man Is The Burden – Case Studies In Colonization
Shri Rajiv Malhotra’s recent discussion on the upcoming series of books on the UTurn theory and on the nature of Civilisational Digestion, has provoked deep churn. It raises serious questions on current narratives, which are designed to invoke awe of the
A Call For Pūrva Pakṣa Of China In A Post COVID-19 World
The year 2020, while entering the annals of humanity marked by the COVID-19 pandemic with origins in the Wuhan province of China, coincides with the 70th year of India-China diplomatic relations. The long advertisements across newspapers and the
China Must Pay… and so must the World
China’s crimes and cover-up China must pay for sure. There is no question about that. They exported a deadly virus from Wuhan. They downplayed the danger. They silenced the whistleblowers. If China had taken action 3-weeks earlier, infected cases could have
China Coronavirus Panic: A “Western Universalism” Case Study
From China’s Problem to Global Crisis For days people ignored #ChinaCoronaVirus – it was at best a footnote in most discussions. In early days people referred to it as the Wuhan Coronavirus and most thought that it would remain localized to China – so let
Religion is Adharma – 2: Understanding Dharma
In the previous part, we had delved into the concept known popularly as religion. We had analyzed the characteristics of God, Prophets and Holy Books. We had then shown some of the common features of Islam and Christianity, and we had provided a generic
Salvation: Hindu influence on Christianity – Part 2
Editorial note: Dr. Koenraad Elst wrote this for the Infinity Foundation Mandala project almost two decades ago. The recent interview of ex-Christian Esther Dhanraj has provoked lots of discussion. This essay by Dr. Elst, in his own inimitable style, we hope
Salvation: Hindu influence on Christianity – Part 1
Dr. Koenraad Elst wrote this for the Infinity Foundation Mandala project almost two decades ago. The recent interview of ex-Christian Esther Dhanraj has provoked lots of discussion. This essay by Dr. Elst, in his own inimitable style, we hope, will add
Plagiarism By Cornell, Harvard And Nature, Delhi’s Smoke Season And Monsanto. What Is The Connection ?
In December 2017, I published an article entitled ‘Law aiding Monsanto is reason for Delhi’s annual smoke season‘ in the Delhi based newspaper Sunday Guardian. The article explained why the Delhi metropolitan region had been blanketed by smoke
René Guénon, Sameness And Digestion Of Dharma – Part 3
To Read Second Part of Article, Click Here. III – Some responses 1) Symbolical unity and Primordial Traditional: Hindu teachings, while making use of symbols, do not invest them with the garb of reality itself. Symbols can be used in poetics, aesthetics and
René Guénon, Sameness And Digestion Of Dharma – Part 2
Guénon openly departs from dharmic doctrines sometimes, as in the case of punarjanman (reincarnation), the existence of which he denied. His point of view was also endorsed over the years by also famous Sri Lankan traditionalist Ananda
René Guénon, Sameness And Digestion Of Dharma – Part 1
This article offers a short, but essential, description of René Guénon’s point of view about Hinduism and succinctly points out why his position cannot be considered dharmic, and how he contributed to the “sameness” approach (Malhotra, 2011, Ch. I)
Religion is Adharma – 1: Understanding Religion
Author: Subhodeep Mukhopadhyay. The word dharma is often translated as religion. But as scholars like Rajiv Malhotra have pointed out, dharma is a Sanskrit non-translatable and cannot be translated as religion[i]. Let us first try to understand what religion is. The Oxford Dictionary defines religion as [ii]: The belief in …
Soul Is Anitya, Atma Is Not
According to Cambridge dictionary, soul is “the spiritual part of a person that some people believe continues to exist in some form after their body has died”. The word is classified under the category “Souls, spirits & ghosts” and some of the common synonyms and related words associated with soul are: astral plane[i], aura, ectoplasm