{"history":[],"article":{"id":"3fb96821-619e-4ac2-9546-839cc8130b4e","title":"Rajiv Malhotra","slug":"rajiv-malhotra","content":":::summary\n![Rajiv Malhotra](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Rajiv///malhotra.png)\n**Name:** Rajiv Malhotra \n**Birth Date:** September 15, 1950 \n**Birth Place:** [New Delhi, Delhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/new-delhi-delhi), India \n**Citizenship:** [American](https://bliptext.com/articles/americans) \n**Alma Mater:** [St. Stephen's College, Delhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/st-stephen-s-college-delhi) [Syracuse University](https://bliptext.com/articles/syracuse-university) \n**Occupation:** Author · researcher · professor \n**Notable Works:** [Breaking India](https://bliptext.com/articles/breaking-india) (2011), · [Being Different](https://bliptext.com/articles/being-different) (2011), · [Indra's Net](https://bliptext.com/articles/indra-s-net-book) (2014), · [The Battle for Sanskrit](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-battle-for-sanskrit) (2016) \n**Website:** http://rajivmalhotra.com \n:::\n\n# \n**Rajiv Malhotra** (born 15 September 1950) is an Indian-born American right-wing [Hindutva](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindutva) ideologue, author and the founder of Infinity Foundation, which focuses on [Indic studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/indic-studies), and also funds projects such as [Columbia University](https://bliptext.com/articles/columbia-university)'s project to translate the [Tibetan Buddhist](https://bliptext.com/articles/tibetan-buddhist) [Tengyur](https://bliptext.com/articles/tengyur).\nApart from the foundation, Malhotra promotes a [Hindu nationalist](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-nationalist) view of [Indic cultures](https://bliptext.com/articles/indic-cultural-sphere).\nMalhotra has written prolifically in opposition to the western academic study of Indian culture and society, which he maintains denigrates the tradition and undermines the interests of India \"by encouraging the paradigms that oppose its unity and integrity\".\n\n# Biography\nMalhotra studied physics at [St. Stephen's College, Delhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/st-stephen-s-college-delhi) and computer science at [Syracuse University](https://bliptext.com/articles/syracuse-university) before becoming an entrepreneur in the information technology and media industries.\nHe retired early in 1994 aged 44, to establish the Infinity Foundation in [Princeton, New Jersey](https://bliptext.com/articles/princeton-new-jersey), in 1995.\nBesides directing this foundation, he also chairs the board of governors of the Center for Indic Studies at the [University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-massachusetts-dartmouth), and advises various organisations.\nMalhotra had been a speaker at an international conference held over the Center for Indic Studies, [University of Massachusetts Dartmouth](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-massachusetts-dartmouth) and was a board member of the Foundation for Indic Philosophy and Culture at the [Claremont Colleges](https://bliptext.com/articles/claremont-colleges).\nHe also wrote extensively on internet discussion groups and e-magazines.\nIn October 2018, Malhotra was appointed an honorary visiting professor at the Centre for Media Studies at [Jawaharlal Nehru University](https://bliptext.com/articles/jawaharlal-nehru-university), Delhi.\nOn 6 November 2018, he delivered his first lecture organized by the School of Sanskrit and Indic studies on the topic of Sanskrit non-translatables.\n\n# Infinity Foundation\nMalhotra founded the institute in 1994; followed by Educational Council of Indic Traditions (ECIT) in 2000.\nThe foundation works without any full-time workers; sans Malhotra himself.\nThe stated goals were to fight a perceived misrepresentation of ancient Indian religions and to document the contributions of India to world civilization.\nNo member of the advisory board was an academic and most belonged to the software industry.\nThe Foundation has given more than 400 grants for research, education and community work.\nIt has provided small [grants](https://bliptext.com/articles/grant-money) to major universities in support of programs including a visiting professorship in Indic studies at [Harvard University](https://bliptext.com/articles/harvard-university), Yoga and [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi) classes at [Rutgers University](https://bliptext.com/articles/rutgers-university), the research and teaching of [non-dualistic](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonduality-spirituality) philosophies at the [University of Hawaii](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-hawaii), Global Renaissance Institute and a Center for Buddhist studies at [Columbia University](https://bliptext.com/articles/columbia-university), a program in religion and science at the [University of California](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-california), an endowment for the Center for Advanced Study of India at the [University of Pennsylvania](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-pennsylvania), and lectures at the Center for Consciousness Studies at the [University of Arizona](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-arizona).\nThe foundation has provided funding for journals like Education about Asia and the [International Journal of Hindu Studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/international-journal-of-hindu-studies) and for the establishment of the Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Non-violence at [James Madison University](https://bliptext.com/articles/james-madison-university).\nWhile the foundation's own materials describe its purposes in terms of education and philanthropy, scholars of Hinduism and South Asia see it largely as an organization committed to the \"surveillance of the Academy (academia)\", and a senior U.S. scholar of Hinduism, Columbia University's Jack Hawley, has published a refutation of the foundation's characteristic charges against the study of Hinduism in North America.\n\n# Views\n\n## Criticism of American academia (2000s)\n\n### Wendy's Child Syndrome\nIn early 2000s Malhotra started writing articles criticising [Wendy Doniger](https://bliptext.com/articles/wendy-doniger) and related scholars, claiming that she applied [Freudian psycho-analysis](https://bliptext.com/articles/psychoanalysis) to aspects of Indian culture.\nHis 2002 blog post titled \"Wendy's Child Syndrome\" was considered as the starting point of a \"rift between some Western Hinduism scholars [...] and some conservative Hindus in India, the United States, and elsewhere\".\n[Martha Nussbaum](https://bliptext.com/articles/martha-nussbaum) has called it a \"war\" by \"the Hindu right\" against American scholars.\nThe blog post \"has become a pivotal treatise in a recent rift between some Western Hinduism scholars—many of whom teach or have studied at Chicago—and some conservative Hindus in India, the United States, and elsewhere\".\nMalhotra concluded in his blog post: \"Rights of individual scholars must be balanced against rights of cultures and communities they portray, especially minorities that often face intimidation. Scholars should criticize but not define another's religion.\"\nAccording to Braverman, \"Though Malhotra's academic targets say he has some valid discussion points, they also argue that his rhetoric taps into the rightward trend and attempts to silence unorthodox, especially [Western](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-world), views.\"\nThe essay, together with a series of related essays and interviews, has been republished in Academic Hinduphobia, in the wake of the withdrawal of Doniger's [The Hindus: An Alternative History](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-hindus-an-alternative-history) from the Indian market, due to a lawsuit \"alleging that it was biased and insulting to Hindus\".\nThe withdrawal led to extensive media attention, and renewed sales in India.\nMalhotra said \"the drama has diverted attention away from the substantive errors in her scholarship to be really about being an issue of censorship by radical Hindus\", hence the republication of his critique of Wendy Doniger and scholars related to her.\n\n### American academia\nIn his 2003 blog post \"Does South Asian Studies Undermine India?\"\nat Rediff India Abroad: India as it happens, Malhotra criticises what he views as uncritical funding of South Asian Studies by Indian-American donors: \"Many eminent Indian-American donors are being led down the garden path by Indian professors who, ironically, assemble a team of scholars to undermine Indian culture. Rather than an Indian perspective on itself and the world, these scholars promote a perspective on India using worldviews which are hostile to India's interests.