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The sad fact is that after nearly two hundred years Western Indology has still failed to understand India, her culture, her soul or her history. It has progressed little beyond Eurocentric and missionary stereotypes, only adding Marxist, Freudian and other modern stereotypes to these, naively believing that these western ideologies are somehow dramatically enlightening to India and its profound spiritual culture, when they are usually irrelevant or inferior and have already failed in the West. Meanwhile it has discovered little more in the vast treasures of Vedic culture than any primitive culture.
Western Indology does not understand the philosophy of India,
its emphasis on dharma and karma, liberation and enlightenment, or its great
traditions of Yoga and meditation. It does not acknowledge the value of its
rishi/yogi culture and its Vedic origin. Nor does it recognize any such higher
yogic spiritual tradition as behind any ancient civilizations or behind
humanity as a whole. From its perspective, Indian spirituality is a
self-serving fantasy hiding what is unscientific, inhumane or archaic.
Yet even more
sadly Western Indology does not want to recognize that India as a unique
civilization really exists. It fails to see any real identity to Indic
civilization prior to British rule or any real continuity to it from ancient
times. Rather it views India as a melting pot of invading cultures with no
overriding political or cultural background or unity. It was Karl Marx who said
that India has no history, and what is called history “is the record of
successive intruders.” This is the position still taken by Western Indologists
and their counterparts in India, particularly Indian leftists who treat the
words of Marx almost like a scripture. They fiercely resist the suggestion of
any advanced indigenous civilization in India.
Western thought
reads the same type of political and psychological motives into the Indic
school of thought that it does for the history of Europe. It tries to
understand the Indic tradition according to Marxism, Freud, Deconstructionism,
or whatever may be the latest trend in western thought, as if these
characteristic preoccupations of the outward looking western mind could unlock
the keys to a very different yogic culture. In fact, these usually tell us more
about the western mind than about India’s traditions. Generally, the current
western scholarship about India or about the ancient world as a whole naively
follows the shifts of political and social correctness in western thought, as
if all of history was to change retrospectively along with the fluctuations of
ideology in the West! In short, the West has not adequately questioned its
approach for understanding Indic civilization or created a consistent model for
viewing it at a spiritual or philosophical level. Not surprisingly, Indic
civilization remains a mystery and the West does not appreciate the riches of
the higher mind behind it.
Western
intellectual culture is quite critical of the Indic tradition and rejects most
of it as unscientific or erroneous. It styles Indic thought as mystical,
irrational, superstitious or even absurd. We could, therefore, easily describe
the main approach of Western Indology as one of negationism, denying something
outright in order dispose of it altogether. This failure of Western Indology is
nowhere more evident as in its treatment of the Vedas. The monumental literature of the Vedas—the largest of the ancient world and given a spiritual and
cultural reverence throughout India throughout its history—is reduced to the
record of illiterate invading hordes or pastoral nomads which really didn’t
deserve to be preserved. Vedic literature is not examined in depth but simply
explained away by such negationist theories, as something of no consequence
that need not be taken seriously.
According to Western Indology the Vedic is a literature that
should not exist, that if it does exist is primitive, distorted or deceptive.
Whatever appears sophisticated in the Vedas
becomes an interpolation or a cynical borrowing from indigenous people that the
Vedic people supplanted and denigrated (in other words, blaming the negationism
on the Vedic people themselves!). Western Indology first viewed Vedic
literature as the record of invading/militant Aryan hordes from Central Asia as
they destroyed the sophisticated Dravidian urban culture of Mohenjodaro and
Harappa. Now that the Harappan culture has been shown to have not ended in
violence but in geological and river changes, they haven’t given up their old
views but simply modified them, without even acknowledging their previous
distortions. They now see the Vedas
as the record of a pastoral culture that gradually infiltrated its way into
India after 1500 BCE and, in some unknown way, subverted the language and
literature of the land, though no real evidence for this or record of it has
remained.
