Sanskrit Non-Translatables

A Defense of Meritocracy

The Importance of Sanskritizing English

The Importance of Sanskritizing English

Publisher
Amaryllis (November 13, 2020)
Country of Origin
India
Type
Hardcover
No. of Pages
288
Language
English
ISBN-10
9390085489
ISBN-13
978-9390085484
Item Weight
1.63
pounds
Dimensions
7.87
in
x
5.51
in
x
1.57
in

About the book

Sanskrit Non-Translatables is a path-breaking and audacious attempt at Sanskritizing the English language and enriching it with powerful Sanskrit words. It continues the original and innovative idea of non-translatability of Sanskrit, first introduced in the book, Being Different. For English readers, this should be the starting point of the movement to resist the digestion of Sanskrit into English, by introducing loanwords into their English vocabulary without translation.

The book presents a thorough mechanism of the process of digestion and examines the loss of adhikara for Sanskrit language because of translating its core ideas into English. The movement launched by this book will resist this and stop the programs that seek to turn Sanskrit into a dead language by translating all its treasures to render it redundant. It discusses 54 non-translatables across various genres that are being commonly mis-translated. It empowers English speakers with the knowledge and arguments to introduce these Sanskrit words into their daily speech with confidence. Every lover of India’s sanskriti will benefit from the book and become a cultural ambassador propagating it through routine communications.

Rajiv Malhotra

Rajiv Malhotra was trained initially as a Physicist, and then as a Computer Scientist specializing in AI in the 1970s. After a successful corporate career in the US, he became an entrepreneur and founded and ran several IT companies in 20 countries. Since the early 1990s, as the founder of his non-profit Infinity Foundation (Princeton, USA), he has been researching civilizations and their engagement with technology from a historical, social sciences and mind sciences perspective. He has authored several best-selling books. Infinity Foundation has also published a 14-volume series on the History of Indian Science & Technology. His latest book on AI is  titled, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds”, in which India is the case study to analyze the impact of AI in a variety of domains.

Rajiv’s works include The Battle for Sanskrit; Breaking India; Being Different; Indra’s Net; and Academic Hinduphobia.

Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji

Babaji Satya Narayana Dasa, PhD, is a Vaishnava scholar and practitioner. He holds five post graduate degrees: a doctorate degree and a masters degree in Sanskrit, a law degree, and a masters and undergraduate degree in Engineering (IIT, Delhi). He is the author of 15 books related to Indian culture and philosophy. Babaji has been published in The Journal of Hindu Studies as well as The Journal of Vaishnava Studies. He is a contributing author to two books, Krishna, and Free Will, Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy, (OUP). He has also contributed to a 26-volume series published by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research.

Dr Dasa is the founder of Jiva Institute of Vedic Studies to promote Vedic culture, philosophy, and Ayurveda through education. He has initiated a program for preservation, translation, and publication of ancient Indian works of science and wisdom and serves as a visiting professor at the State University of New Jersey, Rutgers, and American Hindu University. He was honored by the late president of India, Dr Pranab Mukherjee, for his extraordinary contribution in presenting Vedic culture worldwide.

About the Authors

About the Editors

Rajiv Malhotra

Rajiv Malhotra

Rajiv Malhotra is a researcher and public intellectual on civilizational studies, world religions, and cross-cultural encounters. He was trained initially as a physicist, and then as a computer scientist specializing in Artificial Intelligence in the 1970s. After a successful corporate career in the USA, he became an entrepreneur and founded and ran several IT companies across twenty countries. Since the early 1990s, as the founder of his non-profit Infinity Foundation (Princeton, USA), he has been researching civilizations from a historical, social sciences, and mind sciences perspective. He has authored several best-selling books that have impacted many leading intellectuals worldwide. Rajiv also serves as chairman of the board of governors of the Center for Indic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and is on the advisory board of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla.

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At a time when Hinduism studies are under the full and tight control of Western Indologists (via their university courses and libraries, and journals and conferences), this book comes as a timely reminder of the extensive damage being wrought by this coterie, none wherein is a practising Hindus, after all. Ransacking the vast and hoary Hindu legacy, vital concepts of Yoga, Vedanta, and kindred fields are taken over by them, and exploited without compunction for crass commercial ends, labelling them first with fancy nomenclature, coupled with a denial/dethronement/desecration of their very sources. Caricature translations that divest the Sanskrit words (dharma and saṁskāra, for instance) of their sanctity and nuances are rampant. By calling out the Western games of systematic sabotage and subversion and insidious inculturation leading to cultural genocide and digestion (e.g., "Christian Yoga"), Rajiv Malhotra (in collaboration with Sri Satyanarayana Dasa) has laid bare the damages wrought by such dilution, decontextualisation, and distortion through vapid English translations thatdo violence to the subtleties, rich content and technical nature of over 50 key Sanskrit vocables. The work Sanskrit Non-Translatables exposes how facile and popular equations - such as Om = Amen, Svarga = heaven, saṁskāra = ritual, Hanumān = monkey god, dāsa = slave, śāstra = scripture, and dhyāna = meditation - are by no means full and faithful renderings. There was a desideratum to alert alike the lay and the scholarly Hindu, and this book effectively accomplishes the task it has set out for. More writings of this genre are indeed the need of the hour. All Indian libraries - public as well as private - must possess a copy of this book.

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K S Kannan
Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj Chair Professor, IIT-Madras
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This book is an eye-opener and argues a highly original and audacious thesis to enrich the English language by adding Sanskrit words that have no English equivalent. These unique words bring profound meanings discovered by the ancient rishi-s. For English language speakers, it will not only enhance their vocabulary but also introduce them to entirely new concepts for understanding of reality.

see more
Book Cover Image
Dr. Vijay Bhatkar
Chancellor, Nalanda University
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This is an indispensable book addressing the difficult situation today that Sanskrit terms pregnant with meaning cannot be translated into any foreign language; yet we have to make them understandable to people of other cultures who want to learn Sanskrit from the point of view of jigisha rather than jijnasa. The authors have worked hard to collect relevant material from various sources to prove that the English translations of many Sanskrit terms are false and misleading.

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Dr. Korada Subrahmanyam
Author of Theory of Language: Oriental & Occidental, and other books
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Rajiv has revealed the Rupa of what the world is going to be. He has performed seminal public service for those who believe in the sovereignty of an individual human being. We thank you for that. Throughout history, the greatest crime against a human being has been organ harvesting. But Rajiv has explained that the most dangerous organ harvesting that is going on is the harvesting of our mind and it is happening unconsciously without us realizing it. I predict that this book will be the most talked-about in 2021.

Rakesh Kaul
Vice Chairman – Indo-American Arts Council
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Let me compliment you for writing this book at this stage of the game and discussing this very important question in the context of Five battlegrounds. I think it is a great contribution and I am sure it will trigger very important conversations in society. Certainly, the battlegrounds which you have defined are actually a lot of food for thought for several stakeholders in society, and I do hope that a lot of debate gets triggered as a result of this book which will be good for humanity at large.

Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Padma Vibhushan
Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission of India, Retired
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I think various forces are at play. Anyone who understands this, it becomes his Swadharma. So I think it is your Swadharma, it is my Swadharma, that we talk about it, we do what we can and unless we begin with the dystopian view, we will not be galvanized into action. So I salute you for raising the alarm by stating those 5 battlegrounds, catching hold of people and telling them and saying that you got to do something, not because the world will necessarily go bad, but because it is a real risk and we must fight with all our might to resist it.

Vallabh Bhanshali
Chairman, ENAM, Philanthropist and Spiritualist
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I have not seen any previous book on this subject written in the world context and of course in the context of India, China, America, and other nations and what impact AI will have on other societies. I think it will be very well-read as your other books. I appreciate and admire it. Also, there will be many critics arguing on both sides. So this will generate a good discussion for society, for many people. I am very happy that while we are getting so many advances in Artificial Intelligence, you are taking the challenge of thinking about what the battlegrounds of the future will be, and how nations will perform. We have seen in the World Wars and other previous wars, that it is always the technologies that contribute to the win or loss. We see a similar thing happening now. And you are taking this issue in this book head-on, as usual very head-on in this kind of a thing. You have raised the five battlegrounds that are very important to see from the perspective of Technology, Geopolitics, humanity, and what impact AI will have on them. I'm sure that this book will raise many questions to our social scientists, our thinkers, our economists, and political scientists. They should understand the great impact that AI will have on all sectors, and you have taken five battlegrounds to look at them from a holistic perspective, which has not been done before. I am sure that this book will inspire, particularly policymakers, and people like me to take up larger issues. We must create tomorrow's frontier organizations.

Vijay Bhatkar, Padma Bhushan
Father of India’s Supercomputer. Chancellor of Nalanda University
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This is a long-overdue and credible analysis of AI technology and its impacts on socio-political systems, as well as the future of civilization, especially the nations striving to prosper. Rajiv Malhotra's resilience, hard work, and sincerity deserves our collective appreciation for giving us a book that is truly eye-opening, and one that bares the follies of unfettered obsession with technologies that can disrupt or endanger large sections of humanity.

Yogacharya Dhananjaya Kumar
Economist, Author, Educator
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This book is not only an interesting take on the pros and cons of broad topics related to AI and assisting technologies but very thought-provoking from a human psychology perspective. The book is the first of its kind that I am aware of discusses many facets of AI's impact, such as behavioral changes, social media manipulations, socio-political influence, world domination, and its effects on developing nations like India in great depth. Being an AI practitioner, I like the fact that the book has been written for both the non-experts and inquisitive technologists alike!

