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A Field Guide to Post-Truth India
This book describes the refashioning of thought in contemporary India. The thread that runs through the essays collected here is that under the pretext of decolonization of the Indian mind, our fundamental conceptions of reality and truth are being brought in line with “Indian Knowledge Systems.”
A post-truth culture is emerging in which myths substitute for history, pseudoscience parades as science, mysticism lays claims as a legitimate scientific method and baldfaced lies drown out objective facts. Post-secular India is on its way to becoming a post-truth society.
Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1. Big Lies and Deep Lies in Post-Truth India.
Chapter 2. Defending Tradition, Defying Science: Ayurveda in the Time of COVID-19
Chapter 3. The Dark Age of the Unicorn: Searching for Indigenous Aryans
Chapter 4. India’s Long Goodbye to Darwin
Chapter 5. Yogic Perception and Hindu Sciences, from Early Beginnings to Our Troubled Times
Appendix. Science Sanskritized: How Modern Science Became a Handmaiden of Hindu Nationalism
Bibliography
Index
A post-truth culture is emerging in which myths substitute for history, pseudoscience parades as science, mysticism lays claims as a legitimate scientific method and baldfaced lies drown out objective facts. Post-secular India is on its way to becoming a post-truth society.
Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1. Big Lies and Deep Lies in Post-Truth India.
Chapter 2. Defending Tradition, Defying Science: Ayurveda in the Time of COVID-19
Chapter 3. The Dark Age of the Unicorn: Searching for Indigenous Aryans
Chapter 4. India’s Long Goodbye to Darwin
Chapter 5. Yogic Perception and Hindu Sciences, from Early Beginnings to Our Troubled Times
Appendix. Science Sanskritized: How Modern Science Became a Handmaiden of Hindu Nationalism
Bibliography
Index
- GenresIndiaPoliticsNonfiction
206 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 27, 2025
This is such a relevant book.It reveals in great detail how the RW government in India and its allies have been fostering the hindutva ideology as well as attacking modern science by labeling it as 'Western'.It exposes how the regime is trying to 'Sanskritize' science through the NEP scheme.
There is a total rejection of modern ideas just because they are 'European',be it the positivism of August Comte,the empiricism of Francis Bacon,the liberal ideas of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine,the great scientific breakthroughs of Charles Darwin (infact the government has removed Evolution theory from school text books!).Sadly,even theorists who advocated post colonialism by constantly attacking 'Western' ideas ended up inadvertently aiding the RW in India.Post colonialism became a veritable arm of hindutva.
There is a clear 'hinduization' of the public sphere abetted by a forced standardization of ideas (across institutions,schools,colleges,media etc).This was exactly what the Nazis had done in Germany.This emphasis on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and the attempt to make it widespread (even our IIT's are involved in this odious project!) is truly scary.The IKS project is a Trojan horse for the hinduization of thought.
The problem in India is that we have technology but no real science or genuine scientific temper.Take the IT crowd for instance (exceptions exist of course).They just use science and technology in a transactional way while retaining hindutva ideology (we will do coding etc in an instrumentalist way but we possess a hindutva mindset filled with blind superstitions,mindless rituals and irrationality).
This is the tragedy.They display an avid interest in Indic thought (exploring the Vedas,Ramayana as well as reading the key leaders of Neo-Hindu movement like Dayanand Saraswati etc) but do not possess or seek to possess the critical mindset and scientific temper that intellectuals like Bertrand Russell and Christopher Hitchens championed.Most of them have become foot soldiers for hindutva (some unwittingly).I hope they realize this before it is too late.
This book is a much needed wake up call.I must confess that i might have adopted a rather stentorian tone in this review.I beg the GR readers indulgence for the same,however the crisis that we face today is such a dire one.We sorely need a society that values rationality,objectivity,universalism and is firmly based on the principles of secular humanism.
There is a total rejection of modern ideas just because they are 'European',be it the positivism of August Comte,the empiricism of Francis Bacon,the liberal ideas of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine,the great scientific breakthroughs of Charles Darwin (infact the government has removed Evolution theory from school text books!).Sadly,even theorists who advocated post colonialism by constantly attacking 'Western' ideas ended up inadvertently aiding the RW in India.Post colonialism became a veritable arm of hindutva.
There is a clear 'hinduization' of the public sphere abetted by a forced standardization of ideas (across institutions,schools,colleges,media etc).This was exactly what the Nazis had done in Germany.This emphasis on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and the attempt to make it widespread (even our IIT's are involved in this odious project!) is truly scary.The IKS project is a Trojan horse for the hinduization of thought.
The problem in India is that we have technology but no real science or genuine scientific temper.Take the IT crowd for instance (exceptions exist of course).They just use science and technology in a transactional way while retaining hindutva ideology (we will do coding etc in an instrumentalist way but we possess a hindutva mindset filled with blind superstitions,mindless rituals and irrationality).
This is the tragedy.They display an avid interest in Indic thought (exploring the Vedas,Ramayana as well as reading the key leaders of Neo-Hindu movement like Dayanand Saraswati etc) but do not possess or seek to possess the critical mindset and scientific temper that intellectuals like Bertrand Russell and Christopher Hitchens championed.Most of them have become foot soldiers for hindutva (some unwittingly).I hope they realize this before it is too late.
This book is a much needed wake up call.I must confess that i might have adopted a rather stentorian tone in this review.I beg the GR readers indulgence for the same,however the crisis that we face today is such a dire one.We sorely need a society that values rationality,objectivity,universalism and is firmly based on the principles of secular humanism.
April 6, 2025
An interesting book with examples of how Vedic Hinduism continues to dominate both 'salvific' and 'scientific' discourses in contemporary India.
There's a critique of postcolonial theory and how it contributes to pseudoscientific ways of thinking but it doesn't go deep enough, for me.
There's a critique of postcolonial theory and how it contributes to pseudoscientific ways of thinking but it doesn't go deep enough, for me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews