[as always, this article is a work in progress ...]
Note: This post is not to be viewed as a 'celebration' by the Hindu society of 'succeeding in surviving continually for a very long time'. After all, a cockroach has also survived for a long time. Barely surviving is not a cause for high-fives. Indeed as Rajiv Malhotra says:
"I have too many times responded to this false belief as an instance of what I have coined the Moron Smriti. Dharma's space and share went down by 80% over the past 1500 years. Imagine your company CFO saying, "Congratulations, boss! We lost 80% of our marketshare, share price, revenues, but guess what? We are still not bankrupt! Isn't that cool?""
Rather the attempt here is to recognize the key concept of integral unity present in Hinduism that gives it its unsurpassed resilience and ability to constructively harness 'disorder' in the hope that it helps shape the future of Hinduism in a positive manner.
Anti-Fragile
Reading Naseem Taleb and following this interview is interesting.
"Linda Geddes: In your new book you talk about things being "antifragile." What do you mean exactly?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: When you ask people what is the opposite of fragile, they mostly answer something that is resilient or unbreakable—an unbreakable package would be robust. However, the opposite of fragile is something that actually gains from disorder. In the book, I classify things into fragile, robust, or antifragile...
...
LG: How would you make something antifragile?
NNT: If antifragility is the property of all these natural complex systems that have survived, then depriving them of volatility, randomness, and stressors will harm them...
"
Note the highlighted terms used to represent what to the West essentially is some form of "chaos". Readers of the book "Being Different: India's Challenge to Western Universalism", will most probably grasp the meaning of the title of this post relatively quickly. Empirically, it is well known that Hinduism and India's Dharmic civilization has managed to not just survive but continually thrive for 5000+ years. There is a lesson to be learned here. Furthermore, Hinduism has withstood the onslaught of invaders who practiced and imposed barbaric versions of Abrahamic ideologies for more than 800 years on India, but remarkably, with relatively little success. Reason: They could not decipher the "chaos" and "disorder" within Hinduism required to cause it to disintegrate. The path of least resistance employed to conquer Hinduism led them into a maze and a series of dead ends. In comparison, almost the entire middle east was converted to Islam within a few decades using similar methods. Similarly, Europe and the United States witnesses a rapid conquest of paganism centuries ago, and presently, a steady decline in Church membership in the last century, despite enjoying a monopoly in the religious market and unprecedented and robust material prosperity. Why?
Although a lot of this post focuses on religion and philosophy, this is not just a religion versus religion comparison on resilience. This is more a civilization versus civilization comparison.
Integral Unity
Dharmic thought systems' organic Integral Unity, as opposed to the Judeo-Christian approach of synthesizing unity makes it anti-fragile. In BD, Rajiv Malhotra points out: "... All dharmic schools begin by assuming that ultimately the cosmos is a unified whole in which absolute reality and the relative manifestations are profoundly connected. Western worldviews, by contrast, have been shaped by a tension between the absolute status of Judeo-Christian historical revelations on the one hand and the knowledge produced by a highly dualistic and atomistic Greek metaphysics and Aristotelian binary logic on the other".
Chapter 3 of this book shows precisely how the organic and integral unity-based Dharmic traditions are anti-fragile in contrast with the Judeo-Christian one that is based on various inorganically synthesized coalition of ideas, which is inherently fragile (i.e. a Jarasandha Model). As far as chaos, Rajiv Malhotra notes: "Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian yogi and philosopher of the twentieth century, said that since unity in the dharmic traditions is grounded in a sense of oneness, there can be immense multiplicity without fear of collapse into disintegration and chaos. He went on to say that nature can afford the luxury of infinite differentiation, since the underlying immutability of the eternal always remains unaffected. In the West, chaos is seen as a ceaseless threat both psychologically and socially – something to be overcome by control or elimination. Psychologically, it drives the ego to become all-powerful and controlling. Socially, it creates a hegemonic impulse over those who are different. A cosmology based on unity that is synthetic and not innate is riddled with anxieties. Therefore, order must be imposed so as to resolve differences relating to culture, race, gender, sexual orientation and so on ..."
Thus is clear from this passage that Rajiv Malhotra perceives this inability of the West to embrace chaos as a major fault line. Interestingly, Gurumurthy, India's brilliant investigative journalist, and Hindu thinker in a recent talk in Bangalore said "the west has nationalized the family and privatized the state". The fear of chaos has breached the western family's living room and bedroom.
The Bandhu Principle
So how exactly does Integral Unity make Hinduism anti-fragile? To that we turn to the Bandhu principle, which is described in 'Being Different' as follows:
"Bandhu is a concept used to explain how the whole and the parts are held together in integral unity. All aspects of the world stem from a common ineffable source, and what we perceive as nature is but a pointer to a higher reality. There is interlinking among the various faces of this reality, such as sounds, numbers, colours and ideas, and this interlinking is bandhu....
Furthermore .... Not only does each discipline presume this unity; so does the relationship among disciplines. All the arts and sciences are interrelated and may be seen as manifold ways in which human nature, itself an emanation of cosmic unity, expresses itself. One discipline contains and reflects the others. Delving deeply into any one of them eventually leads to similar integral principles and structures..."