\"\nMalhotra voices four criticisms of American academia.\nPrimarily, he claims \"American academia is dominated by a [Eurocentric](https://bliptext.com/articles/eurocentric) perspective that views western culture as being the fount of world civilisation and refuses to acknowledge the contributions of non-western societies such as India to European culture and technique\".\nThen, he goes on to say that the academic study of religion in the United States is based on the model of the \"[Abrahamic](https://bliptext.com/articles/abrahamic)\" traditions; this model is not applicable to Hinduism.\nHe says Western scholars focus on the \"sensationalist, negative attributes of religion and present it in a demeaning way that shows a lack of respect for the sentiments of the practitioners of the religion\".\nHis final claim is that [South Asian Studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/south-asian-studies) programs in the United States create \"a false identity and unity\" between India and its Muslim neighbour states, and undermine India \"by focusing on its internal cleavages and problems\".\nMalhotra argues that American scholarship has undermined India \"by encouraging the paradigms that oppose its unity and integrity\", with scholars playing critical roles, often under the garb of 'human rights' in channeling foreign intellectual and material support to exacerbate India's internal fault lines.\nHe claims Indian-American donors were \"hoodwinked\" into thinking they were supporting India through their monetary contributions to such programmes.\nMalhotra compares the defence of Indian interests with corporate brand management, distrusting the loyalties of Indian scholars.\n\"Therefore, it is critical that we do not blindly assume that Indian scholars are always honest trustees of the Indian-American donors' sentiments. Many Indian scholars are weak in the pro-India leadership and assertiveness traits that come only from strongly identifying with an Indian Grand Narrative. They regard the power of Grand Narrative (other than their own) as a cause of human rights problems internally, failing to see it as an asset in global competition externally. Hence, there is the huge difference between the ideology of many Indian professors and the ideology espoused by most successful Indian-American corporate leaders.\"\nMalhotra argues that a positive stance on India has been under-represented in American academia, due to programmes being staffed by Westerners, their \"Indian-American Sepoys\" and Indian Americans who want to be white — whom he disparages as \"career opportunists\" and \"[Uncle Toms](https://bliptext.com/articles/uncle-tom-syndrome)\", who \"in their desire to become even marginal members of the Western Grand Narrative, sneer at Indian culture in the same manner as the [colonialists](https://bliptext.com/articles/british-raj) once did\".\nMalhotra has accused academia of abetting the \"Talibanisation\" of India, which would also lead to the radicalisation of other Asian countries.\n\n### U-turn theory\nMalhotra posits that the Western appropriation of [Indic ideas and knowledge systems](https://bliptext.com/articles/history-of-science-and-technology-in-the-indian-subcontinent) has a long history.\nHe names this theory of his \"The U-Turn Theory\".\nHe then goes on to show how the appropriation occurs in several stages:\nAs evidence, he cites a number of \"U-Turners\" from the scholarly fields of [mind sciences](https://bliptext.com/articles/mind), [cognitive sciences](https://bliptext.com/articles/cognitive-sciences) and [psychology](https://bliptext.com/articles/psychology):\nIn [Vivekananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/vivekananda)'s Ideas and the Two Revolutions in Western Thought (2013), Malhotra claims that [Vivekananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/vivekananda) has deeply influenced modern western thought, but that this influence in some cases remains unacknowledged and uncredited.\nSome examples Malhotra cites are [William James](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-james) and his work [The Varieties of Religious Experience](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-varieties-of-religious-experience) (1902); [Aldous Huxley](https://bliptext.com/articles/aldous-huxley) and his work [The Perennial Philosophy](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-perennial-philosophy) (1945); and the notion of [involution](https://bliptext.com/articles/involution-esoterism) in the works of [Ken Wilber](https://bliptext.com/articles/ken-wilber), a term which Vivekananda probably took from western [Theosophists](https://bliptext.com/articles/theosophy), notably [Helena Blavatsky](https://bliptext.com/articles/helena-blavatsky), in addition to Darwin's notion of evolution, and possibly referring to the [Samkhya](https://bliptext.com/articles/samkhya) term [sātkarya](https://bliptext.com/articles/satkaryavada).\n\n## Criticism of Christian Yoga\nMalhotra believes that the practice of a distorted version of Yoga, Christian Yoga, is not only inimical but also detrimental to Christianity's fundamental principles and doctrines.\nHe supports his argument by specifically citing the [theology of Christianity](https://bliptext.com/articles/christian-theology) and [Bible](https://bliptext.com/articles/bible), and compares it to the [philosophies of Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga-philosophy).\n

Yoga transcends all dogma and beliefs.
Yoga leads to [unity consciousness](https://bliptext.com/articles/brahman) i.e. no separation from [God](https://bliptext.com/articles/paramatman).
Bible considers the silent mind to be dangerous.
Christianity considers Mantras as 'prayer' to a [pagan God](https://bliptext.com/articles/false-god), which violates a [Commandment](https://bliptext.com/articles/thou-shalt-have-no-other-gods-before-me).
[Biblical cosmology](https://bliptext.com/articles/biblical-cosmology) subverts the [Vedic](https://bliptext.com/articles/vedic) principal of [Rta](https://bliptext.com/articles/ta).

\nMalhotra further mentions that practitioners of Christian [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga) and people who advocate it, neither understand [Christianity](https://bliptext.com/articles/christianity) nor the roots, complexity, and philosophies of [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga).\nAccording to [Shreena Gandhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/shreena-niketa-gandhi), professor of [Religious studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/religious-studies) at [Michigan State University](https://bliptext.com/articles/michigan-state-university), many American Yoga teachers do not learn about [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism), [Indian culture](https://bliptext.com/articles/culture-of-india) and [spiritual philosophies of Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga-philosophy).\nThus, rarely do American teachers go much deeper than mere physical forms or [Asanas](https://bliptext.com/articles/asana), hence they dilute the true depth and philosophies of Yoga.\nMost Western Yoga teachers, states Malhotra, mention [Pranayama](https://bliptext.com/articles/pranayama), [chanting Om](https://bliptext.com/articles/om) or [Asanas](https://bliptext.com/articles/asana) as health-related components of modern Yoga, yet this attitude is based, at best, in a shallow or lack of understanding of Yoga's [Dharmic roots](https://bliptext.com/articles/dharma) and [philosophy](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-philosophy).\nThe [practice of Om](https://bliptext.com/articles/om) as a [sacred utterance](https://bliptext.com/articles/mantra) is designed to dissolve [Namarupa](https://bliptext.com/articles/namarupa) from the mind, that is the whole idea and the principle behind the Mantra.\nIts universality lies in its ability to transcend all particular historic contexts.\nThe names 'Jesus', 'Allah', or 'Amen' are proper nouns laden with historic context and thus aren't a synonym for Mantras which have a specific [transcendental context](https://bliptext.com/articles/transcendence-religion).\n[Patanjali](https://bliptext.com/articles/patanjali) mentions [Om](https://bliptext.com/articles/om) as [Vacakah](https://bliptext.com/articles/nididhy-sana) or vibration of [Ishvara](https://bliptext.com/articles/ishvara), hence the experience it brings cannot be generated by an alternative sound such as the sound or names of other God.\nYoga and Hinduism are deeply coupled, and renaming the [original Sanskrit terms](https://bliptext.com/articles/sanskrit) doesn't do any favor, since the actual physical practices, in the case of [asanas](https://bliptext.com/articles/asana) remains the same, states Malhotra.