Being Different – Rajiv Malhotra
(CHAKRA Blogs) Rajiv Malhotra informed us that many months ago he was approached by a journalist named Myles Collier from *Christian Post*, who told him that their media wanted to interview him on his book Being Different. He asked that it be done by email, so that there is an accurate record and no misunderstanding later. This was accepted by his editors, and what followed was an email exchange in which Rajiv answered every question asked via email. Below is a complete list of all the questions and his answers. Rajiv was told that the interview would appear very soon and that he would receive the url, but never heard back after the interview. His prediction at the time was that once the senior editors saw his responses, they would not want to publish it, because one of his conditions was that any alterations in what he said required his prior written approval. Rajiv has forwarded all his responses in full and has allowed us to publish them.
1. Question: For those not familiar with your work what is the main thesis of your book, Breaking India?
Response:
a) The book explains the role of U.S. and European churches,
academics, think-tanks, foundations, government and human rights groups in
fostering divisive identities between the Dravidian and Dalit communities on
the one hand and the rest of India based on outdated racial theories.
b) Its how outdated racial theories continue to provide academic
frameworks and fuel the rhetoric that can trigger civil wars and genocides
in developing countries.
c) The Dravidian movement’s 200-year history has such origins. Its
latest manifestation is the “Dravidian Christianity” movement that
fabricates a political and cultural history to exploit old fault lines.
I refer to this as the “breaking India project”. Please see:
http://www.breakingindia.com/
2. Question: What kind of reception has your book garnered?
Response:
a) The reception in Indian think tanks and defence study networks has
been very good. The book was launched by senior Indian retired security and
military officials. See videos at:
http://beingdifferentbook.com/globalization-and-world-peace/
http://beingdifferentbook.com/india-in-the-eagles-eye/
http://beingdifferentbook.com/american-theory-making-on-india/
http://beingdifferentbook.com/where-is-india-in-the-encounter/
b) There has also been a very good reception among the general public
in both India and the US. The book has already gone through 5 print runs and
become a national best-seller. Breaking India was quoted during the recent
controversial Kodankulam protests.
c) The latest jacket’s endorsements are also self-explanatory–
please see:
http://breakingindia.com/images/bic.pdf
d) It has been translated into Tamil and the Hindi edition will soon
be ready as well.
3. Question: When specifically considering the situation of the
Dalit’s Dr. Joseph D’souza describes it as the “greatest human rights
violation in history” — is this an accurate portrayal?
Response:
a) Calling the situation of the Dalits the “greatest human rights
violation in history” is an example of the sensationalist pandering and
politicization that Breaking India explains. Anyone
researching atrocities objectively must examine the following ones: White
European Christian conquerors of America against Native Americans and
Australian aborigines, Spanish Inquisition against women and native faiths,
Portuguese Inquisition against Indians, Christian slavery of Africans,
Christian colonization of Asia and other continents during which hundreds of
millions were killed. In fact, Christianity was built by the sword ever
since the time Emperor Constantine hijacked it and turned it into a dogma
for state theocracy.
b) Joseph D’souza is trying to help cover up this White Christian
guilt of perpetrating many of history’s worst atrocities. Non-White
Christians like D’souza perform this cover up for White Christians, and for
this they earn funding and career opportunities. I refer to such persons as
`sepoys’, after the Indians who served under British rule and helped police
and control other Indians. This role is similar to that of the
Anglo-Irishmen who were used by the English to colonize Ireland.
c) Of course, all violations of human rights are to be condemned,
and we must work hard to give dignity to every human across the globe. But
one cannot distort history in order to open the door for Western
interventions as has been their strategy for centuries.
d) There’s a long history of many Indian communities becoming poor
and disenfranchised due to dislocation under Islamic and British oppression,
and many of them turned into present day Dalits. This is not a “Hindu
problem” per se as is the fashion to call it in the Christian press. In
fact, Dalit Christians have litigated against the Indian Church for
prejudices against them that are institutionalized within Christianity –
including separate burial grounds, and bias in the allocation of funds.
e) Most Christian nations that were former colonies, such as the ones
in Latin America, Philippines, etc. have far worse per capita statistics of
crimes than India does.
f) Also, the Church remains racially very much divided even in rich
Christian countries like USA: That’s why there are separate Black churches,
Korean churches, Hispanic churches, etc. Even among Indian Christians in USA
there are separate churches for Tamils and Malaya lees, etc.
g) So human rights activism must begin at home – Christians must work
within Christian society to solve internal problems, rather than trying to
export cures for social maladies they are suffering themselves, and
especially diseases they have spread elsewhere. The human rights record of
atrocities by Christendom is woven deeply into the tapestry of world
history.
h) The Church has no moral authority to intervene in other countries
using the pretext of bringing them human rights.
i) India’s sovereignty and its internal institutions for improving
the lot of all its citizens must be respected and strengthened.