Dr. Uday Kamath, Ph.D.
Chief Administrative Officer at Digital Reasoning and author of several AI Books
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Rajiv Malhotra’s brilliant book spells out for the first time the biggest Pavlovian subjugation that humanity has been trapped within. The clear and present danger to India and Indians has been enunciated lucidly. A 2021 must read for the public and policy makers alike.

Usha Chaudhary
Corporate Executive, COO, CFO, CTO, Board Member and Senior Advisor
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The most difficult type of game is the one you don't know you are in. AI and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds allows you to understand that there is an AI-driven game already underway and that you are in the game.

Ken Harvey
Former NFL Player, Businessman, and Changemaker
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Like most scholars in the Social Sciences, and just like most Hindu activists, I have been jolted into the world of tomorrow by Rajiv Malhotra's latest book on Artificial Intelligence. His prior books on Sanskrit or the Breaking India forces contained new insights on familiar topics, but this here is, for us, a totally new frontline.

Koenraad Elst
Indologist
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This book takes the battle for Sanskrit into the territory of the English-speaking public. It makes a convincing case that English is deficient in its ability to express the profound meanings of the shastras for which Sanskrit words are necessary. By following the authors’ advice, English will become enriched with key Sanskrit terms that are non-translatable. As English has assimilated non-translatable terms from virtually all major world languages, and takes pride in doing so, there is no reason why it should hesitate to do so for Sanskrit, a Classical language very much alive today. I congratulate the authors for their innovative thinking and bold initiative.

Swami Govindadev Giri
Trustee and Treasurer, Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra
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As an avid student of Rajiv Malhotra’s combative intellectual journey, I was anticipating this book. In the characteristic Indian Dharma Rakshak Parampara – defending Indian civilization over millennia by both shastra and shaastra - in the lineage of shhastra exegetes such as Yaska, Adi Shankara, Guru Gorakhnath, Ramanujacarya, Hemacandracarya, Gyaneshwar, the Sikh Gurus, Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda, Rajiv Malhotra is a one-man army to take on Western thought. After the 19th century honeymoon with Sanskrit-Hindu intellectual heritage, Western thought has had the political agenda of subverting Hinduism and Hindu culture by the Macaulayised assault on its texts and thoughts. Like a seasoned strategist, Malhotra began from the outer circle and has moved into the conceptual garbhagrha of the Western methodology with this book, Sanskrit Non-Translatables. This comes after his earlier works articulating the Hindu Civilization as the alternative (Being Different), exposing the adversary’s agenda of fracturing this alternative (Breaking India), counterpoising it with Hinduism’s deep conceptual integrity (Indra’s Net), dispossessing the adversary of the ‘weapon’ they had tried to appropriate (The Battle for Sanskrit) and now the heart of the matter – the counterattack on the studied subversion of the conceptual frame of Hindu civilizational thought by ‘Christianising’ the core categories through motivated interpretive translations. This book takes fifty-four indisputably foundational concepts, arranges them in a fourfold typology that moves from terra firma to terra cognita to the cosmos, and contests the irrationality, the untenability and the ‘design’ of their widely employed English equivalents. The demolition of this conceptual subversion sets free the autonomy of the Indian thought and mind. With its well-thought out prefatory essays, this is a book that every English-educated Indian must read to further ‘decolonise’ his mind and stand up to the hegemony of Western thought.

Dr. Kapil Kapoor
Chairman, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla
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Rajiv Malhotra carries his battle for Sanskrit a step further in this book. Short of having Sanskrit itself as the language of pan-Indian intellectual discourse, we must insist that as long as English continues to play this role, Sanskrit words should be used in English on account of their unique semantic valence so that a whole culture and an entire worldview is not lost in translation.

Prof. Arvind Sharma
McGill University
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Sanskrit Non-Translatables by Rajiv Malhotra and Satyanarayana Dasa central concepts of Sanatana Dharma, and brings attention to the many errors and distortions that have been introduced by the use of English words that do not quite do justice to the Sanskrit originals. It makes a powerful case for what it calls the Sanskritization of the English language by introducing key Sanskrit loanwords into English vocabulary and keeping them untranslated. This is a bold and innovative approach that deserves to be pursued in parallel with teaching Sanskrit itself. It is nothing short of spreading Vedic sanskriti into the English-speaking world by penetrating their minds with powerful Sanskrit terms.

Dr. Subhash Kak
Author of Matter and Mind, The Gods Within, and other books
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This is an indispensable book addressing the difficult situation today that Sanskrit terms pregnant with meaning cannot be translated into any foreign language; yet we have to make them understandable to people of other cultures who want to learn Sanskrit from the point of view of jigisha rather than jijnasa. The authors have worked hard to collect relevant material from various sources to prove that the English translations of many Sanskrit terms are false and misleading.

Dr. Korada Subrahmanyam
Author of Theory of Language: Oriental & Occidental, and other books
Quote Icon

This book is an eye-opener and argues a highly original and audacious thesis to enrich the English language by adding Sanskrit words that have no English equivalent. These unique words bring profound meanings discovered by the ancient rishi-s. For English language speakers, it will not only enhance their vocabulary but also introduce them to entirely new concepts for understanding of reality.

Dr. Vijay Bhatkar
Chancellor, Nalanda University
Quote Icon

At a time when Hinduism studies are under the full and tight control of Western Indologists (via their university courses and libraries, and journals and conferences), this book comes as a timely reminder of the extensive damage being wrought by this coterie, none wherein is a practising Hindus, after all. Ransacking the vast and hoary Hindu legacy, vital concepts of Yoga, Vedanta, and kindred fields are taken over by them, and exploited without compunction for crass commercial ends, labelling them first with fancy nomenclature, coupled with a denial/dethronement/desecration of their very sources. Caricature translations that divest the Sanskrit words (dharma and saṁskāra, for instance) of their sanctity and nuances are rampant. By calling out the Western games of systematic sabotage and subversion and insidious inculturation leading to cultural genocide and digestion (e.g., "Christian Yoga"), Rajiv Malhotra (in collaboration with Sri Satyanarayana Dasa) has laid bare the damages wrought by such dilution, decontextualisation, and distortion through vapid English translations thatdo violence to the subtleties, rich content and technical nature of over 50 key Sanskrit vocables. The work Sanskrit Non-Translatables exposes how facile and popular equations - such as Om = Amen, Svarga = heaven, saṁskāra = ritual, Hanumān = monkey god, dāsa = slave, śāstra = scripture, and dhyāna = meditation - are by no means full and faithful renderings. There was a desideratum to alert alike the lay and the scholarly Hindu, and this book effectively accomplishes the task it has set out for. More writings of this genre are indeed the need of the hour. All Indian libraries - public as well as private - must possess a copy of this book.

K S Kannan
Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj Chair Professor, IIT-Madras
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This is a bold book, daring to take up some of the basic but unexamined assumptions of modern Western Indology.

Arvind Sharma
Birks Professor of Comparative Religion, McGill University
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For the past sixty years my primary activity has been to interpret Sanskrit and sanskriti. Indeed, Malhotra and I are sailing in the same boat. This book provokes a debate between the ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ of our heritage. It exposes that many outsiders pretend to be insiders, but their hidden agenda is to convince ignorant Hindus that the Vedas are myths and that the traditional claims are nonsensical. They pretend to know our traditions even better than our highest exponents. Unfortunately, most insiders are either blissfully unaware of these subversive projects or are living in isolation and afraid of debating them. Malhotra’s work is designed after the traditional method of purva-paksha and uttarapaksha which makes it very interesting and thought provoking. I strongly recommend this work to all Indologists, traditional pandits, historians, philosophers and ordinary seekers.

DAYANANDA BHARGAVA
Recipient of President’s Award, former Head of Department of Sanskrit and Dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Jodhpur; presently Chairman, J.R. Rajasthan Sanskrit University, Jaipur.
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This book calls upon traditional scholars to get out of their silos, and calls upon opponents to join the conversation as interlocutors. It is a remarkable work of systematic argumentation that provides a forceful defence against the onslaught of Western scholarship. Serious scholars will benefit from its remarkable insights, boldness and uprightness. I highly recommend it as a preparation for strategic debates.

S.R. BHATT
Chairman, Indian Council of Philosophical Research, HRD Ministry, Government of India; Former Head of Department of Philosophy, Delhi University.
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Rajiv Malhotra belongs to that rare breed of Indian scholars who have been working in the area of Indic civilization for a long time. In this incisive and exhaustive work he brings forth the critical role of Sanskrit, and ignites a meaningful discussion on a long neglected area. I wish the book all success.

R. VAIDYANATHAN
Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
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This book makes excellent reading and uses an analytical method to compare the rival positions of Western and traditional Indian camps. The author has done a yeoman’s service by exposing the scholars who are hijacking the pristine glory and contemporary utility of Sanskrit language, literature and culture.

PANKAJ CHANDE
Member of Central Advisory Board of Education, Government of India; former President, Association of Indian Universities; former Vice-Chancellor, Kavi Kulaguru Kalidas Sanskrit University, Maharashtra.
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This book rips through the fortress of American Indology and its insinuations that Sanskrit traditions are socially abusive and are driven by the political motives of the elite. The author is devastatingly impressive in the way he exposes the prevailing hegemonic discourse of the West and the role of the large army of Indian sepoys who have been recruited as mercenaries. Rajiv Malhotra has been one of the most effective kshatriyas in the intellectual kurukshetra of today. Every traditional scholar and practitioner of Vedic traditions must read it and join his home team.

KAPIL KAPOOR
Former Rector and Professor of English and Sanskrit Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Chief Editor, Encyclopedia of Hinduism; Chief Editor, Encyclopedia of Indian Poetics.
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Westerners consider themselves very progressive when meddling in Indian affairs. The values they now defend, such as egalitarianism and feminism, are different from what prevailed in the West during the colonial age, but the underlying spirit of “civilizing the savages” is the same. They now try to wrest control of Sanskrit studies from the “oppressive, reactionary” traditionalists, and increasingly succeed with the help of native informers eager for the status and money that Western academics can confer. Once upon a time, the colonizers brought prized artworks to museums in the West, claiming that these were safer there than in the care of the irresponsible natives. Now, their successors try to carry away the adhikara (prerogative) to interpret Sanskrit texts, so as to make Hindus look at their own tradition through anti-Hindu lenses. For the first time, Rajiv Malhotra analyses the stakes involved for Hindu civilization, which risks losing control over the backbone of its historical identity, and the power equation in the production of knowledge concerning Sanskrit and the dharmic tradition. He proposes a research programme that Hindus will need to carry out if they are to face this sophisticated onslaught. This path-breaking book maps a battlefield hitherto unknown to most besieged insiders.

KOENRAAD ELST
Indologist
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This book provides extensive ground work for traditional scholars, sadhaks, writers and awakened minds to understand the serious threats against Indian civilization. The author’s fearless exposition is driven by his indomitable will, persistence and vigour, long swadhyaya, and cool and patient mind. Works of this calibre appear rarely in a generation. Future scholars will be grateful to Rajiv Malhotra for this wakeup call to retain the sacredness of Sanskrit and its association with Indian life.

DEEPIKA KOTHARI and RAMJI OM
Filmmakers of History of Yoga
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Rajiv’s work is a timely response to the discourse by western academics, and exposes the need for Indian scholars with a deep understanding of our languages and culture, working with original texts, to counter the flawed narrative and create an Indian narrative.

T.V. MOHANDAS PAI
Chairman, Aarin Capital Partners
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Having gone through the pages of this book, I highly recommend that every traditional scholar and Western Indologist should study it and engage the issues it raises. The author provides a solid response to the prejudices against Indian civilization, and his remarkably systematic approach is commendable.

RAMESH KUMAR PANDEY
Vice-Chancellor, Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth
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While an army of Western scholars has been hurling criticisms and throwing challenges against Indian heritage for two centuries, there has hardly been a commensurate response from the heirs of our heritage. This is largely due to gaps in knowledge at our end: the Sanskrit pandits are often ignorant of nuanced English and the Western frameworks and paradigms; and the modern westernised Indians are culturally illiterate and lack the competence to respond. This book bridges the gaps and enables traditional pandits as well as the Indian literati to comprehend Western Indology from an Indian perspective. It also exposes how westerners have manoeuvred by capturing Indian resources to perpetuate their biased verdicts. The book makes it possible to have dialogues as equals. The responsibility now lies squarely on traditional Indian scholars to take on the issues between insiders and outsiders which this book has framed. Rajiv Malhotra’s contribution consists of this valuable role as a prime initiator of this dialogue.

K.S. KANNAN
Former Director, Karnataka Samskrit University, Bangalore
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The Battle for Sanskrit has immense potential to equip and arm Vedic insiders with the required knowledge not just to battle the outsiders but, more importantly, to preserve their own sanskriti based on its indigenous principles. I humbly request all Sanskrit lovers, scholars and practitioners of Vedic traditions to read this book and join the suggested ‘home team’ for serious intellectual exchanges on the issues concerned.

SAMPADANANDA MISHRA
Director, Sri Aurobindo Foundation for Indian Culture, Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry
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The Battle for Sanskrit wrests open a main gate to the predominantly western constructed citadel known as Indology. Who can remain silent or, worse, collaborate, in the face of groundless allegations that Indian elites are promulgating Sanskrit and its traditions for political gain, thus perpetuating a so-called Sanskrit-born social abuse? As the linguistic key to the highest wisdom of humanity, Sanskrit studies must escape captivity enforced by academic guardians who over-zealously wield the club of Western theoretical methods. The author, besides exposing the colonial baggage still colouring the western approach to India’s Sanskrit heritage, also shines his torch, in fairness, upon the large platoon of Indian sepoys colluding as mercenaries to help keep the Sanskrit potentiality in check. A salient point this book offers us is that the Western approach to Sanskrit is often weighed down by “political philology”—cultural biases, hegemonic filters. Superbly presenting the positive correction to this imbalance, the author advocates our seeing through the lens of “sacred philology.

H.H. DEVAMITRA SWAMI
Spiritual Leader and Author of Searching for Vedic India
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This is an important book to ignite the much needed conversation on Sanskrit, its past and its future. Rajiv Malhotra opens a new ground by evaluating what Western Indologists have been writing about our traditions. It is time for the scholars to wake up and give responses impartially. I commend the author for arguing against the view that Sanskrit is oppressive or dead. Every serious scholar of Indology should read this book and join the intellectual discourse on our heritage.

UPENDRA RAO
Chair, Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
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Rajiv Malhotra deserves kudos for his insightful book, The Battle for Sanskrit, which is a much-needed intervention that gives insiders a seat at the table as equals. Rather than Western Indologists and their Indian supporters becoming defensive, they should welcome this book as an opportunity for honest exchanges. The issues raised here are too important to be ignored any longer. The direction that this battle takes can have far-reaching consequences on approaches to science, technology, social studies and economics. The pompous edifice of Western Indology that has been built over a long time will not crumble overnight. It is now up to the traditional scholars and practitioners to heed the author’s call and develop solid intellectual responses (uttara-paksha) to the challenges.

HRISHIKESH A. MAFATLAL
Chairman, Arvind Mafatlal Group of Companies; Chairman, BAIF Development Research Foundation
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This book’s meticulously gathered information, and its coherent arguments presented in a lucid and engaging style, will easily make our traditional and modern scholars realise that they can no longer rely on Western scholarly endeavours, however profound and painstaking they may be, for achieving a resurgence of Indian civilization. A book that absolutely must be read, by anyone who cares for the resurgence of Bharatiya-samskriti, which is deeply embedded in Sanskrit!

K. RAMASUBRAMANIAN
Professor, IIT Bombay
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Sanskrit can no longer be the concern of only the traditional pandits. Modern methods of analysis, interpretation and communication have to be brought in and we have to rebuild our own universities – inspired as much by Nalanda as by Cambridge – with science, philosophy, humanities, in fact all knowledge, created, pursued and taught on the same campus. As an unabashed lover of Sanskrit, I welcome this debate that Rajiv Malhotra has brought out into the open about the status of Sanskrit studies in the world, including in particular its homeland, India. This book should trigger a discussion on the scientific qualities of Sanskrit, in particular the tradition’s emphasis on empiricism, and on the similarities and differences between Indian and Western approaches to knowledge.

RODDAM NARASIMHA
Eminent aerospace scientist and recipient of Padma Vibhushan
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The knowledge system which has developed in relation to ancient India since the middle of the eighteenth century was (and still is) dominated by Western scholarship. The so-called consensus in this field was essentially a matter of agreement among Western scholars, with Indians playing only a subsidiary role. The situation should have begun to change in the light of the new power equations since the mid-twentieth century. The fact that it has not yet significantly done so is due to several factors operating in the background, the most important of which is the deplorable unwillingness among Western scholars to take note of the viewpoints of an increasing number of Indian professionals. It is basically a confrontational situation, if not that of war. The Western academic institutions dealing with India are full of ‘experts’ who are basically anti-India. Rajiv Malhotra, a well-known independent scholar, has long been known for his deep perception of this problem and his clear, well-argued analysis and criticism of it. I have always been an avid reader of his columns and books. In this volume he throws new light on the power network behind Sanskrit studies in the West. This is a book which will long be cherished by the rational elements among the Indian and Western Indologists.

DILIP K CHAKRABARTI
Emeritus Professor of South Asian Archaeology, Cambridge University
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Rajiv has given us a new pair of spectacles through which to understand and see our own traditions. He has done this with meticulous scholarship. With devastating bluntness he has smashed the distorted lenses which were fabricated by so called scholars abroad and here, and through which to our shame we had been seeing our religions and traditions. So it is a dual contribution he has played. The book is full of facts and documentation. But even more so, it is suffused with very important argumentation. It is not citation mongering, just quotation from here and there or just alleging conspiracy theories. It is an argument that he gives us as to why a certain proposition which you and I have taken innocently is being advanced. Many scholars say things in complicated ways; very often they say it in such a soft way; they are still looking for careers or acclaim in the very circles that need to be exposed. Rajiv told me that his formula and attitude in this matter was that we must be, to use his word, ‘un-ignorable’. It is a wonderful word. But this does not mean abuse or just a torrent of strong words. It means that the kind of scholarship and documentation which he has provided. An important reason why he is an example to us is that he is truly independent. He is not dependent on any institution. He is not dependent for acclaim from an audience. Such true independence of any individual scholar is an example which we should always bear in mind because too often in India I find that too many of us look for institutional purchase from which to do some work. But the great work that has been done by scholars has often been by individual scholar working absolutely alone, unaided and often unrecognized on both sides. So we should take heart and follow the example of a person like him who laboring alone has been able to make a big impact. I know from scholars in the West that they are apprehensive if he walks into a room in a conference on philosophy or religion or Indic studies. This book shows that many scholars have really been sort of missionaries and muftis, and how they have been insinuating certain notions in us. Rajiv documents their tendentious scholarship and the length to which they did go. He documents so well the echo effect they create. “Woh kuch likhenge, yeha quote hoga, kyunki ab Indians bhi wohi kehe rahe hai, ya Hindu scholar bhi wohi kehe rahe hain, to woh Hindu scholar ko quote kar kar apni cheese ko aur bhi reinforce kar lete hain.” The book was a particular education for me because I always focused only on the Marxist historians and felt that they were regurgitating or swallowing or vomiting what had been written by some Soviet historians. But I now realize after reading Rajiv’s books that actually they were swallowing and vomiting what many of these so called Western scholars in America, Austria or Germany had written with a purposeful agenda. Rajiv has explained that Hinduism and Buddhism are the closest religions to the spirit and substance of science. Just as the goal of science is the understanding of outer reality, its methods is experimentation and peered review, its means is the laboratory, so also Indic religions are the science of the inner world. Their means is personal direct experience, and their peer review is unending. That is how they keep evolving. This method is the scientific method of empirical verification through direct personal experience. Here a very good phrase Rajiv uses is that our ongoing evolution is through the living laboratory of these sages. They looked inside their own mind and came up with great insights. So time is on our side and we should work on this matter and practice our religion with great confident. If something requires reformulation, we should reformulate and say yes, we have reformulated it because this is the formulation required for this time. If we need to endow old words with new meaning we should do that with confidence. I am sure after reading Rajiv’s book you will have a little contempt for these tendentious scholars. The main thing to do is to succeed. Nothing succeeds like success. Not one of these scholars will fabricate and propagate about China the type of nonsense that he does about India. China has become strong, and these scholars know if they write things about China they will lose their livelihood because they will lose their access to their sources. So the important thing is to succeed and then everything else will follow. One final reason for being confident is that because of the work of Ram Swarup, Sitaram Goel, Koenaard Elt, David Frawley, and Rajiv Malhotra the corpus is now reaching a critical mass. So, that we can think that within few years we will have a library for India and a library of India. The prerequisite is that we should be like Rajiv Malhotra, we should know our tradition, we should know our religion. The reason on account of which this kind of fabrication has prevailed for so long is that we have not known our tradition, we have not known our religion and we have seen only through the distorted lens which was fabricated by these tendentious scholars, missionaries and muftis. This book is a must for every Indian. We must see our tradition through the spectacles that Rajiv Malhotra has constructed for us.

Arun Shourie
Author, intellectual and political leader
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Hinduism in the 21st century is a global religion like at no other time in its past. To some extent, this phenomenon is itself a consequence of India’s recent history as a British colony and the challenges faced by the adherents of its various Sampradayas. In particular, the ancient tradition of Advaita Vedanta, with its twin legacy of scholastic philosophizing and experiential teaching, has come to the forefront as one that speaks for the broadest spectrum of Hindus. This is in no small measure due to the activity of Swami Vivekananda and those who followed and extended his work. In turn, this poses severe challenges to academic scholarship and its disciplines that are rooted in an intellectual tradition that is rooted in European history. The world of academic scholarship is confronted with a religion that has no one historical founder, yet has a central body of scripture, which has been interpreted and experienced by multiple people through history. It often seems that academia struggles to come to terms with the Hindu phenomenon, both in India and abroad, because it lacks categories to adequately describe the fluid boundaries that exist between distinct traditions in this eternal Dharma. It is against this backdrop that Rajiv Malhotra’s work gains tremendous importance. As in his previous publications, Rajiv does not hesitate to examine the academic output with a critical eye and to ask scholars very tough questions. Some of these have probably crossed the minds of thinking Hindus in the past, but have not been articulated well or with the same force for various reasons. The moment has come, however, when Hindus need to reclaim their own agency, in order to think and speak for themselves, defining their own terms and bringing their own rich cultural heritage to the table, rather than remaining satisfied with the limiting and often distorting lens of academic descriptions. Rajiv has taken on one of the key distortions prevalent in academia today. This is the supposedly critical scholarly view that completely divorces Advaita Vedanta from Yoga, casting their close relationship as an illegitimate marriage affected only in recent times, and largely due to Swami Vivekananda’s “neo-Vedantic” vision. It has always been a matter of surprise to me that such views are championed by scholars like Rambachan, who ought to know the history of Advaita thought better, in both pre-Sankaran and post-Sankaran times. Rajiv’s work needs to be taken seriously both by those whose profession lies within academia and by those Hindus who are interested in the future of their Dharma Indeed, anyone who considers a sustainable future for human civilization to be desirable, needs to read through Rajiv’s work carefully.

Vidyasankar Sundaresan
Vedanta scholar
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Indra’s Net strongly opposes the work of a prominent group of scholars in the academy and beyond who claim that contemporary Hinduism, as we know it, is artificial and Western-generated and that it was constructed and perpetrated by Swami Vivekananda for political motives. Chapters 1 through 7 explain the details of this subversive thesis (called the ‘neo-Hinduism’ thesis), the backgrounds of its main proponents, and the history of how it came about. Paul Hacker, Malhotra explains, was the first academic scholar to develop the thesis of ‘neo-Hinduism’ charging that ‘neo-Hindus’ had disingenuously adopted Western ideas and expressed them using Sanskrit. He saw Advaita Vedanta as a world-negating and impractical worldview but contended that Vivekananda saw this flaw in Vedanta and intentionally re-engineered Advaita Vedanta to make it look world-affirming and hence attractive to Westerners. Malhotra is quite justified in calling Hacker the father of the subversive thesis of ‘neo-Hinduism.’ Indeed, it was Hacker who first proposed that the practical attitude toward non-Christian religions should consist mainly in what the Church Fathers called chresis, meaning theological utilization. Utilization connotes: (1) that the assimilated elements are made subservient to an end different from the context from which they were taken, (2) that they can be taken over because some truth is contained or hidden in them, (3) that they must be reoriented in order that the truth shines forth unimpeded (see Mehta, J.L. 1985. The Will to Interpret and India’s Dreaming Spirit. In India and the West: The Problem of Understanding, 179-201, Chico, CA: Scholars Press). Hacker used Indology as a field of specialized research (Wissenschaft) for investigating alien Indian texts for any useful material they might contain. An Indic text, Hacker claimed, does not answer us like a partner in a conversation because irrespective of what question the interpreter approaches it with, it always says the same; making the encounter a ‘static’ affair. Dynamism is introduced into it, he told Raimundo Panikkar, only when the interpreter takes up a stand vis-a-vis the text, outside its heathen context, exposes its ‘demonic’ ambiguity and barrenness in that soil and then, by an act of chresis, transplants any grains of logos-seed he may pick up there into the [Christian] soil where alone they can blossom and bear fruit—in the garden of the Church (Mehta 1985: 183-184). Such a quest for universality, completeness, and self-sufficiency in the West goes back to, and would seem rooted in, the thinking of the Church Fathers and in the explicitly formulated principle of chresis, which Hacker commended as the central motivating principle in a religious hermeneutics of the non-Christian ‘other.’ For this reason, Malhotra’s very original contribution lies in demonstrating how many of the precious ideas and concepts have been systematically removed from Hinduism (using the concept of chresis) and securely lodged in Western garb leaving the original Hindu sources to atrophy or making them appear obsolete. He has coined the term “digestion” for this syndrome. Chapter 12 and the Conclusion of IN articulate this syndrome with pertinent examples and discuss the existential danger this poses to Hinduism. The internet now offers potential for the dissemination of the ageless wisdom as recorded in Hindu philosophical teachings in an unbiased and creative way that will appeal to the moderns spread across the globe. Malhotra explains with great acumen how the Vedic metaphor of Indra’s Net first traveled into the very heart of Buddhist philosophy and then on to the West. Using two age-old Sanskrit terms viz. astika and nastika in a novel way, Malhotra shows how persons of different faiths can interact in mutually rewarding ways. He believes that those ‘surfing Indra’s net’ will find an open space in which adherents of all faiths can examine each other’s basic tenets and make any necessary adjustments in order to share the multi-civilizational ecosystem in which we moderns live.

Shrinivas Tilak
Independent research scholar based in Montreal, Canada
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Dear Sir Rajiv Malhotraji Thank you for giving me a copy of Indra's Net. I have been going through your book Indra's Net where you have put stupendous effort to assemble information from a variety of sources to defend the philosophical unity of the various schools of thoughts of Hinduism against the sustained onslaught of some misinformed and some malicious academics both from the west and from within India. These academics create an unhealthy and hostile environment wherein sincere students get confused with these superficialities parading as scholarship'. Dr. Rambachan and people of such schools of thought lack the depth and understanding of an honestly striving mumukshu and a saadhaka to experience and comprehend the universal truths of Sanatana Dharma.Your efforts should be commended for having brought out the underestimation of (and possibly undermining of) the reality of how deeply Swami Vivekananda was rooted in and aligned with traditional hinduism in its varied forms found in many Adhyaatmic centers across India. These academics seem to retrofit their interpretations of Hindu thought into their deeply entrenched notions of an inferior civilization implicit in western mindsets. The dangers of such so called scholarship which has colonized many academic centers within India as well as societal decision makers is that it continues to perpetuate a dishonest intellectual enquiry in Indic studies. These formulations of so called Neo-Hinduism are bogus given that they go against the reality of the continuity of these practised Dharmic traditions over the ages across the country and therefore, seek to only serve vested interests. In addition, these are continuing to damage and threaten the very survival of varied Hindu Dharmic traditions across our country. In this context, your book Indra's Net is a very impactful contribution to counter the insidious attacks on the philosophical unity of Sanatana Dharma apart from laying bare the falsehoods of the pernicious arguments against Swami Vivekananda. I fully appreciate your efforts as well as those of others in strongly defending the integral unity of the various schools of thoughts within the broad fabric of Hindu Dharma the understanding of which comes out clearly as experiential validations only for the practicing travelers along the path: and such academics who care to understand it with all honesty. Yours in the service of the Lord,

Swami Harshananda
Ramakrishna Mission
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This highly original book leads its reader on an epic journey of self-discovery especially for those of us in the West. A fitting and major response to Samuel Huntington’s position on “who are we” as the West; one that can perhaps best be provided by someone reversing the gaze on the West through a non-Western lens. This deserves to be one of the defining books of the age.

JOHN M. HOBSON
Author of The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics; Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield
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This is a memorable book asking us to put aside modernity’s tired categories and lazy comparisons, and at last to take seriously the Indian perspective on history and our world today. Being Different is here a necessary virtue, essential to understanding our neighbours and ourselves. Much reflection and many a good argument should follow upon Malhotra’s unique achievement.

FRANCIS X. CLOONEY
Society of Jesus, and Parkman Professor of Divinity, Harvard University
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This is the first book of its kind looking at the West from India’s dharmic standpoint, and is certain to provoke a major debate for years to come. Rajiv Malhotra’s writings have established him as a “different”, extremely original and robust thinker of our times. In the present volume, he forcefully challenges what he terms the West’s “self-serving universalism” which has been superimposed as a “template” for all nations and peoples. He succeeds in stimulating the mind, stirring the thinking and making readers sit up and join him in his alternative approaches.

D.R. SARDESAI
Emeritus Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles
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Being Different is a provocative and important book for two distinct reasons. First, the book is one of the few attempts by an Indian intellectual to challenge seriously the assumptions and presuppositions of the field of India and/or South Asian studies tout ensemble, including not only the work of European and American scholarship but as well the neocolonialist, postmodernist and subaltern ressentiment so typical of contemporary Indian intellectuals. Second, and perhaps of greater significance, is Malhotra’s attempt to analyse the meaning and significance of Indic culture from within the indigenous presuppositions of India’s own intellectual traditions, including the ontological claims of Indic cosmology, the epistemology of yogic experience, the unique Indic appreciation for complexity, and the nuances of Sanskritic expression. The book will be controversial on many different levels and will undoubtedly elicit rigorous critical response.

GERALD JAMES LARSON
Rabindranath Tagore Professor Emeritus, Indiana University, Bloomington, and Professor Emeritus, Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
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Malhotra writes with passion from within an avowedly dharmic stance, undermining the attempts to domesticate and expropriate Indian traditions in a process of interreligious dialogue that is ultimately based on a Western cosmological framework. This book is essential reading for Western scholars. It espouses an “audacity of difference” that defends the distinctiveness of Indian thought and reveals the chauvinism of much Western thought in its encounters with other cultures.

DON WIEBE
Professor of Divinity, Trinity College in the University of Toronto
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This book is a “must read” for those who care about India and its future.

MAKARAND R. PARANJAPE
Professor of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
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Honest, provocative and wide-ranging, this book gives us (westerners) a rare opportunity to see ourselves through the lens of another worldview. It cuts to the heart of the problems created by Christian beliefs about unique historical revelation, and by the West’s consistent investment in a set of linear historical narratives purporting to offer universal salvation but fuelled by particular western needs and anxieties. Informed by postmodernism, but moving beyond it, the book levels the playing field for a genuine encounter between East and West and raises issues that any serious revision of Christian theology must address.

CLEO KEARNS
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and Infinity Foundation
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Rajiv Malhotra’s insistence on preserving difference with mutual respect – not with mere “tolerance” – is even more pertinent today because the notion of a single universalism is being propounded. There can be no single universalism, even if it assimilates or, in the author’s words, “digests”, elements from other civilizations.

KAPILA VATSYAYAN
Independent scholar and Member of Rajya Sabha
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Many Indian spiritual leaders, lacking a profound knowledge of their own culture, and feeling inferior to the West, try to respond to the Western challenge by showing how Indian and Western religions are the same. Rajiv Malhotra’s work is a kind of yajna that reverses the gaze upon the West through the lens of Indian categories. This process is traditionally called purva paksha, and in Rajiv’s work it is given a new mission. Rajiv has devised the very interesting metaphor of digestion to explain how the dharmic traditions are being disassembled into parts for digestion into the belly of Western culture. Being Different shows how the West’s history-centrism drives it into claims of exclusiveness; this causes anxiety over differences which it seeks to resolve through projects of digestion in order to obliterate whatever seems challenging.

SATYA NARAYAN DAS
Founder of Jiva Institute of Vedic Studies, Vrindavan
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What I found particularly informative and original in Being Different is the discussion on the positive role of chaos in the Indic world as compared to the West’s abhorrence of it. The book explains Hegel’s deep-rooted fear of chaos and uncertainty. He privileged order in Western aesthetics, ethics, religions, society, and politics and classified Oriental traditions into “pantheism”, “polytheism”, and “monotheism” as “world historical categories”. Hegel developed a system of equivalences to assign relative meaning and value to each culture, thereby defining the contours of the “West” and the “Rest.’ These became the conceptual tools for epistemic subjugation of the non-West in the name of order. The dharmic worldview is more relaxed about chaos, seeing it as a creative catalyst built into the cosmos to balance out order that could otherwise become stultifying.

SHRINIVAS TILAK
Independent scholar, Montreal
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With stunning honesty, Being Different alerts the reader to the grave dangers of a difference-negating “sameness” that is marketed worldwide by secular and religious streams in Western culture. This is a very important and highly accessible book in the discourse on the interaction between civilizations.

RITA SHERMA
Executive Director, Confluence School of Faith Studies; co-editor, Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Towards a Fusion of Horizons
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Being Different is a highly successful attempt in exploring the major differences between Indian and Western worldviews, metaphysics, cosmologies and philosophies which have not previously been adequately appreciated by scholars and spiritual seekers.

SAMPADANANDA MISHRA
Director, Sri Aurobindo Foundation for Indian Culture, Pondicherry
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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum

RAJIV MALHOTRA
DIRECTOR
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'Snakes in the Ganga is a path-breaking book. I urge every Indian with a genuine concern and love for the country to read this breathtakingly original book and organize a countermovement in response to these Breaking India forces. Being pro-active is more important than re-active.'

Prof. R. Vaidyanathan
Professor of Finance(Retd.), Indian Institute Of Management Bangalore
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'Once in a generation, a book comes along that has the possibility of changing the course of a civilization. Snakes in the Ganga is that book. It offers profound insights on the dangerous trajectory of Critical Social Justice theories and untested moral orthodoxies born in the West when exported to other cultures. Snakes in the Ganga is our best hope of pushing back on illiberalism, re-centering truth as our North star, and changing the course of our civilization.'

Prof. Peter Boghossian
Founding Faculty Fellow, University of Austin
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I encourage every IITian to understand these attacks on our institution, meritocracy (excellence) and its serious implications. This is an important book for us to help publicize the greatness of the IIT system. The authors deserve commendation for illuminating the issue of the growing criticism against the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), with clear and persuasive language. It is crucial for us to take action against any attempts to tarnish the reputation of these esteemed institutions.’

Ron Gupta
President, PanIIT USA, an umbrella organization of all 23 IITs
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"The changing times and challenges for the Ten-Headed Ravanas — a must study for all those interested in the contemporary issues of India's history/society and politics."

R. Vaidyanathan
Prof. of Finance (retd.), IIM Bangalore
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"This anthology is special because most of these young scholars have been mentored by Rajiv Malhotra over a long period. Thankfully, a new generation of scholars is ready to carry forward the pioneering work in civilizational studies."

MADHU KISHWAR
Author, Founder-Manushi
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A unique change worth taking note of is that humans are becoming machine-like in an endeavor to make machines human-like. Soon both would compete and this combination would dictate global behavior. Threats devoid of emotions in hu-machine (a combination of human and machine) would need careful responses and regulating mechanisms. Those who do not care to adapt shall be first recipients of such intimidation. … the greed for speed will encounter a pushback by nature. Humans need new definitions of … hope, compassion, and happiness to program machines of the future.

Lt. Gen. P.J.S. Pannu
PVSM, AVSM,.VSM

Introduction

Preface by Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji

The Ancient Indian Psyche

The thinkers of ancient India, the rishi-s and muni-s, had a deep understanding of the fact that the universe functions on some basic principles of rhythms of the cosmos known as ritam, and to this end, human life was organized at two levels: individual and social. Further, at the individual level, human life was considered in four parts: brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha, and samnyasa. Considering a life span of one hundred years, twenty-five years were allocated to each stage of life. In order to be in harmony with ritam, an individual, as well as a society, must strive for the four pursuits known as purushartha-s: dharma, artha, kama, and moksha.

Each individual possesses unique characteristics, known as his/her prakriti or nature. According to ideal dharmic social thought, an individual functioned in society in line with his prakriti and was provided with appropriate education. At the collective level, society was organized into four broad categories called varna-s: brahmana (teacher/educator), kshatriya (warrior/king/ queen), vaishya (manager/business sector), and shudra (service sector). The varna was not birth-based but was dependent on the individual’s acquired prakriti. Every society, which functions as an organized unit, comprises these four unavoidable categories for its sustenance, propagation and prosperity. While these categories have emerged unconsciously all over the world, ancient Indian thinkers recognized it and provided a theory supporting the four varna-s to consciously organize society. Indian society was based on this template and functioned peacefully for thousands of years, scaled paramount heights and attained much glory.

