The Need for a New Indic
School of Thought
David Frawley (Vamadeva
Shastri)
The European Business Review/New
European, Volume 13, No. 6, 2001
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is a
scholar and teacher of Vedic Science, Yoga and Vedantic philosophy in the USA ,
where he directs the Vedic Institute. In India , he is recognised as an
authority on Hindu cultural issues. Dr Frawley is the author of more than 20
books and his Web site is www.vedanet.com
During the Eurocolonial period, Indian
history and civilization were distorted to fit European perceptions. A new
school of thought is needed that will see Asian history and tradition with
Asian eyes and thought, beginning with India .
The "clash of civilizations"
A clash of civilizations is occurring
throughout in the world today, a war of cultures at various levels in both our
personal and public lives. This clash is partly because of rising historical
and cultural awareness on the part of newly-independent countries, beginning
with India . The Western-European/North American culture is currently
predominant and is strongly, if not rudely, trying to eliminate or subordinate
the rest. Yet Western civilization is spreading itself not so much by force, as
in the colonial era, but by subtle new forms of social manipulation. These
include control of the media and news information networks, control the
entertainment industry, domination of commercial markets, continued missionary
aggressiveness by Western religions, and as important but sometimes overlooked
control of educational institutions and curricula worldwide.
This control of education has resulted in
a Western-European/North-American view of history and culture in textbooks and
information sources in most countries, including India . Naturally, people
educated according to Western values will function as part of Western culture,
whatever may be the actual country of their birth. They will experience an
alienation from their native culture in which they have not really been raised.
They easily become a fifth column for the Westernisation of their culture,
which also means its denigration or, at best, its commercialisation. An
authentic Indian or Indic perspective, a worldview coming out of the culture of
India and its particular values and perceptions, is hardly to be found, even in
India. The Western school of thought is taught in India , not any Indic or
Indian school of thought.
The Indic school of thought
What is the Indic school of thought, one
might ask? It is not at all something new or unknown. It is the great
spiritual, philosophical, scientific, artistic and cultural traditions of the
subcontinent that are among the largest and oldest in the world. It is the
emphasis on dharma, on karma, on pluralism and synthesis, on yoga sadhana and
moksha. It is not only the tradition of ancient sages from the Vedas and
Upanishads to Buddhist and Yoga traditions but also modern teachers like Sri
Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. It is not only the vast literature of Sanskrit
but also that of the regional languages and dialects of the subcontinent, most
of which have older literary traditions than the languages of Europe such as
English.
All major cultural debates are now framed
according to Western values and perceptions, and so they will naturally serve
to uphold them. The important issues of Indic civilization today are framed according
to the principles or biases of the Western school of thought. These include
what Indian civilization is, when India as a nation first arose, what the real
history of India is, how to reform Indian society, and how India should develop
in order to have its rightful place in the future world. As the debate is
defined according to the approach and
values of Western civilization, India does not always fare well, and India as
its own independent source of civilization is seldom acknowledged. India is judged
as if it should be like another USA , UK or Germany, which it can never be, nor
should be. This only makes Indians feel inferior or wrong.
The Western school of thought has
denigrated or overlooked the Indic school, particularly in the Indian context.
For example, the Indic school has its own history sources through the Vedas,
Puranas and various historical texts (Itihasas) that are quite massive and
detailed and have much internal consistency. However, in writing the history of
India , the Western school does not give these any place. They are dismissed
as, at best, mythology and, at worst, fraud. Instead, it defines the history of
India according to outside influences, as a series of invasions and borrowings
mainly from the west, from cultures the West knows better and has more affinity
with, which makes India seem dependent upon the West in order to advance its
civilization again today.
The Western school of thought negates the
relevance of the traditions of India . This is not simply because the Indic
tradition is wrong, unsophisticated or irrelevant. It is because Western
civilization is hegemonic, if not predatory in nature, and such ideas help
promote its spread. Its information about India contains a built-in poison. It
is meant to undermine the culture of the region and subordinate it to the West,
however objective, scientific or modern its approach may appear to be.