4. Question: There are many organizations dedicated to helping
and empowering the Dalit’s, yet you have made the claim that western
influences actually hinder progressive movements and contribute to an ever
hostile social environment—why is this?
Response:
a) India, like any former colony, has its own share of social
injustices that need to be continually addressed and resolved.
b) But separatist forces supported and funded by external nexuses are
constructing a dangerous and fictitious anti-national grand narrative. This
has been forged specifically to alienate Dalits from their own culture and
country by exacerbating societal divisions. This is the latest version of
the old divide-and-rule strategy practiced by European colonizers
everywhere.
c) All democracy-loving Americans should worry about the
consequences of allowing narrow-minded Christian organizations to undermine
the largest democracy in the world.
d) Dalit communities are not monolithic and have extremely diverse
histories and social dynamics – so you cannot lump all of them in one box.
Also, not all Dalit communities are at the same socio-economic level or
homogeneously poor. Nor are they static or inherently subordinate to others.
Indeed, there are several Dalit billionaires, top politicians and other
leaders – a Dalit has even been the President of India.
e) While Dravidian and Dalit identities were initially constructed
separately, there is now a strategy at work to link them in order to
denigrate and demonize Indian classical traditions as a common enemy. This,
in turn, has been mapped on to a newly manufactured Afro-Dalit narrative
which claims that Dalits are racially related to Africans and all other
Indians are “whites.” Thus, Indian civilization itself is demonized as
anti-humanistic and oppressive.
f) This has become the playground of major foreign players, both
from the evangelical right and from the academic left. It has opened huge
career opportunities for an assortment of middlemen including foreign-funded
NGOs, intellectuals and” champions of the oppressed.”
g) While the need for relief and structural change is immense, the
short-sighted selfish politics is often empowering some individual leaders
rather than the people whose cause is being championed. The” solutions”
often exacerbate the problems. See: http://www.breakingindia.com/six-provocations/
5. Question: What is your current feeling as to the situation
created by outside organizations and the impact that has on the Dalit
population?
Response:
a) Genuine grievances and injustices certainly do exist. There is no
whitewashing here.
b) But the book shows how such existing fault lines are used by
transnational forces to subvert India and brand Indian civilization as
hopeless and in need of being replaced by a superior imported variety. This
can make Dalits believe that their liberation lies in toppling India’s
civilization and nationhood.
c) Politicized Christianity in India maps Biblical notions on to a
Marxist interpretation of” class struggle”, i.e. Liberation Theology, even
though the American sponsors do not support such ideology domestically where
they live. So they are pulling the strings of society and politics half way
around the world in an alien place without having any skin in the game. This
is hypocrisy.
d) My research tracked the money trails from the West where funds are
raised for “education,” “human rights,” “empowerment training,” and
“leadership training,” but end up in programs designed to produce angry
youths who feel disenfranchised from Indian identity. Already the Baptists
have created separatist movements in India’s northeast region by converting
the natives and shifting their loyalties.
e) Similar interventions by some of the same global forces have
resulted in genocides and civil wars in Sri Lanka, Rwanda, etc.
6. Question: There has been a great deal of discussion over the
role of Hinduism in India and its propensity to keep “undesired” individuals
oppressed, I was curious as to your thoughts about the role of Hinduism and
the Hindutva in India?
