Rajiv Malhotra > Quotes

“The truth itself is never vulnerable. What is vulnerable is the state of knowledge or ignorance of human beings, especially our youth, who are being exposed to so many falsehoods.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, The Battle for Sanskrit: Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred, Oppressive or Liberating, Dead or Alive?

“A classical concept in Hinduism has been that a true proposition has to be consistent with sruti, yukti (reason/logic) and anubhava.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity

“The oral and folk traditions were often ignored, or even denounced as superstitious, because they did not fit the Western norms.10”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity

“India itself cannot be viewed only as a bundle of the old and the new, accidentally and uncomfortably pieced together, an artificial construct without a natural unity. Nor is she just a repository of quaint, fashionable accessories to Western lifestyles; nor a junior partner in a global capitalist world. India is its own distinct and unified civilization with a proven ability to manage profound differences, engage creatively with various cultures, religions and philosophies, and peacefully integrate many diverse streams of humanity.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism

“For while the Vedas say, 'truth is one, paths are many', the differences among those paths are not inconsequential.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism

“An op-ed piece in Indian Express by leading scholar and columnist, Ashutosh Varshney, states that in neo-Hinduism, ‘a singular national identity was also equated with masculinity by Hindu nationalists. Vivekananda, whose sayings Narendra Modi tweets, came to promote ‘three Bs’ for Hindus: beef, biceps and the Bhagavad-Gita’.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity

“Scholars in South Asian Studies departments and liberal think-tanks see India through a secular lens based on Western ideas of human rights. They deploy subaltern studies and postmodern theories to deconstruct the Indian state as a catastrophe constructed artificially by colonialism, and to show its very nature as oppressive, undemocratic, inherently anti-minority, anti-women and anti-Dalit. They export these models to their Indian counterparts, forming a self-sustaining system. They also feed these visions into media and government hearings. Thus, these two supposedly opposing intellectual streams converge to provide an image of India as a frontier necessitating Western intervention.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines

“The Vedas are seen like kings’ (prabhu) utterances, the Puranas are like friends’ (mitra) utterances, and kavyas are like the utterances of a beloved wife (kanta).2”
― Rajiv Malhotra, The Battle for Sanskrit: Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred, Oppressive or Liberating, Dead or Alive?

“The violent Hindu retaliation to the Godhra carnage is unconditionally condemnable. Many credible voices have adequately shown that in 2002 it was the lack of adequate response at the highest levels of the Gujarat government that led to a Hindu-Muslim bloodbath, that both sides lost lives but that the Muslims lost more.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines

“the term ‘Indra’s Net’ has been preserved, and this allows scholars like myself to retrace the Vedic origins of these widely popular ideas.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity

“Cornellisen charged Jung for daring to take credit for discovering the 'collective unconscious' which is simply a misnomer and a poor conceptualisation of inner worlds known since millennia in India and even the mystical traditions of Europe”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Battle For Consciousness Theory: The Battle for Consciousness Theory: A Response to Ken Wilber’s Hijacking of Sri Aurobindo and Other Indian Thought on the right.

“Deep learning in machines is resulting in shallow knowledge in humans—an irony indeed. Cognitive skills like memory and attention span are atrophying, even as knowledge, authority and agency are being transferred from humans to machines. In effect, AI has managed to hack human psychology.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“Economists, social scientists and political thinkers are not trained to address the issue that robots do not pay taxes or buy houses and consumer goods to support the economy. Entirely new laws and public policies will be necessary, but as of now world leaders are in denial.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“This project - of placing the West's pathologies, exotica, weirdness, self-images of greatness and peculiar guilt and other complexes- is what I have previously called "Westology", and have called for such a discipline to run parallel to Indology.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Academic Hinduphobia: A critique of Wendy Doniger's erotic school of Indology

“In an era of instant access, social media has confused people between knowledge, opinion and popularity; whatever is popular is assumed to be true. Individuals who lack followers, likes, shares and comments on social media often retreat into low self-esteem, depression, substance abuse, or even suicide.”
― Rajiv Malhotra

“If something was mentioned in Sanskrit texts that somehow did not fit into the Bible, it was labeled as mythology. Whatever could be made to 'fit', became the history of the Indian peoples according to Jones. In this manner, the Vedic and Puranic texts were digested into Biblical chronology. This Bible-centric framework of timescales is what led Max Müller many decades later to establish his dates for the socalled Aryan invasion of India, which influences scholars to this day.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines

“In effect, AI has managed to hack human psychology.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“AI will worsen the divide between the rich and poor, the haves and the have-nots. This will intensify the schism between the camps having divergent vested interests.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“hijacking in progress through these technologies”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“The Biblical expression ‘In the beginning was the Word’ would not be an accurate description of creation according to Sanskrit-based philosophies. What is more accurate is: In the beginning was the primordial sound that differentiates into multiple root sounds, which manifest further before compounding sound sequences are made possible as words.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Sanskrit Non-Translatables : The Importance of Sanskritizing English

“இந்தியவியலிலிருந்து தேவைப்பட்ட சில விஷயங்களை மட்டும் எடுத்துக்கொண்டு பண்பாடுகளின், இனங்களின் வரலாறுகள் ஐரோப்பிய மேன்மைக்கு உதவும் விதத்தில் கட்டமைக்கப்பட்டன.”
― Aravindan Neelakandan Rajiv Malhotra, Udaiyum India