\nSwami Param, head of the Classical Yoga Academy in [Manahawkin, New Jersey](https://bliptext.com/articles/manahawkin-new-jersey), states that \"If people can not acknowledge the Hindu elements and roots of Yoga, they should not bother studying it.\"\nHe further adds, \"As Hindus, we have no problem studying other religions, but we give them the respect they deserve.\"\nYoga's metaphysics centers around the quest to attain [liberation](https://bliptext.com/articles/moksha) from one's conditioning caused by the past [Karma](https://bliptext.com/articles/karma).\nKarma includes the baggage from [prior lives](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-s-ra), underscoring the importance of [reincarnation](https://bliptext.com/articles/reincarnation).\nMalhotra points out that while it's \"fashionable\" for Westerners to say they believe in Karma and reincarnation, they have seldom worked out the contradictions with [core Biblical doctrines](https://bliptext.com/articles/christian-theology).\nYogic liberation is therefore not contingent upon any unique historic events or interventions.\n[Every individual's](https://bliptext.com/articles/jiva) [ultimate essence](https://bliptext.com/articles/tman-hinduism) is [Sat-Cit-Ananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/satcitananda), Originally Divine, and not Originally Sinful by birth.\nMalhotra indicates that this is a very fundamental contradiction of the doctrines of [Original sin](https://bliptext.com/articles/original-sin) and [Nicene Creed](https://bliptext.com/articles/nicene-creed).\nMalhotra further claims that Dharmic traditions are misunderstood by the West, one being the scholars conflated the use of [Dharmic images](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-iconography) and [deities](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-deities) with [pre-Christian Paganism](https://bliptext.com/articles/paganism), although Paganism is quite different from [Dharmic bhakti](https://bliptext.com/articles/bhakti).\nThis suspicion of [idolatry](https://bliptext.com/articles/idolatry) is one of the greatest obstacles which the Western practitioners of Yoga face, states Malhotra.\nThe negative and erroneous association of Yoga with an idolatry of the body gives rise to odd hybrids such as Christian Yoga or Jewish Yoga or, Muslim Yoga, who claim to provide a cleaned-up Yoga, which is free from dangers of idolatry.\nHe adds that internalized taboos, social prejudices, and all stereotypes of [Dharmic culture](https://bliptext.com/articles/indian-religions) and [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism) in particular, act as a filter in the interpretation of [Dharmic traditions](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-india), such as [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga) and [meditation](https://bliptext.com/articles/dhy-na-in-hinduism) to create varied responses to [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga).\nAlthough few Christian Yoga or 'Secular' Yoga practitioners make baseless claims, states Malhotra, such as \"Yoga doesn't belong to [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism)\" or \"Yoga isn't Hindu\", he asserts that, such people neither understands the [philosophy of Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga-philosophy) nor its relation to [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism).\nIt's a fact of the matter that [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga) is one of the [six major orthodox schools of Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-philosophy) ([Āstika](https://bliptext.com/articles/stika-and-n-stika)), hence those preconceived claims are factually incorrect.\nYoga, in Hinduism, is a way towards [liberation](https://bliptext.com/articles/moksha) from [Saṃsāra](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-s-ra) and [Duḥkha](https://bliptext.com/articles/du-kha).\nFurthermore, Malhotra cites a survey research conducted by the Yoga practitioners in the West shows that those who attained a sense of [self-directed awareness](https://bliptext.com/articles/samadhi), are less likely to identify as \"Christians\" or any dogma based religions, and more likely identified to be with [Dharmic religions](https://bliptext.com/articles/indian-religions) such as, [Buddhists](https://bliptext.com/articles/buddhism), or, contrary to that as [Spiritual but not religious](https://bliptext.com/articles/spiritual-but-not-religious).\n[Douglas R. Groothuis](https://bliptext.com/articles/douglas-groothuis), professor of philosophy at [Denver Seminary](https://bliptext.com/articles/denver-seminary), says that \"Yoga was a Hindu practice structured to help people attain a higher spiritual state within, and that is incompatible with Christian teachings\", further he adds, \"I don't think Christian Yoga works, It's an oxymoron\".\n\n## Academic Hinduphobia: A Critique of Wendy Doniger's Erotic School of Indology\nSeveral of Malhotra's essays from the early 2000s were re-published by [Voice of India](https://bliptext.com/articles/voice-of-india) in 2016 in Academic Hinduphobia: A Critique of Wendy Doniger's Erotic School of Indology.\nThe essays have been reportedly republished in the wake of the withdrawal of Doniger's [The Hindus: An Alternative History](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-hindus-an-alternative-history) from the Indian market, due to a lawsuit \"alleging that it was biased and insulting to Hindus\".\nThe withdrawal led to extensive media attention and renewed sales in India.\nMalhotra claims that \"the drama has diverted attention away from the substantive errors in her scholarship to be really about being an issue of censorship by radical Hindus\", hence the republication of his critique of Wendy Doniger and scholars related to her.\n\n## Breaking India (2011)\nMalhotra's book Breaking India: Western Interventions in [Dravidian](https://bliptext.com/articles/self-respect-movement) and [Dalit](https://bliptext.com/articles/dalit) Faultlines discusses three faultlines trying to destabilise India:\nThis book goes into greater depth on the third: the role of US and European churches, academics, think-tanks, foundations, government and human rights groups in fostering separation of the identities of Dravidian and Dalit communities from the rest of India.\n\n## Being Different (2011)\nBeing Different is a critique of the western-centric view on India characterised by Abrahamic traditions.\nMalhotra intends to give an Indian view on India and the west, as characterised by the Indian Dharmic traditions.\nMalhotra argues that there are irreconcilable differences between [Dharmic traditions](https://bliptext.com/articles/indian-religions) and [Abrahamic religions](https://bliptext.com/articles/abrahamic-religions).\nThe term [dharma](https://bliptext.com/articles/dharma): \"... is used to indicate a family of spiritual traditions originating in India which today are manifested as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. I explain that the variety of perspectives and practices of [dharma](https://bliptext.com/articles/dharma) display an underlying integral unity at the metaphysical level.\"\n\n## Indra's Net (2014)\nIndra's Net is an appeal against the thesis of [neo-Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/neo-vedanta) and a defense of [Vivekananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/vivekananda)'s view of [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga) and [Vedanta](https://bliptext.com/articles/vedanta).\nThe book argues for a unity, coherence, and continuity of the Yogic and Vedantic traditions of [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism) and [Hindu philosophy](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-philosophy).\nIt makes proposals for defending Hinduism from what the author considers to be unjust attacks from scholars, misguided [public intellectuals](https://bliptext.com/articles/public-intellectual), and hostile religious polemicists.\nThe book's central metaphor is \"[Indra's Net](https://bliptext.com/articles/indra-s-net)\".\nAs a scriptural image \"Indra's Net\" was first mentioned in the [Atharva Veda](https://bliptext.com/articles/atharvaveda) (c. 1000 [BCE](https://bliptext.com/articles/bce)).\nIn Buddhist philosophy, Indra's Net served as a metaphor in the [Avatamsaka Sutra](https://bliptext.com/articles/avatamsaka-sutra) and was further developed by [Huayen](https://bliptext.com/articles/huayan-school) Buddhism to portray the interconnectedness of everything in the universe.