Response:
a) It is ironic that Christians are able to make such assumptions at
a time when Hindu ideas are being appropriated into Christianity to create a
more benevolent theology for Christianity. Hindu metaphysics and praxis have
been digested into Christianity for a long time, but very systematically for
at least 200 years, into such diverse areas as: sacredness of the earth and
the divine feminine; yoga and the human body as not being inherently sinful
but being inherently divine; animal rights and vegetarianism; the inherent
unity of consciousness as opposed to the dualism of Judeo-Christianity; etc.
b) I am writing a whole series of books on how major Christian
thinkers have acknowledged Hindu sources for some of their most important
rethinking on Christianity. Unfortunately, subsequent Christians like to
dilute these Hindu influences and eventually forget them entirely, and
replace them with Judeo-Christian sources, in order to hide the “Hinduism
inside” that exists at the heart of much of today’s reinterpreted
Christianity.
c) So, on the one hand, we have this very frantic appropriation
going on, and the Hindu origins are being erased. Simultaneously, on the
other hand, the very same Hindu sources are being abused as “oppressive”.
How could Hindu ideas be useful to liberate Christianity from Christianity’s
own shackles, and yet Hinduism be branded so vehemently as oppressive?
d) I am reminded of the way Greek thought was appropriated by St.
Augustine and others in order to start Christian theology (prior to which
Christian historians admit that the Bible lacked philosophical content), and
yet the very same Greek society was condemned as “pagan” and finished off. I
have referred to this as a form of arson: the arsonist robs the bank and
then burns it down to hide the evidence. The Christian West has perfected
this type of activity over the centuries: appropriate and simultaneously
destroy the source.
e) I am amazed at the sweeping assumptions in your question. It is
hypocritical for Christians to point fingers at the alleged “propensity to
keep undesired individuals oppressed” in Hinduism, given Christianity’s
track record on oppression of indigenous cultures, sexual abuse of children,
persecution of great scientists and thinkers who did not accede to Christian
dogma of the time, systemic repression of women and homophobia.
f) As for Hindutva, that is a specific political movement and you
will have to interview its leaders for their views. I can only speak for
Hindu dharma as an individual practitioner-scholar, and not for any
institution.
7. Question: How do you respond to those who would call the
research found in your book sound, however claim that your interpretation
and subsequent propaganda message is wrong?
Response:
a) This statement is too general to be possible to answer. There are
many issues discussed in my works, and hence you have to cite a concrete
example of what troubles you, so I may be able to address it. Breaking
India exposes propaganda; it does not create it. It is the result of a
fact finding mission undertaken over decades and the result of rigorous
analysis, not sloganeering.
b) I anticipated that my findings will trouble many persons who have
a vested interest to defend a fabricated history, a fabricated grandiose
notion of their own religious supremacy and exclusivity, and who are in many
cases also sustaining their careers and lifestyles based on pushing ideas on
behalf of powerful global nexuses.
c) If any objections to my research come from persons who do not
fall in these categories and are based on primary sources, I will consider
them respectfully and modify my views if necessary.
8. Question: The Dalit Freedom Network and Operation Mobilization
are two groups that are building schools which offer English-medium
education with a Christian world-view perspective while also offering
vocational training to help abused and trafficked individuals in India. If
local programs are not offering opportunities for marginalized people why
would it be negative for Dalit’s and other lower caste members to
exercise choice and work towards a better future?
Response:
a) Mahatma Gandhi lashed out against Christian missionaries numerous
times because they linked their social work to conversion. I agree with his
posture. Christians who are genuinely motivated must provide unconditional
help from one human to another.
b) To denigrate another’s culture is a form of himsa (harm) and
violates the dharmic principle known as ahimsa. Christians must learn mutual
respect for others and not use mere “tolerance” as a cover up of hatred.
(For more details on my principle of mutual respect and how it differs from
tolerance, please see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajiv-malhotra/religious-difference-with-mutual-respect_b_1165589.html)
c) Regarding the groups you have named, I oppose their political
projects and my book exposés what they are up to. DFN (with two directors
from OM) uses the Dalit face to hide that it is a hardcore operational wing
of American right-wing agendas in India. The Dalit label gives it the
emotional appeal and aura of legitimacy to intervene in India’s affairs. DFN
brings speakers and activists from India to testify before US government
commissions, policy think-tanks and churches, with the explicit goal of
promoting US intervention in India (Breaking India, pages 222-223).
d) What most of my American Christian friends are shocked to learn is
that the kind of Christianity being propagated in India is often similar to
the radical, medieval Christianity that was based on performing “miracles”
and on hate speech. Most modern Christians in USA have rejected that
Christianity, but the obsession for numerical growth in Christian population
has become the evangelical obsession. The sole focus is on numbers, not
quality or genuine religiosity.
