Some Impressionistic takes from the book of

Rajiv Malhotra
“Being Different”
by Ramki
[email protected]
About the Author
 Rajiv Malhotra is an internationally known researcher,
writer, speaker and public intellectual on current affairs
as they relate to civilizations, cross-cultural
encounters, spirituality and science.
 He studied physics and computer science, and served
in multiple careers including: software development
executive, Fortune 100 senior corporate executive,
strategic consultant, and successful entrepreneur in
the information technology and media industries.
 At the peak of his career when he owned 20 companies in several countries, he
took early retirement at age 44 to pursue philanthropy, research and public
service. He established Infinity Foundation for this purpose in 1994.
 Rajiv has conducted original research in a variety of fields and has influenced
many other thinkers in India and the West. He has disrupted the mainstream
thought process among academic and non-academic intellectuals alike, by
providing fresh provocative positions on Dharma and on India. Some of the
focal points of his work are: Interpretation of Dharma for the current times;
comparative religion, globalization, and India’s contributions to the world.
Prelude
 Being Different is both a critical exploration of the two vastly different
metaphysical/ religious world views (the Abrahamic and dharmic
families of spiritual traditions) dominant in the United States and India
respectively, and a challenge to what the author finds to be an
asymmetric power relationship between them.
 Malhotra does not take up these tasks from a neutral and
disinterested point of view.
 He writes with passion from within an avowedly dharmic stance and
with the intention of undermining the attempts to domesticate and
expropriate the Indian traditions in a process of inter-religious
dialogue that is ultimately based on a Western cosmological
framework and religious assumptions.
 In drawing out the contrast between "tolerance of other religions" and
"mutual respect between religions" in his "experiments in proposing
mutual respect" in chapter 2, he brilliantly exposes the pretense in
Western affirmations of cultural pluralism.
Prelude
 He further insightfully suggests that the West—especially the United
States—suffers from what he calls "difference anxiety" that can be
controlled only by producing a worldwide religious homogeneity that
effectively contradicts the deceptively overt commitment to having a
diversity of cultures.
 Against those within the dharmic framework who envy the "riches" of the
globalized world (a "difference anxiety" from below, compared to that of
the West), he shows that accepting Western cultural assumptions is not
essential to participation in the benefits of globalization.
 An essential reading for Western scholars engaged in cross-cultural
studies. Malhotra espouses an "audacity of difference" in any such
enterprise that defends both the distinctiveness and the spiritual value of
Indian thought that effectively reveals the cultural chauvinism of much
Western thought in its encounters with other cultures.
 Entertaining such audacity without assuming it is simply an apology for
Hinduism could well transform the current global multicultural dialogue
to positive effect.
Questions raised by the author
 Why do religious differences have to be encouraged? Is it
better being different or getting digested?
 What is cultural digestion and how does it create serious
problems?
 Why mutual respect is better than tolerance?
 How does the West and the East react to chaos,
complexities, and ambiguities?
 How does Indian civilization differ from Western history-
centric religion?
The arguments which the author gives for all these questions
make the reader understand what is present in Indian civilization
or Hindu worldview and how is that gets digested in Western
universalism.
The Audacity of Difference
 The author states that Purvapaksha “is the traditional dharmic
approach to rival schools.
 It is a dialectical approach, taking a thesis by an opponent
(‘Purvapakshin’) and then providing its rebuttal (‘Khandana’)
to establish the protagonist’s views (‘Siddhanta’).
 The Purvapaksha tradition required any debater first to argue
from the perspective of his opponent in order to test the
validity of his understanding of the opposing position, and
from there to realize his own shortcomings.
 The author strongly advocates mutual respect rather than
religious tolerance. He makes the readers to understand
easily by quoting ‘no husband and wife would appreciate
being told that his or her presence at home was being
tolerated
The Audacity of Difference
 Tolerance, in short, is an outright insult. Whereas mutual
respect merely means that, ‘I am respected for my faith, with
no compulsion for others to adopt or practice it’.
 In this chapter, adding to the terms religious tolerance and
mutual respect, the author has coined a term “difference
anxiety.” This term refers to ‘the mental uneasiness caused
by the perception of difference combined with a desire to
diminish, conceal, or eradicate it.’
 This chapter describes the ways by which the difference
anxiety pushes the western thoughts towards the
homogeneous ideas, beliefs, and identity.
 As a way of resolving difference, the western civilizations
take out the best elements of other religions, place them in
their own concepts, and formulate themselves as progressive
races.
The Audacity of Difference
 This categorization privileges the western gaze and enables it to
declare itself as the universal norm for others to emulate.
 Gives the historical evidence of slow invasion of the West in
Indian culture, which later made Indians feel proud to follow the
west and feel ashamed or inferior calling themselves as Indian.
 This leads to the digestion of the so-called inferior religion by the
West. When a particular civilization labels itself in the position of
superiority, it tends to dominate the less powerful civilization and
kill the less powerful religion.
 The author strongly claims ‘the cross-fertilization among cultures
can be sustained longer than the merging of one into another.’
 To give more clarity, he speaks about the Indian traditions that
embody the approach of difference with mutual respect based
on the radical idea that differences are not a problem to be
solved
Purva Paksha
Effective prerequisites for Purva Paksha
 Level playing field, terms of debate mutually agreed
 Intention to pursue truth, not conversion
 Pursue truth irrespective of ego impact, no compromises to get win-win;
 Basic self-control /mastery a prerequisite for the practioner
 Be well informed in both the schools
Best example: Mahatma Gandhi and his fight against Colonial rule