\nMalhotra employs the metaphor of Indra's Net to express\n\"the profound cosmology and outlook that permeates Hinduism. Indra's Net symbolizes the universe as a web of connections and interdependences.... The net is said to be infinite, and to spread in all directions with no beginning or end. At each node of the net is a jewel, so arranged that every jewel reflects all the other jewels.... a microcosm of the whole net.... [and] individual jewels always remain in flux.\"\nThe book uses Indra's Net as a metaphor for the understanding of the universe as a web of connections and interdependences, an understanding which Malhotra wants to revive as the foundation for [Vedic](https://bliptext.com/articles/vedas) cosmology, a perspective that he asserts has \"always been implicit\" in the outlook of the ordinary Hindu.\nA revised edition was published in 2016 after charges of plagiarism.\nThe revised edition omits most references to the work of [Andrew J. Nicholson](https://bliptext.com/articles/andrew-j-nicholson) and instead refers to the original Sanskrit sources.\nMalhotra says that Nicholson failed to attribute his ideas to the original sources and explains that the unity of Hinduism is inherent in the tradition from the times of its Vedic origins.\n\n## The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)\nThe Battle for Sanskrit is a critique of the American [Indologist](https://bliptext.com/articles/indologist) [Sheldon Pollock](https://bliptext.com/articles/sheldon-pollock).\nMalhotra pleads for traditional Indian scholars to write responses to Pollock's views, who takes a critical stance toward the role of Sanskrit in traditional views on Indian society.\nMalhotra is critical of Pollock's approach, and argues that western Indology scholars are deliberately intervening in Indian societies by offering analyses of Sanskrit texts which would be rejected by \"traditional Indian experts\".\n\n## Sanskrit Non-Translatables: The Importance of Sanskritizing English (2020)\nSanskrit Non-Translatables, a book by Malhotra published in 2020 and coauthored by [Satyanarayana Dasa](https://bliptext.com/articles/satyanarayana-dasa), deals with the idea of Sanskritizing the English language and enriching it with powerful Sanskrit words.\nIt continues the discussion on the idea of non-translatability of Sanskrit, a concept first introduced in the book, [Being Different](https://bliptext.com/articles/being-different).\nThe book discusses 54 non-translatables across various genres that are being commonly mis-translated.\nIt empowers English speakers with the knowledge and arguments to introduce these Sanskrit words into their daily speech with confidence.\nFor English readers, the book is the starting point of the movement to introduce loanwords into their English vocabulary without translation.\n\n# Reception\n\n## Appreciation\nScholars have widely recognized that Malhotra has been influential in articulating diaspora and conservative dissatisfaction with the Western world's scholarly study of Hinduism.\n[John Hinnells](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-hinnells), a British scholar of [comparative religions](https://bliptext.com/articles/comparative-religion), considers Malhotra to lead a faction of Hindu criticism of methodology for the examination of [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism).\nOther scholars welcome his attempt to challenge the western assumptions in the study of India and South Asia but also question his approach, finding it to be neglecting the differences within the various Indian traditions.\nIn response, Malhotra points out that he does not state that all those traditions are essentially the same, that there is no effort to homogenise different Dharmic traditions, but that they share the assertion of integral unity.\n[Prema A. Kurien](https://bliptext.com/articles/prema-a-kurien) considers Malhotra to be at \"the forefront of American Hindu effort to challenge the Eurocentrism in academia\".\n\n## Criticism\n[Martha Nussbaum](https://bliptext.com/articles/martha-nussbaum) criticises Malhotra for \"disregard for the usual canons of argument and scholarship, a postmodern power play in the guise of defense of tradition\".\nBrian K. Pennington has called his work \"ahistorical\" and \"a pastiche of widely accepted and overly simplified conclusions borrowed from the academy\".\nPennington has further charged that Malhotra systematically misrepresents the relationship between Hinduism and Christianity, arguing that in Malhotra's hands, \"Christian and Indic traditions are reduced to mere cartoons of themselves.\"\nAccording to Jonathan Edelmann, one of the major problems with Malhotra's work is that he does not have a school of thought that he represents or is trained in.\nThis fact undermines his claims to be engaged in [purvapaksa](https://bliptext.com/articles/purva-paksha) debate.\nPurvapaksa debate requires location in a particular place of argument.\nIn May 2015, a Hindu-American scholar at [St. Olaf College](https://bliptext.com/articles/st-olaf-college), [Anantanand Rambachan](https://bliptext.com/articles/anantanand-rambachan), who studied three years with [Swami Dayananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/dayananda-saraswati-arsha-vidya), published an extensive response to Malhotra's criticisms in [Indra's Net](https://bliptext.com/articles/indra-s-net-book). Rambachan claimed that Malhotra's \"descriptions of my scholarship belong appropriately to the realm of fiction and are disconnected from reality\".\nAccording to Rambachan, Malhotra's understanding and representation of classical Advaita is incorrect, attributing doctrines to [Shankara](https://bliptext.com/articles/adi-shankara) and [Swami Dayananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/dayananda-saraswati-arsha-vidya) which are rejected by them.\nMalhotra's epistemological foundations have also been critically questioned by Anantanand Rambachan.\nHe does not, according to Rambachan, situate his discussion in relation to classical epistemologies or clarify his differences with these.\nMalhotra's critiques on [Wendy Doniger](https://bliptext.com/articles/wendy-doniger)'s [Freudian psychoanalytic](https://bliptext.com/articles/freud-s-psychoanalytic-theories) interpretations of [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism) in her academic works, have \"led to verbal and physical attacks on western scholars and their institutions.\"\nMalhotra claimed on social media in August 2020 that he spoke out against Wikipedia in the 1990s in a talk in [Auroville](https://bliptext.com/articles/auroville) that was posted in their magazine, when the portal sought Indian users for donations.\nWikipedia, on the other hand, was founded in 2001.\nMalhotra's claims were criticized on social media.\nIn November 2022, [Google](https://bliptext.com/articles/google) cancelled Malhotra's talk at its headquarters after receiving complaints about his views on homosexuality and Islam.\nA day after cancelling his talk, Google introduced rules for inviting guest speakers to its offices.\n\n## Allegations of plagiarism\nIn July 2015, Richard Fox Young of [Princeton Theological Seminary](https://bliptext.com/articles/princeton-theological-seminary) and Andrew J.Nicholson who authored [Unifying Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/unifying-hinduism), alleged Malhotra had plagiarized [Unifying Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/unifying-hinduism) in Indra's Net.\nNicholson further said that Malhotra not only had plagiarised his book, but also \"twists the words and arguments of respectable scholars to suit his own ends\".\n[Permanent Black](https://bliptext.com/articles/permanent-black), publisher of Nicholson's Unifying Hinduism, stated that they would welcome [HarperCollins](https://bliptext.com/articles/harpercollins)' \"willingness to rectify future editions\" of Indra's Net.\nIn response to Nicholson, Malhotra stated \"I used your work with explicit references 30 times in Indra's Net, hence there was no ill-intention\", and cited a list of these references.\nHe announced that he would be eliminating all references to Nicholson and further explained: \"I am going to actually remove many of the references to your work simply because you have borrowed from Indian sources and called them your own original ideas [...] Right now, it is western Indologists like you who get to define 'critical editions' of our texts and become the primary source and adhikari. This must end and I have been fighting this for 25 years [...] we ought to examine where you got your materials from, and to what extent you failed to acknowledge Indian sources, both written and oral, with the same weight with which you expect me to do so.\"\nMalhotra published a rebuttal and stated that he had removed all references to Nicholson's works in chapter 8 of Indra's Net, replacing them with references to the original Indian sources.