Rajiv Malhotra's Blog, page 2

Difference With Mutual Respect: A New Kind of Hindu-Christian Dialogue

In an earlier blog, I introduced the concept of mutual respect and why it is superior to the patronizing notion of "tolerance" that is typically celebrated at interfaith events. My recent book, "Being Different" (Harpercollins, 2011), is entirely about appreciating how traditions differ from one another rather than seeing them as the same. In parallel with these works, I have been in conversations and debates with numerous thinkers of traditions other than my own.



One such dialogue has been with Father Francis Clooney, a noted Jesuit theologian and a leading professor of Religion at Harvard. Clooney not only took a good deal of time in 2010 to read through my entire manuscript and write me his useful comments, he and I have also responded to each others public talks over the years and argued online. There have been agreements and disagreements, but always with mutual respect. I wish to reflect on how this experience relates to my overall approach to interfaith dialogues.



Chapter one of my book is titled "The Audacity of Difference," and it cites numerous examples to show that most religious leaders feel more comfortable publicly taking the position that various traditions are the same as each other (even though in private teachings to their followers they emphasize their own side's distinct advantages). I coined the term "difference anxiety" to refer to the anxiety that one is different from the other -- be it in gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion or whatever else. The opposite of difference anxiety is difference with mutual respect, the posture I advocate for dialogue.



This is not merely a shift in public rhetoric, but requires cultivating comfort with the infinitude of differences built into the fabric of the cosmos. The rest of my book explains several philosophical foundations of the differences between the dharmic traditions (an umbrella term for Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism) and the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).



There are multiple audiences I wish to debate using this book, including those Hindu gurus who preach that all religions are the same, and many westerners who adopt an assortment of eastern spiritual practices in combination with their own Judeo-Christian identities and who blur differences or wish them away. I also respond to complaints that the acknowledgment of differences will lead to mutual tensions rather than mutual respect.



In response to my recent talk at University of Massachusetts (Dartmouth), Francis Clooney made some interesting observations mostly (but not entirely) in agreement with my approach to difference. (See the video below.)







What particularly struck me from his talk and our subsequent conversation was his observation that most of his readings of prior Hindus have shown them to be either dismissive of Christian theology's positions, trivializing of its important differences, or reducing the differences to modern politics, rather than uncovering the deep structures from which the differences emanate. He also accepts my book's emphasis that many Sanskrit terms cannot be simply translated into western equivalents.



We also disagreed on several points. For instance, Clooney views inculturation as a positive posture of Christian friendship toward Indian native culture by adopting Indian symbols and words, whereas I find it to be often used as a mean to lure unsuspecting Indians into Christianity by making the differences seem irrelevant.



The significance of such an approach to dialogues is not dependent upon whether both sides agree or disagree on a given issue. In fact, I do not consider it viable to reconcile the important philosophical differences without compromise to one side or the other. Rather, the significance here is that we are comfortable accepting these differences as a starting point, which is more honest than the typical proclamations at such encounters where differences are taboo to bring up.



This approach to difference opens the door for any given faith to reverse the gaze upon the other in dialogue. Given the west's immense power over others in recent centuries, the framing of world religions' discourse, including the terminology, categories and hermeneutics, has been done using western religious criteria combined with subsequent western Enlightenment theories. In my book, I refer to this as "Western Universalism" and feel that this artificial view of non-western faiths has been assumed as the "standard" space in which all traditions must see themselves, leading to difference anxieties, and hence to the pressure to pretend sameness.



My hope is to hold more such dialogues with experts from as many other traditions as I can, and be able to freely share both areas of agreement and disagreement without pressure or guilt.



Hindu cosmology has naturally led me to this comfort with difference: The entire cosmos and every minutest entity in it is nothing apart from the One, i.e. there is radical immanence of divinity such that nothing is left out as "profane." Hence, unity is guaranteed by the very nature of reality, eliminating the anxiety over difference at the very foundations. In fact, the word "lila" represents the profound notion that all these differences are forms of the One, and that all existence is nothing apart from divine play, the dance of Shiva.

A Different Kind Of Hindu-Christian Dialogue

The significance of such an approach to dialogues is not dependent upon whether both sides agree or disagree on a given issue; rather, that we are comfortable accepting these differences as a starting point.