“accepting that machines can uncover their private selves to the extent of knowing them better than a spouse or close friend. The”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“An open past serves as a creative resource for future generations who might want to explore the roads not taken.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism

“After citing his impressive list of publications and awards, he turned to me and asked: ‘How could you think I hate Hinduism when I have spent my entire life studying the Sanskrit tradition? How could someone possibly hate the tradition that he has devoted his life to studying? Only a person in love with the tradition could work so hard to understand it.’ This logic would certainly have impressed the vast majority of Indians he deals with. The mere fact that a famous westerner is working so hard to study our tradition is enough to bring awe into the minds of many Indians.


However, my response was different from what he might have anticipated. I told him he must have heard of certain American academicians who are considered Islamophobic (a well-known term referring to those who hate Islam). He replied, ‘Of course there are those scholars.’ Then I pointed out that Islamophobic scholars spend their entire lives studying Islam. By Pollock’s logic, their long-term investment in Islamic studies ought to make them lovers of Islam. Nevertheless, they hate Islam and they study it diligently for that very reason. Their careers are made by studying a tradition with the intention of demolishing it and exposing its weaknesses. Similarly, I said, there are scholars in many disciplines who study some phenomenon for the purpose of undermining it, not because they love it. People study crime in order to fight it. There are experts on corruption who want to expose it, not because they love corruption. There are public health specialists who study a disease with the intention of being able to defeat it. Therefore, I argued, it was fallacious to assume that merely studying Sanskrit made him a lover of sanskriti (the Indian civilization based on Sanskrit).”
― Rajiv Malhotra, The Battle for Sanskrit: Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred, Oppressive or Liberating, Dead or Alive?

“The gap between human and machine intelligence is shrinking and intelligent machines often exceed human characteristics—in speed, accuracy, durability, cost efficiency and endurance.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“க்ளூஜ் அமைப்பில் இருக்கும் இந்தத் தெளிவான கிறிஸ்தவச் சார்புதான் ஒரு மார்க்சிய வரலாற்றாய்வாளரான ரொமிலா தாப்பரைத் தேர்ந்தெடுத்தமையை அதிசயமான விஷயமாக்குகிறது.51 தாப்பர் ஹிந்துப் பண்பாட்டின் மேன்மையைக் கட்டுடைக்கும் ஒருவர் என்பதுடன் அவருடன் அப்பரிசை அதே ஆண்டு (2008) பகிர்ந்துகொண்டவரோ, ரொமிலா தாப்பர் ஹிந்துப் பண்பாட்டுக்குச் செய்ததற்கு நேர் எதிரான விஷயத்தைக் கிறிஸ்தவத்துக்குச் செய்தவர். பீட்டர் எல். ப்ரவுன் கிறிஸ்தவ மடாலயத் துறவு குறித்து ஒரு நேரான சித்திரத்தைக் கட்டமைக்கிறார். ஹிந்து மதத்தில் துறவு எனும் அதே நிகழ்வை தாப்பர், வாழ்க்கையை நிராகரிக்கும் தப்புவித்தல் என்கிறார்.52”
― Aravindan Neelakandan Rajiv Malhotra, Udaiyum India

“To pursue this quest, I set up Infinity Foundation in 1994, a nonprofit organization to promote dialogue between Eastern and Western schools of thought. Its first projects included investigations in consciousness studies.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“It is extremely easy to find people who speak pleasantly. But it is rare to find people who speak and hear true words even when they are not pleasing to hear.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“A troubling trend is that as machines get smarter, a growing number of humans are becoming dumber. In a sense, the public has outsourced”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds

“மொழிபெயர்ப்புகள் மூலம், இந்திய இலக்கியங்களிலிருந்து தங்களுக்குத் தேவையான பொக்கிஷங்கள் பலவிதங்களில் ஐரோப்பிய நாகரிகத்தால் சுரண்டி எடுக்கப்பட்டன. தவறான மொழிபெயர்ப்புகள் மூலம், திருடியெடுத்தல் மூலம், மறுத்தல், நீட்சியளித்தல் ஆகியவை மூலம் எனப் பலவிதங்களில் இந்தியப் பண்பாட்டுப் பொக்கிஷங்கள் சுரண்டப்பட்டு அவை பத்திரமாக ‘மேற்கத்திய’ முறையில் மாற்றப்பட்டு உள்வாங்கப்பட்டன. இந்தியாவிலிருந்து பெறப்பட்ட கருத்தாக்கங்கள், உருவகங்கள், சித்திரிப்புக்கள், தத்துவ-காவிய-கவிதா அம்சங்கள் அனைத்தும் நவீன கணினி க்ளிப்-ஆர்ட் போல மேற்கத்திய நாகரிகச் சூழலில் கிழக்கத்திய வாசனையுடன் ஆனால் ஐரோப்பியப் பண்பாட்டுக்கே உரிய விதத்தில் பயன்படுத்திக்கொள்ளக்கூடியவாறு மாற்றப்பட்டன.”
― Aravindan Neelakandan Rajiv Malhotra, Udaiyum India