Thus "... Bandhu accounts for the survival of dharmic spirituality, for even when certain disciplines and practices were destroyed, other disciplines encoding the same principles survived and helped revive the overall tradition."
The West is slowly beginning to see the benefits of such highly decentralized 'anti-fragile' designs - something that India always had used, and informally understood for thousands of years. The study of complex network systems in the aftermath of the West's financial collapse of 2007 reveals some interesting preliminary results [see this 15-minute video]. The talker notes the high degree of centralization of ownership as well as the high levels of interactions between the nodes in the network.
This interview reiterates why it is extremely important for Hinduism to survive in its original form and context without bad Western translations, uncredited appropriations, digestion, and new-age makeovers. Among many other things, it also provides crucial answers, feedback, and examples to some of the most complex practical and dire problems facing societies in the world today and in the future. Next, let us look at the nature of the "Black Swans" that Hinduism may face in the future.
Black Swans and the anti-fragile future of Hinduism
The Amazon book description says "Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world." Let's go back to the interview once again.
"LG: Does all this connect to your black swans?
NNT: Those are rare events with extreme impacts that lie outside the realm of regular expectations because nothing in the past can convincingly point to their possibility. The global financial collapse is one example ...
LG: How do we get out of the way of these rare catastrophic events?
NNT: We can't measure the probability of rare events because small measurement errors will cause those predictions to explode. The real point of my book The Black Swan is not to talk about the weird things that can happen but to be able to identify how resistant and robust you are to computationally small probabilities..."
-----------
Update 1 (December 5, 2012)
The video of the brilliant lecture by Gurumurthy in Bengaluru last week (alluded to earlier in the original post above) is now online. The first 15-20 minutes of the talk is especially interesting in that it reveals the "anti-fragile" nature of Indian civilization's native, self-governing, entrepreneurial, decentralized, eco-friendly, pluralistic economy that is neither Darwinian-Capitalistic or Socialist/Marxist. The Bandhu principle appears to extend to the 'Hindu business model' as well. This is contrasted with the West's fear of 'chaos' that inevitably converges toward a centralized ownership model (either the government, or a few private organizations), which is evident from the empirical observations in the 'who controls the west' video in the above post. Per Dr. Vaidyanathan (who also spoke that day), more than 90% of Indian work-force is self-employed. Amazing resilience!
The resilience of this native Hindu economy as described by Gurumurthy is best captured within the first 5-10 minutes of the followup to this talk by M. R. Venkatesh. I have embedded that video as well, below for the sake of completion.
-----------
Update 2 (December 13, 2012)
This update comes thanks to the insightful questions asked of the thesis by an anonymous commentator. The robustness and fragility of History-Centric (HC) versus Dharmic cultures are compared side-by-side, and some hypotheses postulated.
Robustness and Anti-fragility of History-Centric Cultures
A HC faith's only but glaring weakness is its complete dependence on history. This results in a Synthetic but not Integral Unity (Ref: 'Being Different' book). All additional theology are derived dependencies and extensions of this HC core. This resembles a "Star-wars Death-Star" model. If the core is damaged beyond a point, the system implodes. History-Centrism is a non-regeneratable resource. If their history is discredited or erased, that culture will disappear. Consequently, it is a strategy that even a low-grade threat to their HC objects (e.g. religious structure/holy book/prophet) must receive a disproportionately severe response. HC faith based cultures are designed to be robust, so their first line of defense is tight. They have the support of oil-rich countries or Western nations with strong military, economic, and information base.
Hypothesis: Working HC-systems are typically very (strategically) robust to make up for the poor anti-fragile properties that make them vulnerable to implosion.
The best way to take down such a system is an open question and is left to the reader.
Comparative Analysis of Hinduism
As already argued, Hinduism has been super anti-fragile in the past. The response to an attack on its religious resources typically elicits a disproportionately muted response. Temples damaged, texts and concepts distorted, Yoga, Ayurveda, Advaita digested, etc.., eliciting nothing more than a whimper and grumblings. Thus Hindus have been been terribly complacent about their primary line of defense for decades, and this has hurt them badly. Furthermore, a major emerging threat is the systematic attack (Stage 3) on Hindu Gurus all over the world. Unlike HC theologists whose main task is to memorize 'HC Smriti' (Claim: A machine is sufficient to replicate and teach all necessary HC theology??), the wise Guru carries with her or him, the 'DNA' of Hinduism that can be used to re-generate and propagate Dharmic concepts and inspire future leaders of the nation (Can we even count the number of patriotic Indian leaders inspired by Swami Vivekananda?).
Hypothesis: Working Dharmic systems (e.g. Hindu society) today are typically non-robust that leaves them vulnerable to sustained pressure. They have excellent anti-fragile properties that have been understood by adversarial HC systems.
Update 3: Dec 21, 2012
-----------------------------
Perspectives on Indian History: The anti-fragile nature of India's cultural unity (Sanskriti) comes out really well in this insightful and superb presentation (Jijnasa Charcha) by Sandeep Balakrishna. This Google-docs link may look better. In particular note the empirical comparison with HC-dominated Europe. You can view the Jijnasa Charcha on Youtube here (turn the audio way up). This is a 5-part video, that is well worth listening to.
Update 4: January 9, 2012
------------------------------
Updated terminology in a few places.
Update 5: January 11, 2012
----------------------------------
Added introductory note and reference to Rajiv Malhotra's coined phrase "Moron Smriti".
Update 6: August 08, 2014
------------------------------------
anti-fragility of Hinduism (and dharmic systems, in general) also appear to be related to its allostatic nature ~ 'unchanging, perhaps even getting stronger, by adaptively changing' without sacrificing dharma. Here's a tweet by the @macroresilience twitter handle:
Update 7: May 3, 2016
------------------------------
Briefly updated content.
Note: This post is not to be viewed as a 'celebration' by the Hindu society of 'succeeding in surviving continually for a very long time'. After all, a cockroach has also survived for a long time. Barely surviving is not a cause for high-fives. Indeed as Rajiv Malhotra says:
"I have too many times responded to this false belief as an instance of what I have coined the Moron Smriti. Dharma's space and share went down by 80% over the past 1500 years. Imagine your company CFO saying, "Congratulations, boss! We lost 80% of our marketshare, share price, revenues, but guess what? We are still not bankrupt! Isn't that cool?""
Rather the attempt here is to recognize the key concept of integral unity present in Hinduism that gives it its unsurpassed resilience and ability to constructively harness 'disorder' in the hope that it helps shape the future of Hinduism in a positive manner.
Anti-Fragile
Reading Naseem Taleb and following this interview is interesting.
"Linda Geddes: In your new book you talk about things being "antifragile." What do you mean exactly?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: When you ask people what is the opposite of fragile, they mostly answer something that is resilient or unbreakable—an unbreakable package would be robust. However, the opposite of fragile is something that actually gains from disorder. In the book, I classify things into fragile, robust, or antifragile...
...
LG: How would you make something antifragile?
NNT: If antifragility is the property of all these natural complex systems that have survived, then depriving them of volatility, randomness, and stressors will harm them...
"
Note the highlighted terms used to represent what to the West essentially is some form of "chaos". Readers of the book "Being Different: India's Challenge to Western Universalism", will most probably grasp the meaning of the title of this post relatively quickly. Empirically, it is well known that Hinduism and India's Dharmic civilization has managed to not just survive but continually thrive for 5000+ years. There is a lesson to be learned here. Furthermore, Hinduism has withstood the onslaught of invaders who practiced and imposed barbaric versions of Abrahamic ideologies for more than 800 years on India, but remarkably, with relatively little success. Reason: They could not decipher the "chaos" and "disorder" within Hinduism required to cause it to disintegrate. The path of least resistance employed to conquer Hinduism led them into a maze and a series of dead ends. In comparison, almost the entire middle east was converted to Islam within a few decades using similar methods. Similarly, Europe and the United States witnesses a rapid conquest of paganism centuries ago, and presently, a steady decline in Church membership in the last century, despite enjoying a monopoly in the religious market and unprecedented and robust material prosperity. Why?
Although a lot of this post focuses on religion and philosophy, this is not just a religion versus religion comparison on resilience. This is more a civilization versus civilization comparison.
Integral Unity
Dharmic thought systems' organic Integral Unity, as opposed to the Judeo-Christian approach of synthesizing unity makes it anti-fragile. In BD, Rajiv Malhotra points out: "... All dharmic schools begin by assuming that ultimately the cosmos is a unified whole in which absolute reality and the relative manifestations are profoundly connected. Western worldviews, by contrast, have been shaped by a tension between the absolute status of Judeo-Christian historical revelations on the one hand and the knowledge produced by a highly dualistic and atomistic Greek metaphysics and Aristotelian binary logic on the other".
Chapter 3 of this book shows precisely how the organic and integral unity-based Dharmic traditions are anti-fragile in contrast with the Judeo-Christian one that is based on various inorganically synthesized coalition of ideas, which is inherently fragile (i.e. a Jarasandha Model). As far as chaos, Rajiv Malhotra notes: "Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian yogi and philosopher of the twentieth century, said that since unity in the dharmic traditions is grounded in a sense of oneness, there can be immense multiplicity without fear of collapse into disintegration and chaos. He went on to say that nature can afford the luxury of infinite differentiation, since the underlying immutability of the eternal always remains unaffected. In the West, chaos is seen as a ceaseless threat both psychologically and socially – something to be overcome by control or elimination. Psychologically, it drives the ego to become all-powerful and controlling. Socially, it creates a hegemonic impulse over those who are different. A cosmology based on unity that is synthetic and not innate is riddled with anxieties. Therefore, order must be imposed so as to resolve differences relating to culture, race, gender, sexual orientation and so on ..."
Thus is clear from this passage that Rajiv Malhotra perceives this inability of the West to embrace chaos as a major fault line. Interestingly, Gurumurthy, India's brilliant investigative journalist, and Hindu thinker in a recent talk in Bangalore said "the west has nationalized the family and privatized the state". The fear of chaos has breached the western family's living room and bedroom.
The Bandhu Principle
So how exactly does Integral Unity make Hinduism anti-fragile? To that we turn to the Bandhu principle, which is described in 'Being Different' as follows:
"Bandhu is a concept used to explain how the whole and the parts are held together in integral unity. All aspects of the world stem from a common ineffable source, and what we perceive as nature is but a pointer to a higher reality. There is interlinking among the various faces of this reality, such as sounds, numbers, colours and ideas, and this interlinking is bandhu....
Furthermore .... Not only does each discipline presume this unity; so does the relationship among disciplines. All the arts and sciences are interrelated and may be seen as manifold ways in which human nature, itself an emanation of cosmic unity, expresses itself. One discipline contains and reflects the others. Delving deeply into any one of them eventually leads to similar integral principles and structures..."
Thus "... Bandhu accounts for the survival of dharmic spirituality, for even when certain disciplines and practices were destroyed, other disciplines encoding the same principles survived and helped revive the overall tradition."
The West is slowly beginning to see the benefits of such highly decentralized 'anti-fragile' designs - something that India always had used, and informally understood for thousands of years. The study of complex network systems in the aftermath of the West's financial collapse of 2007 reveals some interesting preliminary results [see this 15-minute video]. The talker notes the high degree of centralization of ownership as well as the high levels of interactions between the nodes in the network.
This interview reiterates why it is extremely important for Hinduism to survive in its original form and context without bad Western translations, uncredited appropriations, digestion, and new-age makeovers. Among many other things, it also provides crucial answers, feedback, and examples to some of the most complex practical and dire problems facing societies in the world today and in the future. Next, let us look at the nature of the "Black Swans" that Hinduism may face in the future.
Black Swans and the anti-fragile future of Hinduism
The Amazon book description says "Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world." Let's go back to the interview once again.
"LG: Does all this connect to your black swans?
NNT: Those are rare events with extreme impacts that lie outside the realm of regular expectations because nothing in the past can convincingly point to their possibility. The global financial collapse is one example ...
LG: How do we get out of the way of these rare catastrophic events?
NNT: We can't measure the probability of rare events because small measurement errors will cause those predictions to explode. The real point of my book The Black Swan is not to talk about the weird things that can happen but to be able to identify how resistant and robust you are to computationally small probabilities..."
Yes, Hinduism (or more accurately, Dharmic Civilization) has survived a few totally unexpected and incredibly hostile attacks, albeit at a very heavy price paid in terms of a Dharmic decay in Hindu society. The questions that it faces today are
- can this decaying Hindu society that was once a vehicle of integral unity be induced to implode?
- what if Dharmic Civilization is attacked by an adversary that simulates the Bandhu principle? This is precisely the method of inculturation being adopted by the Church in India.
- How can this anti-fragile exemplar survive such a viral attack?
Broadly speaking, it seems that the Church has employed three different types / stages in their attack on Hinduism:
Stage 1: 1757 - 1857 : Overt Missionary tactics to convert natives as a de-facto and active government policy. One of the tangible victories of the 1857 war of Independence was to strongly discourage the use of this type of a frontal attack.
Stage 2: 1857 - 1947 : Government-sanctioned methods to impart Church-friendly / Western-Universal, convent-English education and the destruction and marginalization of native traditions, teaching, and training methods.
Stage 3: 1947 - present: The political freedom gained by India ended the blatantly pro-Abrahamic methods but not the Western-Universalism that Gandhi fought against. The WU controlled media and educational material contains ample anti-Hindu messaging that largely encourages the rejection of Hindu philosophy using textbooks riddled with straw-man arguments.
Furthermore, distributed stealth-marketing methods employing native force multipliers (inculturation and converted Christian transmitters). This, by far, has the maximum chance of success and empirical results can confirm this. This approach attempts to destroy Hinduism:
a) from the inside-out, by
b) employing not just a single central agency, but a union of varied agents having diverse talents, and in pursuit of their own objectives, and
c) outwardly simulates a Hinduism-like integral unity.
Note that (c) is just a simulation and obfuscation since this ploy is merely another (admittedly clever) instance of synthetic-unity at work given the history-centric core of the adversarial sections of the West. In stage-1 and stage-2, the Hindu society, either willingly or reluctantly, joined hands with the India's Islamic society to repel Western universalism, but paid a heavy price in terms of territorial and demographic losses apart from enduring a cultural genocide. How it will be able to defend itself against this novel inside-out attack is an open question. However, the heartening news is that the books "Breaking India" and "Being Different" have
a) deciphered the mechanism, tactics, and to some extent, also understood the strategy employed by the adversary
b) Prescribed some methods and techniques that can be employed toward preserving the DNA of the ultimate anti-fragile system of the universe.
-----------
Update 1 (December 5, 2012)
The video of the brilliant lecture by Gurumurthy in Bengaluru last week (alluded to earlier in the original post above) is now online. The first 15-20 minutes of the talk is especially interesting in that it reveals the "anti-fragile" nature of Indian civilization's native, self-governing, entrepreneurial, decentralized, eco-friendly, pluralistic economy that is neither Darwinian-Capitalistic or Socialist/Marxist. The Bandhu principle appears to extend to the 'Hindu business model' as well. This is contrasted with the West's fear of 'chaos' that inevitably converges toward a centralized ownership model (either the government, or a few private organizations), which is evident from the empirical observations in the 'who controls the west' video in the above post. Per Dr. Vaidyanathan (who also spoke that day), more than 90% of Indian work-force is self-employed. Amazing resilience!
The resilience of this native Hindu economy as described by Gurumurthy is best captured within the first 5-10 minutes of the followup to this talk by M. R. Venkatesh. I have embedded that video as well, below for the sake of completion.
-----------
Update 2 (December 13, 2012)
This update comes thanks to the insightful questions asked of the thesis by an anonymous commentator. The robustness and fragility of History-Centric (HC) versus Dharmic cultures are compared side-by-side, and some hypotheses postulated.
Robustness and Anti-fragility of History-Centric Cultures
A HC faith's only but glaring weakness is its complete dependence on history. This results in a Synthetic but not Integral Unity (Ref: 'Being Different' book). All additional theology are derived dependencies and extensions of this HC core. This resembles a "Star-wars Death-Star" model. If the core is damaged beyond a point, the system implodes. History-Centrism is a non-regeneratable resource. If their history is discredited or erased, that culture will disappear. Consequently, it is a strategy that even a low-grade threat to their HC objects (e.g. religious structure/holy book/prophet) must receive a disproportionately severe response. HC faith based cultures are designed to be robust, so their first line of defense is tight. They have the support of oil-rich countries or Western nations with strong military, economic, and information base.
Hypothesis: Working HC-systems are typically very (strategically) robust to make up for the poor anti-fragile properties that make them vulnerable to implosion.
The best way to take down such a system is an open question and is left to the reader.
Comparative Analysis of Hinduism
As already argued, Hinduism has been super anti-fragile in the past. The response to an attack on its religious resources typically elicits a disproportionately muted response. Temples damaged, texts and concepts distorted, Yoga, Ayurveda, Advaita digested, etc.., eliciting nothing more than a whimper and grumblings. Thus Hindus have been been terribly complacent about their primary line of defense for decades, and this has hurt them badly. Furthermore, a major emerging threat is the systematic attack (Stage 3) on Hindu Gurus all over the world. Unlike HC theologists whose main task is to memorize 'HC Smriti' (Claim: A machine is sufficient to replicate and teach all necessary HC theology??), the wise Guru carries with her or him, the 'DNA' of Hinduism that can be used to re-generate and propagate Dharmic concepts and inspire future leaders of the nation (Can we even count the number of patriotic Indian leaders inspired by Swami Vivekananda?).
Hypothesis: Working Dharmic systems (e.g. Hindu society) today are typically non-robust that leaves them vulnerable to sustained pressure. They have excellent anti-fragile properties that have been understood by adversarial HC systems.
Update 3: Dec 21, 2012
-----------------------------
Perspectives on Indian History: The anti-fragile nature of India's cultural unity (Sanskriti) comes out really well in this insightful and superb presentation (Jijnasa Charcha) by Sandeep Balakrishna. This Google-docs link may look better. In particular note the empirical comparison with HC-dominated Europe. You can view the Jijnasa Charcha on Youtube here (turn the audio way up). This is a 5-part video, that is well worth listening to.
Update 4: January 9, 2012
------------------------------
Updated terminology in a few places.
Update 5: January 11, 2012
----------------------------------
Added introductory note and reference to Rajiv Malhotra's coined phrase "Moron Smriti".
Update 6: August 08, 2014
------------------------------------
anti-fragility of Hinduism (and dharmic systems, in general) also appear to be related to its allostatic nature ~ 'unchanging, perhaps even getting stronger, by adaptively changing' without sacrificing dharma. Here's a tweet by the @macroresilience twitter handle:
------------------------------
Briefly updated content.
For those who understand this Integral Unity we need to continue to be different ---true to ourselves thus true to Dharma.
ReplyDeleteFor the masses we need some simple writing and practices to get the fundamentals right --- all can understand the concepts because they are natural to all humans. The way of teaching has to be different. Dharma is not learnt in schools or university but felt in the Human Heart.
Renu
Renu: cant agree more. thanks for saying this.
DeleteGreat understanding! I am so happy that there are so many that are beginning to understand the challenges that we face. I hope people get more educated on this through your blog.
ReplyDeletethank you for your kind and generous words, Doctor.
Deletewhat do you mean when you say "Hinduism has to survive in its original form and context"?
ReplyDeleteThere are many others better qualified & wise to answer, but will try to answer my own way if u don't mind.
ReplyDeleteThere's an old joke about a guy who's freezing in winter wishing he had a warm coat to wrap around. He meets a cozy, but hungry bear that says "u want a fur coat and i want a meal, lets negotiate". After a while, the bear alone returns. Both of them got what they wanted.
Thus, it is far better for Hinduism to remain authentically Dharmic, rather than be digested into Western Universalism & Christianity.
Very well said!;)!
DeleteThere may not be any original form and content, because as 'human knowledge' it has been growing and progressing all along. @gmybird
DeleteI watched an interview of Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Farid Zakaria's show on CNN. Taleb's example of a system that used disorder/catastrophe to improve was the aviation system. He said once a crash occurs because of a plane failure, you can be quite confident that that cause of failure will be eliminated, because the overall aviation system is set up to learn from failures. His example of a fragile system was the financial system, because it does not learn from its failures.
ReplyDeleteThe story of how Hindu culture learned from its failures and adapted and thus continues on, is one that should be told.
Where i
Good points but you totally miss an important part to why Hindus and hindus really survived.Probably the major reason itself.That Hindus had unleashed war against the enemy for nearly 800 years.Its all well documented even in the Islamic chronicles itself.Otherwise there would be no Hindu Society.Rajiv Mahlotra misses out on that himself. So to overlook that is to negate a very important part of Hindu history which you should look into first.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hinduhistory.info/
Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders
http://www.voiceofdharma.org/books/hhrmi/
http://www.hinduhumanrights.info/hindu-fearlessness-through-the-ages/
thanks for posting this, because your question raises some other new points. Apologies for the long response.
Delete1. Resistance was taken as a given in this post and is not denied (If it gave that impression, it is due to my poor writing skills). It's clear that if India did not fight, they'd been finished in decades, forget 1000 yrs. So this post, and i'm *most certain* that Rajiv Malhotra already recognizes this :) The aim of this post is look beyond. Of course, it is another matter that the colonized mindset of Indians means many are unaware of this fact that is obvious to you and me, and in that respect, your point is important.
2. Rather, this post tries to understand how the heroic resistance was *sustainable without losing its original quality*. It is not as if other countries that were digested by Islam/Christianity did not offer stiff resistance. For example, the Christians and Islamic forces fought crusades for centuries, but ended up becoming increasingly violent and mirror images of each other. Same case when Nazis and Stalin's army fought in 1941-45. Some soldiers from both sides turned into cannibals. But India did not turn into a country of savage killers despite heroic resistance over a millennium! Why?
3. Rajiv Malhotra explains this via the "Yogi versus the Gladiator" argument. Hinduism's Dharmic approach to warfare meant that while we fight the Gladiator, we always try to remain a Yogi, i.e. fight to protect Dharma, rather than revenge, personal, or material gain as primary motive. Guru Tegh Bahadur is among the greatest examples. He remained a Yogi until the end.
To summarize, Dharmic forces fought back for 1000 yrs, did not die out or turn into a cult, but largely remained Dharmic and Hindu arts, science, music, education, architecture, etc. still flourished and was periodically regenerated via the Bandhu principle. That is stunning. Look at the state of the invaders in comparison.
The impression I got when it was mentioned to RM sometime back on his yahoo list was that he wasnt aware of that part of history either but inclined more to the 'hindus were under a thousand year muslim' rule myth which historically is not true at all but its a useful myth just like aryan invasion myth.
ReplyDeleteThis thing about the Yogi verses Gladiator argument may have been true in some part of the history but I dont think it was the case all the time during the 1000 years.It was a battle of survival.The last end of Mughal rule which was eventually destroyed by the Maharatas .Now was there any great production of Hindu arts, science, music, education, architecture going on ? I maybe wrong but I dont think so but then its understandable when you are fighting for survival you just wont have the time to focus on those things.
The other pagan/indigenous civilisations did resist fiercely against the Muslim and christian armies but ended up losing.Guru Tegh Bhadhur was among many Hindus Yogis or Warriors who died for the faith so he was not the only one.So to quote,
'They could not decipher the "chaos" and "disorder" within Hinduism required to cause it to disintegrate. The path of least resistance employed to conquer Hinduism led them into a maze and a series of dead ends.'
It May have played a part but it wasn't the force that protected Hindu society alone otherwise we wouldnt have lost a third of our territory and about a forth of our population.And the reason we didnt lose more because the Hindus hit back hard and kept on fighting.
And the other popular myth about 'if it wasn't for the british we would have all become Muslims so they saved us' which many Hindus often repeated is best described by the British author, H.G.Keene,
"The idea, however, that the British have wrested the Empire from the Mohamadans is a mistake. The Mohamadans were beaten down — almost everywhere except in Bengal — before the British appeared upon the scene; Bengal they would not have been able to hold, and the name of the “Mahratta Ditch” of Calcutta shows how near even the British there were to extirpation by India’s new masters. Had the British not won the battles of Plassey and Buxar, the whole Empire would ere now have become the fighting ground of Sikhs, Rajputs, and Mahrattas and others. Except the Nizam of the Deccan there was not a vigorous Musalman ruler in India after the firman of Farokhsiar in 1716; the Nizam owed his power to the British after the battle of Kurdla in 1795), and it was chiefly British support that maintained the feeble shadow of the Moghul Empire, from the death of Alamgir II. to the retirement of Mr. Hastings. Not only Haidarabad but all the other existing Musalman principalities of modern India owe their existence,
directly, or indirectly, to the British intervention."
thanks for the followup. i can see that we are talking about two different things, but they are connected. will pick a particular para to convey my thoughts.
ReplyDelete"Now was there any great production of Hindu arts, science, music, education, architecture going on ? I maybe wrong but I dont think so but then its understandable when you are fighting for survival you just wont have the time to focus on those things."
that's the main point of the post. that even if some Hindu disciplines actually die out, it can be regenerated using the Bandhu principle from other Hindu disciplines, over time.
this post is not about robustness of Hinduism, about how Hinduism heroically fought for survival at different times all over India, which is what u are talking about. that is a worthwhile topic, but a separate one from what is discussed in this post.