e) There are also many good indigenous grassroots movements in India
working for Dalit causes, which do not get the type of prominence or funding
that Western-supported NGOs do. They are sadly underfunded because they lack
the sophisticated fundraising and publicity machinery. Yet such indigenous
organizations have a far better efficiency in the use of funds for making a
positive impact than the foreign ones do.
f) My American Christian friends are grateful to get informed about
this, as it enables them to make better choices in philanthropy, and be more
careful before they fund certain foreign missions. Since my book is
beginning to impact the evangelists’ fund-raising in the US, they want
Christian media like yours to poison the credibility of my work.
g) But any religious community must be open to external criticism and
self-reflection in order to improve its religious standards. Given
Christianity’s long history of abuses, it would be foolish for American
Christians to fail to examine my findings with a receptive mind.
9. Question: Can you explain your thoughts related to difference
anxiety?
Response:
a) I coined the term “difference anxiety” to refer to one’s anxiety
that the other is different in some way—be it gender, sexual orientation,
race, ethnicity, age or religion. The alternative is difference without
anxiety, and better still is celebration of difference.
b) To appreciate this very Hindu principle, one must start by
observing that the cosmos is built on the principle of difference—in plants,
animals, geographies, and even each moment in time is unique. So differences
in culture, human cognition and worldviews are entirely natural.
c) It is interesting that westerners are so protective of the
diversity of plants and animals, but the same emphasis is not placed on
protecting civilizational and faith diversity. The reason is that Westerners
are driven by the urge to control externally – control over other humans,
nature, etc. Homogeneity based on fixed canonized norms helps one control;
hence difference and especially flux are a cause for anxiety. Therefore,
Western religions have traditionally pushed for monocultures.
d) Western Monotheism is more appropriately described as “my-theism,”
meaning that my idea of theism is the only valid one.
e) In Hinduism, sva-dharma is the path for a given individual, the
“sva”prefix literally meaning “my.” It’s like “My Documents” or”My
Favorites” on your computer. God made us unique individuals, each with a
purpose based on past conditioning, including experiences in past births,
and each of us is equipped to discover his or her sva-dharma.
f) To prevent repetition of some of the worst organized, large scale
atrocities in world history that were committed for the sake of spreading a
uniform theology, it is time we respected difference. Please see: http://www.patheos.com/Books/Book-Club/Rajiv-Malhotra-Being-Different/Importance-of-Being-Different-QA-Rajiv-Malhotra-02-20-2012
Excellent replies!
When are the Christians going to say sorry to India for looting the country taking it from 23% gdp in 1700 to LESS THAN 3.8% in 1950’s.
Kind of hypocritical today crying for so called dalits, remember the word dalit was first COINED in a christian missionary school!…..hypocritical for christian today to cry about the plight of poor Indian or poor africans, or poor native americans, when it was those christian invaders that destroyed their life, civilisation, history, culture and made them poor!
But today those christians hide that past, and then FRAME THEIR GENOCIDE back onto other faiths!
The land of dharma needs the courage and interpidity of an intellectual kshatriya like Rajiv Malhotra. It is probably a gargantuan task for ordinary Indians to replicate RM’s work; however, it is certainly desirable to have a critical mass of such kshatriyas to carry his message across the nation and wake up the slumbering Bharatiyas. While the land itself has been decolonized, the new kshatriyas will have to wage war to decolonize the minds of vast population that is still under attack from nefarious Abrahamics, Marxists and dogmatic secularists who have lost touch with their own dharma.
I have read what this so-called ‘Intellectual Patriot’ Rajiv Malhotra has been saying the past few years. over ‘Breaking India’. If you want my opinion, here it is: Rajiv Malhotra is simply put a ‘Fraud’ and an Arrogant one at that…He is talking nonsense over ‘Breaking India’. India is 65 years old, and there never was an ‘India’ before that. So his theory on ‘Breaking India’ is all nonsense.
Hi Suresh
You are not considering the threats to India from US and European based organizations who use fake concepts like Aryan and Dravidian concepts, equating Dalits with blacks (after enslaving blacks for centuries) and wiping out native Americans by the millions in both cases church sanctioned as children of Ham or as pagans.
I know Rajivji personally he references all his material and has debated leading proponents of thinkers in the West who equate Ganeshji’s trunk as a limp phallus (read book invading the Sacred or watch discussion on YouTube) and hundreds of such Hinduism and Hagelian mistruths and denigrations.