Use Western Use Dharmic

Categories Categories
Gaze at Indian Colonial Indology and Pre-colonial Indian
Civilization humanities in today’s intellectuals
South Asian Studies
Gaze at Western Postcolonial Indian Very rare but the Authors
Civilization scholar who attack the goal
West using western
categories

9
Yoga: Freedom from History
 This chapter mainly focuses on giving clarity to the readers
that Indian culture is not history-centric but inner science.
 In Dharmic tradition, through spiritual practices, an ordinary
man can recover the ultimate truth and can understand the
true self and the highest truth.
 Dharmic emphasis on an individual’s ever-present divine
potential runs contrary to the Judeo-Christian emphasis on
‘salvation from sin’.
 From the Dharmic point of view, the Judeo-Christian fixation
on history is strange.
 For the West’s continuous claim that the stories on India are
entirely mythical with no historical evidence, author explains
very clearly that Dharmic spiritual practices do not rely on
some anthropological values
Yoga: Freedom from History
 Further he says ‘truth is not dependent on history; rather,
history is a manifestation of it’.

 Thus, Dharmic relation between history and myth is not

comparable to Western relation between truth and fiction.

 This understanding of highest truth never showed Indian

sense of manifest destiny to rule the world.

 Having explained very clearly the inner science of Dharmic

worldview, he questions the western religion: Will the western
worldview exist if their history is destroyed?
Integral Unity & Synthetic Unity

 Here he explains integral unity as “ultimately ONLY the whole

exists; the parts that make up the whole have but a
RELATIVE existence.
 The whole is independent and indivisible.” It can be
discovered and experienced through spiritual practices.
 According to the Dharmic worldview, creation is not separate
from God and God is not merely the creator (the external
force) of the world.
 However, as per the Abrahamic faith, synthetic unity starts
with the parts that EXIST separately from one another.
According to the Western worldview, physical and non-
physical parts. have independent existence and are linked by
external force i.e. the divine power.
Integral Unity & Synthetic Unity

 The Judeo-Christian worldview is based on the separate

essences for God, the world and the human souls.

 This result has been a forced unity of separate entities, and

such a unity always feels threatened to disintegrate and
remains synthetic at its best. In Dharmic worldview,
everything emerges from unified WHOLE. Moreover, this
makes the readers understand God is the world.
Integral Unity vs. Synthetic Unity: The Idea
 Integral Unity of the Dharmic world: Involution and Evolution cycle
 Concept of infinity: Purna
 Synthetic Unity: Creation and Evolution irreconcilable

Dharma Judeo-Christian
The Ultimate reality Belief independent Belief based
Impersonal, multiple forms Male, Father
God not separate from God and world distinct
world
The Human Individual: sat-chit-anand Individual: sinner
Reincarnation One life
Self-made destiny-karma Circumstances unexplained
Moksha: individual effort Salvation: Grace of god

The World Infinite cycle of creation Finite time and space, linear
No collective end; moksha Judgment day for humanity
personal
Integral Unity vs. Synthetic Unity: Issue of Contention
 Synthetic Unity: Binary world of True and False
 Emphasis on reasoning to bifurcate promotes ego or isolation
 Higher isolation/ inflated ego leads to higher needs
 Inflated ego promotes selfishness and violence
 Result, pursuit of infinite growth in a finite world
 Focus on freedom to
 A range of states: (7 in number) Negation, Approximation,
Absence, Difference (with some similarities), Reduction /
Diminution, Badness / unworthy, Opposite/ contradictory
 Concept of prana –unifying mind and body focused on feeling
 Process to integrate self with the ultimate reality, by eliminating
ego
 Focus on freedom from
Integral Unity vs. Synthetic Unity: Implications
Description Dharmic Judeo-Christianity
World view Cosmic centered system Human centered system
Time horizon Infinite Finite
Relationship with Interdependence Subordinate to human
nature
Approach to problem Discover solutions Invent solutions
Concept of Progress Sustainable co-existence Material progress