\n\n# Publications\n\n## Books\n\n## Other publications\n\n# Subnotes\n\n# Sources\n\n## Printed sources\n\n## Web-sources","current_revision":null,"created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-26T11:03:32.974Z","updated_at":"2025-01-26T11:03:32.974Z","search_vector":"'malhotra':2 'rajiv':1","search_content":" \n \n**Name:** Rajiv Malhotra \n**Birth Date:** September 15, 1950 \n**Birth Place:** [New Delhi, Delhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/new-delhi-delhi), India \n**Citizenship:** [American](https://bliptext.com/articles/americans) \n**Alma Mater:** [St. Stephen's College, Delhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/st-stephen-s-college-delhi) [Syracuse University](https://bliptext.com/articles/syracuse-university) \n**Occupation:** Author · researcher · professor \n**Notable Works:** [Breaking India](https://bliptext.com/articles/breaking-india) (2011), · [Being Different](https://bliptext.com/articles/being-different) (2011), · [Indra's Net](https://bliptext.com/articles/indra-s-net-book) (2014), · [The Battle for Sanskrit](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-battle-for-sanskrit) (2016) \n**Website:** http://rajivmalhotra.com \n \n\n# \n**Rajiv Malhotra** (born 15 September 1950) is an Indian-born American right-wing [Hindutva](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindutva) ideologue, author and the founder of Infinity Foundation, which focuses on [Indic studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/indic-studies), and also funds projects such as [Columbia University](https://bliptext.com/articles/columbia-university)'s project to translate the [Tibetan Buddhist](https://bliptext.com/articles/tibetan-buddhist) [Tengyur](https://bliptext.com/articles/tengyur).\nApart from the foundation, Malhotra promotes a [Hindu nationalist](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-nationalist) view of [Indic cultures](https://bliptext.com/articles/indic-cultural-sphere).\nMalhotra has written prolifically in opposition to the western academic study of Indian culture and society, which he maintains denigrates the tradition and undermines the interests of India \"by encouraging the paradigms that oppose its unity and integrity\".\n\n# Biography\nMalhotra studied physics at [St. Stephen's College, Delhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/st-stephen-s-college-delhi) and computer science at [Syracuse University](https://bliptext.com/articles/syracuse-university) before becoming an entrepreneur in the information technology and media industries.\nHe retired early in 1994 aged 44, to establish the Infinity Foundation in [Princeton, New Jersey](https://bliptext.com/articles/princeton-new-jersey), in 1995.\nBesides directing this foundation, he also chairs the board of governors of the Center for Indic Studies at the [University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-massachusetts-dartmouth), and advises various organisations.\nMalhotra had been a speaker at an international conference held over the Center for Indic Studies, [University of Massachusetts Dartmouth](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-massachusetts-dartmouth) and was a board member of the Foundation for Indic Philosophy and Culture at the [Claremont Colleges](https://bliptext.com/articles/claremont-colleges).\nHe also wrote extensively on internet discussion groups and e-magazines.\nIn October 2018, Malhotra was appointed an honorary visiting professor at the Centre for Media Studies at [Jawaharlal Nehru University](https://bliptext.com/articles/jawaharlal-nehru-university), Delhi.\nOn 6 November 2018, he delivered his first lecture organized by the School of Sanskrit and Indic studies on the topic of Sanskrit non-translatables.\n\n# Infinity Foundation\nMalhotra founded the institute in 1994; followed by Educational Council of Indic Traditions (ECIT) in 2000.\nThe foundation works without any full-time workers; sans Malhotra himself.\nThe stated goals were to fight a perceived misrepresentation of ancient Indian religions and to document the contributions of India to world civilization.\nNo member of the advisory board was an academic and most belonged to the software industry.\nThe Foundation has given more than 400 grants for research, education and community work.\nIt has provided small [grants](https://bliptext.com/articles/grant-money) to major universities in support of programs including a visiting professorship in Indic studies at [Harvard University](https://bliptext.com/articles/harvard-university), Yoga and [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi) classes at [Rutgers University](https://bliptext.com/articles/rutgers-university), the research and teaching of [non-dualistic](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonduality-spirituality) philosophies at the [University of Hawaii](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-hawaii), Global Renaissance Institute and a Center for Buddhist studies at [Columbia University](https://bliptext.com/articles/columbia-university), a program in religion and science at the [University of California](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-california), an endowment for the Center for Advanced Study of India at the [University of Pennsylvania](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-pennsylvania), and lectures at the Center for Consciousness Studies at the [University of Arizona](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-arizona).\nThe foundation has provided funding for journals like Education about Asia and the [International Journal of Hindu Studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/international-journal-of-hindu-studies) and for the establishment of the Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Non-violence at [James Madison University](https://bliptext.com/articles/james-madison-university).\nWhile the foundation's own materials describe its purposes in terms of education and philanthropy, scholars of Hinduism and South Asia see it largely as an organization committed to the \"surveillance of the Academy (academia)\", and a senior U.S. scholar of Hinduism, Columbia University's Jack Hawley, has published a refutation of the foundation's characteristic charges against the study of Hinduism in North America.\n\n# Views\n\n## Criticism of American academia (2000s)\n\n### Wendy's Child Syndrome\nIn early 2000s Malhotra started writing articles criticising [Wendy Doniger](https://bliptext.com/articles/wendy-doniger) and related scholars, claiming that she applied [Freudian psycho-analysis](https://bliptext.com/articles/psychoanalysis) to aspects of Indian culture.\nHis 2002 blog post titled \"Wendy's Child Syndrome\" was considered as the starting point of a \"rift between some Western Hinduism scholars [...] and some conservative Hindus in India, the United States, and elsewhere\".\n[Martha Nussbaum](https://bliptext.com/articles/martha-nussbaum) has called it a \"war\" by \"the Hindu right\" against American scholars.\nThe blog post \"has become a pivotal treatise in a recent rift between some Western Hinduism scholars—many of whom teach or have studied at Chicago—and some conservative Hindus in India, the United States, and elsewhere\".\nMalhotra concluded in his blog post: \"Rights of individual scholars must be balanced against rights of cultures and communities they portray, especially minorities that often face intimidation. Scholars should criticize but not define another's religion.\"\nAccording to Braverman, \"Though Malhotra's academic targets say he has some valid discussion points, they also argue that his rhetoric taps into the rightward trend and attempts to silence unorthodox, especially [Western](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-world), views.\"\nThe essay, together with a series of related essays and interviews, has been republished in Academic Hinduphobia, in the wake of the withdrawal of Doniger's [The Hindus: An Alternative History](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-hindus-an-alternative-history) from the Indian market, due to a lawsuit \"alleging that it was biased and insulting to Hindus\".\nThe withdrawal led to extensive media attention, and renewed sales in India.\nMalhotra said \"the drama has diverted attention away from the substantive errors in her scholarship to be really about being an issue of censorship by radical Hindus\", hence the republication of his critique of Wendy Doniger and scholars related to her.\n\n### American academia\nIn his 2003 blog post \"Does South Asian Studies Undermine India?\"\nat Rediff India Abroad: India as it happens, Malhotra criticises what he views as uncritical funding of South Asian Studies by Indian-American donors: \"Many eminent Indian-American donors are being led down the garden path by Indian professors who, ironically, assemble a team of scholars to undermine Indian culture. Rather than an Indian perspective on itself and the world, these scholars promote a perspective on India using worldviews which are hostile to India's interests.