Such views do
not explain the Vedic literature, its extent, sophistication or continuity.
Ruthless hordes would not produce such a literature or be able to continue it
through the centuries. Pastoral infiltrators would be less able to do so. No
subcontinent would carry on such a vast literature as a great spiritual legacy
that represents small groups of intrusive peoples that had no real
civilization! To carry on such a vast literature, particularly one that requires
very elaborate and expensive rituals, would require a royal patronage and from
an early period.
There is a similar negationism about Harappan civilization,
which is also left in the dark. Harappan civilization is viewed as a mysterious
civilization that came and went leaving no real trace in the later culture.
That it was the largest and most sophisticated urban culture of the ancient
world at the time is similarly downplayed. Rather the impression is given that
it was only a sidelight to smaller Near Eastern cultures that were the real
center of civilization at the time. Its obvious connections to Vedic thought
found in artifacts and symbols like the swastika, the Om symbol and fire altars
are stubbornly ignored. In making the Harappan a so-called Dravidian culture,
the fact that there is no archaeological record, history or trace of a movement
of Dravidians south to confirm this change is similarly ignored.
Vedic literature does represent the Indic tradition from
ancient times. It is the most ancient literature that India as a culture chose
to perpetuate and which nearly all later literatures in the country refer to,
including non-Vedic groups or thinkers. We cannot ignore Vedic literature or
place it in Central Asia. We cannot pretend that it has no connection or origin
in India by ignoring references to Indian geography flora and fauna in the Rigveda itself. Even today many great
Indian thinkers draw inspiration from the Rigveda
itself, including such great figures as Sri Aurobindo, who established an
entire new modern school of Vedic interpretation.
Harappan urban
culture similarly represents the urban aspect of Indic civilization since
ancient time. We cannot pretend that it had no literature and no continuity of
its culture and peoples in the region. Nor can we pretend that it could have
been entirely forgotten by the existent Vedic literature. The literature record
and urban ruins—though very different sources of information that will give
different points of view—cannot be kept apart. The continuity of Indic
civilization and its literature cannot be negated away. We cannot place the
ancient literature of India outside of India and understand the development of
Indian civilization.
The other aspect of Western Indology that is yet more questionable
is its holding on to wrong views even after they have been disproved. To date
the most common impression people have about ancient India—from textbooks and
depictions all over the world—is Wheeler’s massacre at Mohenjodaro and the
image of the invading Aryan hordes like the later Huns and Mongols. See for
example the entry on Mohenjodaro in the Encyclopedia
Britannica for the perpetuation of this distortion, which no Western
Indologist has complained about. Though Western Indologists if pressed acknowledge
that this view is wrong and that Harappan culture declined and fell without
such outside invasion and violence, they have done nothing significant to
change these distortions. They seem to absolve themselves of any responsibility
for them or the political and social problems that their misinterpretations
have caused or aggravated. However, they are outraged if Hindus should question
their record or their motives.
This negationism of Indian civilization is not just a matter
of the Vedas or the Aryan Invasion
Theory. That merely sets the precedent for a negation of the India’s
civilization as a whole. The same predictable pattern repeats itself in other
areas of culture. It is not only ancient India but all aspects of Indic
civilization that are questionable. The logic is simple. Everything in Indian
civilization came from migrants from the West (like the Aryan Invasion),
borrowings from the West (like from the Greeks in ancient times), is inferior
to that of the West (Hindu monism being at best a crude approach to Christian
monotheism), or is simply not of any value at all (Indic spirituality or
Puranic occultism as fantasy, mythology, error or superstition). Whatever
limited indigenous tradition there might have been gets reduced to some
mysterious Harappan, Dravidian culture that was erased by the intrusive Aryans
or taken over by them without affording the natives any credit in the process.
This means that Indic civilization if it is indigenous to any significant
degree remains fraudulent!