This post instead thinks not of an unbroken Hinduism but a resilient Hinduism, but about what happens if in fact, big cracks appear and certain (seemingly critical) components are broken. how does a culture regroup? what is the nature of the re-grouped culture? Gladiatorial heroism and economic power are of limited use in such situations.
e.g., if u destroy key components of a history-centric civilizations that exhibit synthetic unity (i.e., destroy holy institution + clergy + holy books), good chance their core culture disappears, even though the host civilization is militarily heroic & economically robust to materially survive. So Synthetic unity based civilizations can be robust, i.e., they make it very, very difficult for attackers to break key components, but if u do find a way of getting to its core, their culture crumbles.
On the other hand, even when Hindu temples and books destroyed, Hinduism with its built-in power of regeneration bounced back. Furthermore, this regrouped Hinduism (among other things) also inspired the next generation of military leaders thru new Hindu Gurus. e.g. Ramdas for Shivaji, and Vidyaranya for the Vijayanagara empire, etc. Hindu Gurus are not like one-dimensional padres/mullahs who just memorize books. It is as if those Gurus carried with them the DNA of Hinduism. Hence the current attacks (stage-3) are directed toward Hindu Gurus.
You are mistaken if you think Im talking about robustness of Hinduism .What will the Bandhu principle do if there is no Hindu society in the first place ? Look at pakistan or Bangladesh for examples is the Bandhu principle working there ?.You mention resilient Hinduism which is true as the spirituality is not boxed into Abrahamic frameworks but creates an environment for gurus like 'Ramdas for Shivaji, and Vidyaranya for the Vijayanagara empire, etc.'It shows these components of the Guru and the Gladiator are important as each other so when an example of hindu resilience is given then talking about one component without there other is incomplete and this what i feel is the same with BD.
ReplyDelete"What will the Bandhu principle do if there is no Hindu society in the first place ? Look at pakistan or Bangladesh for examples is the Bandhu principle working there ?"
Delete1. yes, this is still taking about robustness and prevention of breaking up, not resilience. history-centrism is non-regenerative. in the worst case, if *all* smriti is lost to Hindu society, the core of Hinduism can still be revived from first principles by Yoga. Hence in Hinduism, the Yogi will always precedence over the gladiator.
(Also, in Rajiv Malhotra's forum few days ago, I argue that Pak hasn't totally self-destructed yet because of the BP.) but resilience does not mean 'invincible'.
"talking about one component without there other is incomplete and this what i feel is the same with BD"
2. this mixes up correlation and causality. Dharma is the root cause, military leaders who fight for Dharma are the consequence. After all, the best example is the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna is the cause, Yoga is the method, and Arjuna's subsequent military leadership is the outcome.
I understand what essence is and how it can expresses itself either by the words of a Guru or the sword of the Gladiator in protection of Dharma but unfortunately for most Hindus when we talk about Hindu resilience they think 'oh hinduism survived anyway so it will survive without me doing anything' This is the biggest danger that lets just sit back , take it easy because hinduism will revive itself anyway whatever the danger.So while we are talking about the underlining resilience we also have to show historically how it was expressed.
DeleteI was at a lecture where the speaker actually showed maps how as invasions came into india and how the map kept on changing.Then speaker showed a map showing how Hindus got back in power during the 19th century when great swamis like Vikekanada and Dayananda came on the scene showing the power of Hindu resilience .So I asked him what about the islamic period when according to your maps islamic rule was all across the country how did hinduism survive ? He just said that Hindu society was so resilient that whatever they faced they never reacted the same way .Which of course is not true but thats the impression was given to the audience that dont worry take it easy somehow without even doing anything we will make it..
Ive heard this line manytimes that Hindu society is resilient whatever happens.Few days back i had a long email with the samething where it was emphasized that how much the Hindus faced the sword they never took up the sword because hindus are resilient.
Krishna maybe the cause but the Gita was still set within the context of Mahabharata.So I dont think anything is being mixed up.
'Hinduism, the Yogi will always precedence over the gladiator.'
But they are not separate in the first place..
Pakistan may fall and at sometime in the future the Bhandhu DNA maybe just reawaken but meanwhile we shouldnt have our guards down.
By definition, the Gladiator archetype ends up fighting for personal glory. The Yogi archetype fights selflessly.
Deleteso in this:
"expresses itself either by the words of a Guru or the sword of the Gladiator in protection of Dharma"
1. there's no "either - or" there. Cause and effect and the *dependent sequence of events* is a very important differentiator in Hinduism v/s Abrahamic faiths. (FIRST) The words of the wise guru transforms the gladiator's sword into a Yogic sword that (SECOND) rises violently to defend Dharma, not glory for self. Yes, both are needed, but the order dictates the importance.
Marxists too claim to fight for people, but every single such violent revolution ultimately consumes the people itself because this sequence is not adhered to.
A gladiator's sword is ultimately double-edged, but a Yogi's is always single-edged.