Historically, many great personalities appeared to rectify the situation whenever balance was disturbed. Bhagavan Shri Krishna himself proclaims that He is the propagator of the varna system (Gita 4.13), and He appears to restore dharma whenever it is challenged by adharma (Gita 4.7).

This ancient system, however, started crumbling when Indian society was invaded by Western forces, primarily with Alexander around 324 BCE. Thereafter, it explained a downward spiral though its resilience was not completely eliminated. Even when India came under foreign rule, around 1192 CE, and later, under the prolonged rule of the Mughals, its education system was not tampered with and the varna-s survived. The fatal blow came in 1854, when the Indian education system was callously destroyed by the British. It was replaced by the Western education structure to produce clerks to help them control the vast empire. Unfortunately, Western education has no such insight into human life, leave alone the cosmic ritam. Tragically, even post India’s independence in 1947, no efforts were made to reclaim the millennia-old heritage. Instead, what continues to this day are the borrowed education system and the constitution of the West, which are a complete mismatch for the Indian psyche.

The Modern Indian Psyche

Modern-educated Indians are a confused lot. Not only have they lost faith in their own traditional values, they are also unable to embrace a Western lifestyle in totality. Most educated Indians portray a Western demeanor, yet in their private lives they practise several beliefs that emanate from ancient tradition, especially at times of birth, death, marriage and festivals. However, they are untrained in their ancient beliefs because nothing in the modern education system fosters them. They may know of and practise certain traditions but have forgotten and surrendered the true meaning and perform them out of a sense of ritual. The lack of sufficient knowledge about one’s own sanskriti, and training under the Western education system, has resulted in Indians developing an inferiority complex with regards to their rich sanskriti and dharma. Many derive pleasure in deriding the ancient sanskriti, revealing the unfortunate situation and reality of the modern Indian psyche. Furthermore, dharmic terminology has been inadequately translated into English. Terms such as atma, moksha, dharma, and prakriti are profound concepts in themselves; they are not mere words that can be translated into a single English word. The terms have to be understood and applied as they are; when translated naively into English, the terms lose their original deeper meaning, which has further led to devaluation of Indian sanskriti. To compound matters, a massive effort has been made by missionaries to digest Indian sanskriti into Christianity. The modern Indian psyche thus has to bear a great misfortune in losing its civilizational heritage.

The Torch Bearer

Several Indians are aware that Indian sanskriti is in peril and is being attacked by forces from within and outside. A handful of them are highlighting and being vocal about the danger of it getting lost and are making efforts to revive it. Rajiv Malhotra and Infinity Foundation are leading this resistance and revival. I first heard Rajiv at a WAVES conference in Florida in the US and was taken in by what he spoke. I was teaching a summer course in Hinduism at Rutgers University, and I was eager to meet Rajiv before returning to India.

When I arrived at Rajiv’s home, he was working on a manuscript. Even before I sat down, he shot a question at me, “Do you know how keen he was to know about achintya-bheda-abheda siddhanta I was instantly taken aback because studying and teaching the in fact, I founded an entire institute named after him. I had been working on a mammoth project for over two decades of translating and commenting on the magnum opus of Jiva Gosvami titled Shat Sandarbha. I never imagined I would make such a deep connection with an Indian living outside India, and one whose intense focus is on Hinduism. Rajiv Malhotra is an Indian intellectual warrior, who is fully absorbed in saving Indian sanskriti and fighting the breaking-India forces. I knew for certain that it was only by the will of Shri Krishna that we met. And although I did not know how, I understood that Rajiv and I had an important mission in common.

I left after our first meeting, excited to share my work and to hear Rajiv’s penetrating questions that would go on to refine my thinking with the pinpoint accuracy that he demanded. The first document I shared with him was a paper on achintya-bheda-abheda. He relished the paper, adding that it would be of immense help for his book. He invited me to help him in his work Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism. I gladly obliged, as I felt life would be breathed back into Mother India. Our friendship cemented and we would meet during my teaching assignments at Rutgers. Over the years, we have recorded several videos on a variety of subjects. Three years ago, the idea of recording Sanskrit non-translatables arose. Rajiv had already introduced this concept in his book, Being Different. He proposed that we create fifty-four episodes on Sanskrit non-translatable words. I was very excited with the idea and over the next two years, we made video recordings at his residence in New Jersey, as well as at our center, Jiva Faridabad, in India. Jessica Richmond co-ordinated our recording sessions and organised the required material.

In the midst of the recordings, Rajiv suggested we write a book based off the content of the videos and I immediately agreed. With the fifty-four video episodes and this book, we are taking a big step forward to actualizing Rajiv’s mission. Just as Western terminology has entered the Indian psyche, Indian terminology should also enter not only Western, but also the modern Indian’s mind. This will be a great step towards reclaiming our sanskriti. I give my blessings that Rajiv Malhotra’s vision be realized.

Preface by Rajiv Malhotra

Since twenty-five years, Infinity Foundation has been challenging the prevailing narratives with groundbreaking research and provided original perspectives on dharma and its rightful place in the world. An important book published by the Foundation, Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America, in 2007, took aim at the Freudian psychoanalytic critiques of Hinduism being propagated by a powerful nexus in the Western academia and being spread among Indian intellectuals. The book gave birth to, and incubated, a solid and entrenched opposition that cannot be ignored today. It spurred the Indian diaspora to recognize the pattern of attacks on Hindu dharma under the garb of academia and audaciously ‘talk back’ to the establishment of Western scholars. This ‘reversing the gaze’ on Western intellectual elites found its way rapidly to India where it shaped a new generation of self-confident Indians. The term ‘Hinduphobia’ was adopted by Infinity Foundation to turn the spotlight on to a serious issue and it has now entered the everyday lexicon of serious thinkers worldwide.

Infinity Foundation’s next pathbreaking book, Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines, detailed Rajiv Malhotra’s twenty years of research, talks, and writings on how external forces are trying to destabilize India by deliberately undermining its civilization. The book proved how such efforts are targeted at obfuscating, and ultimately aborting any collective identity of the present-day Indian, based on a positive view of his/her civilization. It exposed the foreign nexuses and applied the term ‘sepoys’ to refer to their Indian accomplices. The book highlighted that the project to intellectually fragment, or ‘break’ India targets Hinduism because it is seen as the robust foundation cementing its diversity. Several watchdog movements have sprung into action because of the book, Breaking India. It has triggered a domino effect with a plethora of researchers associating themselves with this genre of scholarship to expose more instances of the same syndrome. The theories and vocabulary introduced in the book are now used widely.

The next authoritative work by Infinity Foundation, Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism addressed the central question: who we as Indians are, and what distinguishes us from others, especially from the West. It presents an original and coherent view of dharma as a family of traditions and unabashedly challenges the West’s claim of being the universal lens for studying world cultures. Western Universalism is unfortunately still used as the template for mapping and defining all cultures and therefore, it is vital to be conscious of its distorted interpretations of Indian traditions. Being Different has prompted a wide section of Indians to question various simplistic views and interpretations of their traditions, including some that are commonly espoused even by their own guru-s, family and political leaders. It is a beacon for serious intellectuals on how to ‘take back’ Vedic heritage by understanding it on its own terms.

Indra’s Net: Defending Hinduism’s Philosophical Unity, exposes the widely held thesis in Western academia that Hinduism is a recent invention. This fallacious and ludicrous argument was fabricated during British rule over India in the latter part of the nineteenth century, resulting in dangerous consequences even in post-independent India. The central point of this thesis asserts that Swami Vivekananda, one of the most renowned votaries of Hindu philosophy of the nineteenth century, plagiarized Western secular and Christian ideas and then recast them in Sanskrit terminology to claim their Indian origin. Besides critiquing this thesis, the nexus behind it, and defending Swami Vivekananda’s vision, the book puts forward a vision for the future of Hinduism.

The Battle for Sanskrit: Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred, Oppressive or Liberating, Dead or Alive? challenges Sheldon Pollock, arguably the most influential contemporary Sanskrit scholar in Western academia. The consistent theme underlying his entire work is to characterize Sanskrit as the root cause of all of India’s current social problems. This thesis attributes to Sanskrit a range of negative issues including social disharmony and lack of innovation. Arguments deeply damaging to the Indian civilization have been formulated by Pollock based on questionable assumptions and interpretations.
The Battle for Sanskrit addresses these issues head-on with a vigorous purva paksha or argument of Pollock’s Neo-Orientalist school of thought – an influential school that has spawned new adherents and created a lineage of Western scholars and Indian sepoys today. The book led to multiple conferences of Swadeshi Indology and triggered a greater awareness of the deep and insidious goals of Western Indology and the broader academia. The Battle for Sanskrit was precipitated by the proposal of an Adi Shankara Chair at Columbia University sponsored by the Sringeri Peetham (one of the four important peetham-s established by the philosopher Adi Shankara), whose Academic Committee was to be headed by Sheldon Pollock. The effect of the book and the awareness it created has discouraged sponsors from pursuing the establishment of such a chair. After the Shankaracharya, head of Sringeri, was personally approached and briefed on the contents of the book, he was convinced not to proceed with the proposed Chair. This created a huge controversy among Non-Resident Indians in the United States who had championed this Chair as a vehicle for popularizing themselves and advancing their own business interests. Infinity Foundation, however, has never shied away from controversy or risks when required for the sake of protecting the wider interest of dharma.

Infinity Foundation has also formulated, funded and implemented numerous major interventions which have affected the civilizational discourse in positive and non-trivial ways. The Foundation became widely acknowledged as the leader in influencing the way scholars are approaching their work on India’s civilization, history, archaeology, social sciences, arts, and other fields. Besides intellectuals, its work has deeply influenced people from various walks of life, not just Indians and people of Indian origin, but all
those who have an all-abiding interest in these matters.

The Foundation has been producing videos on several subjects that showcase the use and application of a dharma-based lens to study our civilization. This has resulted in a new awakening: to promote the use of our drishti (i.e., the ability to look through the dharmic lens). It has adopted the term kurukshetra or battlefield, to describe the present-day encounter of civilizations. The Foundation has expanded beyond the mode of pure research, and engages with the general public, providing new insights into the social and political dynamics at work in this kurukshetra.

The Foundation’s books have a common approach: to present an analysis of distorted theories and their effects, and to expose the falsities and assumptions, of these theories. The target readership is the serious intellectual in support of the Foundation’s aim to develop Intellectual Kshatriyas. These kshatriyas are using the Foundation’s core ideas and vocabulary to aid in the thinking, analysis, dissection, and strategic response to the attacks on dharma, thus providing new perspectives. Any coherent body of thought or knowledge system assumes a powerful impact as a thought carrier and a tool of change, in pragmatic and intellectual ways, if it is supported by its own consistent vocabulary. The histories and progress of a civilization can be seen as an evolution of its conceptual framework and vocabulary in understanding itself and the world.

The theory of Sanskrit Non-Translatables is one such powerful framework and has its own vocabulary of terms. It was introduced for the first time in the book, Being Different. The theory elucidated that Western scholars and Westernized Indians are accustomed to translating and mapping dharmic concepts and perspectives onto Western frameworks, which is a form of digestion of Vedic civilization into their civilization. Being Different argued that this practice is highly problematic. Dharmic traditions are compromised and some elements even atrophy once it becomes acceptable to substitute them with Western equivalents, even though the substitutes do not accurately represent the original Indian idea.

While this problem exists to some extent in all inter-civilizational encounters, it is particularly acute when dharmic concepts in Sanskrit are translated into Western languages. Not only does Sanskrit, like all languages, encode specific and unique cultural experiences and traits, but the very form, sound, and manifestation of the language carries effects that cannot be separated from their conceptual meanings. The non-translatable nature of Sanskrit and its deep meanings are compromised by the cultural digestion of dharma into the West through the inadequate translation of vocabulary. In the course of this digestion, crucial distinctions and understandings are lost, important direct experiences of the rishi-s sidelined, and the most fertile, productive and visionary dimension of dharma eradicated and relegated to antiquity. This loss is often carried out under the guise of modernity.

The current book takes these ideas forward and launches a new movement using Sanskrit Non-Translatables as a device for protecting key ideas from getting distorted, plagiarized, or allowed to become obsolete. The role of Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji has been critical as the subject-matter expert to explicate the nuances of meanings of the important Sanskrit words used to illustrate their non-translatability.

This book is not meant for teaching Sanskrit. It undertakes to explain the inadequate translation of many Sanskrit terms into English, which is commonplace. It spotlights several Sanskrit terms that are loosely and unthinkingly replaced with English translations and shows how the deep and profound implications of these words get lost.

Though primarily meant for the English speaker/reader, many of these discussions are also relevant to resist the usage of these English terms in native Indian languages.

Chapters 1 and 2 cover the rationale and need for Sanskrit Non-Translatables and ingeminate key ideas on the subject from Being Different. The discussion on the origins and unique nature of Sanskrit lays the foundation. The Non-Translatables will play a critical role in the kurukshetra as carriers of deeper ideas and embedded cultural assets, and in the encounters between dharma and adharma.

Chapter 3 through 11 discuss several specific non-translatable terms that are being carelessly translated. For each term discussed, careful and deep thought has gone into explaining why the common translations are inadequate and how they create distortions and confusion. The goal is to lay a strong foundation for readers to start using these Sanskrit words when speaking or writing in English. The aim is to instill confidence that the non-translatable words can be used effectively in everyday engagement in English, enriching the language with new ideas and experiences from the Indian traditions.

To ensure reader friendliness, diacritic marks for Sanskrit pronunciation have only been used in the notes. Most Sanskrit repeated in some cases. A Sanskrit term will often be accompanied provisional meaning in English. Many Sanskrit terms in the source – for instance, ‘Shankara’ and ‘Sankara’. Purists in Indian scholarship may raise issues with some of these compromises. But our battles are selected carefully and with focus, and this means making practical accommodations.

At certain places in this book where multiple interpretations of the shastra exist within our traditions, the Gaudiya Vaishnava sampradaya’s viewpoint is used as the basis for illustrating the non-translatability. This choice is not to preclude other traditional views. Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji belongs to that tradition, hence we use that view. However, we invite collaborations with experts from other dharmic traditions so that the full richness of each Sanskrit concept can emerge from various perspectives. The focus is to explain that various Sanskrit terms are not translatable to English words. Using a particular Dharmic tradition serves to illustrate this point.

Foreword

Nityananda Misra

Anuvada, which literally means ‘saying again’ or ‘restating’ (‘anuvadanam anuvadah’), is the Sanskrit word for translation. An anuvada can be from Sanskrit into Sanskrit, from Sanskrit into Indian languages or from Sanskrit into other languages like English. Owing to the highly mathematical and flexible nature of Sanskrit, it is possible to have a perfectly equivalent anuvada from Sanskrit into Sanskrit. The second sutra of Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra reads, ‘yogah chitta-vritti-nirodhah’, and the anuvada in Sanskrit could be ‘chittasya vrittinam nirodhanam yogah’. In languages originating from (or borrowing heavily from) Sanskrit, Sanskrit words can be used as they occur in the original and the anuvada can still be anuvada of the above sutra could be ‘chitta ki vrittiyon ka nirodha yoga hai’. When it comes to languages that do not share the same history and culture as Sanskrit, a great part of the meaning is lost in translation. In English, the anuvada of the above sutra could be: ‘Union (yoga) is the suppression of the modifications of the unconscious mind’. To a reader who knows both Sanskrit and English, this anuvada will be nowhere close in spirit or meaning to the original Sanskrit sutra. A Hindi speaker reading the above Hindi translation will understand the intent of Patanjali far better than an English speaker reading the English translation. This is because the words yoga, chitta, vritti, and nirodha are used in a similar sense in Hindi as they are used in the sutra.

In this much-needed and pertinent book, Rajiv Malhotra and Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji detail fifty-four Sanskrit words from nine themes with their common English translations and highlight what the English translations fail to capture. The authors make a compelling case for using Sanskrit words as is in English translations. Rajiv Malhotra had introduced this concept in his book Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism, and has highlighted the need for Sanskritization of English for a long time. Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji is a traditionally trained Sanskrit scholar who has translated important texts like the Bhagavad Gita and the Sandarbha works of Srila Jiva Goswami into English. They offer insightful views into etymologies and ranges of meanings of important Sanskrit words and how their common English translations fail to capture the essence of the original words.

Consider the example of the word maya, which is commonly translated into English as ‘illusion’. The authors point out that beside maya being a ‘wondrous Shakti of Bhagavan’, in some traditions, it is the cause of illusion and not illusion per se in the Advaita Vedanta tradition. Having learned the concept of maya in my childhood from both Hindi and Sanskrit sources, I am aware that another meaning of maya is kripa (loosely translated as ‘compassion’), as attested by the Anekartha-sangraha of Acharya Hemachandra (medieval Jain scholar and polymath) and as cited in the work Bhakti-Sudha by Karapatri Swami (a guru in the Advaita Vedanta tradition). Thus, ‘illusion’ or ‘deception’ is only one of the many meanings of the word maya (Acharya Hemachandra lists four meanings in the Anekartha-sangraha) and translating as ‘illusion’ reduces a word with many shades of meaning to a single narrow meaning. The authors draw our attention to a plethora of other such mistranslations. For example, advaya-jnana is more appropriately translated as ‘non-dual consciousness’ and not ‘monistic consciousness’.

While discussing the non-translatable terms, the authors also throw light on many significant concepts in Hinduism. The discussion on Om clarifies several misconceptions about the word that have recently been made popular by a prominent Hindu guru. The discussion on the mahabhutas shows how words like ‘space’, ‘fire’, and ‘air/wind’ fail to capture the essence and profound meanings of the words akasha, agni, and vayu. When we say ‘space’, we do not get an idea of shabda (loose translation, ‘sound’) but the concept of akasha in Hindu philosophy is inextricably linked with the concept of shabda, as the definition of akasha in the Tarkasangraha (a seventeenth century treatise on logic and reasoning by Annambhatta) clarifies: “shabda-gunakam akasham”.

The important differences between the Indic concept of svarga and naraka and the Abrahamic concepts of heaven and hell are discussed in detail by the authors. While discussing ahimsa, Rajiv Malhotra and Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji incisively point out that opposite meaning (or virodha) is only one of the six senses of the prefix ‘a’ (from ‘na’). This is known to students of Sanskrit grammar but presenting such fine nuances to laypersons is what the book succeeds at. The chapter on Kavya is a refreshing end to the book with discussions on words like kama, bhava, prema, and ananda. As per the Nitivakyamrita (a work on ethics and ethical values by the Jain scholar Somadeva Suri), kama is that which grants gratification abounding in bodily sentiment to all indriya-s (“abhimabika-rasanuviddha yatah sarvendriya-pritih”) This is a very broad concept which can never be captured by a narrow word like ‘lust’, as the authors convincingly prove.