He is not arrogant but speaks straight to the point. He is extremely well read and a person of very very high intellect and honesty.
Please read his book Being Different it is wonderful.
Regarding Breaking India you will be surprised that Christian funded NGOs are behind the Kudankalam nuclear project protests and these NGOs have a target to “soul harvest” in India.
He is one of a few like Subramaniam Swamy fighting the foreign nexus supported by the Christian Sonia Gandhi corrupt family which even the Indian intelligence have been noticing.
There is a concerted move for example to introduce a “faith bill” in Maharashtra to target Hindu sadhus all funded by Christian funded NGOs.
We Hindus are naive not to realize this. If you have any questions or doubts I will try to answer though I am no expert but a concerned Indian dharmic principle loving person.
Hari Raghavan can you please give more information on this ”faith bill” thankyou.
Please see the link below.
http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/15242.html
Hi Suresh,
India was culturally always one. Politically also, India has had several kings who had brought under the whole geography under one federal structure, much like what it is now with local state governments with a single central government. Please read the scholarly work of R.K.Mukherjee – “Fundamental Unity of India” – published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. http://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Unity-India-Radha-Mookerji/dp/8180280055/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8
Suresh’ comment about no India before 1947 is an affirmation of Shri Malhotra’s message. People like Suresh do not even see anything which needs to be broken! So complete is the brainwashing by the colonists.
Interesting thing about Suresh’ message is that there is no justification for his claim. He wants everyone to just accept what he is saying. Reminds you of something??
Anyone who says that there are no nefarious agendas being undertaken by the NGOs (who are controlled/funded by foreign evangelical institutions) in attempting to crack open the already serious rift caused by the colonial British between the “dalits” and the rest in India is clearly biased and have already shut their thinking faculty.
I have read both of Rajiv’s books – Being Different and Breaking India; he gives compelling evidence that the unity of India is being compromised by the creation of Dalit Fault Line and lends credence without a shred of doubt that the evangelical institutions have one goal in mind – harvesting more souls amongst the vulnerable and poor of India and appropriation of the most cherished ideals in Dharmic/Indic thought.
I agree with one commenter above that we need more Rajiv Malhotras to begin a serious challenge to the designs of the Western imperialism.
Precise & all-encompassing answers by Dr. Rajiv Malhotra. Unfortunate that the Magazine did not publish it. I came to this link while looking for some information and found it in the answer to Question 8.
I have recently posted a “reverse” analysis of funding to Indian NGOs via FCRA. The organizations mentioned there are related to Rajiv-ji’s answer to Question 8. My post is at: http://sighbaboo.blogspot.in/2014/06/operation-mobilisation-via-fcra.html
My post provides links to the financial cord connecting Operation Mobilisation and Dalit Freedom Network.
Hi,
Thanks for providing this interview. I came across this while searching for DFN & OM mentioned by RM-ji in his Answer to Q. 8 above. In a recent blogpost of mine, I have discussed the donations from Dalit Freedom Network to Operation Mobilisation in Secunderabad, via FCRA. The link is: http://sighbaboo.blogspot.in/2014/06/operation-mobilisation-via-fcra.html
Thanks for Rajiv for doing so much of home work and joining the pieces of Jigsaw puzzles and make it a complete picture, backed by time-consuming and labor intensive work in his book.
He has ignited a generation of Indians and his good work will keep on spreading.
May god give him more energy and health to keep up the good work and clearing minds of other fellow Indians who were brainwashed by chrislamists.
The ignorance of Suresh about “India” is truly amazing ! Actually “Bharat” was changed to India at some point in time in history. May be we must consider changing India to Bharat as it was. What the people of Bharat/India must learn from the West is INSTITUTION BUILDING. Just imagine the process, the methods they adopted to install Christianity and Jesus in more than 150 countries around the world – The same Jesus who was tortured and crucified !! And Hinduism’s Sanatan Dharma – the most authentic institution of respect/acceptance/ peace and the message of “Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam” languishes in our own land !
I agree with Rajiv, and we know each other, that there are many Americans who admire and appreciate the principles of Hinduism and would be happy to know more about us but we have no or few institutions that teach or spread the messages of Bhagwad Gita, Sanatan Dharma etc and its universal application to the world around us. Even Yog is a global phenomenon not because of our work but its acceptance by the Americans!