Puranic records
of a hundred kings before the time of Buddha are dismissed as fanciful, even
though names for one major dynasty, that of the Ikshvakus, and years of reign
going back well over a thousand years prior to the Buddha, are recorded. For
reconstructing any authentic history of India, Western Indologists rely on
happenstance Greek, Chinese and Islamic travelers (who had their own religious
and political motives), refusing to accept anything from Indians themselves.
That such visitors are often quite unreliable is ignored (like trusting Spanish
accounts of New World cultures). And when the records of these travelers do
support the antiquity or sophistication of Indian civilization, they are
ignored, like failing to give any credibility to Megasthenes’s statement that
India had a tradition that went back many thousands of years before Alexander.
Relative to the
culture of ancient India, its negation by Western Indologists is almost total.
For sculpture, which was particularly important for the iconic temple worship
in India, we are told that what was of any value in it came from the Greeks
after the time of Alexander. That Harappan statues are quite sophisticated and
realistic and could represent indigenous influences is ignored. Later sculpture
like that of South Indian temples is dismissed as inferior to that of Europe or
as unrealistic in its depictions.
Relative to the
tradition of drama, which was quite important in India, we are told that it
derives from a Greek influence because the Greeks had great dramas (though
lacking in the spiritual and yogic style of the Indians), again though there is
no Indian recollection of such a Greek influence. For poetry, we are told that
the classical Sanskrit poetry of such as Kalidasa is artificial, sterile and
unrealistic, though it is highly spiritual, very musical and quite
sophisticated. We are told that it can’t compare with that of the Greeks and
Romans, much less Shakespeare! Great Indian traditions of music and dance, said
to go back to the Sama Veda, are
generally ignored as not of much value in world music and as probably an
invention of recent centuries, at most meriting a short footnote!
Relative to
science, most of Indian science, particularly astronomy, is reduced to
borrowings from the Greeks, though Indian astronomy and mathematics follow
different lines. Indians did not need the Greeks to bring them Babylonian
astronomy, as such scholars state. They had contact with that region long
before Alexander and generally influenced the Middle East more than it did
India. Ayurvedic medicine is similarly thought to owe a lot to the Greeks,
though Ayurveda has clear Vedic roots.
We must remember
that India archaeologically speaking has a history of a great civilizations going
back three thousand years before the time of Alexander. Alexander’s so-called
conquest of India, which was more of a raid, was not even mentioned in
historical records of India. Greek rulers in the third and second century BC
were mentioned, but not considered extraordinary. Clearly, Alexander’s supposed
influence on India is exaggerated out of proportion to reality. There was
certainly no great adulation of Greek culture as better than that of India,
though Greek contributions in the field of astronomy were recognized. On the
contrary, the Greeks spoke highly of the civilization of India. Megasthenes,
who came to India about the time of Alexander, in the fragments of his Indika that remain records and Indian
tradition of 153 kings going back over 6400 years. Clearly, India had a sense
of tremendous antiquity for its civilization when the Greeks came. They didn’t
see the Greeks as their superiors, as we do, nor did the Greeks themselves.
Relative to
religious literature, we are told that Vedic prayers and metaphors cannot
compare with the psalms of the Bible in terms of sensitivity or sophistication.
For philosophy, there has been a desire to reduce Upanishadic thought to a
Greek influence, even though history does not support that. Still a Greek borrowing
is suspected. For spirituality, we are told that Yoga, Vedanta and Buddhism are
inferior to western monotheism and its greater sense of compassion and that
their claims of spiritual realization are either religiously or psychologically
suspect. This is in spite of the fact that western mystics like Meister Eckhart
sound more like Hindu Vedantists than like Catholics, and though the ancient
Greeks looked up to the Indians for their spiritual wisdom. Though devotion is
emphasized in Vedic texts and in the Gita
itself, we are told that the Hindu devotional tradition (Bhakti Yoga) owes a
lot to Christians and Muslims, though these religions do not have such yogic
paths, understand yogic states of consciousness, or practice a similar temple
worship as in India! Similarly, we are told that Hatha Yoga postures are an
invention of at most a thousand years in India, though the same postures are
clearly depicted on Harappan seals!
What we are dealing with, therefore, is an
unprecedented and total negation of an entire civilization. Western Indology does not
present India as having an indigenous civilization comparable to that of China,
Europe or the Middle East, but as having little cultural, religious, historical
or political unity of its own. This is in spite of the fact that the vast
Sanskrit literature contains extensive related systems of religion,
spirituality, philosophy, medicine, art and literature going back to the Roman
era, if not long before—something that no other civilization has been able to
maintain. India is put on par with Africa or America by way of civilization and
religion, as a half tribal culture. It is not regarded as having an equivalent,
though different civilization in terms of art, science or religion to the West.
However, there
is another view of India that has honored its great and spiritual civilization.
Western intellectuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth century—including great
thinkers like Voltaire, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Emerson and Thoreau—waxed
eloquently about the spiritual philosophies and traditions of India, even the
greatness of the Brahmin class. They were followed the Theosophists in the
later nineteenth century, with leaders like Annie Besant in the early twentieth
century who was an important leader in the independence movement in India
itself. Today the large New Age movement in the West has an important, if not
central place for Indian gurus, Yoga traditions and healing practices. Indeed,
the western popular mind has always been enamoured of the image of mystical India,
the land of Gods and sages. In addition, many modern scientists like
Oppenheimer and Einstein have noted their philosophical affinity with India and
the East for their new models of unity and consciousness behind the universe.
Historians like Toynbee had similar views. The problem is that such groups have
been a minority and have not determined the manner in which India and its
civilization are usually viewed today.
So clearly, the
problem is not a deficiency or prejudice of the western mind as a whole, but
one in certain parts of academia and various vested interests. There is a
common ground for a new view of India and an integration between East and West,
once we move beyond such biases and recognize these other East-West connections
that have existed throughout history.
The real question, therefore, is—why is Western Indology, with
all its supposed academic rigor, is so inherently incapable of understanding
India or its traditions? I think that the answer is simple. Western Indologists
have not confronted the Indic tradition directly. They look at Indic traditions
as fossils or museum pieces and haven’t entered into Indian thoughts and
practices, though these are available to them if they wish. Their very academic
rigor, which trains them only in an external view of the world, becomes a
barrier to the type of interior civilization which India represents. They lack
the necessary spiritual and yogic vision to make sense of Indic civilization.
They lack the mindset and the tools for the job, which requires spiritual
insight and not mere logic or pottery gathering. Worse yet, they are not even
aware of their limitations in this respect.
The reasons for this incapacity to understand India are
reflected in a general incapacity to understand non-western cultures. Western
Indologists still see western civilization as world civilization. They do not
recognize any real independent Indic civilization apart from that of the West.
As in their eyes, civilization per se comes from the West, any civilization in
India must have western roots or otherwise be questionable.
We note that
textbooks of world history to the present day are mainly textbooks of western
history, with a few footnotes thrown in to represent the rest of the world. Textbooks
of world art are mainly textbooks of western art; textbooks of world philosophy
are mainly textbooks of western philosophy, and so on with all the different
fields of knowledge and culture. Non-western cultures are recognized in world
civilization to the extent that they represent western type cultural
aspirations towards science, democracy (self-determination), economic
development or monotheism, the characteristics of western civilizations, not
for any unique cultures of their own. Because western historians believe that
western history represents the main trend in world history, they are naturally
inclined to see the origins of world history and that of western history as the
same. Not surprisingly, they compulsive reduce or modify historical data to fit
into this preconceived mold.