Sanskrit Non-Translatables, with its lucid language, will be easy for laypersons to comprehend. The exhibits and tables will serve as useful mnemonics for the readers. The book will immensely benefit the readers and writers of the third category of the anuvada mentioned before—from Sanskrit to languages like English.

We know for a fact that translations of important texts from one language to another can never be wholly effective or completely true and faithful to the original. To truly understand and appreciate Shakespeare, one has to read Shakespeare in the original Elizabethan English. With both concepts and fifty-four examples, Sanskrit Non-Translatables: The Importance of Sanskritizing English vividly shows how the ‘lost in translation’ effect is amplified manifold when translating from a highly structured, refined, rich, and potent language like Sanskrit to a language like English. Readers of the book will realize how translations of Sanskrit texts into Hindi or other Indian languages, which retain much of the original Sanskrit vocabulary, are far more effective than translations into English. The translation of the Valmiki Ramayana into English by Robert Goldman (professor of Sanskrit at the University of California, Berkeley) is no doubt good, but the Hindi translation published by Gita Press is undoubtedly better. For a reader who understands Hindi, the latter should be the first preference.

This must-read book will reach many readers across the globe. My sincere hope is that it inspires many of them to learn with Sanskrit commentaries, the best anuvada possible.

Nityananda Misra, author of
Mahaviri: Hanuman-Chalisa Demystified and other books
Mumbai, 2020

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Forewords

Table of Contents

  • Foreword by Nityananda Misra
  • Introduction
  • Preface by Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji
  • The Case For Sanskrit Non-Translatable
  • The Theory of Sanskrit Non-Translatable

Introduction/ Preface

Prefaces

The thinkers of ancient India, the rishi-s and muni-s, had a deep understanding of the fact that the universe functions on some basic principles of rhythms of the cosmos known as ritam, and to this end, human life was organized at two levels: individual and social. Further, at the individual level, human life was considered in four parts: brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha, and samnyasa. Considering a life span of one hundred years, twenty-five years were allocated to each stage of life. In order to be in harmony with ritam, an individual, as well as a society, must strive for the four pursuits known as purushartha-s: dharma, artha, kama, and moksha.

Since twenty-five years, Infinity Foundation has been challenging the prevailing narratives with groundbreaking research and provided original perspectives on dharma and its rightful place in the world. An important book published by the Foundation, Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America, in 2007, took aim at the Freudian psychoanalytic critiques of Hinduism being propagated by a powerful nexus in the Western academia and being spread among Indian intellectuals. The book gave birth to, and incubated, a solid and entrenched opposition that cannot be ignored today. It spurred the Indian diaspora to recognize the pattern of attacks on Hindu dharma under the garb of academia and audaciously ‘talk back’ to the establishment of Western scholars. This ‘reversing the gaze’ on Western intellectual elites found its way rapidly to India where it shaped a new generation of self-confident Indians. The term ‘Hinduphobia’ was adopted by Infinity Foundation to turn the spotlight on to a serious issue and it has now entered the everyday lexicon of serious thinkers worldwide.

Forewords

Nityananda Misra

Anuvada, which literally means ‘saying again’ or ‘restating’ (‘anuvadanam anuvadah’), is the Sanskrit word for translation. An anuvada can be from Sanskrit into Sanskrit, from Sanskrit into Indian languages or from Sanskrit into other languages like English. Owing to the highly mathematical and flexible nature of Sanskrit, it is possible to have a perfectly equivalent anuvada from Sanskrit into Sanskrit. The second sutra of Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra reads, ‘yogah chitta-vritti-nirodhah’, and the anuvada in Sanskrit could be ‘chittasya vrittinam nirodhanam yogah’. In languages originating from (or borrowing heavily from) Sanskrit, Sanskrit words can be used as they occur in the original and the anuvada can still be anuvada of the above sutra could be ‘chitta ki vrittiyon ka nirodha yoga hai’. When it comes to languages that do not share the same history and culture as Sanskrit, a great part of the meaning is lost in translation. In English, the anuvada of the above sutra could be: ‘Union (yoga) is the suppression of the modifications of the unconscious mind’. To a reader who knows both Sanskrit and English, this anuvada will be nowhere close in spirit or meaning to the original Sanskrit sutra. A Hindi speaker reading the above Hindi translation will understand the intent of Patanjali far better than an English speaker reading the English translation. This is because the words yoga, chitta, vritti, and nirodha are used in a similar sense in Hindi as they are used in the sutra.

In this much-needed and pertinent book, Rajiv Malhotra and Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji detail fifty-four Sanskrit words from nine themes with their common English translations and highlight what the English translations fail to capture. The authors make a compelling case for using Sanskrit words as is in English translations. Rajiv Malhotra had introduced this concept in his book Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism, and has highlighted the need for Sanskritization of English for a long time. Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji is a traditionally trained Sanskrit scholar who has translated important texts like the Bhagavad Gita and the Sandarbha works of Srila Jiva Goswami into English. They offer insightful views into etymologies and ranges of meanings of important Sanskrit words and how their common English translations fail to capture the essence of the original words.

Consider the example of the word maya, which is commonly translated into English as ‘illusion’. The authors point out that beside maya being a ‘wondrous Shakti of Bhagavan’, in some traditions, it is the cause of illusion and not illusion per se in the Advaita Vedanta tradition. Having learned the concept of maya in my childhood from both Hindi and Sanskrit sources, I am aware that another meaning of maya is kripa (loosely translated as ‘compassion’), as attested by the Anekartha-sangraha of Acharya Hemachandra (medieval Jain scholar and polymath) and as cited in the work Bhakti-Sudha by Karapatri Swami (a guru in the Advaita Vedanta tradition). Thus, ‘illusion’ or ‘deception’ is only one of the many meanings of the word maya (Acharya Hemachandra lists four meanings in the Anekartha-sangraha) and translating as ‘illusion’ reduces a word with many shades of meaning to a single narrow meaning. The authors draw our attention to a plethora of other such mistranslations. For example, advaya-jnana is more appropriately translated as ‘non-dual consciousness’ and not ‘monistic consciousness’.

While discussing the non-translatable terms, the authors also throw light on many significant concepts in Hinduism. The discussion on Om clarifies several misconceptions about the word that have recently been made popular by a prominent Hindu guru. The discussion on the mahabhutas shows how words like ‘space’, ‘fire’, and ‘air/wind’ fail to capture the essence and profound meanings of the words akasha, agni, and vayu. When we say ‘space’, we do not get an idea of shabda (loose translation, ‘sound’) but the concept of akasha in Hindu philosophy is inextricably linked with the concept of shabda, as the definition of akasha in the Tarkasangraha (a seventeenth century treatise on logic and reasoning by Annambhatta) clarifies: “shabda-gunakam akasham”.

The important differences between the Indic concept of svarga and naraka and the Abrahamic concepts of heaven and hell are discussed in detail by the authors. While discussing ahimsa, Rajiv Malhotra and Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji incisively point out that opposite meaning (or virodha) is only one of the six senses of the prefix ‘a’ (from ‘na’). This is known to students of Sanskrit grammar but presenting such fine nuances to laypersons is what the book succeeds at. The chapter on Kavya is a refreshing end to the book with discussions on words like kama, bhava, prema, and ananda. As per the Nitivakyamrita (a work on ethics and ethical values by the Jain scholar Somadeva Suri), kama is that which grants gratification abounding in bodily sentiment to all indriya-s (“abhimabika-rasanuviddha yatah sarvendriya-pritih”) This is a very broad concept which can never be captured by a narrow word like ‘lust’, as the authors convincingly prove.

Sanskrit Non-Translatables, with its lucid language, will be easy for laypersons to comprehend. The exhibits and tables will serve as useful mnemonics for the readers. The book will immensely benefit the readers and writers of the third category of the anuvada mentioned before—from Sanskrit to languages like English.

We know for a fact that translations of important texts from one language to another can never be wholly effective or completely true and faithful to the original. To truly understand and appreciate Shakespeare, one has to read Shakespeare in the original Elizabethan English. With both concepts and fifty-four examples, Sanskrit Non-Translatables: The Importance of Sanskritizing English vividly shows how the ‘lost in translation’ effect is amplified manifold when translating from a highly structured, refined, rich, and potent language like Sanskrit to a language like English. Readers of the book will realize how translations of Sanskrit texts into Hindi or other Indian languages, which retain much of the original Sanskrit vocabulary, are far more effective than translations into English. The translation of the Valmiki Ramayana into English by Robert Goldman (professor of Sanskrit at the University of California, Berkeley) is no doubt good, but the Hindi translation published by Gita Press is undoubtedly better. For a reader who understands Hindi, the latter should be the first preference.

This must-read book will reach many readers across the globe. My sincere hope is that it inspires many of them to learn with Sanskrit commentaries, the best anuvada possible.

Nityananda Misra, author of
Mahaviri: Hanuman-Chalisa Demystified and other books
Mumbai, 2020

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Question: Can you tell us more about the first few prominent books that made you aware of the problem?

Besides Kali’s Child, another book that caught my attention was ‘Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings.’ Its author, Paul Courtright, describes the trunk of Ganesa as a limp phallus, his broken tusk as castration, and even the staff of a brahmachari during the sacred thread ceremony as a ‘detachable penis.’ There is a wholesale distortion of Hindu texts. For instance a blatantly false claim is made that Daksha raped his own daughter Sati, an avatar of the Devi.

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