\"\nMalhotra voices four criticisms of American academia.\nPrimarily, he claims \"American academia is dominated by a [Eurocentric](https://bliptext.com/articles/eurocentric) perspective that views western culture as being the fount of world civilisation and refuses to acknowledge the contributions of non-western societies such as India to European culture and technique\".\nThen, he goes on to say that the academic study of religion in the United States is based on the model of the \"[Abrahamic](https://bliptext.com/articles/abrahamic)\" traditions; this model is not applicable to Hinduism.\nHe says Western scholars focus on the \"sensationalist, negative attributes of religion and present it in a demeaning way that shows a lack of respect for the sentiments of the practitioners of the religion\".\nHis final claim is that [South Asian Studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/south-asian-studies) programs in the United States create \"a false identity and unity\" between India and its Muslim neighbour states, and undermine India \"by focusing on its internal cleavages and problems\".\nMalhotra argues that American scholarship has undermined India \"by encouraging the paradigms that oppose its unity and integrity\", with scholars playing critical roles, often under the garb of 'human rights' in channeling foreign intellectual and material support to exacerbate India's internal fault lines.\nHe claims Indian-American donors were \"hoodwinked\" into thinking they were supporting India through their monetary contributions to such programmes.\nMalhotra compares the defence of Indian interests with corporate brand management, distrusting the loyalties of Indian scholars.\n\"Therefore, it is critical that we do not blindly assume that Indian scholars are always honest trustees of the Indian-American donors' sentiments. Many Indian scholars are weak in the pro-India leadership and assertiveness traits that come only from strongly identifying with an Indian Grand Narrative. They regard the power of Grand Narrative (other than their own) as a cause of human rights problems internally, failing to see it as an asset in global competition externally. Hence, there is the huge difference between the ideology of many Indian professors and the ideology espoused by most successful Indian-American corporate leaders.\"\nMalhotra argues that a positive stance on India has been under-represented in American academia, due to programmes being staffed by Westerners, their \"Indian-American Sepoys\" and Indian Americans who want to be white — whom he disparages as \"career opportunists\" and \"[Uncle Toms](https://bliptext.com/articles/uncle-tom-syndrome)\", who \"in their desire to become even marginal members of the Western Grand Narrative, sneer at Indian culture in the same manner as the [colonialists](https://bliptext.com/articles/british-raj) once did\".\nMalhotra has accused academia of abetting the \"Talibanisation\" of India, which would also lead to the radicalisation of other Asian countries.\n\n### U-turn theory\nMalhotra posits that the Western appropriation of [Indic ideas and knowledge systems](https://bliptext.com/articles/history-of-science-and-technology-in-the-indian-subcontinent) has a long history.\nHe names this theory of his \"The U-Turn Theory\".\nHe then goes on to show how the appropriation occurs in several stages:\nAs evidence, he cites a number of \"U-Turners\" from the scholarly fields of [mind sciences](https://bliptext.com/articles/mind), [cognitive sciences](https://bliptext.com/articles/cognitive-sciences) and [psychology](https://bliptext.com/articles/psychology):\nIn [Vivekananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/vivekananda)'s Ideas and the Two Revolutions in Western Thought (2013), Malhotra claims that [Vivekananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/vivekananda) has deeply influenced modern western thought, but that this influence in some cases remains unacknowledged and uncredited.\nSome examples Malhotra cites are [William James](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-james) and his work [The Varieties of Religious Experience](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-varieties-of-religious-experience) (1902); [Aldous Huxley](https://bliptext.com/articles/aldous-huxley) and his work [The Perennial Philosophy](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-perennial-philosophy) (1945); and the notion of [involution](https://bliptext.com/articles/involution-esoterism) in the works of [Ken Wilber](https://bliptext.com/articles/ken-wilber), a term which Vivekananda probably took from western [Theosophists](https://bliptext.com/articles/theosophy), notably [Helena Blavatsky](https://bliptext.com/articles/helena-blavatsky), in addition to Darwin's notion of evolution, and possibly referring to the [Samkhya](https://bliptext.com/articles/samkhya) term [sātkarya](https://bliptext.com/articles/satkaryavada).\n\n## Criticism of Christian Yoga\nMalhotra believes that the practice of a distorted version of Yoga, Christian Yoga, is not only inimical but also detrimental to Christianity's fundamental principles and doctrines.\nHe supports his argument by specifically citing the [theology of Christianity](https://bliptext.com/articles/christian-theology) and [Bible](https://bliptext.com/articles/bible), and compares it to the [philosophies of Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga-philosophy).\n \n Yoga transcends all dogma and beliefs. \n Yoga leads to [unity consciousness](https://bliptext.com/articles/brahman) i.e. no separation from [God](https://bliptext.com/articles/paramatman). \n Bible considers the silent mind to be dangerous. \n Christianity considers Mantras as 'prayer' to a [pagan God](https://bliptext.com/articles/false-god), which violates a [Commandment](https://bliptext.com/articles/thou-shalt-have-no-other-gods-before-me). \n [Biblical cosmology](https://bliptext.com/articles/biblical-cosmology) subverts the [Vedic](https://bliptext.com/articles/vedic) principal of [Rta](https://bliptext.com/articles/ta). \n \nMalhotra further mentions that practitioners of Christian [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga) and people who advocate it, neither understand [Christianity](https://bliptext.com/articles/christianity) nor the roots, complexity, and philosophies of [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga).\nAccording to [Shreena Gandhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/shreena-niketa-gandhi), professor of [Religious studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/religious-studies) at [Michigan State University](https://bliptext.com/articles/michigan-state-university), many American Yoga teachers do not learn about [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism), [Indian culture](https://bliptext.com/articles/culture-of-india) and [spiritual philosophies of Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga-philosophy).\nThus, rarely do American teachers go much deeper than mere physical forms or [Asanas](https://bliptext.com/articles/asana), hence they dilute the true depth and philosophies of Yoga.\nMost Western Yoga teachers, states Malhotra, mention [Pranayama](https://bliptext.com/articles/pranayama), [chanting Om](https://bliptext.com/articles/om) or [Asanas](https://bliptext.com/articles/asana) as health-related components of modern Yoga, yet this attitude is based, at best, in a shallow or lack of understanding of Yoga's [Dharmic roots](https://bliptext.com/articles/dharma) and [philosophy](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-philosophy).\nThe [practice of Om](https://bliptext.com/articles/om) as a [sacred utterance](https://bliptext.com/articles/mantra) is designed to dissolve [Namarupa](https://bliptext.com/articles/namarupa) from the mind, that is the whole idea and the principle behind the Mantra.\nIts universality lies in its ability to transcend all particular historic contexts.\nThe names 'Jesus', 'Allah', or 'Amen' are proper nouns laden with historic context and thus aren't a synonym for Mantras which have a specific [transcendental context](https://bliptext.com/articles/transcendence-religion).\n[Patanjali](https://bliptext.com/articles/patanjali) mentions [Om](https://bliptext.com/articles/om) as [Vacakah](https://bliptext.com/articles/nididhy-sana) or vibration of [Ishvara](https://bliptext.com/articles/ishvara), hence the experience it brings cannot be generated by an alternative sound such as the sound or names of other God.\nYoga and Hinduism are deeply coupled, and renaming the [original Sanskrit terms](https://bliptext.com/articles/sanskrit) doesn't do any favor, since the actual physical practices, in the case of [asanas](https://bliptext.com/articles/asana) remains the same, states Malhotra.