There is no
doubt that Greco-Roman culture is the origin of most western philosophical,
political and scientific thought. There is similarly no doubt that the Near
East is the origin of most western religious thought through the
Judeo-Christian tradition and its Egyptian and Mesopotamian connections. But
Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian or Mesopotamian origins cannot be ascribed to the
civilizations of South and East Asia, Africa and America or that of world
civilization as a whole. Western civilization may in fact represent a
sidelight, not the main stream of world civilization that is more spiritual in
nature.
That Western
Indologists may be offended if their methodology or qualifications to judge the
Indic tradition are questioned only highlights their inability to approach it
in an objective manner. They can negate an entire civilization but are
intolerant of accepting any fundamental criticism of their approach in turn.
That Western Indology might be questioned is only natural in the post-colonial
age, which has exposed many Eurocentric/materialist models as biased. Presently, western scholars are resisting
the new Hindu historical scholarship, though it has much hard data behind it,
because it questions their views on a political and philosophical level. This
is contrary to how they have handled the challenge of other regions of former
colonial rule.
Black Africans
and other indigenous groups have questioned and thrown off such nineteenth
century based interpretations of their history. While initially western
scholars denigrated these new indigenous views of Black History, they have now
come to accept them or at least afford them a place, including creating their
own departments in western universities. The difference is that anti-African
and anti-Black views have been thrown out as politically incorrect, while
anti-Hindu views are still regarded as politically correct and largely
unquestioned. While western scholars are sensitive to the charge of racism and
critical of colonial views of history in regards to Africa, they are still
perpetuating the colonial view of India.
Meanwhile, western thinkers don’t understand the very different view of
civilization found inside the Indic tradition. Indic thinkers are not so
impressed by western civilization and its supposed greatness, though they might
admire the West on some points. Modern Indian sages have been equally hard on
western civilization. Vivekananda, Rama Tirtha, Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi and
Tagore—in fact, most modern Indian gurus criticize the West for a lack of true
spirituality and any real yogic path to develop higher consciousness. Almost
every Indian spiritual teacher who has addressed western civilization has
expressed misgivings about the underlying values or lack of values behind it.
Certainly, no great spiritual teachers of modern India would equate western
civilization with world civilization. On the contrary, they usually find it to
be a deviation, perhaps necessary, from the longer and more enduring spiritual
occupations of humanity that were common not only to India but to all ancient
cultures. They look back to the Upanishadic vision that long ago showed the
limitations of materialistic culture. “Living in the midst of ignorance,
considering themselves to be wise and learned, they wander like the blind led
by the blind. The goal does not appear to these heedless children, deluded by
the lure of wealth. Thinking there is nothing beyond this world, they fall
again and again into the power of Death (Katha Upanishad II.5-6).”
Indic thinkers
find the sages in their own tradition—Vedic rishis, Vedantic sages or great
yogis—to be deeper and more profound than the Greek philosophers, modern
scientists or monotheistic theologians. From them a Vasishta, Yajnavalkya,
Shankara or Patanjali represents a higher mind than an Aristotle, Thomas
Aquinas or Kant. Indic thinkers aren’t overwhelmed by the greatness of modern
science and technology, which they see as limited outer preoccupations, but
look to a greater science of consciousness that does not rely on instruments.
They don’t find western art, which has an ego base and sensate approach, to be
superior to Indian art and its spiritual/religious orientation. They don’t find
western consumerism to be an enlightened economy but to only hide a deeper
spiritual poverty. They don’t find modern democracies and their human rights
orientation to be really cognizant of the rights and duties of soul or our
rights and duties to the universe.
Indic thinkers
aren’t impressed by the ability of western scholars to grasp the Indic
tradition, or all the gyrations they do to keep the origin of the Vedas out of India. And such thinkers
are not bigoted or unintelligent for doing so, nor have they failed to
seriously examine western civilization. They simply have different values and a
different sense of culture, consciousness and reality than mainstream western
culture. Yet they are not alone in their views, many western mystics have
expressed similar critiques of western civilization, and much of the western
counterculture has as well.