Dharma Is Not The Same As Religion

The word "dharma" has multiple meanings depending on the context in which it is used. Monier-Williams' Sanskrit-English Dictionary lists several, including: conduct, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality, religion, religious merit, good work according to a right or rule, etc. Many other meanings have been suggested, such as law or "torah" (in the Judaic sense), "logos" (Greek), "way" (Christian) and even 'tao" (Chinese). None of these is entirely accurate and none conveys the full force of the term in Sanskrit. Dharma has no equivalent in the Western lexicon.



Dharma has the Sanskrit root dhri, which means "that which upholds" or "that without which nothing can stand" or "that which maintains the stability and harmony of the universe." Dharma encompasses the natural, innate behavior of things, duty, law, ethics, virtue, etc. Every entity in the cosmos has its particular dharma -- from the electron, which has the dharma to move in a certain manner, to the clouds, galaxies, plants, insects, and of course, man. Man's understanding of the dharma of inanimate things is what we now call physics.



British colonialists endeavored to map Indian traditions onto their ideas of religion so as to be able to comprehend and govern their subjects; yet the notion of dharma remained elusive. The common translation into religion is misleading since, to most Westerners, a genuine religion must:



1) be based on a single canon of scripture given by God in a precisely defined historical event;

2) involve worship of the divine who is distinct from ourselves and the cosmos;

3) be governed by some human authority such as the church;

4) consist of formal members;

5) be presided over by an ordained clergyman; and

6) use a standard set of rituals.



But dharma is not limited to a particular creed or specific form of worship. To the Westerner, an "atheistic religion" would be a contradiction in terms, but in Buddhism, Jainism and Carvaka dharma, there is no place for God as conventionally defined. In some Hindu systems the exact status of God is debatable. Nor is there only a single standard deity, and one may worship one's own ishta-devata, or chosen deity.



Dharma provides the principles for the harmonious fulfillment of all aspects of life, namely, the acquisition of wealth and power (artha), fulfillment of desires (kama), and liberation (moksha). Religion, then, is only one subset of dharma's scope.



Religion applies only to human beings and not to the entire cosmos; there is no religion of electrons, monkeys, plants and galaxies, whereas all of them have their dharma even if they carry it out without intention.



Since the essence of humanity is divinity, it is possible for them to know their dharma through direct experience without any external intervention or recourse to history. In Western religions, the central law of the world and its peoples is singular and unified, and revealed and governed from above.



In dharmic traditions, the word a-dharma applies to humans who fail to perform righteously; it does not mean refusal to embrace a given set of propositions as a belief system or disobedience to a set of commandments or canons.



Dharma is also often translated as "law," but to become a law, a set of rules has to be present which must: (i) be promulgated and decreed by an authority that enjoys political sovereignty over a given territory, (ii) be obligatory, (iii) be interpreted, adjudicated and enforced by courts, and (iv) carry penalties when it is breached. No such description of dharma is found within the traditions.



The Roman Emperor Constantine began the system of "canon laws," which were determined and enforced by the Church. The ultimate source of Jewish law is the God of Israel. The Western religions agree that the laws of God must be obeyed just as if they were commandments from a sovereign. It is therefore critical that "false gods" be denounced and defeated, for they might issue illegitimate laws in order to undermine the "true laws." If multiple deities were allowed, then there would be confusion as to which laws were true.



In contrast with this, there is no record of any sovereign promulgating the various dharma-shastras (texts of dharma for society) for any specific territory at any specific time, nor any claim that God revealed such "social laws," or that they should be enforced by a ruler. None of the compilers of the famous texts of social dharma were appointed by kings, served in law enforcement, or had any official capacity in the state machinery. They were more akin to modern academic social theorists than jurists. The famous Yajnavalkya Smriti is introduced in the remote sanctuary of an ascetic. The well-known Manusmriti begins by stating its setting as the humble abode of Manu, who answered questions posed to him in a state of samadhi (higher consciousness). Manu (1.82) tells the sages that every epoch has its own distinct social and behavioral dharma.



Similarly, none of the Vedas and Upanishads was sponsored by a king, court or administrator, or by an institution with the status of a church. In this respect, dharma is closer to the sense of "law" we find in the Hebrew scriptures, where torah, the Hebrew equivalent, is also given in direct spiritual experience. The difference is that Jewish torah quickly became enforced by the institutions of ancient Israel.