\nSwami Param, head of the Classical Yoga Academy in [Manahawkin, New Jersey](https://bliptext.com/articles/manahawkin-new-jersey), states that \"If people can not acknowledge the Hindu elements and roots of Yoga, they should not bother studying it.\"\nHe further adds, \"As Hindus, we have no problem studying other religions, but we give them the respect they deserve.\"\nYoga's metaphysics centers around the quest to attain [liberation](https://bliptext.com/articles/moksha) from one's conditioning caused by the past [Karma](https://bliptext.com/articles/karma).\nKarma includes the baggage from [prior lives](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-s-ra), underscoring the importance of [reincarnation](https://bliptext.com/articles/reincarnation).\nMalhotra points out that while it's \"fashionable\" for Westerners to say they believe in Karma and reincarnation, they have seldom worked out the contradictions with [core Biblical doctrines](https://bliptext.com/articles/christian-theology).\nYogic liberation is therefore not contingent upon any unique historic events or interventions.\n[Every individual's](https://bliptext.com/articles/jiva) [ultimate essence](https://bliptext.com/articles/tman-hinduism) is [Sat-Cit-Ananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/satcitananda), Originally Divine, and not Originally Sinful by birth.\nMalhotra indicates that this is a very fundamental contradiction of the doctrines of [Original sin](https://bliptext.com/articles/original-sin) and [Nicene Creed](https://bliptext.com/articles/nicene-creed).\nMalhotra further claims that Dharmic traditions are misunderstood by the West, one being the scholars conflated the use of [Dharmic images](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-iconography) and [deities](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-deities) with [pre-Christian Paganism](https://bliptext.com/articles/paganism), although Paganism is quite different from [Dharmic bhakti](https://bliptext.com/articles/bhakti).\nThis suspicion of [idolatry](https://bliptext.com/articles/idolatry) is one of the greatest obstacles which the Western practitioners of Yoga face, states Malhotra.\nThe negative and erroneous association of Yoga with an idolatry of the body gives rise to odd hybrids such as Christian Yoga or Jewish Yoga or, Muslim Yoga, who claim to provide a cleaned-up Yoga, which is free from dangers of idolatry.\nHe adds that internalized taboos, social prejudices, and all stereotypes of [Dharmic culture](https://bliptext.com/articles/indian-religions) and [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism) in particular, act as a filter in the interpretation of [Dharmic traditions](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-india), such as [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga) and [meditation](https://bliptext.com/articles/dhy-na-in-hinduism) to create varied responses to [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga).\nAlthough few Christian Yoga or 'Secular' Yoga practitioners make baseless claims, states Malhotra, such as \"Yoga doesn't belong to [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism)\" or \"Yoga isn't Hindu\", he asserts that, such people neither understands the [philosophy of Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga-philosophy) nor its relation to [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism).\nIt's a fact of the matter that [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga) is one of the [six major orthodox schools of Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-philosophy) ([Āstika](https://bliptext.com/articles/stika-and-n-stika)), hence those preconceived claims are factually incorrect.\nYoga, in Hinduism, is a way towards [liberation](https://bliptext.com/articles/moksha) from [Saṃsāra](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-s-ra) and [Duḥkha](https://bliptext.com/articles/du-kha).\nFurthermore, Malhotra cites a survey research conducted by the Yoga practitioners in the West shows that those who attained a sense of [self-directed awareness](https://bliptext.com/articles/samadhi), are less likely to identify as \"Christians\" or any dogma based religions, and more likely identified to be with [Dharmic religions](https://bliptext.com/articles/indian-religions) such as, [Buddhists](https://bliptext.com/articles/buddhism), or, contrary to that as [Spiritual but not religious](https://bliptext.com/articles/spiritual-but-not-religious).\n[Douglas R. Groothuis](https://bliptext.com/articles/douglas-groothuis), professor of philosophy at [Denver Seminary](https://bliptext.com/articles/denver-seminary), says that \"Yoga was a Hindu practice structured to help people attain a higher spiritual state within, and that is incompatible with Christian teachings\", further he adds, \"I don't think Christian Yoga works, It's an oxymoron\".\n\n## Academic Hinduphobia: A Critique of Wendy Doniger's Erotic School of Indology\nSeveral of Malhotra's essays from the early 2000s were re-published by [Voice of India](https://bliptext.com/articles/voice-of-india) in 2016 in Academic Hinduphobia: A Critique of Wendy Doniger's Erotic School of Indology.\nThe essays have been reportedly republished in the wake of the withdrawal of Doniger's [The Hindus: An Alternative History](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-hindus-an-alternative-history) from the Indian market, due to a lawsuit \"alleging that it was biased and insulting to Hindus\".\nThe withdrawal led to extensive media attention and renewed sales in India.\nMalhotra claims that \"the drama has diverted attention away from the substantive errors in her scholarship to be really about being an issue of censorship by radical Hindus\", hence the republication of his critique of Wendy Doniger and scholars related to her.\n\n## Breaking India (2011)\nMalhotra's book Breaking India: Western Interventions in [Dravidian](https://bliptext.com/articles/self-respect-movement) and [Dalit](https://bliptext.com/articles/dalit) Faultlines discusses three faultlines trying to destabilise India:\nThis book goes into greater depth on the third: the role of US and European churches, academics, think-tanks, foundations, government and human rights groups in fostering separation of the identities of Dravidian and Dalit communities from the rest of India.\n\n## Being Different (2011)\nBeing Different is a critique of the western-centric view on India characterised by Abrahamic traditions.\nMalhotra intends to give an Indian view on India and the west, as characterised by the Indian Dharmic traditions.\nMalhotra argues that there are irreconcilable differences between [Dharmic traditions](https://bliptext.com/articles/indian-religions) and [Abrahamic religions](https://bliptext.com/articles/abrahamic-religions).\nThe term [dharma](https://bliptext.com/articles/dharma): \"... is used to indicate a family of spiritual traditions originating in India which today are manifested as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. I explain that the variety of perspectives and practices of [dharma](https://bliptext.com/articles/dharma) display an underlying integral unity at the metaphysical level.\"\n\n## Indra's Net (2014)\nIndra's Net is an appeal against the thesis of [neo-Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/neo-vedanta) and a defense of [Vivekananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/vivekananda)'s view of [Yoga](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoga) and [Vedanta](https://bliptext.com/articles/vedanta).\nThe book argues for a unity, coherence, and continuity of the Yogic and Vedantic traditions of [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism) and [Hindu philosophy](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindu-philosophy).\nIt makes proposals for defending Hinduism from what the author considers to be unjust attacks from scholars, misguided [public intellectuals](https://bliptext.com/articles/public-intellectual), and hostile religious polemicists.\nThe book's central metaphor is \"[Indra's Net](https://bliptext.com/articles/indra-s-net)\".\nAs a scriptural image \"Indra's Net\" was first mentioned in the [Atharva Veda](https://bliptext.com/articles/atharvaveda) (c. 1000 [BCE](https://bliptext.com/articles/bce)).\nIn Buddhist philosophy, Indra's Net served as a metaphor in the [Avatamsaka Sutra](https://bliptext.com/articles/avatamsaka-sutra) and was further developed by [Huayen](https://bliptext.com/articles/huayan-school) Buddhism to portray the interconnectedness of everything in the universe.\nMalhotra employs the metaphor of Indra's Net to express\n\"the profound cosmology and outlook that permeates Hinduism. Indra's Net symbolizes the universe as a web of connections and interdependences.... The net is said to be infinite, and to spread in all directions with no beginning or end. At each node of the net is a jewel, so arranged that every jewel reflects all the other jewels.... a microcosm of the whole net.... [and] individual jewels always remain in flux.