This entire
issue reflects a clash of civilizations. Western Indology is part of western
civilization, shares its values and naturally works to expand its frontiers on
an intellectual level. Western Indology is an attempt to mold and fit Indic
civilization into the terms and values of western civilization. Western
Indology has yet to accept Indic civilization as a spiritual, philosophical and
historical tradition of its own value and independence, with its own
authenticity. It has not really confronted the Indic tradition, much less
acknowledged it as an equal. Western Indology looks down upon the Indic
tradition from on high, from its ivory tower, dissecting, fragmenting and
denigrating the civilization of India according to its own alien values and
views.
The best thing for Western Indologists to do would be to start
over afresh. They should first recognize that Indic civilization is a tradition
much older, broader and more spiritual than the western tradition and
independent from it as well. Indic civilization is not necessarily hostile to
western civilization but it does proceed by different values and according to a
different perception of humanity, nature and the universe, apart which we
cannot make sense of it.
The best thing for Indians and those who follow Indic
traditions is to go directly to their own traditions not only on a spiritual
level but also relative to culture and history and not give much credence to
Western Indology as it is today. We see a renaissance of the Indic tradition in
the world today on a spiritual, yogic, philosophical and culture levels. The
popularity of Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, Ayurveda and Indian music all over the
world shows this. This in the long run is a more important event with a longer
lasting influence than Western Indology that has so far failed to enter the
courtyard, much less the sanctuary of the great temple of Indic civilization.
Unfortunately, the views of Indologists still determine textbook accounts in
schools, even in India, and influence the global media. Otherwise one could
just as well ignore them as irrelevant.
The Indic
tradition divides up western civilization into different areas, to which it
ascribes different degrees of validity. It largely accepts western science as
valid within its own sphere but regards that sphere as limited. For example, it
accepts the findings of physics, particularly the discoveries of the relativity
of time and space and the underlying reality of energy behind matter. However,
it considers that these discoveries should be pursued further to get at the
reality behind the universe, which is one of intelligence and consciousness.
The Indic
tradition accepts western political ideals of democracy and equality as good
ideas but undermined by a materialistic formulation. Our first need as human
beings is a spiritual self-determination—the freedom to know ourselves and
discover our true nature beyond the body and mind, free from political,
commercial or economic constraints. Spiritual self-determination provides us
the ability to stand above external manipulation, to go beyond desire, greed
and ego. Modern democracy allows mainly for a material self-determination. This
does not bring true freedom but makes the masses vulnerable to manipulation by
commercial, political and religious forces, which cater to their fears and desires.
This is what we are seeing in the democratic West, which has almost a
dictatorship of the media and the corporate world and very little individual or
creative thinking about ultimate reality.
The Indic tradition
does not accept that western views of history, society and spirituality are
valid or complete. These are the main areas that it finds western civilization
to be lacking. Above all, it cannot accept the equation of these western
disciplines with science in terms of objectivity, finality or proof. Western
social sciences, for example, remain culturally bound and cannot be given the
finality of the physical sciences, which are also undergoing many changes.
Western religions are still mired in medieval and regressive concepts of
exclusive truth and the need to convert the world and are yet more
questionable.
The Indic
tradition is aiming at spiritualizing western civilization, which means
accepting its validity particularly in the realm of science, but integrating
that into a deeper spiritual view which accepts the spiritual sciences of Yoga
and Vedanta as well. It can also honor the genuinely creative and spiritual
aspects of western civilization and various individual western thinkers,
artists and mystics. The main conflict between the Indic and the western is
their respective approaches to the humanities (history, social sciences and
religion). The Indic tradition sees nothing of lasting value to be gained by
subordinating itself to current western civilization or allowing that to define
and delimit it, reducing it to a mere sidelight to western culture. The Indic
tradition sees itself as closer to true world civilization, which is also
cosmic civilization, and is one of spirituality and Self-realization, not of
mere mastery of the external world.
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