So tell me what measures one as a Yogi or not ? or who is doing it for personal glory or not ? If your your house is on fire will you worry about the person coming to save you is not there for personal personal glory or just doing it selflessly ? .If there is no wise guru around then what should we just hand over the sword over to the enemy to finish us off ? All these intellectual and philosophical convolutions cannot cover the basic facts that action on the ground is more practical than sitting in a cave meditating on who is a yogi or not.
ReplyDeletethis is not a "fight v/s flight" debate as already mentioned right in my 1st response. To respond to the one new and important point u raised:
Delete"So tell me what measures one as a Yogi or not ? or who is doing it for personal glory or not ?"
The Bhagavad Gita precisely answers these questions
let me state the obvious: to use violence, in proportion, not as revenge, and relevant to defending self, country, or family from violence is Dharmic. To meekly submit to wanton violence & injustice is Adharmic & not Ahimsa.
Deletethis post takes this as a *given* and talks about something beyond this.
Again you bring it down to a measuring tape.Using Violence in proportion ? how would you know how much violence is proportion and where the draw the line.So If Madhavrao Scindia who lost his brothers and just barely survived the battle of Panipat then came back years later and in revenge killed many pathans and Afghans which also broke muslim domince in the process would you say that was right or wrong when revenge was one of the major motives ? I can give hundereds of exampls where Hindus came back for revenge.So should they have apologized and given back what they had conquered in the process ?
DeleteI know what the Bhagavad Gita says and within what context but I also know the following from the Gita
"Considering also your duty as a warrior, you should not waver. Because there is nothing more auspicious for a warrior than a righteous war. (2.31) Only the fortunate warriors, O Arjun, get such an opportunity for an unsought war that is like an open door to heaven. (2.32) If you will not fight this righteous war, then you will fail in your duty, lose your reputation, and incur sin. (2.33) People will talk about your disgrace forever. To the honored, dishonor is worse than death. (2.34) The great warriors will think that you have retreated from the battle out of fear. Those who have greatly esteemed you will lose respect for you. (2.35) Your enemies will speak many unmentionable words and scorn your ability. What could be more painful to you than this? (2.36) You will go to heaven if killed (in the line of duty), or you will enjoy the kingdom on the earth if victorious. Therefore, get up with a determination to fight, O Arjun. (2.37) Treating pleasure and pain, gain and loss, and victory and defeat alike, engage yourself in your duty. By doing your duty this way, you will not incur sin. (2.38)
Couldn't be said that Krishna is stirring up Arjuns Ego to go and fight ?
So this idea about invaders coming to India and seeing all this chaos is just part of the reasons why they couldnt break through because there is much more to it. If the Kumbh mela looks chaotic to the outsider then how comes Indian traffic which also to an outsider looks totally chaotic has the worst deaths and other injuries due road accidents in the world ?
the one new thing u added that is interesting to me is:
ReplyDelete"If the Kumbh mela looks chaotic to the outsider then how comes Indian traffic which also to an outsider looks totally chaotic has the worst deaths and other injuries due road accidents in the world ?"
i'll give u pointers, & leave it to u to do your own Manthana & research to arrive at the answer.
a. there is no claim that "chaos is good"
b. indian traffic is actually chaotic.
c. Rajiv Malhotra has already addressed this question in his book BD & talks.
a.Well if the reason is given to why hindu society survived in your opening paragraphs about chaos and disorder in face of the enemy who couldnt convert Hindus because of that (even though I dont agree fully with that theory ) then one would think it is good when the rest of the ancient world ended up in a museum even im sure their belief systems may have been similar to Hindu ones but still they were destroyed militarily.
ReplyDeleteb. Well if Indian traffic is actually chaotic then Indians with their past history should easily be able to cope with it without knocking someone down or getting knocked themselves to survive.
c, ive read his books and seen the videos but i feel still there's something missing.Ive made a few points here already in that direction.Maybe because im more of an activist hindu on the ground that I see something completely different from the internet world even though I use the net as part of my activism but only as an accessory.
Ive read the book and seen his videos but I dont feel everything answered as yet.
another article from financial systems world. west seems to produce a stream of papers/books after 2008?
ReplyDelete"The Pathology of Stabilisation in Complex Adaptive Systems"
http://www.macroresilience.com/2011/12/14/the-pathology-of-stabilisation-in-complex-adaptive-systems/
uses the human mind/body as an example of a 'complex adaptive system', and its attempted stabilization using modern medicine
wonder what a Purva Paksha that compares this with Hinduism's Ayurveda / medicine-as-food, & meditative techniques approach, would reveal.
another useful document:
ReplyDeletePerspectives on a Hyperconnected World: Insights from the Science of Complexity
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GAC_PerspectivesHyperconnectedWorld_ExecutiveSummary_2013.pdf
That was almost an indepth analysis of how Church has staged their attack on hinduism. But recently , one cannot ignore the economic power of these Churches in terms of land acquisitions throughout India, particularly Kerala. One can spot a Church or a mosque almost every kilometer. In the recent times financial prowess seems to be the key,and unfortunately Hindus are just not in there. Yes , we are immune to invasions,we have enough antibodies to attack even the most virulent strains.No to forget , repeated battles can weaken the defence mechanism,and only integral unity can help in thriving
ReplyDelete