\"\nThe book uses Indra's Net as a metaphor for the understanding of the universe as a web of connections and interdependences, an understanding which Malhotra wants to revive as the foundation for [Vedic](https://bliptext.com/articles/vedas) cosmology, a perspective that he asserts has \"always been implicit\" in the outlook of the ordinary Hindu.\nA revised edition was published in 2016 after charges of plagiarism.\nThe revised edition omits most references to the work of [Andrew J. Nicholson](https://bliptext.com/articles/andrew-j-nicholson) and instead refers to the original Sanskrit sources.\nMalhotra says that Nicholson failed to attribute his ideas to the original sources and explains that the unity of Hinduism is inherent in the tradition from the times of its Vedic origins.\n\n## The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)\nThe Battle for Sanskrit is a critique of the American [Indologist](https://bliptext.com/articles/indologist) [Sheldon Pollock](https://bliptext.com/articles/sheldon-pollock).\nMalhotra pleads for traditional Indian scholars to write responses to Pollock's views, who takes a critical stance toward the role of Sanskrit in traditional views on Indian society.\nMalhotra is critical of Pollock's approach, and argues that western Indology scholars are deliberately intervening in Indian societies by offering analyses of Sanskrit texts which would be rejected by \"traditional Indian experts\".\n\n## Sanskrit Non-Translatables: The Importance of Sanskritizing English (2020)\nSanskrit Non-Translatables, a book by Malhotra published in 2020 and coauthored by [Satyanarayana Dasa](https://bliptext.com/articles/satyanarayana-dasa), deals with the idea of Sanskritizing the English language and enriching it with powerful Sanskrit words.\nIt continues the discussion on the idea of non-translatability of Sanskrit, a concept first introduced in the book, [Being Different](https://bliptext.com/articles/being-different).\nThe book discusses 54 non-translatables across various genres that are being commonly mis-translated.\nIt empowers English speakers with the knowledge and arguments to introduce these Sanskrit words into their daily speech with confidence.\nFor English readers, the book is the starting point of the movement to introduce loanwords into their English vocabulary without translation.\n\n# Reception\n\n## Appreciation\nScholars have widely recognized that Malhotra has been influential in articulating diaspora and conservative dissatisfaction with the Western world's scholarly study of Hinduism.\n[John Hinnells](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-hinnells), a British scholar of [comparative religions](https://bliptext.com/articles/comparative-religion), considers Malhotra to lead a faction of Hindu criticism of methodology for the examination of [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism).\nOther scholars welcome his attempt to challenge the western assumptions in the study of India and South Asia but also question his approach, finding it to be neglecting the differences within the various Indian traditions.\nIn response, Malhotra points out that he does not state that all those traditions are essentially the same, that there is no effort to homogenise different Dharmic traditions, but that they share the assertion of integral unity.\n[Prema A. Kurien](https://bliptext.com/articles/prema-a-kurien) considers Malhotra to be at \"the forefront of American Hindu effort to challenge the Eurocentrism in academia\".\n\n## Criticism\n[Martha Nussbaum](https://bliptext.com/articles/martha-nussbaum) criticises Malhotra for \"disregard for the usual canons of argument and scholarship, a postmodern power play in the guise of defense of tradition\".\nBrian K. Pennington has called his work \"ahistorical\" and \"a pastiche of widely accepted and overly simplified conclusions borrowed from the academy\".\nPennington has further charged that Malhotra systematically misrepresents the relationship between Hinduism and Christianity, arguing that in Malhotra's hands, \"Christian and Indic traditions are reduced to mere cartoons of themselves.\"\nAccording to Jonathan Edelmann, one of the major problems with Malhotra's work is that he does not have a school of thought that he represents or is trained in.\nThis fact undermines his claims to be engaged in [purvapaksa](https://bliptext.com/articles/purva-paksha) debate.\nPurvapaksa debate requires location in a particular place of argument.\nIn May 2015, a Hindu-American scholar at [St. Olaf College](https://bliptext.com/articles/st-olaf-college), [Anantanand Rambachan](https://bliptext.com/articles/anantanand-rambachan), who studied three years with [Swami Dayananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/dayananda-saraswati-arsha-vidya), published an extensive response to Malhotra's criticisms in [Indra's Net](https://bliptext.com/articles/indra-s-net-book). Rambachan claimed that Malhotra's \"descriptions of my scholarship belong appropriately to the realm of fiction and are disconnected from reality\".\nAccording to Rambachan, Malhotra's understanding and representation of classical Advaita is incorrect, attributing doctrines to [Shankara](https://bliptext.com/articles/adi-shankara) and [Swami Dayananda](https://bliptext.com/articles/dayananda-saraswati-arsha-vidya) which are rejected by them.\nMalhotra's epistemological foundations have also been critically questioned by Anantanand Rambachan.\nHe does not, according to Rambachan, situate his discussion in relation to classical epistemologies or clarify his differences with these.\nMalhotra's critiques on [Wendy Doniger](https://bliptext.com/articles/wendy-doniger)'s [Freudian psychoanalytic](https://bliptext.com/articles/freud-s-psychoanalytic-theories) interpretations of [Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/hinduism) in her academic works, have \"led to verbal and physical attacks on western scholars and their institutions.\"\nMalhotra claimed on social media in August 2020 that he spoke out against Wikipedia in the 1990s in a talk in [Auroville](https://bliptext.com/articles/auroville) that was posted in their magazine, when the portal sought Indian users for donations.\nWikipedia, on the other hand, was founded in 2001.\nMalhotra's claims were criticized on social media.\nIn November 2022, [Google](https://bliptext.com/articles/google) cancelled Malhotra's talk at its headquarters after receiving complaints about his views on homosexuality and Islam.\nA day after cancelling his talk, Google introduced rules for inviting guest speakers to its offices.\n\n## Allegations of plagiarism\nIn July 2015, Richard Fox Young of [Princeton Theological Seminary](https://bliptext.com/articles/princeton-theological-seminary) and Andrew J.Nicholson who authored [Unifying Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/unifying-hinduism), alleged Malhotra had plagiarized [Unifying Hinduism](https://bliptext.com/articles/unifying-hinduism) in Indra's Net.\nNicholson further said that Malhotra not only had plagiarised his book, but also \"twists the words and arguments of respectable scholars to suit his own ends\".\n[Permanent Black](https://bliptext.com/articles/permanent-black), publisher of Nicholson's Unifying Hinduism, stated that they would welcome [HarperCollins](https://bliptext.com/articles/harpercollins)' \"willingness to rectify future editions\" of Indra's Net.\nIn response to Nicholson, Malhotra stated \"I used your work with explicit references 30 times in Indra's Net, hence there was no ill-intention\", and cited a list of these references.\nHe announced that he would be eliminating all references to Nicholson and further explained: \"I am going to actually remove many of the references to your work simply because you have borrowed from Indian sources and called them your own original ideas [...] Right now, it is western Indologists like you who get to define 'critical editions' of our texts and become the primary source and adhikari. This must end and I have been fighting this for 25 years [...] we ought to examine where you got your materials from, and to what extent you failed to acknowledge Indian sources, both written and oral, with the same weight with which you expect me to do so.\"\nMalhotra published a rebuttal and stated that he had removed all references to Nicholson's works in chapter 8 of Indra's Net, replacing them with references to the original Indian sources.\n\n# Publications\n\n## Books\n\n## Other publications\n\n# Subnotes\n\n# Sources\n\n## Printed sources\n\n## Web-sources","revisionCount":0},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}