When India as a nation arose is defined by
the Western school as 1947, the year of independence. It founders were Nehru
and Gandhi, who inherited a united region from the British, before which India
was just a confused mass of local kingdoms with no national consistency. On the
other hand, according to the Indic school, India or Bharat as a country arose
in the Vedic era as
the type of dharmic/yogic culture that has
been the main characteristic of Indian civilization through history. This
spiritual or yogic orientation can be found in the cultures of all the regions
of India from Tamil Nadu to the Himalayas , pervading even in the folk art and
folk songs of all regions, as well as "high" culture.
Western distortions and the Indian
response In the Western school of thought, an Aryan invasion or migration is
used to describe the way in which ancient Vedic civilization took root in India
, as if it were an alien force of intruding barbarians. In the Indic school of
thought, the whole idea of an Aryan invasion/migration is a sign of ignorance.
The Indic tradition arose from the rishi tradition of spiritual endeavour,
characteristic of the Vedic-Sarasvati culture and related cultures, reflected
in the continuity of Vedic literature from the Vedas to the Mahabharata,
Buddhist and Jain literature and the Puranas, which all reflect the same
principles, peoples and dynasties of kings.
In these current cultural debates,
therefore, an overriding greater debate is ignored that which takes place
between the Western and the Indic schools of thought. The Western-style media
and academia tries to see what is authentic in Indian civilization and finds it
to be wanting, reducing it to little more than caste or superstition. This is
not surprising as the Indic tradition has a different focus and values than
does the Western tradition. Similarly, from the standpoint of the Indic
tradition, we must question Western civilization itself. Is the Western school
of thought enlightened? Is it appropriate for India ? Can it understand the
unique civilization of the subcontinent?
The Indic school itself is often highly
critical of the Western school. For example, when asked what he thought about
Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi replied: "It would be a good
idea." What he meant was that, from the standpoint of the spiritual
traditions of India , Western civilization with its materialism, aggression and
dogmatism was not highly evolved. Sri Aurobindo wrote on the limitations of
Western civilization, while appreciating it in certain areas.
Secular missionaries
The West similarly tries to control any
debate on cultural ethics, using slogans of democracy and human rights, which
are only used to intimidate weak nations and conveniently ignored relative to
stronger or wealthier nations like China or Saudi Arabia . Organizations
operating under the cover of human rights are among the most aggressively
alienating influences today. They function like "secular
missionaries", ignoring victims of terrorism like the Hindus, while
defending the "rights" of terrorist organizations against security
forces that are compelled to take action against them. Meanwhile, it is the
West that is selling the weapons and profiting by terrorism and civil strife
throughout the world. The West originally trained many terrorist groups, such
as the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan .
Such groups highlight social inequalities
in India , but ignore a colonial history marked by attacks on indigenous Indic
culture. The same charges of cultural backwardness have been used throughout
the colonial era to undermine the native traditions of Africa , Asia and the
USA , and to justify forced religious conversion and political domination,
which is their real aim. Sometimes native intellectuals are taken in by these
Western approaches to social issues, not realizing that they are just promoting
the colonial agenda of world domination in a more covert form.
New rules of debate
Therefore, it is not enough simply to
debate issues of culture, politics, or history in the existing forums in order
to promote a more Indian or Hindu view. We must question the very process
itself, its basis and the perspective or values behind the school of thought in
which the debate occurs. What India needs is the creation of a new Indic school
of thought that is dynamic and assertive in the modern global context one that
can challenge Western civilization not merely in regard to the details of
history or culture, but also relative to fundamental principles of life,
humanity and consciousness. This requires a revival or renaissance in the Indic
tradition and its great spiritual systems of Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, and
Jainism, and also in its political, artistic and scientific traditions. Modern
science and technology can arguably be more humanely employed according to
Indic or Dharmic values than according to Western religious exclusivity and
commercial greed.