 Binary mode of view vs. multiple hues of dharma is seen as

dharma being ‘unethical’
 Means vs. end debate and Krishna in Mahabharata
 A view that ethics as a guide applies only in self-centered
actions
Order & Chaos
 After reading about the synthetic unity, readers can comprehend
very clearly the author’s view of the deep-rooted anxiety of
western worldview towards chaos, uncertainty, and complexity.
 To make it clear that Dharmic worldview is decentralized and is
flexible with chaos, the author brings in Sri Aurobindo’s quotes
on decentralization that “unity must be created, but not
necessary uniformity.”
 Adding to this, the chapter describes how Dharmic worldview
sees chaos as a creative catalyst built into the cosmos to
balance out order and hence it adopts a more relaxed attitude
towards it.
 In this chapter, the author gives a beautiful analogy – Dharmic
as forest and Judeo-Christian as desert.
 This analogy will help readers get a clear idea of Dharmic
worldview’s flexibility towards chaos.
Anxiety Over Chaos vs. Comfort with Complexity: The idea

 Defined, permanent bifurcation vs. Subjective, temporary, classification

 Biblical view: Good and Evil inherited, Noah and three sons: Ham,
Shem, Japheth
 Dark-skinned Ham & ancestors punished for violating honor
 Dharmic View: Good and evil, vision based
 Kashyapa =Vision, Diti= limited/ divided, limited, Aditi= limitless
 Source of Difference: Desert origin vs. Forest born

View Time Karma/ History Psychological

Phala dependent implications
Christianity Finite Eternal Yes Tension/ Guilt
Hinduism/ Infinite Temporary No Ease
Buddhism
 Anxiety Over Chaos vs. Comfort with Complexity: Issue of
Contention

Uni-dimensional Ethics:

 Commandments or the one Right path for all

 Push for Uniformity

Contextualized Dharma:

 Universal dharma an oxymoron

 Dharma is life-stage specific, occupation specific and era-

specific, Dharma is open ended and evolves

 Practice can be both right and wrong; they are context specific

 Push for unity

Anxiety Over Chaos vs. Comfort with Complexity: Implication

Satyam-Shivam-Sundaram implications
 Western view:
 True, good and beautiful is integrated
 White skinned, symmetric gods and heroes, dark
skinned, malformed villains
 Was used to justify slavery
 Dharma View:
 Beautiful need not be good, good need not be beautiful,
both good and beautiful need not be permanent, i.e. true
 Dark skin seen as beautiful and good, : Rama, Krishna,
Vishnu
Non-translatable Sanskrit versus Digestion

 The author argues about the problematic impact of translating

and representing the Dharmic worldview in western
frameworks.
 Dharmic worldview is in Sanskrit.
 This is the reason why Hindu worldview cannot be translated
on western framework.
 In Sanskrit, the fundamental sounds have a link to the
experience of the object they represent i.e. the root sound
and vibrations.
 This chapter clearly states how the digestion happens due to
this kind of translation to western worldview, which actually
cannot be translated at all.
Cultural Digestion vs. Sanskrit Non-translatebles: The Idea

 Four levels of Vak (the root/ source of creation): un-manifest,

subtle potential, mental image and outer expression
 Words have multiple meaning and is context specific
 Bridaranyaka Upanishad: The 3 meanings of Da
 Translating Sanskrit into other western languages misses the
essence
 It is like assigning constant value to an algebraic variable
 Brahman and Ishwara ≠ God, Impersonal vs. Personal,
universe vs. creator
 Shiva ≠Destroyer, Shiva is transformer, there is no end
 Atma ≠Soul; True self vs. waiting to be save by God
Cultural Digestion vs. Sanskrit Non-translatebles: Implication

Religion viewed Differently

Aspects Christian view Dharmic View

Divine Distinct from individual Within; but not essential as in
Buddhism, Jainism, Carvaka
Source of Single source Multiple sources; library vs.
Knowledge books
Governance Institution of Church Not essential
Route to A standard set: Multiple routes: Jnana, Bhakti,
salvation repentance and Karma,
acceptance

Membership Formally granted No formal membership, a way

of life
Western Universalization
Idea
 Globalization means westernization
 Progress is salvation or scientific secular progress
 Concept of Universal History, linear in nature
Issues of Contention
 Binary categories like sacred/ secular, monotheism/polytheism,
creation/evolution, political right/left cannot explain Dharma with
multiple hues
Implications
 Other cultures selectively used to forward Westernization:
Germany and Sanskrit
 Uni-dimensional concept of success
 Cultural genocide in the name of development
 Eliminating local production and seasonal eating
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