Indra’s Net Book
(CHAKRA) It is fashionable among intellectuals to assert that Dharma traditions lacked any semblance of unity before the British period, and that the contours of contemporary Hinduism were bequeathed to us by our colonial masters. Such arguments routinely target Swami Vivekananda, a key interlocutor who shattered many deeply rooted prejudices against Indian civilization. They accuse him of having camouflaged various alleged ‘contradictions’ within traditional Hinduism, and charge him with having appropriated the principles of Western religion to ‘manufacture’ a coherent and unified worldview and set of practices known today as Hinduism.
Indra’s Net: Defending Hinduism’s Philosophical Unity (Harpercollins, 2014) provides a foundation for refuting theories that slander contemporary Hinduism as illegitimate, ascribing sinister motives to its existence, and characterizing its fabric as oppressive. Rajiv Malhotra offers a detailed, systematic rejoinder to such views, and articulates the multidimensional, holographic understanding of reality that grounds Hindu Dharma.
Originating in the Atharva Veda, the concept of Indra’s Net is a powerful metaphor for interconnectedness. It was transmitted via Buddhism’s Avatamsaka Sutra into Western thought, where it now resides at the heart of post-modern discourse. According to this metaphor, nothing ultimately exists separately by itself and all boundaries can be deconstructed. This book invokes Indra’s Net to articulate the open architecture, unity and continuity of Hinduism. Seen from this perspective, Hinduism defies pigeonholing into the traditional, modern and post-modern categories by which the West defines itself; rather, it becomes evident that Hinduism has always spanned all three categories simultaneously and without contradiction.
Rajiv Malhotra also argues that Vivekananda’s creative interpretations of Hindu Dharma informed and influenced many Western intellectual movements of the post-modern era. Indeed, appropriations from Hinduism have provided a foundation for cutting-edge discoveries in several fields, including cognitive science and neuroscience. Examples of this are cited in this book.
To buy the book in USA: Send check for $25 per copy to: Infinity Foundation, 53 White Oak Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540.
Author bio:
Rajiv Malhotra is an Indian-American researcher and public intellectual on current affairs, world religions, cross-cultural encounters and science. His focus is on interventions that challenge and disrupt many assumptions concerning Indian civilization. He is the author of Breaking India (Amaryllis, 2011) and Being Different (HarperCollins, 2011), and the chief protagonist in Invading the Sacred (Rupa & Co., 2007). He is chairman of the Board of Governors of the Indic Studies center at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. A scientist by training, Rajiv was previously a senior corporate executive, strategic consultant and entrepreneur in telecommunications, information technology and media.
Yelle is right when he says that, “Every tradition is in fact an amalgam, and retains the traces of its composite origins.” But he is wrong when he argues against my use of common features such as integral unity and embodied knowing, calling these “a thoroughly modern and homogenized ideal of Hinduism drawn from certain aspects of Vedånta philosophy and Yoga.” His concern about homogenization would have been legitimate if Being Different had proposed an integration of all Dharma traditions into a single new tradition. This is simply not my goal. Looking for commonality as a standpoint from which to gaze at a different family does not require us to relinquish the internal distinctiveness among the members of either family.
Thank You Rajiv Malhotraji for continuing your relentless work for fighting Dharma n Indian philosophy in this global arena of Intellectual Kurukshetra!!! Thank You once again!