The world today needs a critique of
"modern civilization" from an Indic or Dharmic perspective, an
interpretation of capitalism, socialism, communism, Christianity and Islam from
a tradition that is much older, deeper and closer to the spirit in both man and
nature. These Western ideologies are failing to address the spiritual needs of
humanity and are incapable of creating a world order that transcends dogmatism
or exclusivism.
Those of us who are part of the Indic
school of thought should emphasize such a greater debate and not get caught in
the details of issues already formulated according to the biases of Western
civilization. This debate should examine the right structure for society and
the real forward direction for history and evolution. We must raise fundamental
questions. Is the current Western materialistic view of history valid at all,
or are there spiritual forces at work in the world that go beyond all these?
Can we understand our history through outer approaches like archaeology,
linguistics or genetics, or is a higher consciousness or more intuitive view
required as well? Are the records of our ancient sages to be rejected so
lightly, whenever we think they do not agree with our views?
The real issue of the Vedas, India's oldest
tradition, is not how these texts might fit into the current model of history
as promoted by the Western school of thought, tracing the development of
civilization through outward material advances. It is how the existence of such
an ancient tradition of rishis, knowers of cosmic consciousness, shows a higher
spiritual humanity from which we have arisen and whose legacy we can reclaim.
Towards a new school of thought
India needs a different type of
scholarship, an Indic school of thought that has its own values, traditions and
methods of reaching conclusions. Those of us who follow the Indian civilization
should develop this Indic school in its own right and not merely try to justify
our views in terms of the Western or European school of thought, which is
hostile and radically opposed to Indic cultural tradition.
I recently raised a call for an
intellectual Kshatriya in India a new class of warrior intellectuals to defend
India and its great pluralistic traditions from the onslaught of Western exclusivist
approaches, whether religious, economic or political. This call fundamentally
requires the creation of such a new Indic school of thought. Such a new Indic
school of thought concerns not only philosophies of liberation or yoga, but
Indic, Hindu and Dharmic approaches to ecology, the global marketplace, health,
science, the status of women, religious
freedom, in short to all the main issues in society today and it should also
look beyond these issues, which are often the issues of the Western school, to
yet broader concerns. How can we integrate humanity and nature, with its
underlying cosmic intelligence? How can we reclaim our spiritual heritage, as a
species, that
the great yogis have pointed out for us?
Such a new Indic school of thought
requires new institutions to promote and embody it, or new Vedic schools. This
will arise not through Indology departments in Western-style universities but
through a new type of institution with its own funding and curriculum, free
from manipulation by the vested interested and ideologies of the Western school
and its religious, commercial and political bias.
An intellectual renaissance
The problem is that the Western school
created Indian academic institutions that reflect Western values. To try to
gain credibility for Indic thought in the context of European institutions, as
some well-meaning Hindus are attempting, may be a helpful strategy but misses
this main point. Western universities have their own agendas that they will not
readily give up. They
will not change simply because a few
well-intentioned people and groups give them money and sponsor positions to
project a more "sympathetic" picture of India and her civilization.
Like a sea that salts every river that flows into it, existing trends and interests
will force the people coming into them to conform to the dominant Eurocentric
values that pervade these institutions. Otherwise, they cannot survive
academically.
It is not on single issues that we need to
make headway but on promoting the Indic tradition as a complete school of
thought in itself, rather than merely as a side subject of Indological study in
Western-defined academia. We must look back to such Indic models as Naimisha,
Takshashila, Nalanda or Mithila, not only to their institutions, but also to
the Gurukula approach and its more intimate and spiritual form of
learning.
I urge the young people and the scholars
of India to take up this cause. Do not try to define India in the context of
civilization as defined by the West. Instead look to the great traditions of
India that have their own deeper roots and use it to critique Western
civilization and discover its limitations. Rather than seeking to define and
control India according to Western perspectives, the West should look to India
for guidance on the deeper issues of culture and spirituality. Indians, in
turn, should assert their own greater traditions and not simply imitate the
West or seek to justify Indian civilization from a Western perspective. True
scholars of the Indic tradition need not go to Harvard or Oxford to seek
credibility, rather these institutions should come to them.
© David Frawley, 2002.