The dharma-shastras did not create an enforced practice but recorded existing practices. Many traditional smritis (codified social dharma) were documenting prevailing localized customs of particular communities. An important principle was self-governance by a community from within. The smritis do not claim to prescribe an orthodox view from the pulpit, as it were, and it was not until the 19th century, under British colonial rule, that the smritis were turned into "law" enforced by the state.



The reduction of dharma to concepts such as religion and law has harmful consequences: it places the study of dharma in Western frameworks, moving it away from the authority of its own exemplars. Moreover, it creates the false impression that dharma is similar to Christian ecclesiastical law-making and the related struggles for state power.



The result of equating dharma with religion in India has been disastrous: in the name of secularism, dharma has been subjected to the same limits as Christianity in Europe. A non-religious society may still be ethical without belief in God, but an a-dharmic society loses its ethical compass and falls into corruption and decadence.

Dharma Is Not The Same As Religion

A non-religious society may still be ethical without belief in God, but an a-dharmic society loses its ethical compass and falls into corruption and decadence.

The Importance of Debating Religious Differences

This is not about superiority or inferiority but about positioning religious differences as humanity's multifaceted experience and a shared resource.

The Importance Of Debating Religious Differences

This is not about superiority or inferiority but about positioning religious differences as humanity's multifaceted experience and a shared resource.

The Importance of Debating Religious Differences

I want all the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. --Gandhi



In most liberal circles, discrimination on account of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and race is rightly denounced. Human diversity is not only widely accepted in these domains but also celebrated. Of course, the journey is by no means complete, and it has been long and tough for those who pioneered it. In my own work, I'm inspired by feminists who courageously challenged masculine paradigms on gender, African-Americans who heralded their unique culture and identity rather than becoming subsumed as subordinates or an exotic addition to a "universal" culture, and leaders of the gay rights movement who undermined the prevailing hegemony on sexual orientation.



In each of the examples above, alternate perspectives challenged head-on the dominant discourse, categories and frameworks that were well entrenched as normative and "universal."



But in interfaith discussions, we still shy away from making similar bold challenges to the established worldview. Rather, what is frequently espoused is the mere "tolerance" of other religions. In an earlier blog I explained the important distinction between tolerance and mutual respect, and the need to advance from the former to the latter. Mutual respect requires appreciation of what makes other faiths distinct from one's own; anything less is empty rhetoric. Such an approach compels thinkers to uncover differences, take honest risks and reject the politically correct but eventually unproductive stance that "all religions are the same." Indeed, my own experiences with the Jewish community, as recounted in an earlier blog, have shown that many cultural misunderstandings can be resolved through the forthright articulation of religious differences.



Many of my writings explore this huge resistance in the public square to uncovering and embracing religious differences. I use the term "difference anxiety" to describe the psychological distress that stems from viewing differences as problematic rather than natural. There are deep-rooted reasons for this anxiety, a topic I explore in detail in my forthcoming book, The Audacity of Difference. Suffice it is to say here that any productive interfaith dialogue must first acknowledge and accept the distinctiveness of the spiritual, cultural and historical matrix of each civilization,and challenge the Western penchant for claiming universalism for itself.



China and the Islamic world offer counter-examples to the claim that globalization must mean Westernization. Weming Tu of Harvard makes the point that Chinese civilization has its own paradigm for modernity based on Confucianism, and that this is not contingent on China's Westernization. Islam, too, has its own alternative worldview including a distinct theology, sociology and political framework.



A resistance to articulating and understanding differences, religious and otherwise, also comes from many Indians who are remarkably Eurocentric in their views. One hears many modern Indians ask: Aren't we all really "the same"? What's wrong with a "universal" point of view? Isn't it wonderful that millions of Westerners practice yoga, and Indian cuisine has gone global? Additionally, fashionable academic constructs such as "post-modern," "post-racial," "post-religious" and "post-national" seem to announce the arrival of a flat, secularized world that is not differentiated by peoples' histories, identities and religious points of view.



My own enthusiasm to this confluence of cultures is balanced by the fact that this fusion does not always preserve diversity and is often inequitable. What remain intact are many structures that support power and that privilege the mythological, historical and religious beliefs of the West.



I use the term "digestion" to describe the widespread dismantling, rearrangement and assimilation of a less powerful civilization into a dominant one. Like the food consumed by a host: what is useful gets assimilated into the host while what does not fit the host's structure gets eliminated as waste. The West superimposes its concepts, aesthetics, language, paradigms, historical template and philosophy, positioning these as universal. The corresponding elements of the digested civilization get domesticated into the West, ceasing to exist in their own right. The result is that the consumed tradition, similar to the food, ceases to exist whereas the host gets strengthened. In harvesting the fruits of other civilizations, the West has often destroyed their roots, thereby killing their ability to produce more bountiful harvests. Native Americans and European pagans are among numerous examples of such previous digestions into the modern West.



This process is often rationalized as the inevitable "march of civilization," with the West positioned as the center of the world and the engine driving it forward. The non-Western civilizations are considered relevant only as sources "discovered" by the West (as in "our past") or as theaters in which the West operates ("our civilizing mission") or as threats to Western interests ("our frontiers").



Every civilization deserves a seat at the table as an equal and as the subject rather than only as the object of inquiry. Every religion and its assumptions, must like all other areas of human knowledge be subject to critique on a level playing field. None, however powerful and well-funded, ought to be exempt from scrutiny or be privileged to set the terms. In the realm of interfaith gatherings, we need forums where non-Christians may challenge the "universal" concepts being applied to all world religions, in the same manner as women, African-Americans and homosexuals have already achieved in their respective domains. I predict that in five years there will be such mainstream inter-religious discourse in which it will no longer be considered too controversial to challenge one another audaciously in the quest for honest understanding.



The Audacity of Difference uncovers several profound metaphysical distinctions between dharmic and Western assumptions. This is not about superiority or inferiority but about positioning religious differences as humanity's multifaceted experience and a shared resource.

Gandhi's Dharma and the West

Mahatma Gandhi articulated his sva-dharma ("my dharma") using a few key Sanskrit words that do not have an exact English equivalent. One of these is satya, his practice of truth.

Gandhi's Dharma and the West

Mahatma Gandhi articulated his sva-dharma ("my dharma") using a few key Sanskrit words that do not have an exact English equivalent. One of these is satya, his practice of truth. Unlike truth in the Western sense, satya is not an intellectual proposition but a way of life which has to be actualized and embodied directly by each person. There is no place for the reification or codification of satya, because truth is not held in some book or set of laws; it lives in oneself, and cannot be separated from oneself. This philosophical distinction is at the heart of Gandhi's dharma.



He insisted that satya-graha, or "truth-struggle," is a civil disobedience method that has to be individually lived, as opposed to being theorized or institutionalized. Later, this method inspired the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement in the U.S. as well as revolutions in South Africa, Poland and elsewhere. He not only advocated a sustainable society, he lived sustainably. The Gandhi library in Delhi contains the sum total of all of his personal belongings: his glasses, a pair of sandals, a pen and a few dhotis.



Another fundamental component of his dharma is captured in the term ahimsa, which is translated too simply as "nonviolence" but is not the same as the common idea of "pacifism." It is much larger. Himsa means harming, and ahimsa means non-harming. Harming the environment is himsa, as per the very deep dharmic idea that all nature is sacred. Harming animals is also himsa, and so vegetarianism is an important quality of ahimsa. Gandhi argued that vegetarianism has a lower impact on the environment than a meat diet, and hence a vegetarian society is more eco-sustainable than a carnivorous one. The modern eco-feminism movement was galvanized by Gandhi's ideals brought to America in the 1960s.



To achieve ahimsa requires enormous activity, including confrontation, such as he used while challenging the mighty British Empire that caused himsa on a large scale. Paradoxically, it takes a fighter to actualize ahimsa. Gandhi was such a fighter. He is falsely depicted as "passive" and non-threatening. In fact, he was audacious, outspoken (what we today call "politically incorrect"), and refused to be appropriated by anyone.



Ahimsa also applies to cultures taken as a whole. Cultural genocide is the systematic and complete elimination or suppression of the native religion, language, dress, way of life, customs and/or symbols of one people by another. Even though the people in question might be given material benefits through humanitarian aid, education and medical facilities, it is still himsa if there is systematic destruction of their identity, sense of history, ideas of ancestry and relationship with nature. This kind of himsa goes on today under the name of "development." In the United Nations laws of genocide, the phrase "cultural genocide" was dropped from the earlier drafts.



