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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is a bold book, daring to take up some of the basic but unexamined assumptions of modern Western Indology.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book is a “must read” for those who care about India and its future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.'

'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.'

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.’

"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."

"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."

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.