Gandhi fully understood cultural violence and often talked about it. He believed that cultural difference is not to be erased but celebrated, another old dharmic idea. The universe is built on diversity. In fact, that is what the word "uni-verse" means: the many-in-one. Every species has sub species and sub-sub species and this nesting of diversity goes on and on. Cultural homogeneity is therefore unnatural and unfeasible. There should not be one single religion or way of life. Everyone should have his or her own sva-dharma depending on personal circumstances and tendencies.



Gandhi fought against cultural colonization as much as against its material and political manifestations. Although he was not against Christianity (and in fact often quoted Jesus), he opposed Christian missionaries in India. He said they should only do selfless work and not convert people. If they desired to run a school or hospital, or give the poor food, these things should not become a tool for conversion.



Embodying the principle of diversity, he wore a traditional dhoti, went barefoot and bare-chested and felt comfortable sitting on the floor. Even when he went to England in 1931 and King George V held a reception in his honor at Buckingham Palace, he wore the same frayed sandals that carried him on his famous march of civil disobedience to defy the British law banning Indians from making salt. He spoke in simple village language and lived with the poorest people, accentuating his different aesthetics from the elites.



Yet another Sanskrit term that Gandhi emphasized was svadesi, meaning "from the soil," a native product, similar to the "buy local" movement which is now fashionable in the West. The preference for local production and seasonal eating was based on the ideal of ahimsa. Svadesi is better for the environment and for the health of individuals because they are acclimatized to local things and have a relationship with the natural setting in which they live. Svadesi entails eating locally grown food, wearing locally made clothes and, where possible, buying locally made goods. He produced his own cloth, milked his own goat, etc.



He advocated a dharmic society based on traditional decentralized governance built from the bottom-up at the village level. This conflicted directly with the top-down British system. Western approaches to human rights also operate in a top-down power structure in which the political activists, aid workers and NGOs with access to global media and funding are positioned as agents, and take "the burden" and responsibility of others' agency upon themselves. This approach is incompatible with the ideal of empowering the people for their own truth-struggle.



Ahimsa is not something merely to be talked about or legislated; it must be lived by every individual. This requires bottom-up social activism whereby the people themselves embody the change they want to see in the world. Hence, one must have a functional, sustainable society in which the people at the bottom are free to embody their satya. It was for this reason, and not just as an end in itself, that he demanded swaraj or self-rule from the British.



Self-rule is thus much more than mere political independence and involves both "freedom to" and "freedom from." In the West, freedom is conceived as freedom to own a car, to travel, to shop, to speak. In other words, it is extroverted. But such a pursuit does not produce freedom from anger, or from desire, jealousy, habits and compulsions. In the latter notion, one is free from the conditioned self or ego. Gandhi always worked toward personally embodying this state of freedom from internal and external dependencies.



He frequently explained that there was indeed a deep ideological clash of civilizations between Britain and India. The unsustainability of British industrialization was prominent among his concerns, making him arguably the first modern proponent of sustainability. He was troubled that the ever increasing consumption in an industrial economy depletes the natural resources and destroys the self-sustaining villages which comprise India's social fabric.



When he turned his attention to the British way of life, criticizing its exploitative practices, hierarchies and industrial consumerism, he was "reversing the gaze" -- quite provocatively -- on another civilization. In the dharma traditions, this kind of informed analysis of another worldview is called purva-paksha. His short book Hind Swaraj (Indian Self-Rule), published a century ago, is a magnificent example of purva-paksha directed toward the British Empire. It examines colonialism from an Indian perspective, including criticism of those Indian elites who had joined hands with the British.



He took the Bhagavad Gita's notion of kurukshetra (battlefield) and lived his dharma in terms of the battles to be fought. Unfortunately, after his death, many of his ideas were translated so completely as to lose their original nuance of meaning. In this way, Gandhi has been domesticated, replaced with "Gandhism." Many so-called "Gandhians" do not embody the truth-struggle and are part of centralized power structures. This is himsa to Gandhi.

Gandhi's Dharma And The West

Mahatma Gandhi articulated his sva-dharma ("my dharma") using a few key Sanskrit words that do not have an exact English equivalent. One of these is satya, his practice of truth.